Keys to Happiness

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

                I recently saw a trailer for a new film titled Hector and the Search for Happiness.  In it, a psychiatrist travels around the world to discover the true meaning of the apparently elusive emotion in his life. The premise of this movie intrigued me, and I started to think about the sources and definition of happiness in my own life. For example, Spending time with my friends and family and riding and hanging out with my horse makes me very, very happy. The sound of raindrops beating on the roof and against my windowpanes makes me happy. So does chocolate ice cream and the idea of Thursday night (because I have the whole weekend to look forward to).

                But are those things true happiness? Is it the blush of first love, a new baby, an expensive car? How do you recognize it when happiness is in your grasp to experience? Maybe it has a smell or sound or texture that I have never consciously noticed. If so, how do you or I know if we have missed our chance to be happy? Or, do we only know that you are happy because we are not experiencing other emotions that we associate with experiences that we associate with familiar, challenging negative experiences in our daily life? In that case, the subconscious mind would likely associate financial insecurity/unemployment, physical illness, etc. as a part of your subconscious life script. No matter how challenging and stressful these experiences may be, the SCM will accept them because they are familiar, comforting and known; conversely, will likely reject or avoid any other experience that evokes an opposite emotional reaction such as happiness, which is unknown and therefore painful.

These questions let me to consider that more existential question which would likely be addressed in the film: How did I (or anyone) even know what happiness is, to be able to identify any emotion as such? Even talk-show radio personality Dennis Prager addresses how hard a person must work to achieve this state in his self-help book titled Happiness is a Serious Problem. To be honest, puzzling over this question began to make me feel agitated, unsure and uncomfortable—the opposite of happy.

                Eventually, my thoughts drifted to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder Dr. John Kappas’s Theory of Mind concept. It posits that human behavior is based on the subconscious mental scripts that we create during early childhood. Furthermore, since fear of falling and fear of loud noises is the only emotion (or reaction to emotions) that human beings are born with, we must learn what happiness is and create our own and individual associations with it. Put in this context, I concluded that there must be countless definitions of and explanations for happiness—which made me feel much better.

                Dare I say it? It made me feel happy.

 

 

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

Signature Moves

 

           The Los Angeles Times recently ran an interesting article about the way various baseball players sign autographs (http://www.latimes.com/sports/angels/la-sp-autographs-analysis-20140916-story.html). In it, the president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, Sheila Lowe, interpreted the traits of several members of the Los Angeles Dodgers based on characteristics of their signatures. I agreed with many of Ms. Lowe’s characterizations of the writing she analyzed, such as her interpretation of the left-slant in one player’s long strokes (possibly holding onto the past) and the angular, illegible style of another (intelligence and impatience). Probably the most telling characteristic of any of the signatures she analyzed in this article were the extra loops or doodles that Ms. Lowe observed in Jered Weaver’s signature, which she interpreted as a possible wind-up for a pitch.

As I have explained in my previous blog titled And Your Handwriting Says, your handwriting is a manifestation of what you consciously think that is motivated by a subconscious ideomotor (automatic physical) response. In other words, the way you write—the shape and size of each letter, whether you connect the letters and even the speed of your writing—are literally a reflection of your behavior and personality traits. Unlike the body of the main text of your writing, your signature indicates how you would like to be seen by others. It is not necessarily indicative of who you really are or what you are really like. Someone whose signature matches or is most like the body of the writing tends to be very no-nonsense; “what you see is what you get.” The opposite would be true your signature is very different from the rest of your writing.  

Finally, remember that athletes and other celebrities often stylize their signatures to be a kind of informal trademark when they sign autographs for fans. Some add flourishes while others just sign initials or even make an ineligible scrawl (filiform writing) as if to subconsciously conceal their “true” identity. Without access to the rest (body) of a handwriting sample it is very difficult to really interpret what these athletes’ signatures truly reveal about their subconscious behavior.

 

 

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

 

Body Language

(This blog was originally posted on April 25, 2014)

 

                I am fascinated by one of the television advertisement for mobile (cell) phone services. In the ad, a group of potential customers puts a representative of a major, national phone company through her paces as they ask about various communications features that the company offers. Viewers are led to infer that the prospective customers are real-estate agents, because each of them is professionally clad in a tan sports blazer with a large emblem of a house on the left side of the jacket. The group pretty much verifies the identity of their vocation when one of the women says, “Let’s close!” and they all cross their arms over their chest and grin. But it is what the customers and the sales representative say with their bodies throughout the ad that is of greatest interest to me.

                Throughout the ad, the phone-company representative matches every physical and facial gesture that her prospective clients make. As a customer’s voice lilts at the end of a question, the salesperson uses a similar lilt in her response. When one person points a finger to make a point, the sales rep makes the same movement during her explanation. Someone steeples her fingers across her midsection; the sales rep makes the same gesture. Another person in the group nods and raises her eyebrows; so does she. When the camera pans back a little, viewers can see that the sales rep has even adopted a similar stance as she stands with the customers. At the end of the advertisement when one of the customers crosses her arms and announces they will all take (“close”) the deal, her colleagues look at her and immediately imitate the crossed-arms gesture.

                I like this ad because it is such a fabulous demonstration of how people mirror someone’s behavior in order to build rapport with someone. If your job entails selling products or services, you probably recognized every sales technique depicted in the advertisement I just described. But you don’t have to be a salesperson or a customer to identify with what went on. We mirror each other’s various behaviors—facial expressions, physical gestures, patterns of speech—all the time, often without realizing that we are doing it. These actions are like a “fast track” to building rapport with someone you would like to get to know better. People are naturally attracted to others who behave or seem to think like they do.

Think about a conversation you have had recently: Did you nod at some point during the conversation or lean forward in your seat as if to listen to your companion’s words even more closely? And did your companion then lean his or her body closer to yours, return your nod or mirror a hand movement that you were previously unaware of having made? Did you notice when your spouse or friend took a step forward, backward or sideways to mirror your stance, or raised or lowered his or her voice to match the tone of yours? These are examples of mirroring; and mirroring is a subconscious (or conscious) behavior that creates rapport and can facilitate social bonds by reinforcing similarity or familiarity between you. Rapport is an inherent and necessary component of every kind of relationship; it is the cornerstone upon which every relationship is built. It is only when we establish rapport with someone are we likely to explore the similarities and differences between us, and know whether we want to spend the time and energy to create a social, romantic or professional relationship with that person. Without rapport, we cannot come to trust, respect, like or communicate well with him or her, and a relationship—or a successful sale—is unlikely to result from the interaction.

 

 

 

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

 

Forgiveness

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.

               

  

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

Flight Syndrome: What Does Your Behavior Say About How You Feel?

                According to John Kappas, Ph.D., whenever a person represses or does not express an emotion the displaced energy from that experience is converted into a physical “symptom” of that emotional trauma. The phenomenon is called a body syndrome. There are no nerve endings in the brain; however, the sensory perception (e.g., smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch) that begins there send electric impulses that carry this information through the body. These impulses ultimately begin to manifest physical discomfort in areas of the body that are specifically associated with a certain repressed emotion. Once we are aware of which emotion is being manifested, we can treat the syndrome, the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder stated.

                A few nights ago, a late-night talk-show host told his audience that he tends to wander across the stage while he does the monolog during his show. In fact, the host confided that he never really noticed this behavior until one of his producers showed him a clip from a previous episode. Sure enough, within a few minutes he had drifted several feet to the left of his mark (tape) on the middle of the stage. His studio audience laughed. My mind whirred and came up with an immediate explanation for his nightly migrations across the stage:  Flight Syndrome.

                Flight Syndrome represents physical symptoms and behaviors that affect the legs and feet. In this syndrome, a person manifests his or subconscious desire to run away from a situation or problem that may be inducing fear or anxiety. Physical symptoms affect the muscular/skeletal structure of the legs and feet (e.g., bunions, breaks or sprains) or even disorders of the circulatory or nervous system (e.g., varicose veins or neuropathy). Flight syndrome behaviors include pacing, toe tapping and an inability to remain still.

As a certified hypnotherapist, it is out of my scope of expertise to diagnose an illness or to recognize/identify specific symptoms that have a psychological or physiological basis. Therefore, I do and will refer clients to an appropriate licensed medical or psychology professional to determine the cause and/or treat that specific physical symptom that. However, once this other expert has ruled out a medical etiology of your symptom, with a follow-up referral from that licensed professional, I can continue to work with you in hypnotherapy, which can provide complementary therapeutic benefits and help to alleviate and/or control these symptoms and help you to pursue and achieve your vocational and avocational self-improvement goals.

People generally do not know the cause of this presenting issue when they seek hypnotherapy. Therefore, the first step to treating someone who is manifesting a flight syndrome is to explore what the client is running away from and possible reasons why the client needs or wants to run away. Once the possible cause(s) has been established, I would use systematic desensitization to help the client neutralize the intensity of the stimulus that triggers his or her physical symptom or flight behavior. I would also incorporate guided therapeutic imagery and teach the emotional freedom technique to increase the person’s perception of being able to control and prevail over the flight triggers and manage symptoms of physiological discomfort.

 

               

 

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

 

 

The Art of Perfecting a Behavior

(This blog was originally posted on February 11, 2014)

 

                Everybody has a different idea of perfection. There is perfect weather. A perfect test score. And then there is the perfect boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse. The list goes on, ad infinitum—as do our expectations of what constitutes perfection and our desire to possess it. What if I were to tell you that you are already perfect, just the way you are?

                It is true. Your subconscious mind is literally programmed to try to do everything you ask or want it to do—including those behaviors and beliefs that no longer work for you and want to change or get rid of. The longer you have done or been practicing that behavior, the more deeply you ingrain it in your mind. Eventually, it becomes a default, a comfort zone, a known. Every time you repeat that behavior or habit, you send another positive message to your subconscious that reinforces your comfortable association with what you are doing. In his Theory of Mind, John Kappas, Ph.D., refers to the subconscious mind categorizing certain events or stimuli as “pleasure.” In this context, pleasure is something the person identifies as familiar or known, but not necessarily “pleasurable.” In other words, you are equally likely to continue to behave in a particular way even if it is uncomfortable, because that behavior is what you know and where your subconscious mind tells you that you are safe.

                For example, a chronic smoker has smoked two packs of cigarettes each day since she was 14. Her parents smoked for as long as she can remember, and her mother actually gave her that first-ever cigarette. Even though she is battling emphysema, she continues to smoke partly because, subconsciously, the smells of a just-lit cigarette or the sulfur from an extinguished match take her back to memories of that rare moment of mother-daughter bonding. Or, a recent Lottery winner blows through his entire jackpot in a matter of months: having struggled financially throughout his adult life, he had no experience (knowns) of how to enjoy this windfall in a responsible way. And then there is that individual who continues to embark on a series of disastrous romances in which the love interest already has a partner, or is physically/emotionally abusive or emotionally unavailable. Even though he or she can recognize the repeating pattern, the person seems incapable of leaving, let alone avoiding, that situation again and again.

                When I work with you to change or replace unwanted behaviors through hypnotherapy, one of the first things I do is explain Dr. Kappas’ Theory of Mind in relation to how it is applicable to your current beliefs and behaviors. I explain how your “knowns” were created in your subconscious mind, and how the SCM reinforces them each time you repeat that behavior. Finally, I will reassure you that since you are so good (perfect) at reinforcing this undesired, original habit, you are perfectly equipped to learn and practice the new, desired behavior. With the exception of your reactions to the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises—which every person is born with—you have had to learn every one of your beliefs and behaviors. If you want to change or get rid of one of them, it is in your power to do just that.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

The Day the World Changed

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

                September 11, 2001.

                I remember where I was and exactly what I was doing when I first heard that a commercial airliner had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Less than 20 minutes later, a second jetliner hit the South Tower. By the time a third jet barreled into the Pentagon and a fourth went down in a remote field in Pennsylvania, it was obvious that the United States was under attack and the world as we knew it would never be the same.

                Gone are the days when we may walk our grandparents down the jet way and escort them right to the door of an airplane to wave goodbye when they go home after Thanksgiving. (We can’t even walk through airport security with our shoes still on.) Gone are the days when the only things we had to worry about when we traveled were weather delays or mechanical problems on the jet, coach or train we are traveling on. Oh, no: that is our old (now largely untenable) subconscious mental script. In the past 13 years, the bigger concern and occasional reality is whether the person seated beside us is carrying a concealed weapon such as a bomb or blade. Thirty years ago, hostages on a hijacked plane or ship could usually rely on eventually being released to survive their ordeal when the bad guy(s) were caught or left their human collateral behind in their escape. Since September 11, 2001 most people seem to know—believe?—that we may not escape such an attack with our lives.

                Now, let’s turn that mind-set around. As a species, humans are very good at surviving, enduring and adapting to the physical and social environment in which we live. While I lived in England during the 1990s, everyone knew better than to ever leave bags, packages or luggage unattended anywhere, or else the police confiscate and destroy (blow up) the bag in case it was a bomb. Precaution, observation and adherence to the new security motto if you see something, say something have become our new subconscious known in the United States, too. We do not take our freedom or security so much for granted anymore, simply because we can’t afford to do so. Our metaphoric antennae are ever on alert, ready to raise the alarm if something doesn’t look, sound or seem right. By the time the passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 realized their flight was doomed, they likely knew from phone calls to loved ones that they were heading toward a similar fate as what had already happened in New York City and Washington. Armed with the knowledge that they would not survive the hijacking no matter where the flight ended, they reportedly confronted and fought back against the terrorists. Their heroic actions not only saved thousands more lives by crashing the plane into a Pennsylvania field instead of the Capitol building but also created a new subconscious known for the rest of us: it is okay to fight back. Indeed, since we know and acutely remember that what happened thirteen years ago could happen again, we are more ready to jump right into the fray and prevent a fellow traveler from igniting explosives in his shoes or underwear. Even though we may grumble about the inconvenience, we submit to the extra interview, x-ray and pat-down at the security gates before boarding a plane or even entering a landmark building.

For me, our ability to endure even after those terrorist attacks proved that the capacity of our subconscious mind is a major key to humanity’s ability to survive extreme tragedy and bear almost unbearable loss. If not for the SCM’s ability to translate, store and retrieve those danger message units from the environment and anchor that perception to a fight/flight response, countless more people would likely have perished on and since September 11, 2001.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and friends, and the first-responders who sacrificed and lost so much, thirteen years ago today.

 

 

 

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