Venturing into the Unknown

(This blog was originally posted on December 25, 2013)

 

For many of us, doing something new or unfamiliar can be very scary. But, you know what? After you do that thing just one time it loses that essence of being scary. It becomes “known” to your subconscious mind and is integrated with your repertoire of behaviors. Your subconscious mind will file away the memory of that sensation, experience, or associated emotion for future reference for future behaviors the rest of your life—even if you never repeat the specific behavior. (Advanced calculus, anyone?)

John G. Kappas, Ph.D., and Alex G. Kappas Ph.D., revolutionized the practice of hypnotherapy based on their findings that not everyone receives hypnotic suggestions the same way (suggestibility). Suggestibility refers to how you learn, and it influences how you interpret every experience. In Kappasinian Hypnotherapy there are two categories of “known” (learned) experiences:

·         Pain: Anything new or unfamiliar (unknown). It may also refer to a physically or emotionally painful experience. 

·          Pleasure: An experience that is known and familiar, although it may not necessarily be pleasurable. “Pleasure” can be a positive or a negative emotional/physical experience.

When you first learned how to walk, the first step or two was probably wobbly. You probably held onto a parent’s hand for dear life for the first attempts; it may have taken a week before you could make it across a room without stumbling and falling down (Pain). Fast-forward a week, a year, 20 years to today. Now you are able to skip, jump and run without even thinking about it (Pleasure) because these activities are familiar and comfortable.

Just imagine all of the New Year’s Resolutions you will achieve when your subconscious mind recognizes and accepts that these new behaviors are now “knowns” and they are here to stay!

 

 

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

 

It's Shark Week!

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

 

                I am not a fan of sunbathing on the beach or swimming in the sea, but I am an avid supporter of preserving the ocean and the animals that live in these waters. I admit that part of my reticence about playing in the surf stems from a primitive fear of the creatures that live in the deep ocean water. Perhaps the blockbuster film, Jaws, which is based on Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel, feeds my anxiety about encountering a great white shark. But every August since 1988, the Discovery Channel® (www.discovery.com) broadcasts a week’s worth of documentaries about sharks. Over the years it has become a popular, even a celebrated, event. called "Shark Week." (http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/) A few years ago, one of their advertising campaigns incorporated modified lyrics from the popular holiday song, “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” to promote the annual event. Indeed, it is.

                Some nail salons offer ocean- or shark-themed manicures to celebrate Shark Week. Lady Di’s Cookies and Sweets boutiques sell a shark-week themed cupcake that features a frothy-sea frosting design, topped off with a blue gummy “shark” candy. In some cases, fans of this annual shark festival get together with friends and family to watch the week-long series, a la Super Bowl celebrations.

                In addition to nail-biting videos of great white sharks launching themselves out of the water to attack an unknowing seal and the requisite programs about shark-human encounters, the documentaries also provide tips to survive such an encounter. In addition, many of these shows also includes facts about other animals—fish and mammals—that share the water and even the over-all health of the world’s oceans. Let’s not forget the cute icon of a fin sliding across the bottom of the television screen followed by a great white taking a big bite out of the Discovery Channel® logo before and right after a commercial break. Those are great.

If you want to indulge your wild side, join me in virtually swimming with the sharks this week. Shark Week is really a lot of fun to watch and educational. With the Super Bowl still about six months away, this is an annual event that you can really sink your teeth into.

Happy Shark Week!

 

 

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

A Different Perspective

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

 

                It’s uncanny how spending time and distance away from something gives you a brand new perspective on that situation when you come back. For example, as I finish re-reading Night Fall by Nelson DeMille, just about every page is yielding new details or references to the looming Al Qaeda attacks of 2001 than I remember reading before. The words on the pages and the plot twists in the book have not changed. However, my familiarity with the story, protagonists and the author’s writing style has probably enabled me to notice details I overlooked before.

                One explanation for this phenomenon could be that I am actually more relaxed than I was the first time I read the novel. This makes sense: Night Fall is a very exciting and fast read. I still remember how hard my heart pounded as I got swept up into the action. I couldn’t read fast enough to find out what would happen next, and it was all I could do to not turn to the next page before I finished the one I was on. Even though reading is typically relaxing for me, my physiological response indicated that I was actually agitated—even anxious or stressed—than relaxed. My conscious mind knew that I was not in imminent danger, but DeMille’s writing conjured specific images in my subconscious mind and convinced it that the opposite was true. In other words, my SCM translated the anxiety/excitement I felt while reading the novel as “danger” and my sympathetic nervous system probably went into fight/flight mode to protect me (my body). I couldn’t take the extra time to consider and digest each word on the page because I was literally “running” away from the danger my SCM believed I was in. Without intending to do this, I started skipping words or phrases that my mind identified as triggers of my anxiety before my conscious mind could process their meaning or implication.

                Now that I am reading the book for the third or fourth time, I am more desensitized to some of the more shocking scenes in it. Since my conscious and subconscious mind know what is coming next, I can allow myself to linger over or even re-read a paragraph that I don’t remember from the last time(s) I was on that page. Night Fall is still a thrilling thriller for me, but now that I am able to be more relaxed as I read it, I am able to enjoy each and every word of it.

 

 

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

Jumping to Conclusions

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

 

 

                Children are cautioned to not jump to any conclusions about what they might have seen or heard on the playground because it might not be accurate or true. Scientists must follow specific research guidelines when they conduct an experiment to ensure that what they observe in the lab is a legitimate result and not a fluke produced by confounding data. Criminal investigators are also expected to follow a protocol when they collect clues so they can correctly deduce not only who committed a crime but also know when and how it was done. Without this information, there can be no case to prosecute; and if the evidence is incorrect or prejudiced, the mystery will not be solved. Despite these warnings, it can be very hard to resist the temptation to fill in the blanks and provide some kind of answer to an unusual situation, even if our explanation is equally likely to be wrong.

                Two stories have been featured in the news recently that likely fall into the category of erroneous conclusions versus actual fact. The first addresses the constant rumors that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant again. Speculation about her being pregnant really amped up a couple of days ago when some photographs were released that showed Kate clutching a handbag in front of her abdomen. The fact that she and Prince William are apparently planning to stay at their new home this month is only adding fuel to people’s new-baby theory. Why else would they stay home, right?

In the second story, a security camera recently filmed a grainy image of a large cat- or dog-like animal prowling a neighborhood in Norwalk, California. Local residents and wildlife experts have pitched different explanations for the creature: it’s a cougar; no it’s a large dog; uh-uh, it’s an African lion that escaped from the zoo, and so on. Television viewers and social media are also discussing a possible identity of the mystery animal; I have even heard speculations about it being a cross between a large dog and a mountain lion (unlikely). Having said that, as I am writing this blog no one has identified the animal; however, one biologist speculated that it could also be an African lion which someone is keeping illegally as an exotic pet.

                I am fascinated with these stories not because of their content, but how people react and respond to them. I am interested in which message units and subconscious knowns these news reports trigger in us that we want to look for reasons, information and explanations to support our beliefs about what is really going on in these situations. Not knowing something or not having a believable explanation is uncomfortable, even painful. As John Kappas, Ph.D. explained in his Theory of Mind, the subconscious mind will default to a story or mental script that it already knows and is comfortable with to avoid the discomfort of not knowing. This is true even when the conscious mind also doubts that this script is accurate.

Perhaps our fascination with the Duchess of Cambridge stems from all those fairy tales we were told during childhood, stories about beautiful women who married a handsome prince and went on to live happily ever after. Lo and behold, fairytales obviously do come true because look at the Duchess of Cambridge: She grew up (sort of) like “one of us,” fell in love with a handsome prince and married an heir to the British throne. Now, people want to know everything about her, and when that information isn’t forthcoming, they look for “clues” or evidence that will support their ideas about what her life is like. Rumor has it that they want to have another baby, and Kate had such bad morning sickness last time; it just makes more sense that they want to stay in England right now. It just doesn’t make sense to us that she and Prince William would rather spend their summer vacation setting up their new home and hanging out with their son instead of jetting off to an exotic location. No, the real reason they aren’t going away must be that she is pregnant again, right? Well, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. And so on.

                As for that mysterious animal in Norwalk, human mythology is rife with tales about mysterious creatures of the night. It is fun to imagine what this one is and how it got here. We ultimately may learn that it is just a very large dog that jumped out of its yard, or a mountain lion that came down from wherever to scavenge for food and water. However, the grainy quality of the surveillance video combined with the eerie night lighting and the ambiguous form prowling around a peaceful neighborhood set our imaginations into overdrive. The fact that no one knew what it was gave us license to imagine what it could be.

                Stay tuned…

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

Vicarious Training

 

 

                Training clinics are great opportunities to learn tips and techniques from celebrated athletes in your sport. Similarly, you can improve your skill by watching and critiquing video-recordings of yourself training and/or discussing your observations with your coach. Finally, you can also learn a lot observing other members of your team when they are training or competing, and listening to the coach’s advice or instruction to the other athlete.

                One benefit of this kind of vicarious training is that you can observe what the athlete is doing and how he or she is doing it, in terms of what the instructor is asking for. You will also have a firsthand look at how the technique looks when it is done correctly or incorrectly, accompanied by the trainer’s feedback to the athlete without the pressure of being in the spotlight, yourself. You can focus on and mentally process these instructions and corrections in the context their being a (hopefully) supportive critique of that athlete’s technical performance. You can then incorporate what you learned during this “lesson” into visualization and imagery exercises to improve your own execution of that or a similar technique.

Another benefit of vicarious training is that you can test your skill at identifying those minute technical movements that facilitate the successful execution of a technique or an error. If the student makes similar mistakes that your coach has also previously called you on, listen closely to his or her suggestions to correct that error. Hypnotherapist and Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D. explained why suggestibility can be a game-changer in how you perceive and process information no matter how clear and concise these instructions are. For example, a physical suggestible person learns best from direct and literal instructions or cues from the environment. This athlete will take in the instruction at the moment it is given during the training session when learning how to do the technique or correct a previous mistake. However, an emotional suggestible learns from metaphor and inference. In addition to taking in the literal instructions, this athlete truly learns by projecting the coach’s corrections and tips for the other student onto his or her own athletic performance. This is one reason why vicarious learning opportunities such as viewing training videos, auditing clinics and watching peers practice or compete in the sport are so effective in improving athletic performance.

Finally, you are also likely to glean additional information about the sport, in general, and the specific technique or movement being practiced, during conversations between the instructor and the athlete. Even if you have heard it all before, as it were, it is beneficial to listen to this information again to reinforce the information you have learned about the techniques you are or will be working on. Furthermore, the coach may use different phrases or expression to clarify what he or she wants the student to learn. You never know, but this slight variation in the instructor’s language or communication technique may also resonate with you and deepen your own understanding of the skill you have been training and vicariously learning more about.

 

 

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

 

 

Family Ties

 

                Last night, Late Night host Seth Meyers had his younger brother, Josh, as a guest on the show to help promote their new animated series, The Awesomes. This was the first time I ever saw them interact together, and I was immediately struck by how easy, comfortable and familiar they were. That made sense; not only are they brothers, they are obviously very good friends. Watching the interview was less like a promotion for their shared venture on the Hulu® network and more like being a fly on the wall at a family reunion. It was fun to listen to them reminisce about their childhood and adolescence, the private names they call each other and the verbal shorthand they use to communicate. Apparently, the brothers knew each other so well that when Seth offered to pick up a sandwich for Josh, the younger sibling immediately knew that the family dog had died. Similarly, when Josh started a phone conversation by saying “I’m all right,” Seth knew those words were actually a code for, I’m alive, but this, this and this happened to me on the ski slopes today, or whatever.

                Family members aren’t the only ones who communicate like this. Good friends, spouses, romantic partners or military personnel also share a similar verbal short-hand. Words don’t even need to be spoken, yet a gesture or facial expression tells an entire story to the other party in this non-verbal exchange. An observer, someone who is not part of this immediate group, might wonder if the members are even psychic the way they finish each other’s sentences. Even spookier is when one person says something and another says, “I was just going to say that!” and you know it is true. Extra-sensory perception may or may not have a part in the fluidity of this exchange, but you can definitely chalk up the mutual understanding to shared experiences and shared subconscious knowns. Siblings are a great example of this phenomenon.

                Consider this second example of shared, familial knowns versus what we learn from non-family members (strangers). The popular detective series of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Inspector Morse, got a new spinoff a few years ago titled Endeavour. This new series follows Shaun Evans’ rookie detective constable at the start of Morse’s police career, negotiating department politics while he solves complicated murders. I think Evans is well-cast as Morse. He has the clear-blue eyes for which John Thaw’s Chief Inspector Morse was known, and the younger man has mastered Thaw’s facial expressions, posture and pattern of speech. But Thaw’s daughter, Abigail, who has a recurring role in the new series, is even more like her late father than the man who portrays him. In addition to bearing some physical resemblance to him, Ms. Thaw absolutely has that raised eyebrow, grimace, slow smile that fans remember from her father’s embodiment of “Morse.” These are not gestures that she would have had to study and learn so she could mimic them in her role, the way Evans would have had to do to convincingly portray a younger version of Inspector Morse. Rather, she would have acquired them over the years while sitting on her father’s knee listening to a story when she was a little girl or any number of casual interactions with him during a family get-together.

                Whether or not you are emotionally close to your family, if you were raised and grew up together you already share more than DNA. You also learned various behaviors and beliefs from your parent(s)/guardian(s) through the development of your suggestibility, as did your sibling(s). You learned to associate certain events or stimuli with pleasure or pain, and these experiences became the knowns that would create, support and reinforce your subconscious life script. This process is the basis of Hypnosis Motivation Founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Theory of mind and development of suggestibility. Whenever someone observes how two “like” minds think alike, I would say that is true more frequently about family members’—especially, siblings’—mental processes than that of two “strangers” such as spouses or close friends. Dr. Kappas’ Theory of Mind probably also goes a long way to explain the role of nurture in terms of contributing to our social development.

 

 

 

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

 

Moving On, Part 2

 

Image courtesy of Microsoft

 

 

 

In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe conducted a study to identify which stressful life events cause physical illness.(1) They published the results of this study as the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. It comes as little or no surprise that Holmes and Rahe’s research rated death of a spouse, divorce and marital separation, respectively, as the three most stressful life events. Whatever the cause, letting go of a relationship can be very difficult and painful. For some people, it is traumatic. In this blog, I explain how experiencing grief and working through the five stages of loss during hypnotherapy can help you accept that the relationship is finished.

                When someone is having trouble accepting that the relationship is over, Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., advised taking the client through the stages of grief and loss(2) during hypnotherapy. Although there are five stages of loss, it is important to remember that not everyone experiences each stage of grief or even go through them consecutively. It is also possible to repeat these stages and to experience one or more at the same time.

·         Stage 1: Denial, characterized by shock and numbness, and refusing to accept that the relationship is over.

·         Stage 2: Resentment. Anger at the other person(s) in the relationship or anyone else who is around.

·         Stage 3: Bargaining, wherein the person tries to make a deal with God, themselves and other people in his or her life to just get the person/relationship back.

·         Stage 4: Grief. This stage is characterized by crying and/or emotional withdrawal. (If the person is crying excessively, I would also require a medical or psychological referral so I could address this issue in hypnosis.)

·         Stage 5: Resolution. During this final stage of grief and mourning, the person starts to get his or her life back on track. The individual begins to feel more hopeful and accepts the fact that the relationship is over, the other person(s) is not coming back.

Remember: the emotional pain we experience at the end of a significant relationship isn’t just sadness about the person who is no longer in our lives. We also feel pain because we have lost or can no longer follow an important mental script or “known” in our subconscious mind. Regardless of the quality of that bond, disengaging from it and the habits or behaviors you have practiced during the relationship entails breaking script. Now, you must venture into the unknown experience of being independent from that relationship. I use therapeutic guided imagery to facilitate the process of forgiveness—of the self and the other person(s)—to help you heal and leave the finished relationship behind. I also employ guided imagery to help you relax and increase/rebuild your self-confidence, improve your self-esteem and reinforce your self-image as you forge this new path.

 It is only when we can say goodbye with love and respect to the lost relationship and the person(s) we shared it with that we can truly move forward in our lives.

 

1)      Holmes TH, Rahe RH (1967). "The Social Readjustment Rating Scale". J Psychosom Res 11 (2): 213–8.

2)      Kübler-Ross, E. (1969) On Death and Dying, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-04015-9

 

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