The Symbology of Dreams

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

  

                Dreams always show or reveal what is going on in your life. The circumstances in your dream may be literal, inferred or symbolic. They are also very specific to you and are not transferable to anyone else.

                For example, a dream about flying may represent venting the feeling of escaping to more pleasant surroundings. Or, if your emotions are negative (e.g., sad, angry or fearful) when you wake up from an escape dream, it may represent a fear of loss of control, an out-of-body experience or fear of possession. Frustration about direction may also reflect your inability to make a decision.

                As a general rule, the content of what you have worked through in therapy or experienced during the course of the day will be vented out in an early-morning dream. Some dreams are so vivid that you may (temporarily) believe that the dream is true. However, be careful not to take the content of your dream literally. Rather, it is the message that is revealed to you through the symbols of your dream that is important. The timing of your dream is also very important because it tells you where the dream started or what jogged your memory of an event or situation. Timing of the dream also indicates how far back you must go to interpret its content or meaning.

                Finally, the way you feel when the dream is over reveals where you are in terms of dealing with an issue. “You can have a fairly traumatic dream and feel pretty good when you awaken or have a fairly traumatic dream and feel pretty bad,” said Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder Dr. John Kappas. “The kind of feelings a person has determines if [you’re] trying to let it go or take it back.”

                Your mind will hold onto the dream (i.e., the dream will recur) until it is interpreted, often adding circumstances or elements to facilitate the venting process. Once the dream is expressed, “it starts to decompose” and will not return, Dr. Kappas explained. If an issue is not vented out in a dream, it can be brought up during a hypnotherapy session.

                “Dreams can be very revealing and is an important part of therapy,” the hypnotherapist said.

 

 

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/.

Components of Success

 

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

 

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

 

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

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

                My point is this: Success doesn’t just happen; it is the product of a lot of time, effort, hard work and the intention and desire to succeed. This topic has been on my mind for a few weeks, and I did address it in my March 23, 2014 blog titled “Are You Ready?” I did not intend to write a sequel to that essay. However, I figured I must have had more to say about it since this topic was not only addressed on a radio talk show this afternoon but I also came upon a related quote from Vidal Sassoon in a Twitter feed: “The only place where success comes before work is a dictionary.”

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

© 2014

Language in Nature

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

                Like California, Japan is in a seismically active area that geologists call the Ring of Fire. Experts claimed that there was no warning before the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake other than the nation’s earthquake-alert system that warned citizens that a tremor was coming. By the time the initial shaking from that 9.0 quake stopped, tsunami waves were on their way to devastate seaside communities and trigger a radiation leak and ultimate nuclear meltdown of the Fukashima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

                Over three and one-half years later, that area of the Ring of Fire lived up to its name again. Apparently, 150 hikers were on the crater when Mount Onatake, a volcano located in central Japan, unexpectedly burst to life on Saturday, September 27, 2014. Approximately 40 people died in the explosion; many witnesses reported that there had been no warning before the ash and gas explosion. This account worried me. As a resident in Southern California, I am very aware that there rarely is a warning before a natural disaster—at least, a disaster in which tectonic plates are involved. Or, are there warnings that humans just don’t yet know how to detect?

                When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, there were plenty of indicators that something was going on with the volcano. In addition to frequent and increasingly intense earthquakes, residents reported that their pets and livestock were behaving strangely before the eruption. I also remember hearing stories about birds becoming disoriented and flying into buildings; this strange behavior was explained as a consequence of some kind of electro-magnetic disturbance in the atmosphere. I don’t know if that was true, but I immediately thought of that theory when a bat inexplicable flew right into a book store where I was working in 2010. I remember telling a colleague, Either that bat is sick or we’re in for some major tectonic-plate activity. A few days later, on April 4, 2010, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Baja California. Shaking from the Mexicali Earthquake, as it was immediately dubbed, was strong enough to be felt all the way to Los Angeles County. The next day, one of the assistant managers I worked with came up to me and told me that he immediately recalled my “premonition” about earthquakes and was seriously spooked as soon as he felt the shaking.

                Remember when thousands of black birds inexplicably fell from the sky, dead, in Beebe, Arkansas on January 1, 2011? Experts ruled out poisoning or disease as a cause of death. However, thousands of other dead birds were reported in Kentucky and Louisiana around Christmas of 2010, and schools of fish suddenly washed up on the shores of the Arkansas River around that same time. Meanwhile, a 3.8 magnitude earthquake shook North-Central Indiana on December 30, 2010. Hmm….

                Less than one year after the bat flew into my bookstore before the Mexicali temblor hit and approximately three months after the blackbirds fell out of the sky in the Midwest following an earthquake near Indiana, the Tohuku Earthquake happened. Once again, a quake was preceded by a spooky animal behavior. Exactly one week before the quake, thousands of dead fish were discovered floating in a Los Angeles harbor. Once again, my first thought was that this incident could be a warning about an earthquake. I thought about a college geology lecture in which the instructor explained how noxious gases can be released during a quake. In 2004, several bison were poisoned by poison gases released near a geyser in Yellowstone National Park, which is a Super Volcano in its own right. Anyway, the connection between the dead sardines and tectonic activity made sense to me; and my prediction—if you want to call it that—came true on March 11, 2011.

                I prefer to think of my observations of behaviors or phenomena I observed or heard about were just that—observations—and not specifically predictions of future natural disasters. Again, as a resident in Southern California I am interested in earthquakes and other related phenomena because I live in an area that gets shaken up from time to time (pun intended). You can bet that if the Discovery Channel® is broadcasting a documentary about earthquakes, volcanoes or tsunamis is on that I will probably be tuning in to watch. As a fan of mystery novels and thrillers, it is fun for me to gather clues and collect evidence about potentially recurring events. As an animal lover, I watch a lot of documentaries and read books about the various species that most interest me. Needless to say, my interest definitely piques when the narrator or author describes what these animals seem to know (predict), how they behave and what they do to survive when a natural disaster destroys their home. Over the years of reading about, watching documentaries and experiencing earthquakes myself (subconscious knowns), I have created my own subconscious mental script and associations about these events and how to survive them. I just hope that neither I nor the people I care about are ever in a situation to have to activate that emergency plan.

               I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences to everyone who was affected by the eruption of Tohoku Volcano last week.

A Place of Non-Judgment

 

                What is the key to a successful hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy session? It is giving the client a place of non-judgment in which to work on his or her self-improvement issues.

In a pivotal scene of Shonda Rhimes’s new series, How to Get Away With Murder, law instructor Professor Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) explains how she can tell whether her client is innocent: “I don’t care.” I admit that example is extreme: I help people achieve their vocational and avocational self-improvement goals, not represent them in a capital crime. Having said that, I must and do approach each client from a similar position of non-judgment (unconditional positive regard) as Professor Keating to help my clients feel comfortable, relaxed and open to do the intensive inner work that hypnotherapy often entails.

                Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., believed that it is not a hypnotherapist’s role or responsibility to make moral value judgments about a client’s situation or circumstances. Rather, it is up to the therapist to “buy the symptoms” of and provide information about the client’s presenting behavior.  According to Dr. Kappas, the hypnotherapist’s only role is to repair the problem that the client has brought. The only exception is if the client is a victim of or threatens violence against himself or herself or another person. In that case, the therapist is obliged to warn or intervene on another person’s behalf, or call authorities if necessary, he said. (I also follow this policy, which I explain to my clients when we start working together.)

There is no right or wrong when it comes to the client’s life and world view. When the hypnotherapist takes this approach, it facilitates helping the person through the bad times and guides the person to happier times, he advised. “The moment you make a judgment call, you lose the client.”₁

 

1.        Intimate Conversations With Dr. John Kappas. 1994. Video series, Lesson 1

 

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

 

Slow Down to Speed Up

 

 

                Have you ever noticed how it takes twice as long to complete a task when you rush to get it done? Whether it is finishing a homework assignment or a big project for work, somehow something goes wrong at the last, worst possible moment and totally messes up your projected deadline. What if you could avoid all that hassle in the first place and meet your deadline with time to spare?

                Last year, the Automobile Association of America ran a great television advertisement that perfectly illustrated this point. In it, someone in a flashy car speeds past another vehicle. At first, it seems like the driver in the second car gets ahead, but then he is stopped at an intersection with the driver in the original car waiting for the light to change. This pattern is repeated the same way several more times until the message becomes clear: driving fast and recklessly doesn’t get anyone ahead; in fact, it may cause more inconvenience (and waste more gas) than the apparent rush is worth. Similarly, in an episode of the police drama, Rookie Blue, one of the characters reminded an officer he had trained why he once insisted she finish eating her lunch before getting out of the squad car. Sergeant Shaw wanted her to take those extra couple of seconds so she could mentally prepare herself for dealing with regardless of the situation she would be facing outside. The crime scene would still be there, he explained, but the officer needed to calm down and plan what she needed to do to apprehend the criminal or else risk getting seriously hurt or even killed making the arrest.

                Often, when we are under pressure to complete a task, we rush through or even skip important steps so we can get the job out of the way and move onto other more interesting or “fun” things. Monty Roberts, an award-winning horse trainer and author, often advises: “Give yourself fifteen minutes and it will take an hour; give yourself an hour and it will take fifteen minutes.” In other words, when we work carefully and conscientiously—focusing only on the task at hand—we are in a better position to get the job done quickly and usually on the first try. However, when we rush through the job to meet a self-imposed or official deadline we are more likely to neglect important steps to complete the task which may ultimately undermine it.

                An unintentional byproduct of rushing to complete a task is that we can put ourselves into hypnosis. Consider John G. Kappas, Ph.D.’s definition of hypnosis: “Hypnosis is created by an overload of message units, disorganizing our inhibitory process (Critical Mind), triggering our fight-flight mechanism and ultimately resulting in a hyper-suggestible state, providing access to the subconscious mind.” When we rush around trying to meet a deadline, our minds are already whirling practically out of control as we consider what we need to get done and if/how many steps we can get away with “leaving out.” Even if we do not intend to take a short-cut to finish the task, in this naturally induced hypnotic state we may neglect an important step because our subconscious (not conscious) mind has taken over the behavior. We have literally “escaped” into hypnosis to avoid the anxiety and stress we feel trying to complete that project.

Unfortunately, the stress we consciously and subconsciously tried so hard to reduce or avoid is likely to reappear, and be even more intense, when we rush to just “get it done.” When we take those extra few seconds or even an entire hour, at the end of the day the fastest way to accomplish a goal is to slow down.

 

 

 

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

Release and Let It Go

(This blog was originally posted on February 26, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

 

Everyone lives in the context of a pain/pleasure principle. We prefer—and try—to do what makes us feel good (pleasure) and avoid the things that cause discomfort (pain) in the context of the “knowns” in the subconscious mind. For example, John Kappas, Ph.D., theorized that the SCM would categorize your 10-year feud with your siblings as pleasure (known) because it is so comfortable with all of the emotions it associates with this grudge.

When anger morphs into a long-term resentment, it is a habit. Like any other habit or behavior, it is something you learned. The great news is, since you learned how to feel angry about a particular situation or at a specific person; therefore, you can unlearn the anger response in that context. Following are some basic strategies I would use as a hypnotherapist to help the individual transform his or her anger response into one of forgiveness, healing and emotional and spiritual freedom.

·         I would describe the person’s strained relationship with the sibling in the context of Dr. Kappas’ Theory of Mind by way of explaining/helping the client to understand how he or she has substituted/emphasized anger at the sibling in order to avoid feeling any emotional pain that conflict caused.

·         Once the client is in hypnosis, I would help him or her to feel and acknowledge the hurt the original incident caused. I would also employ therapeutic-guided imagery and desensitization techniques to help the person work through the triggers that continue to incite the anger and hurt. I do not use age-regression techniques to bring up these triggers, I will desensitize the client only to the memories/associations that he or she remembers and has described during an alert/aware state.

·         I will use more deepening/relaxation techniques and guided imagery to help the person forgive him- or herself for having been in a position to have been hurt, in the first place. Next, I will use these techniques to help the client also forgive the other person for doing whatever he or she did to cause the original pain in the first place.

Marc Gravelle, a late instructor of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute, once advised: “As long as you remain angry at a person, you’re giving him permission to control you physically, emotionally and intellectually. When you forgive the other person, you’re not giving him permission to do ‘whatever.’ He’s still guilty of doing that, but you (the client) can move on and the other person no longer controls you.”

 

 

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

 

 

 

Parental Guidance

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

 

                Little kids are like sponges. They literally absorb every piece of information around them. Good or bad, if a child sees or hears something he or she is likely to imitate or repeat the behavior at the first opportunity. Like their adult counterparts, they have come into the world not knowing anything except the reactions to a fear of falling and of loud noises. Over time, they will learn countless behaviors and beliefs by association and repetition of those same behaviors and beliefs they have observed in people around them. As children, we learn attitudes and behaviors from our primary caretaker (usually mom) that are likely to stay with us throughout our lifetime. This is Theory of Mind.

                A couple of things in the media have recently really caught my attention because they are real-life examples of Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s model. In the first, a television advertisement depicts a man and his young son hanging out together for the day. The little boy imitates everything his dad does from the way the adult crosses his legs to how he brushes his teeth. At one point, the father looks over at his son sitting beside him on the sofa eating potato chips right out of the bag just like he is. It is as if a light-bulb goes on in the father’s head: he suddenly gets up, turns off the TV and goes into the kitchen with his son to prepare a cooked meal.

                In the second example, this morning a radio talk-show host discussed a recent news story in which a popular young television actress has reportedly filed a restraining order against her alleged abusive boyfriend. Apparently, the young man had been physically and verbally abusive toward her throughout their relationship. During the course of his report, the host issued his own impromptu, loving “warning” to his daughter and her boyfriend. He told them that as the teenage girl’s dad, would not tolerate anyone mistreating his daughter in any way for one day, let alone four years. He ended the segment by observing that both loving/considerate and abusive/inconsiderate behaviors are learned. Of course, if his daughter’s boyfriend really ever did mistreat her, it might not be productive to contact the boyfriend’s dad to “break up with” the other boy. After all, he mused, when and where/from whom was the kid must likely to have learned that abusive behavior was okay?

I can’t remember what—if any—product was being marketed in the advertisement I described at the beginning of this blog. That didn’t matter to me, because the ultimate message viewers would receive is that parents or guardians must provide a healthy, loving role model for the children around them. When kids see the adults in their lives eating healthy foods, exercising or playing sports, and communicating with them and each other, they are more likely to imitate these positive behaviors. When a parent quits smoking cigarettes and cuts out unhealthy snacks in his or her own life, this is also a positive example. It shows the child that he or she “walks the walk” of the healthy lifestyle behavior that the parent is encouraging for the rest of the family. Similarly, children can (and do) just as easily pick up negative behaviors when the adult makes unhealthy lifestyle choices or is emotionally and/or physically abusive to other people in the environment. Regardless of which behavior is consciously or subconsciously (and perhaps unintentionally) taught or encouraged in the home, every time the child repeats this belief or action it becomes more firmly entrenched in his or her own subconscious life script.

As the grown-ups in our kids’ lives, it is up to us to be an example of the adults we would like them to become.

 

 
 

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