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Thursday, May 8, 2014

The Elevator Lesson

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

“Hello? Hello!” When there was no answer, the thrum of persistent knocking. Finally, the shrill sound of a ringing bell similar to noise of an old-fashioned alarm clock rang once, twice. Then the cycle repeated; this time, the voice sounded more plaintive, more panicked.

“Excuse me? I think someone is stuck in one of the elevators,” I told the receptionist.

The woman cocked her head in the direction of the elevators and picked up her phone. “I’ll call security,” she told me with a calm smile.

It seemed like ages until someone finally showed up to help get the passenger out, although probably only a few minutes had passed from the time I alerted someone about the stuck elevator until the problem was resolved. The whole time, I battled my own wave of panic and concern for the person stuck inside while sending these mental messages: “Help is coming. You will get out soon.” It was 3 p.m.—well past lunch-time—but what if he or she had not eaten anything since breakfast? I knew from my hypnotherapy training and personal experience that hunger and low blood-sugar levels can bring on or exacerbate anxiety and trigger symptoms of nausea, dizziness and weakness. I have helped my clients work through phobias that were created by subconsciously associating the physical symptoms of having a low blood-sugar level with an object or some event going on in their environment. Since the person in the stuck elevator was also actually experiencing this event, it would be reasonable if the person developed a legitimate fear of elevators after today. What if he or she already had a phobia of elevators….? But, I was getting ahead of myself.

Of course, the building’s security officers showed up and got the person out of the elevator. He seemed no worse for wear and was even laughing about what had happened. I wondered what I would or could have done in his situation. Like this passenger, I would have called out for help and activated the alarm, like he did. Then I would have worked on calming down (and remaining calm) by doing diaphragmatic breathing so I could focus on possible options to resolve my problem. Once I established that there was cellular reception from where I was, I could call someone in the office I was visiting in that building to let them know there was a problem with one of the elevators and ask them to send help for me. Alternatively, I could have called a friend or family member to look up the phone number of a general manager of the building and raise the alarm. I could have even called 911.

I think the thing that most disturbed me about the incident was other people’s response to it—or lack of response. Even if I was the only person who initially heard the person knocking and calling for help, which I doubt, the alarm bell was very loud. The receptionist didn’t seem too concerned when I told her that I thought someone was stuck in an elevator; it was as if one or the other machine malfunctioned on a regular basis and this was another daily inconvenience. People continued to walk past, chatting on their mobile phones or with a friend. Some pressed the call button to summon the other elevator to take them back downstairs. But no one seemed particularly worried, curious about or interested in the shrill rings that cut through the air every few seconds. It was like they didn’t want to get involved. Maybe they didn’t, and that scares me more than the idea of being stuck somewhere. I just find it very sad and disheartening that we can no longer generally count on the kindness and awareness of strangers for help and support during a crisis or an emergency.

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/.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Energy Vampires

Vampires are very popular these days. They show up as main characters in popular television series and movies. They are heroes (or anti-heroes) in novels for young-adult and adult readers. The Count on Sesame Street teaches young viewers about numbers and counting. Finally, vampires represent a powerful metaphor to describe a person who literally drains someone else of positive energy and emotional fortitude. Maybe you even know or have someone like this in your life. Like the creatures represented in literature and on film, emotional vampires “prey” on just about anyone they can sink their emotional fangs into. Just like Kristen Wiig’s character of “Penelope” on Saturday Night Live, they are very needy individuals who try to one-up every other person in the room in order to feel more confident and in control of their lives.

However, like the supernatural creatures they represent, emotional vampires share specific characteristics and must also observe certain behavioral protocols that make them easy to recognize and defend against.

How to recognize an emotional vampire:

· Emotional vampires have a lower vibrational energy than others around them.

· They are often in the middle of or just getting through some kind of emotional disaster. Part of their charm or attraction is that they give off a lost or needy vibe that motivates others to want to just look after them during a crisis. By then, of course, you are already “hooked” and eager to offer more support when another problem develops.

· They often revel in their negative experiences or other people’s disappointments.

· When you share a painful confidence with this person, he or she seems to be in competition with you to describe an even more distressing experience: “When that happened to me….” When you interact with an emotional vampire, you actually feel worse about what is going on in your life than you did before.

· An emotional vampire’s negative energy literally “sucks” out and dampens the optimism, good mood and spiritual/psychic energy of everyone else in his or her environment.

How to defend against an emotional vampire:

· Remember: Just like the vampires in horror movies, an emotional vampire must be invited or welcomed into your emotional/personal life. Whenever you feel uncomfortable in someone’s presence, pay attention/listen to that emergency alert from the primitive part of your subconscious mind, warning you to stay away from someone who could be emotionally (or even physically) dangerous to you.

· Be a true friend to one or several people and surround yourself with individuals who are true friends to you. These are people who like, trust and respect you. They are individuals with whom you share various mutual and separate interests. They may challenge you, but their support does not waver. They celebrate your successes with you, but they do not insult or ridicule you and they do not try to make you bad or worse about a misfortune. They look out for your best interests, and you do the same for them. They also “close ranks” around you and try to shield you from the negative energy of others who try to bring you down.

· Participate in activities that you enjoy doing and make you feel relaxed, happy, positive and self-confident. The more positive energy you give off, the more positive energy you will attract!

· Use your positive energy (attitude) to neutralize negativity in your environment. See my “Energy Exchange” blog (January 3, 2014) for more information about how to raise the energy level in your environment.

· Finally, try this cool imagery exercise (one of my favorites!) to create a protective energy shield around you. Visualize, imagine, picture or pretend that you are surrounding yourself with silken strands of pure, positive energy. This energy is manifested as the most delicate strands of gold and silver light, more delicate than the silk of a spider’s web but millions of times stronger. (Remember: silk from a spider’s web is already proportionally stronger than steel. In other words, very strong!) Gradually wind these gold and silver strands around yourself, starting with your feet, and work your way up your body. These strands appear invisible to you and everyone around you, but only until the emotional vampire tries to get to close to you. Unlike a traditional spider’s web, this silk repels rather than ensnares the threat. These strands of beautiful, pure energy encase you like a knight’s armor. They are strong as iron but slippery as soap or ice. Since there is nothing for an energy vampire to hold or sink his or her fangs into, this person has no choice but to is go away and find another “victim.”

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

That Light Bulb Moment

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

According to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Comedian Bill Maher recently told his Real Time audience that some of the best decisions he ever made involved quitting a behavior or lifestyle that didn’t make him happy, including quitting smoking and leaving Catholicism. He explained that continuing to smoke cigarettes was jeopardizing his heath, and practicing a religion he didn’t believe in was making him miserable (Maher is now an atheist). The comedian realized that he needed to change or even abandon some of his previous beliefs and behaviors in order to lead a life that was more authentic for him.

But what about Thomas Edison, who famously joked that through his efforts, society now knew about 999 ways not to build a light bulb before he perfected the design on the 1,000^th or so attempt? His success was the product of hard work, dedication and perseverance as a scientist. He was able to turn disappointment into motivation and even a teachable moment. If he had stopped trying to perfect his invention on the third or 999^th attempt someone else, somewhere else, likely would have created the light bulb. Creating the light bulb was Edison’s invention, his goal to achieve, his life path to follow—and he stayed on-course until he realized this dream.

When my clients initially contact me to help them achieve a new vocational or avocational self-improvement goal through hypnotherapy, they often want to give up a habit that no longer works for them. Some people want to quit smoking; others want to lose weight (stop over-eating). Still others want to increase their self-confidence and build their self-esteem so they can truly, finally, leave an unhealthy social, work or romantic relationship. Others want to learn skills or techniques that will help them relax and follow through with a plan or persevere and finally complete a project.

According to Einstein’s logic, stopping or quitting unproductive or even potentially harmful behaviors might be construed as a sign of sanity or even genius. On the other hand, he might argue that it’s a waste of time to spend years, money and energy repeating a pattern or design that seems to never work out—except, it did. In my role as a certified hypnotherapist, I focus on the most efficient and ecologically sound ways of helping the client achieve those goals that will not harm the person or others in his or her environment. I use hypnosis and guided imagery techniques to help the person explore his or her motivations to change an undesired habit that is limiting personal growth and replace it with one(s) that will enhance and maximize that individual’s potential. You know what you want to achieve. Your conscious mind thinks it knows what you are capable of. Through hypnotherapy, you can re-program any limiting or negative mental scripts into those of self-confidence, dedication and perseverance. I trust and respect your desire to do this work so you can also live the life you want to be leading, and I look forward to helping you achieve these self-improvement goals!

Monday, May 5, 2014

Patience

Some days, it seems like nothing goes to plan. A “quick” errand ends up taking two hours. Traffic is still stop-and-go, several hours after rush-hour. Severe weather on the East Coast causes delays travel on all routes; you may not make it to your cousin’s wedding on time—and you are in the best man or maid-of-honor. Your computer server goes down on the day your term paper or an important project for work is due. What can you do to improve your circumstances? It may help you feel better to have a full-blown temper tantrum, but any relief this outburst brings is likely to be short-lived. Also, you will have to deal with the physical and/or social consequences of your melt-down. There is another way, and it is patience.

Patience is a rare and often maligned or ridiculed virtue. Some people seem to be born with it. Nothing fazes them, and no matter what is done or said to or about them, these people carry on as if everything is fine and life is still good. But even those of us who do not naturally possess this kind of fortitude need not despair: anyone can learn to be patient. I did, and you can, too.

Before I started my hypnotherapy training, I was constantly racing—if not battling—myself to be better/faster/stronger or whatever I thought I needed to do to succeed. If something went wrong or did not occur in what I considered to be a timely manner, well, let’s just say that I would be very frustrated. Even though I knew I would eventually finish the project or task, I would resent the fact that I had lost even a little bit of control of the process I was working on. And then one day it dawned on me that patience wasn’t the issue or conflict that I and others like me probably needed to work on: it was the willingness to allow myself to relinquish my need for control.

It is actually very easy to be patient when you are relaxed and open to new experiences. How many times have you looked back on an event and acknowledged that, if not for that inconvenient delay you might be in a very different place in your life, or that project might have had a different (and not so good) outcome? We have come to believe that society expects and even nurtures that frenetic, Type-A desire to succeed at all costs, including our health and relationships. But this belief is a learned behavior, and even those of us who like to micro-manage every aspect of every day can master the art of taking some pressure off ourselves and relaxing into a state of calm, patience and relaxation.

The great thing about learning how to become patient is that this behavior naturally reinforces itself. Every time you release the anxiety or stress that is fueling your sense of impatience, your physical body naturally relaxes, your breathing deepens and your heart rate slows down and regulates. The body naturally prefers this state of being, or homeostasis, because it is under less pressure to function normally. As you release this physical stress and allow yourself to just “be” in the moment, your subconscious mind creates a new known or positive association with this state. Monty Roberts, one of my favorite horsemen likes to say, “Low adrenaline equals high learning.” In other words, when you are relaxed, calm and patient, your mind naturally opens up to the new and interesting experiences that life is trying to show you.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Going For a Cause

At some time in our lives, just about everyone uses a defense mechanism to cope with a stressful or disappointing experience. These strategies can include denial or displacement of the unpleasant emotion, repression of a memory, substance abuse, regressing to an earlier stage of development or even substance dependency. However these behaviors provide only a temporary perception of control over the environment; eventually, we have to deal with and resolve the primary issue that has triggered the defense mechanism in order to achieve personal growth. To be an effective hypnotherapist, I must recognize which one(s) a client may be using, how and why the device is working in this situation, and when it is preventing desired change and personal growth to occur.

According to John Kappas, Ph.D., resistance to changing a behavior is the first stage of effecting this change. “We do things systematically to avoid change,” said the founder of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute. “Change is a threat to the unconscious mind.” To facilitate change in a client’s behavior—such as helping someone to quit smoking or to lose weight—the hypnotherapist must “buy” the person’s symptoms of defensive behavior and provide some symptomatic relief. But for the problem or unwanted behavior to be truly resolved it is often necessary to go for the cause of the conflict or symptom. “The client may be subconsciously protecting [the cause] by employing defense-mechanism devices,” Dr. Kappas explained.

Usually, many factors combine to create the primary issue or problem, and the client is suggestible to those precipitating factors, the hypnotherapist explained. Consequently, the first hypnotherapy session with a client is the most important component of the therapeutic process, because this is the first opportunity to start working with the client’s suggestibility and “suggest” certain changes in behavior. For example, I might work with a client to desensitize the person to the association of smoking a cigarette while drinking an alcoholic beverage before supper. Or, I would create a new association in which a client would “choose” to write about his or her negative emotions in a journal rather than eat a bowl of ice cream when the person felt angry or sad. But these changes in behavior—social drinking and displacing negative emotions through eating—can and will only occur when the client is ready to recognize the relationship between the emotion and behavior.

“You cannot cure a person by telling him what the problem is,” Dr. Kappas said. “Whenever you hit the cause of the problem, symptoms start to disappear. Once you identify and remove the primary cause of the problem, you must alleviate secondary issues.”

Friday, May 2, 2014

Masters of Suggestibility

Photo by Jennifer Berkowitz/courtesy of Jennifer & Joy Berkowitz

Have you ever attended a really good concert? Rock, pop, country—it really doesn’t matter what the genre happens to be—have a lot in common: The singer(s) and other band members engage the audience through their music and banter; and the audience, which typically comprises devoted fans wearing T-shirts or hats with the performers’ logo, knows every lyric to every song they ever wrote. There is always plenty of activity going on, on-stage: musicians or back-up entertainers are dancing, lights are flashing; there are changes of costume and/or scenery. There may also be a video screen projecting images or scenes from a previous gig to look at and further overload the audience with an impossible number of visual and auditory stimuli (sensory overload). By the time the band is halfway through the first song, the audience is mesmerized and the singer(s) have become masters of their fans’ suggestibility.

Last year, my friends and I experienced one of the best and, for me, most interesting concerts I have ever been to. (I will get to that in a minute.) I think that anybody who has ever attended a Bon Jovi concert would agree that this band puts on an incredibly entertaining, rocking show. They went through a catalog of about 20 songs, practically nonstop, for two hours. Even when lead singer Jon Bon Jovi—who is one of the most energetic and charismatic performers I have ever seen—disappeared offstage for a couple of minutes to drink some water and change clothes, the band rocked on loudly and exuberantly until he popped back into the spotlight and continued to work the audience. Most if not every other person at Staples Center that night was a devoted fan of the band and knew all of the lyrics to their songs. All Bon Jovi had to do was hold his microphone out at the audience and thousands of voices would automatically sing along with him.

But by 11 p.m. or so, the night was wearing on, and everyone’s ears were probably buzzing from the loud noise. Exhaustion was starting to set in. After all, most of the fans in this audience were in their late-forties or fifties, if not older. We had been at work all day and we still faced a long drive back to wherever we lived so we could get to bed and then get up early to start another workday, the next morning. Meanwhile, the band was still going strong and cranking out one song after another. Bon Jovi must have felt the reduced energy in his audience because this is when he suddenly encouraged everyone to get up and sing and dance with the music. “I still have a whole catalog of songs in my head to go through!” he told us. Of course, the revelry started up again and we continued to rock on until the concert was over.

This was when the concert became truly interesting to me in terms of being able to observe behavior and suggestibility. I was fascinated to witness and impressed to actually experience the hypnotic modalities I have studied, hard at work on everyone at the Staples Center that night. Here was a very charismatic and talented band whose lead singer was literally telling thousands of people what to sing or say or do without really ever having to issue a direct instruction to the audience. There was no question that Jon Bon Jovi was running this show, because he was standing/walking/dancing around the stage (special place or authority), wearing either his trademark jacket emblazoned with the stars and stripes motif or leather vest (special clothes or authority) and singing those Billboard hit songs (special words or doctrine) or reminiscing about highlights of the band’s storied career. Bon Jovi only had to point his microphone and those of us with emotional suggestibility immediately got the inference: he wanted us to sing along with him! (So we did.) Later on, when he specifically told (instructed) his audience that he wanted us to continue to enjoy the music we obliged and stood to sing and dance some more (physical suggestibility) until the gig was over.

Hmm… I wonder if I was hypnotized?

Thursday, May 1, 2014

In a Manner of Speaking

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

If you exaggerate any aspect of your voice when you hypnotize someone,
these kinds of affectations could sabotage the rapport you share with your client.

The voice is one of the most important tools that are used during a hypnotherapy session. The words that a hypnotist uses in the hypnotic script are important in terms of conveying which behaviors the client is changing or replacing, and how or when this is being done. However, the subconscious mind also perceives and processes a lot of this information through the delivery of this script—in other words, the way these words are expressed and communicated. Since the SCM does not know the difference between fantasy and reality, it is imperative that the hypnotic script expresses what the client means, and means what the person says he or she wants to achieve through this therapy.

· Choice of words: I specifically create each hypnotic script for every one of my clients. Most of this material comes from the key words or phrases that the person uses to describe his or her emotions, motivations or desires to change an unwanted behavior. Then, I tailor the suggestion to reflect the client’s emotional or physical suggestibility (how the person learns) to facilitate his or her subconscious mind’s ability to process and integrate this information. For more information about how I create the hypnotic script, please visit my blog, “The Hypnotic Script” from March 26, 2014.

· Tempo/rhythm: Sometimes I alternately increase and decrease the tempo or rhythm of my speech to emphasize different aspects of the hypnotic suggestion. In hypnosis, the subconscious mind is particularly aware of these differences in my speech and will process these subtle (or not-so-subtle) inflections as a reinforcement of the hypnotic suggestion.

· Timbre and tone: I will also vary the timbre or tone of my voice in relation to the content of the hypnotic suggestion that I am giving to the client. For example, I typically use a maternal or soft tone when I facilitate a “special place” guided-imagery journey for my client. However, I will use a paternal or more forceful tone when I help a client work through negative emotions or associations through the arm-rigidity suggestion.

During hypnosis, the subconscious mind is even more sensitive to and aware of subtle changes in the environment than it is during an alert, wide-awake state of conscious awareness. Consequently, the client will know the difference between the “normal” speaking voice that the hypnotherapist uses during the cognitive portion of the session and an artificial, pseudo-European accent he or she puts on to do hypnosis. The therapist does not need to exaggerate any aspect of his or her voice to hypnotize someone. However, these kinds of affectations could sabotage client-therapist rapport if the person perceives that the hypnotherapist is being disingenuous because his or her speech during hypnosis is suddenly, radically different from the rest of the session.