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Thursday, April 14, 2022

Forgiveness

I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

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

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

Have you ever got stuck in a blame-game with someone, refusing to accept some responsibility for your role in the situation or to accept the other person’s apology for hurting you? Do you ever hold onto the anger and emotional pain about something that occurred so long ago that you don’t even feel those emotions anymore but keep holding onto them because…you don’t even know why? Would you be willing to let go of all that negative energy if you knew this release would help you feel better, to be at peace and free you from the emotional baggage you have been dragging around?

I recently saw this quote from Inspirationboost.com, and it really resonated with me: “Forgive. Not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.”

At some point during our lifetime, someone hurts us. This injury may be physical or metaphoric, intentional or accidental, but long after the physical wounds have healed some emotional scars continue to feel raw. To assuage this pain and gain a sense of control over what happened, we may claim that the injury was justified or believe that we somehow brought it on ourselves. Indeed, it can be very difficult to see past this pain when someone you once cared about is hurling verbal and legal barbs your way during an acrimonious divorce or dissolution of a business or social relationship. You may even resent and even guilt/shame for having ever trusted him or her with your heart (and your finances).

The problem with holding onto these negative emotions is you are the one who continues to suffer emotional pain long after the relationship is ended and you and the other person have parted ways for good. Whenever you dwell on the negative events that happened during the relationship and the sadness or anger that you felt at the time, you reinforce the strength and the habit of feeling (and feeding) those negative emotions. This continued bombardment of thoughts, memories and negative associations with the past relationship overloads the conscious mind, triggering the fight/flight mechanism and putting you in an even more hyper-suggestible state (hypnosis). Since we are most suggestible to ourselves, every time we repeat a thought or behavior you reinforce its strength and power in your subconscious mind. In other words, you are hypnotizing yourself to perpetuate this unwanted behavior. Ultimately, the most effective way to heal from that hurt is to forgive the person who inflicted it so you can pursue the life that you want and deserve to be living.

Special Offer:

Release Unwanted Weight with Hypnosis

Hypnosis for weight loss series: $1,250 for the 10-week series. (This is a $250 savings!) The $200 fee for the first session will be waived only when the package is purchased up front. Motivational materials and a free digital recording of the hypnosis portion of each session will be provided.

This promotion is not redeemable for cash and may not be combined with any other offer.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. Sara has been voted the Best Hypnotherapist in Santa Clarita, California, three years in a row (2019, 2020, 2021). For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Exposing a Defense Mechanism

I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

(This blog was previously posted on December 13, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., even though the behaviors are manifested consciously, defense mechanisms only operate on a subconscious level. These subconscious devices are designed to “protect” a person from the basic concepts, morals or other things that individual has learned and deemed undesirable. An important feature of a defense mechanism is that it interferes with, prevents or inhibits the person from functioning normally.

Types of defense mechanisms include: compensation, conversion, denial, displacement, dissociation, fantasy, negativism, projection, intellectualization/rationalization, reaction formation, repression, sublimation and undoing. Society even rewards some defense mechanisms such as working hard (but sacrificing family time) to have a career.

The most effective way to deal with a defense mechanism is on the subconscious level: i.e., in hypnosis, Dr. Kappas advised. The hypnotherapist must keep in mind that repression will already be in place as it is an essential component for all defense mechanisms to function. Therefore, it is important to work with the client’s subconscious mind to recognize, acknowledge and accept that a defense mechanism exists and is in place. Finally, the hypnotherapist must help the client create and learn a new subconscious mental script to change those old behavioral patterns, he said.

“If you don’t spot a defense mechanism in regular (cognitive) therapy, use corrective therapy to reveal it,” Dr. Kappas advised.

Special Offer:

Release Unwanted Weight with Hypnosis

This promotion is not redeemable for cash and may not be combined with any other offer.

Monday, April 11, 2022

Recipe for Success, Part 2

I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

(This blog was originally posted on January 19, 2017)

Photo by Rick Hustead

People often come in for hypnotherapy to change or adopt a behavior that will help them achieve a specific goal or succeed at a particular endeavor. Contrary to popular belief (and the stories we tell ourselves), Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D. asserted that such success had nothing to do with intelligence, working hard, being nice or deserving, etc. Rather, success (or lack thereof) boiled down to the mental “programming” a person received and how that program was reinforced in daily life (behaviors).

In Part 1 of this blog, I explained why subconscious resistance to changing those familiar—albeit unwanted—behaviors can keep us stuck there. In today’s blog I describe the Recipe for Success to help you stop the self-limiting script and help you achieve your self-improvement goals.

Believe that you are 100% successful at what you want to achieve. Everything that happens to you is an expression of the subconscious signal you send to the universe. As you change the previous programming of this script by changing those old beliefs, the Universe will send you new opportunities.
Daily Reinforcement. According to Dr. Kappas’s Theory of Mind, every one of your current beliefs and action reinforces what you learned from the time you were born until you were about eight years old. If you are battling homeostasis, you must battle it daily by practicing the new beliefs and behaviors you want to replace the old, obsolete ones.
Ideomotor Response. Handwriting daily affirmations and goals/achievements in the Mental Bank Ledger is a great way to reinforce those new behaviors. (I teach my clients how the Mental Bank Concept helps to replace their obsolete subconscious mental script with one that will help them achieve new goals and provide their first ledger to get them started!)
Symbolic Language. Dr. Kappas chose monetary and numeric symbols (e.g., the $) to represent success and growth because numbers are an important part of how the subconscious mind works.
Hypnosis. The hypnotherapist facilitates a natural process that occurs at least twice each day during the “Magic 30 minutes” after waking up in the morning and just prior to drifting off to sleep at night. These periods of natural hypnosis are when a person is most suggestible to changing or adopting a new behavior/belief. (This is why you are encouraged to do the Mental Bank right before going to sleep at night.) Similarly, the hypnotic suggestions given during hypnotherapy also “ride the wave” into the subconscious mind to effect the desired change.
Precognitive and Venting Dreams. The majority of change does not happen in the office during the hypnotherapy session. Rather, the hypnotherapist plants the seed for this change that grows over time, starting in sleep. For example, during hypnosis I drop in a hypnotic suggestion that my client will have a venting dream to release any attachment to the unwanted behaviors. Meanwhile, the person can gain insight and benefit from dreams that occurred during the precognitive stage of sleep about how to resolve any conflicts that have prevented achieving the desired goal.

Special Offer:

Release Unwanted Weight with Hypnosis

This promotion is not redeemable for cash and may not be combined with any other offer.

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Recipe for Success, Part 1

I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

(This blog was originally posted on January 18, 2017)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Dr. Kappas attributed the difficulty to change or re-program these behaviors to homeostasis, whereby a person tends to only go so high before hitting a metaphoric “ceiling” to this success. Silently, suddenly self-sabotaging behaviors start to happen to keep the individual stuck in the same (comfortable and familiar) life patterns he or she is trying to change or improve. It is easier and oftentimes more socially rewarding) to stay the same or resist change (see Systems Approach in Hypnotherapy). Fortunately, there is also a metaphoric “floor” to this resistance, at which time the person goes so low that he or she is motivated to make a positive change and break out of this negative or limited cycle.

In Part 2 of this blog, I will describe the Recipe for Success to help you stop the self-limiting script and help you achieve your self-improvement goals.

Special Offer:

Release Unwanted Weight with Hypnosis

This promotion is not redeemable for cash and may not be combined with any other offer.

Monday, April 4, 2022

Break Old Habits with Hypnotherapy

I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

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

Photo by Rick Hustead

Habits have a way of taking a toll on our lifestyles. The good news is that it is possible to change these behaviors. Hypnotherapy can help you replace the mental script that you currently follow (the habit you want to dump) with one that you design to help you to live the life you want to lead.

According to John Kappas, Ph.D.'s Theory of Mind, the only two things humans “know” from birth is to react to a fear of loud noises and to react to a fear of falling. Everything else is a learned behavior or belief. The good news since you , it is have learned to do something it is possible to unlearn it—even those things you have been doing “forever” such as put off doing homework or projects until the last minute, smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, bite your nails or eat a pint of ice cream before going to bed. So long as you are motivated to change these behaviors, through hypnosis and hypnotherapy, I can help you construct a new script or “game plan” to achieve your goal.

As a certified hypnotherapist, I may work with you to achieve a variety of vocational avocational self-improvement goals (see the 145 Ways Hypnotherapy Can Help You link on my website for a complete list of these topics). During the course of the hypnotherapy, I use guided imagery and Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques to help my clients find solutions and strategies to replace their unwanted habit and increase their self-confidence to make these behavior changes. Each solution is necessarily unique to each client, because it comes directly from that person’s subconscious mind, via hypnosis.

And I will be there to motivate and support you as you let go of unwanted beliefs and behaviors to embark on your new life, unencumbered by old habits that used to weigh you down.

Special Offer:

Release Unwanted Weight with Hypnosis

This promotion is not redeemable for cash and may not be combined with any other offer.

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Hyper-Suggestible States: Voodoo

I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

(This blog was originally posted on December 7, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

People in hyper-suggestible states tend to want to “retreat” into a trance or disassociate themselves from themselves/the situation if they feel overwhelmed by the stimuli around them. The more suggestible the individual is the more easily he or she will drift into a trance state (hypnosis). This is particularly true of third-stage somnambulists, said hypnotherapist Dr. John Kappas.

In one of his most interesting video seminars, the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder worked with a client to remove the man’s frozen smile and nervous twitch. The client explained that these symptoms developed while he lived in Trinidad, where he had lived for many years. During the course of their discussion, the Dr. Kappas discovered that the client had participated in a voodoo ritual around this time. The hypnotherapist deduced that his client’s natural somnambulistic tendencies kept him in the hyper-suggestible state he experienced during that experience.

In addition to chants/spells, voodoo rituals often include smoking or ingesting hallucinogenic drugs to overwhelm the participant and induce a trance to change the participant’s behavior, Dr. Kappas said. The more suggestible the person is, the more likely he is to go into that trance. Voodoo rituals are unfamiliar and especially frightening to Westerners, who have little first-hand knowledge or experience with its traditions and beliefs, he explained. “If the person believes voodoo spells (curses) work and is already highly suggestible, he may be particularly vulnerable to going along with any behaviors or beliefs the priest presiding over the ritual suggests.”

The small (pin-point) size of the client’s pupils indicated that he was already in a trance state. Therefore, before Dr. Kappas started to work on changing the unwanted behavior (twitch and frozen smile), the hypnotherapist had to de-hypnotize him and get the man out of the original hyper-suggestible state. “You have to recognize that the client is already in-state [and then] re-direct him. Take him in to get him out,” the HMI founder said. Next, Dr. Kappas desensitized the man to the previous suggestions and drew on aspects of hypnotic modality to assume an authoritative role during the hypnotic induction. These steps were imperative to make the client more amenable to following the hypnotherapeutic suggestions to remove the client’s suggestibility to the voodoo and change the unwanted physical behaviors, the hypnotherapist explained.

“You have to recognize the client is already in state, [and then] redirect him. Take him in to get him out,” Dr. Kappas said.

What You Can (and Cannot) Expect from Hypnotherapy

I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE!

(This blog was originally posted on October 20, 2014)

Photo by Rick Hustead

I would like to clarify a couple of things about hypnosis and my role as a certified hypnotherapist. First, as I explain on my website, hypnosis is a natural, drug-free and highly effective therapeutic modality that has been used for centuries to help people change mental scripts for unwanted beliefs or behaviors that no longer work for them. Whether you want to lose weight, quit smoking, increase your self-confidence, overcome a fear or phobia, or achieve just about any vocational and avocational self-improvement goals, hypnosis can help you get it done.

My goal is to help each and every one of my hypnotherapy clients to achieve his or her vocational and avocational self-improvement goals. I participate in continuing-education courses throughout the year to fine-tune my therapeutic skills and learn new techniques that I can apply in my practice. Between sessions with my clients, I make myself available to answer any questions or discuss an issue that may have come up during the week via a follow-up phone call, e-mail correspondence or both. I provide a recording of the hypnosis component of their therapy for them to listen to during the week and even give them “homework” assignments to help reinforce the new behavior until their next hypnotherapy session. These assignments may include breathing/relaxation exercises to practice, maintaining their Mental Bank program by writing in their Mental Bank ledger each night before bed, reading specific articles or watching online videos about related hypnotherapeutic techniques that are available via the Hypnosis Motivation Institute online video library.

I work with my clients to achieve their stated goals; when they have accomplished what they set out to do, we typically part ways until they want to work on something new. I generally do not need to explore unrelated issues or discuss experiences that occurred long ago in my clients’ lives unless they state or believe that event pertains to their presenting issue or affects how they currently lead their lives. Having said that, hypnotherapy is not an overnight miracle “cure” for anything and everything that ails or distresses you. By the time most people come in for hypnotherapy, many months or even years have passed since the unwanted belief or behavior was created. Meanwhile, their subconscious mental script has had plenty of time to nurture and reinforce that unwanted habit. Although hypnotherapy is also generally a shorter-term therapy than many traditional psychotherapeutic modalities, it will likely take more than one hypnosis session to change and/or permanently remove that behavior.

Finally, California law allows me to provide hypnotherapy as a complementary or alternative treatment to help my clients to achieve vocational and avocational self-improvement goals (Business and Professions Code 2908). For example, I am certified to help people manage pain and individuals who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder to deal with a myriad of physical and emotional symptoms. However, I may only do so with a referral from a licensed medical doctor or mental-health professional; I must receive a referral from both of these health-care providers to work with a client who has PTSD. I ethically and legally cannot and will not address some issues (e.g., age regression therapy to identify possible past abuse) or diagnose medical or mental-health symptoms. If I feel that your issues are or become beyond my scope of expertise as a hypnotherapist, I will refer you to a licensed medical doctor or psychologist for further evaluation and/or treatment.