Overcoming the Fear of Flying With Hypnosis, Part 2

(This blog was originally posted on May 15, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

 

 

 

                If you are afraid of flying, hypnosis and guided imagery can alleviate this anxiety and help to make your journey more comfortable. In this blog, I will describe how I use hypnosis and therapeutic guided-imagery concepts to help desensitize my clients to any negative associations they may have with and fear of flying.

                The first thing I do is confirm that the client has a fear and not a phobia of the stimulus (flying). According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., a fear is distinguished from a phobia if it has a specific cause or origin. For example, if the plane you were last on went through a thunderstorm and you experienced a lot of turbulence and sudden drop in altitude or a loved one dying in a crash, you might develop a fear of flying. Conversely, a phobia is a generalized anxiety response that is associated with low blood-sugar levels and no specific event triggered the reaction.

                Once I make this determination, I will teach the person some basic relaxation techniques, such as diaphragmatic breathing and special-place imagery. When the client is in hypnosis and is in a deep state of relaxation, I will help him or her to create a finger-press anchor to “lock in” that sensation of calm and comfort, which the person can employ if and when he or she feels anxious or afraid. I also guide the person through a series of imagery exercises to desensitize him or her to anticipatory anxiety about flying and to the specific stimulus or stimuli that trigger the fear or anxiety response (e.g., words such as terminal, last call and final destination). I also have the person “rehearse” preparing for and taking the scheduled flight: making travel arrangements, packing for the flight, waking up the day of the trip, eating a nutritious meal, leaving for the airport and boarding the plane. During this exercise, the client gets to visualize, imagine picture or pretend that he or she hears and sees the doors close on the aircraft and feel the plane take off, fly for the estimated duration of the journey and land at the destination. I will then guide the client through a similar exercise to prepare for the trip home.

                I incorporate the client’s words/expressions in the hypnotic script to emphasize and reinforce his or her reasons/motivations to overcome the fear (or phobia) about flying. I use guided imagery to help the client replace negative associations between the sensation of flying, with that of the deep relaxation and sense of calm and comfort experienced during hypnosis. In this and future hypnotherapy sessions, I will continue to desensitize the person to triggers of this fear of flying and reinforce the new association between feeling confident, relaxed and in control while traveling in an airplane. Once the client has returned to an alert state I will provide some practical tips to further reduce anxiety while traveling and provide a recording of the hypnosis/visualization portion of the session to further reinforce this relaxed state.

 Practical tips to make your flight more comfortable:

 

·         Drink water and eat a nutritious meal that contains protein to keep your mood even and anxiety low.

 

·         Do not drink alcohol or caffeinated beverages before or during the flight, which can affect suggestibility and may increase your anxiety.

·         Get plenty of sleep the night before you travel.

·         Listen to the reinforcement track before bed the night before your flight and on a personal stereo during the flight.

·         Practice diaphragmatic breathing and activate the finger-press anchor whenever you need to reduce stress or anxiety before or during the flight.

 

 

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 www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com

© 2015

Overcome Fear of Flying With Hypnosis, Part 1

(This blog was originally posted on May 14, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

 

                With the approach of June and the end of the school year, many people are planning and preparing for their summer vacations. Even if you plan to take a cruise, at least part of your travel itinerary is likely to be by air. If you are afraid of flying, hypnosis and guided imagery can alleviate this anxiety and help to make your journey more comfortable. In this blog, I will suggest some ideas and concepts to help desensitize you to any negative associations you may have with flying and air travel.

·         Wrong words: Airport staff, flight attendants and ground crew often make a lot of unintentional negative associations with flying: e.g., terminal (airport building), departure lounge and last and final call to board the airline, final destination of your journey. These are just words and part of flying jargon; they are not meant to imply negative consequences of flying and air travel.

·         Flying is still one of the safest forms of travel and is statistically less dangerous than driving an automobile.

·         Airplanes are constructed to have several safety (and back-up safety) mechanisms and computers to keep the crew and passengers safe throughout the journey.

·         Pilots have thousands of hours of training in flight simulators before they sit at the controls of a commercial jet; even then, they will be working with/supervised by a pilot with more experience to deal with various flight conditions, turbulence and other air emergencies.

·         Air-traffic control centers are trained to and responsible for monitoring each commercial airplane at specific parts of the flight, from takeoff until landing. The pilot, co-pilot and any other officer on board will be in constant verbal and radar contact with the air-traffic control officers that are monitoring your flight.

·         The pilot(s) and flight crew all have a vested interest to have a smooth flight and a safe (and timely) arrival. They are well-trained to handle various air emergencies and are highly unlikely to do anything to jeopardize their or their passengers’ safety.

·         Finally, since the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 passengers and flight crew are aware of potential risks and have proven they are prepared to physically subdue a potential or suspected threat during the flight.

 

In my next blog, I will describe some hypnosis and therapeutic guided-imagery techniques that I use to help people work through and overcome their fear of flying.

 

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

Components of Success

(This blog was originally posted on March 24, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

 

 

                My dad once commented how much he admired actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s success in the film industry. He thought the Sherlock star had suddenly hit the big-time since he went from starring in a British television series about Sherlock Holmes to a lead role in the film about Julian Assange; had a role in August: Osage County, a major film starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts; and even voiced the dragon in the film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. He was also shown goofing around with other A-list celebrities at the 85^th Academy Awards in 2013. Of course, this was not an example of Mr. Cumberbatch being an overnight success, at all. He had certainly been paying his dues as an actor for many years—mostly on stage in Britain and some roles in television movies and series in Britain and in America. Do you remember his very minor role as a cavalry officer in Steven Spielberg’s (2011) film, War Horse? Now that he has landed roles in bigger projects, more people are starting to notice him.

                One of my favorite examples of what it takes to be successful is from an interview that Clinton Anderson, a very popular horseman, horse trainer and founder of Downunder Horsemanship, did many years ago. The trainer explained that it took years for him to build his company and reputation as a horseman when he immigrated to the United States from Australia. Apparently, he spent just about every cent he had traveling around the country to do riding and horsemanship clinics, and he usually only had one woman in his classes. Mr. Anderson said he was willing to continue traveling, teaching and “treating [his students] like queens” that way as often as he could and as long as he had the money to do so because, hopefully, the next year that student would come back and bring a friend or two. They did, and the rest is history, but his career did not take off into the stratosphere for about 20 years of very hard work.

                My point is this: Success doesn’t just happen; it is the product of a lot of time, effort, hard work and the intention and desire to succeed. This topic has been on my mind for a few weeks, and I did address it in my blog titled, “Are You Ready?” I did not intend to write a sequel to that essay. However, I figured I must have had more to say about it since this topic was not only addressed on a radio talk show this afternoon but I also came upon a related quote from Vidal Sassoon in a Twitter feed: “The only place where success comes before work is a dictionary.”

                In John Kappas, Ph.D.’s book, Success Is Not an Accident: The Mental Bank Concept, the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder explains how a person’s mental script and subconscious messages influence how and where the individual will direct energy and effort to realize a goal. Everyone has the power to achieve a goal, Dr. Kappas says, if the “correct” mental script for that success—like a road map or a recipe—is available and in place for the person to follow.

                The thing is we often have to live life and accumulate a lot of different experiences, good and bad, to know what we really want or don’t want to do or have in our lives. Some people are very lucky in that they know very early on where they want to be in 10, 20 or 30 years, and they just work hard and steadily to achieve that goal. Other people experiment for a while: they switch majors in college, change jobs over and over and even switch careers in the search for a seemingly unattainable success.

                In a way, I followed both of those paths: By age 11, I had decided that I wanted to be a therapist. I majored in psychology at college and then did a research Master’s degree in psychology in England. When I returned to the United States, I did a complete 180, career-wise, and worked for seven years at a prestigious martial arts publishing company. I started as a proofreader and, eventually earned a promotion to be one of the editors and a staff writer. By the time I found my way back to my intended path as a therapist, I had done another year of training in hypnotherapy and started my own company, Calminsense Hypnotherapy. Did I mention that I also worked as a barista for a time to help make ends meet? (I make a wicked caramel macchiato.)

The point I’m trying to make is this: it has taken me almost 35 years of hard work and experiencing life, trying my hand at different jobs/careers to appreciate what I really wanted to do in order to be where I am right now. It turned out that my ultimate career as a hypnotherapist turned out to be not exactly what I had originally imagined myself doing when I declared that I wanted to be a therapist. But life didn’t stop when I made my “dream job,” so to maintain my company’s success I have assiduously been marketing, advertising and networking my practice through social media. Meanwhile, I continue to earning certifications in additional therapeutic techniques that can help my hypnotherapy clients achieve their avocational and vocational self-improvement goals. In addition to my background in psychology, I can draw on the historical, philosophical and self-defense information I learned and the social experiences I had working at the magazine to help build rapport with and create metaphors and hypnotic scripts for my clients.

Sometimes when I look back on everything I have done and experienced to get where I am, doing what I love to do, I pinch myself and wonder how I got so lucky. And then I remember: luck had nothing to do with my success. Yes, I am still in the process of becoming the person I always wanted/meant/planned to be, but I am that person because I have put in the time and hard work to get where I am.

 

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

 

Making It Happen

(This blog was originally posted on April 19, 2014)

Photo by Sara Fogan

                Have I ever mentioned how powerful the subconscious mind is? As in, the SCM wants nothing more than to do what you tell it to do. You don’t even have to mean what you are thinking about; an idea just pops into your head and is gone in a nanosecond. Until…

I decided to wear my red jeans tonight so I could throw the blues into the washing machine with my other dark colors. I didn’t want to run the machine again just wash my magenta top; but if I could wait until tomorrow evening to throw the red jeans in with the shirt, that would be an acceptable load. Funny, my subconscious obviously didn’t agree with this strategy. Somehow, while I was eating dessert a stray blob of ice cream dripped off my spoon, onto the edge of the kitchen table and right on the leg of my red jeans. Really? Come on! I had only been wearing them for a couple of hours!

                In my blog titled Power of Thinking, I described the premise of John Kappas, Ph.D.’s book titled Success Is Not an Accident. According to the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder, any thought or idea that we program into our subconscious mind becomes a mental script; it is these mental scripts that determine the outcome of our actions. Whether we imagine a positive or negative result, the SCM follows that mental script and work to actualize the goal it thinks you “want.”

If blogs have “morals,” this one is, be careful what you think of. I guess I really did want to wash those red items tonight.

 

 

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

 

Anchors

(This blog was originally posted on April 3, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

 

                In my previous blogs, I described how I help my clients “anchor” a positive association to their new, desired behavior. This is done while the person is in hypnosis and most likely to be enjoying the deep relaxation, calm and comfort that this state naturally provides. He or she can activate this new anchor at any time to reinforce the new, desired behavior and replace unwanted habits. But, hypnosis isn’t the only time we create anchors. In fact, these subconscious associations can occur in various situations and at any time whether we intend to do this or not. This is how many of those habits that we consciously want to change have been created in the first place.

                Smells can create very strong, pervasive anchors for many people. The scent of the cologne or perfume can bring up a happy association with a beloved grandparent or may trigger negative emotions if the smell reminds you of your ex. The smell of freshly baked apple pie might­ take you back to coming home from college to enjoy a holiday meals; but this same smell could be frustrating or even torturous for someone who is on a diet. These are just a few reasons why I do not wear perfume or even use scented candles when I work with my hypnotherapy clients. I also want to avoid creating an unintended trigger to hypnosis that could be activated if the person perceives a scent that their subconscious mind already associates with me.

                We can also create subconscious anchors to food or physical sensations (touch). Do you remember the first time you touched a hot stove? You may not if this first experience happened when you were very young. However, your subconscious mind sure does; you probably even can’t recall a time when you have not been cautious about touching a surface that might be hot. The same is true if you have ever avoided a certain food because you once got food poisoning eating that item, or you can no longer tolerate the taste or smell of a favorite snack since you had your child because that was all you could eat while you were pregnant.

You can even create a subconscious anchor to sounds or music. For example, whenever I hear the hit song, “Always,” by Bon Jovi, my mind immediately flashes to an early memory of lounging on a beach at the end of a summer day. The sun is still bright in the sky but the temperature is no longer hot, and an almost-cold breeze is coming off th­e ocean. The song sounds almost tinny as it blasts out of the portable, one-speaker stereo that belongs to a nearby sunbather. I can barely detect the scent of Coppertone® sunscreen as the salty air fills my nostrils. Do you see how much imagery and how many associations are evoked by this one, specific song? To this day, I only need to catch the first few bars and I see this scene. I wasn’t even a Bon Jovi fan the first time I heard “Always” and I’m still not overly fond of that song—or sunbathing on the beach, for that matter.

Isn’t that interesting….

               

 

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

Dream Therapy & Hypnosis, Part 3

(This blog was originally posted on January 10, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

Where do you go when you dream…?

 

The most important part of dream therapy is to gauge the content of the dream. There are no universal symbols in dreams. Different things mean different things to different people. To help my clients translate the information their subconscious mind is communicating to them in a dream, I ask the following questions:

1.      At what stage of the night did the dream occur?

2.      Was the dream physiological or psychological? For example, did you hear a knock on your bedroom door and incorporate the sound in your dream (psychological dream)? The most common cause of a “falling dream” is a rapid loss of blood sugar; the person has a sensation of running, pulling or falling (physiological dream).

3.      What is the timing of the dream? Where are you geographically: in your current environment, in your childhood home, at college, etc.? This information is an important clue about your subconscious and the history of the development of your belief system.

4.      What was your dream about (content)? Was it literal or symbolic? Before interpreting the dream, you must decipher the language in which it occurred.

5.      What was your emotion (i.e., how did you feel) during the dream? The purpose of dreams is to trigger emotions and make you feel things.

6.      What emotions, information, etc. did you release in the dream through “venting”?

7.      How old are you in the dream?

 The language of dreams is rich and complex. I use dream therapy to help my hypnotherapy clients learn and understand this language to facilitate their desired behavior change. The ability to communicate with the subconscious mind in this way is an invaluable tool to break through resistance and achieve goals.

 

 

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

 

 

Dream Therapy & Hypnosis Part 2

(This blog was originally posted on January 9, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Microsoft
The “venting stage” of dreams allows you to let go of emotions/energy you don’t need to hold anymore.

 

            While we sleep, the subconscious processes the millions of message units that the mind has received during the day. Dreams, which occur during the REM (rapid-eye movement) stage of sleep, are the “dumping ground” in which the subconscious essentially purges the mind of information that it no longer needs. There are three major REM activity periods:

·          Wishful thinking stage. These dreams occur during the first third of the evening (period of sleep). This REM stage is the shortest and has the least (lowest) electrical amplitude. The majority of message units that your mind is processing are useful information; these dreams are the least intense.

·          Precognitive stage. This is the second major REM period. Dreams are longer and more intense. During this stage, you are likely to wake up from a dream with insight and answers to a problem you have been considering, because the information (resolution) was already in your mind. Remember, the mind only knows two things: knowns and unknowns—what is familiar, and what is unfamiliar. Actual “programming” of the lift script occurs at this stage of sleep; this new program becomes the autopilot that guides your day.

·          REM stage. This REM period occurs during the last third of the sleep cycle just before or up to an hour before waking up. The dreams that occur during this stage—“venting dreams’’—are the longest, most intense and best-remembered dreams. They are particularly valuable because your subconscious mind is dumping or letting go of the energy associated to emotions and information that you no longer need to carry around with you.

When you do not allow yourself to vent this information through dreams, you are holding in energy and inhibiting your ability to deal with daily stresses. When I work with clients, I provide a safe environment in which they can interpret their dreams and further vent the emotions (energy) associated with the dream, in hypnosis. I also provide a hypnotic suggestion that the client will release any remaining energy or emotions, etc. associated with their therapeutic issue in a venting dream, which we can discuss and work through in the next hypnotherapy session.

Protein, such as almonds and peanuts are a great go-to snack to prevent a sudden drop in blood-sugar level that is associated with the development of phobias.

 

 

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