The Philosophy of Thank you, Part 1

                Every Friday, Jimmy Fallon writes thank-you notes to various individuals, organizations or even theoretical concepts for inspiring some of his comedic commentary on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The content of most of his thank-you notes is silly; the melancholic musical accompaniment and facial expressions of The Roots’ keyboard player, James Poyser, just makes the act even more hilarious. I believe that the popularity and original Fallon’s inspiration for this sketch boils down people’s basic human desire for others to recognized and appreciate their contributions in society.

                I have also noticed something very interesting about saying thank you. More and more often, it seems that many people acknowledge someone else’s expression of gratitude with the same expression, as opposed to saying “you’re welcome.” This trend is particularly obvious at the end of almost every interview on PBS’s News Hour. Very few guests acknowledge anchor Judy Woodruff’s or Gwen Ifill’s expression appreciation for their expert contributions with “you’re welcome.” Instead, they seem to thank the host for thanking them. I can’t help but wonder, what is that all about? Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., observed that someone who learns by inference and metaphor (emotional suggestibility) usually feels embarrassed when praised or acknowledged in front of others even if he or she desires that recognition.

My training and experience as a certified hypnotherapist and observer of human behavior leads me to infer that most of the program’s guests do possess emotional suggestibility, based on their professional backgrounds. Historians, scientists, social scientists and political commentators that regularly appear on this program are typically members of academia (college or university staff). When they provide the information or insights these experts provide on the news program, these experts refer to conclusions or opinions they have already drawn in the course of their own work (e.g., research data or social interactions or patterns). When Ms. Woodruff or Ms. Ifill thanks someone for appearing on the program, perhaps the guest is literally thanking the host for giving him or her an opportunity to share this information with a wide, television audience base.            

                No matter who you are, no matter what you are doing, saying “thank you” is a very cool thing to do. It’s also emotionally fulfilling for both parties to acknowledge someone else’s well-deserved gratitude for your valuable contribution!

               

 

 

 

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014

 

New Year's Eve Resolutions

Photo courtesy of Microsoft Bing

 

On December 31 of every year, a lot of us make a New Year’s Eve resolution (or several). Lose weight. Stop smoking. Try something new or travel to another country. Find new love or reconcile differences with a current romantic partner. The list goes on. Many people achieve these goals; many do not. Does it matter whether these goals are actually achieved? That depends who you ask and what the resolution was.

People typically set their New Year’s Eve resolutions late at night, typically while drinking or after having imbibed alcohol. They may or may not have eaten solid, nutritious food during the evening. These factors, combined with excitement about the holiday plus the body naturally starting to get tired at that late hour, create a state of hyper-suggestibility. When we are so caught up in party revelry it is easy to over- or under-estimate what we can reasonable expect to accomplish the next day, let alone over the course of twelve months.

I do not mean to sound like I am disparaging New Year’s Resolutions, because I absolutely am not. New Year’s Eve resolutions are intended to motivate and inspire us to step out of our usual habits and improve ourselves in some way. However, more often than not they become a source of great anxiety and consternation. My greatest concern is the amount of distress, frustration and pressure they put on people during the course of the year can actually cause the individual to not only revert to but even exaggerate previous, unhealthy behaviors they wanted to change.

As we begin 2015, spend a few minutes taking stock of the goals and resolutions you have set for this year. Remember, many of the unwanted (“bad”) habits we want to change did not start overnight. If you have been smoking two packs of cigarettes each day for the past 25 years, your plan to quit smoking will likely be more effective if you gradually wean yourself off the tobacco. I offer a smoking-cessation program that enables people to gain more control over their smoking habit and overcome the addiction to tobacco over the course of six weeks, at which time they become a permanent non-smoker. If you want to take off some extra pounds, consider how long you have been at your current weight compared to your ideal weight. How long did it take to get where you are today? The safest and healthiest way to lose weight is gradually. It takes time to permanently change unhealthy eating habits, incorporate exercise into a regular routine and increase self-confidence about how you look and improve your body image at each stage of your weight-loss journey. The same is true about getting rid of just about any other negative behavior or habit/attitude that you want to change.

Patience, perseverance and an abiding belief in your ability to fulfill that New Year’s Eve resolution can bring you the success you desire. You just need to relax and remember that you can control and are in control of why (motivation), when (timing) and method of achieving it. For more information about how hypnotherapy and therapeutic-guided imagery can further facilitate this success, please visit my web-site at www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com or call (661) 433-9430.

Happy New Year!

 

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

Handwriting Analysis: Doodles

Image by The Broken Minor/Courtesy of Microsoft

 

                I have explained the role of handwriting analysis in my hypnotherapy practice and identified some specific traits I look at in a person’s handwriting in three of my previous blogs (Handwriting Analysis for Hypnotherapy; And Your Handwriting Says; And Your Handwriting Says, Part 2). Like handwriting, the doodles we draw in the margins of a page or around letters or words also provides insight into our subconscious mind. For example, they can reveal if the writer isn’t being truthful to him- or herself. They can also indicate if the person is stuck in an emotion or struggling with a problem. Following are some common doodles and what they suggest about the writer’s personality.

·         Happy face: The person is literally a happy person.

·         Doodle is at a right slant: the person needs to express his or her emotions.

·         Doodle is at a left slant: the person tends to repress his or her emotions.

·         Bunches of flowers: Symbolizes desire for growth; the person has a feminine side.

·         Geometric shapes (boxes, rectangles): The person is able to see all sides of an issue.

·         Triangles: This person can also see all sides of an issue; tends to be rational and wants things to come to a head.

·         Symmetric shapes: indicates that the person tends to be law-abiding, conformist.

·         Angular shapes: indicates that the person is less open to others.

·         Dolphins or porpoises, chimpanzees: The person is playful.

·         Ladders: motivation, drive.

·         Arrow through a heart: Drive/ambition for love.

·         Tic-tac-toe squares or hash lines: The person feels restricted by other people in his or her life.

Doodles are universal: in other words, no matter what language you speak/write, it is common and natural to see these scribbles or drawings somewhere on the page. Sometimes I specifically ask clients to “draw” how they feel or what they think about something if they cannot express their thoughts or emotions in written words. I might then ask the person to describe how he or she feels about the squiggles or objects just drawn.

                For more information about handwriting analysis or to request a full analysis of your writing, please contact me at (661) 433-9430 or contact me via e-mail at calminsensehypnosis@yahoo.com.

 

 

 

     Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

Defense Mechanisms: Withdrawal

 

            Have you ever ignored or tried to “freeze out”/stop talking to someone you are arguing with once emotions start running high? Has your spouse, partner or friend ever done this to you? Sometimes people avoid visiting or contacting someone who is seriously or even terminally ill as a means of denying the seriousness of the disease and protecting yourself from experiencing any emotional distress that this contact may trigger in you. These scenarios are examples of withdrawal, a powerful defense mechanism in which a person shuts off communication with another individual or even physically withdraws from an unpleasant circumstance as a means of self-protection.

Like other defense mechanisms, withdrawal is: 1) unconscious; 2) self-deceptive; 3) and it distorts reality through thoughts and action. “Change is a threat to the subconscious mind,” said John Kappas, Ph.D. According to  the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder’s Theory of Mind, people are subconsciously motivated to maintain and/or restore a known physical and emotional status of comfort and security. Whenever someone says or does something that causes physical injury, hurts your feelings or challenges your beliefs, the mind automatically tries to compensate for this threat or “pain” by activating this or another form of defense mechanism.

            In order for a client work through this defense mechanism, I work with the individual to identify the root cause or source of the fear that he or she is trying to avoid confronting in the first place. When the person is in hypnosis, I ask how this fear is negatively affecting his or her life and interactions with others. For example, does the client withdraw from others during an argument because he doesn’t want to face the negative implications of “losing” the debate or being wrong about a philosophical opinion? Once the person identified this motivation I would desensitize him to those negative associations and employ guided-imagery techniques so the person could imagine how it would feel to listen to a different opinion and be open to learning something new.

If the person is emotionally withdrawing from or avoiding a terminally ill relative because she doesn’t want to face her own mortality, I would explore her conceptions about death and dying and what losing this person means/would mean to her. To help prepare the client for visiting the patient, I would desensitize her to hear fear/anxiety and any expectations or ideas she may have about the person’s illness and what she may actually perceive or experience during their interaction. Finally, I would use guided-imagery techniques so the person can imagine feeling calm, comfortable and relaxed during her interaction with this person so she can enjoy the time they spend together.

               

 

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2015

 

 

 

 

 

After the Watershed Hour

 

I can remember a time when there was very little if any profanity in books or movies or on television. What little swearing there was would have been bleeped out. If someone cursed during an interview and the word slipped out before the bleep could be superimposed, the individual and/or the network on which the word was heard would likely offer profuse apologies for the offense. On-screen kisses were generally fairly chaste, and if a couple was shown in bed, both partners had one foot on the floor. When Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” at the end of Gone with the Wind, audiences were equally if not more scandalized by that line than Miss Scarlett’s constant machinations to seduce Ashley Wilkes.

These days however, very few words or activities are off-limits on-screen, on the radio or on the page. Even then, it is often possible to discern what is being said or done. I am constantly amazed at the amount of fairly explicit sexual innuendo and even depiction of sexual activity on network television before 9 p.m. A wider variety of expletive language has become more prevalent among public figures, as well: Remember when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti dropped an F-bomb during a speech to celebrate the Los Angeles Kings hockey team winning the Stanley Cup in June 2014? New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady apparently let one fly in November 2013, and Jennifer Lopez reportedly did the same on American Idol in March 2014. What happened to the idea that public figures such as athletes, politicians and other celebrities should be role models for youngsters? What gives?

According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Theory of Mind, every belief and behavior other than a reaction to the fear of falling and a reaction to the fear of loud noises is learned. First we identify a stimulus (e.g., smell, sound, taste, sight, touch) and associating it with a positive or negative response or experience (knowns). As these associations gradually create our life script (mental script), we continue to behave in ways which we have learned “work” to help us accomplish a particular goal. As our primary caretaker(s) and, eventually, other influential people in our environment, repeatedly introduce us to specific beliefs or behaviors, the critical area of the mind identifies this random data as “knowns” in the SCM.

I doubt that expletive language, sex and violence have become more prevalent or extreme in recent years. Rather, I think our acceptance of and familiarity with them in our daily lives has facilitated our acceptance and tolerance of them on-screen and in books, etc. This isn’t good or bad, just an observation about how we behave and our expectations and attitudes about these behaviors. Sure, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (film) had very little swearing in it. However, I bet if the film was made today there would be a lot more “bad words” simply because it is more socially acceptable to use profanity in books, movies and on television that it was forty-plus years ago.

Eventually, we become desensitized to that stimulus (e.g., profanity, sexual imagery, etc.) in our environment so that its presence in our entertainment also feels familiar and comfortable. I think that with these words and images now playing such a big part in (a large portion of) society’s subconscious mental script, it would almost feel unrealistic if they were missing in today’s entertainment.

 

 

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014

 

Two Routes, One Destination

Diagram courtesy of Microsoft Bing
 

                In life, there are often several routes we can take to reach the same destination or techniques we can use to achieve the same goal. I find it interesting that once we have chosen a specific path or method, we are very reluctant to try the alternative.

                A couple weeks ago, I suggested to my dad that he drive to my nephew’s school Christmas pageant the same way I go to see my horse. I knew that this route would enable him to avoid both the round-about on the freeway exit and having to make a left-hand turn into the school parking lot. To my surprise, he was very resistant about going the way I suggested. To my surprise, it turned out he had never driven that way to the school, which accounted for his initial protest about taking this unfamiliar route. I had to admit that I felt a pang of sympathy for him. Even though it was known and comfortable for me because I almost always drive the route I was encouraging him to take, once upon a time, I felt the exact same way about it. Maybe one day it will become this familiar and comfortable for my dad, as well.

                Several years ago, I used to always go to the barn the same way my dad wanted to drive to the school. I was aware that a simpler, more direct route existed; there was even an alternative that avoided the freeways altogether. However, since I had never gone either way I was wary about going any way other than the way I was used to. It was so familiar that I barely had to think about when to turn or where. It was comfortable and known, a subconscious mental script that I (almost) could have driven to the barn with my eyes closed. It didn’t matter that I had a GPS in my car and several local maps I could use if I took a wrong turn. It didn’t matter that I had lived in the area for most of my life and, theoretically, already knew—or should have known—how to at least find my way home if I got lost. I had no reason or desire to change this habit, so I didn’t—until “my” freeway ramp was closed for landscaping and I had no choice but to take the path unknown.

                I plugged the alternate route into my GPS, took a deep breath and started to drive according to the GPS Voice’s instructions. So what if I had to get on the freeway a few exits over from my usual starting point? I asked myself as I merged into traffic. I soon realized that I had been worried for no reason when I started to recognize familiar road signs and landmarks that reassured me I really was going the right way. I even discovered that this new route even had some perks: I had to make fewer left-hand turns and fewer lane-changes, and my overall drive time was actually a little shorter. Best of all, I didn’t have to deal with that round-about where I usually exited the freeway. After driving this way a few times, I became so comfortable and confident taking this new route that it became a new mental script but even my preferred way to drive out to this part of the city.

 

               

                               

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014

Opportunities to Handle It

“Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you handle it.”  – Lou Holtz

Photo courtesy of Microsoft Bing

 

I think a part of my subconscious mind was already tuned in to ESPN football analyst and former National Collegiate Athletic Association football coach Lou Holtz’s philosophy when I detached the filter from the machine. Before that moment, I had never ever tried to clean the filter so soon after the espresso finished dripping through; but that day my mind was on about 20 other things and I wasn’t focusing on what I was doing. In my rush to be efficient so I could tackle my next task (baking), I reached for the filter handle to clean up the machine after I made my latte.

BOOM! POP! Espresso grounds flew everywhere.

Let me just say that before I enrolled at the Hypnosis Motivation Institute—let alone became a certified hypnotherapist—this kind of incident probably would have wound me up more than the caffeine I was drinking. But this time, I was willing and very able to take my mishap in stride. Sure, the mess was inconvenient; but there was a silver lining to the clean-up I had to do. I took HMI founder Dr. John Kappas’s advice to just “turn the situation around” directly to heart. Now that I already had to clean up the espresso grounds, this would be a perfect opportunity to really clean the espresso machine as well.  I had recently noticed that the water was filtering very slowly of late; or, sometimes inconsistent amounts of the beverage would be produced. It was time to figure out what was going on so I could get back to enjoying my latte.

The clean-up was also a great opportunity to do some of the relaxation techniques I recommend and teach to my hypnotherapy clients when they are frustrated. I practiced diaphragmatic breathing—drawing slow, deep breaths through my nose, holding the breath for several seconds and slowly released the air through my mouth. Meanwhile, I focused on completely brushing away the errant grounds and then ran the machine with just clear water to flush out the remnant espresso that got stuck in the machine. To prevent my subconscious mind from drifting into negative self-talk and recrimination about all the time I had to spend cleaning up the mess, I sang along with the holiday songs playing on the radio. I thought about all of the holiday festivities to come in the coming days. I even thanked myself for creating an opportunity to give the machine a mini tune-up that would ultimately brew better espresso.

Before I knew it, I had completely handled the mess as well as my non-reaction to it. The espresso maker was clean and working better than it had in a long time, and I had plenty of time to enjoy my beverage before I started my holiday baking. Win-win.

 

 

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014