Your Own Room

 

                In my blog titled 7 Keys to a Successful, Long-Term Relationship, I described seven characteristics of a successful relationship. Each of these factors is equally important in this context, but one—separate interests—is imperative for ensuring individual growth in and outside of the relationship. Let me explain.

                Whether we are discussing a platonic friendship or a romantic partnership, two people enter a relationship because they are attracted not just to the similarities and mutual interests they share but also the differences between them. The expression “opposites attract” really is true: We are attracted to people who possess skills, characteristics and experiences that are different from our own. It is natural to consciously adopt some of the other person’s interests and to subconsciously mimic some facial expressions, mannerisms and beliefs during the course of the relationship. After spending time together, people tend to focus on and emphasize those similarities as a way to demonstrate that their relationship really is meant to be. (Have you ever noticed how couples that have been together for a long time, such as your parents or grandparents, even start to look alike?)

Ironically, when one (or both) of you forfeits your unique traits or interests to be more “like” the other person the relationship may falter. Rather than closing any space between you, abandoning your individuality can inadvertently cause the other person to lose some interest in you. Whether the relationship continues to thrive or eventually ends, you want to have a foundation on which you can continue to enjoy doing the things you always have, with or without the other person in your life.

If you want share a healthy relationship with someone else, start by nurturing your relationship with yourself. What do you enjoy doing? What do you want to do or never do again? Meditate, work with a hypnotherapist or practice self-hypnosis and explore what is important to you. How much are you willing to compromise on an issue or even sacrifice an activity or belief, in order for the relationship to thrive? Give yourself permission to make room in your life for you, and practice doing something for yourself every day. Maintain and grow your self-confidence by expressing an opinion or asking questions about an issue if something doesn’t make sense to you. Give yourself permission to experience every emotion as you feel it. Sing, dance, laugh, and cry. Be present in every moment. The more interested and engaged you are with the world around you, the more interesting you will be and become to people in your life.

You will be interesting to yourself, too.

 

 

 

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/.

© 2015

Never Say "Never"

(This blog was originally posted on January 29, 2014)



Image courtesy of Microsoft

 

                When I was at college, my friends used to joke, “Never say ‘never’, because that is an absolute guarantee you will do what you say you will never do!” Oh, how prescient that advice turned out to be. Now, I understand why.

                The subconscious mind does not understand irony. It does not get a joke. The subconscious mind will try to fulfill whatever messages it receives. Whatever you say or think, it takes literally and conveniently ignores terms such as never, not, won’t and can’t. For example, I occasionally make the mistake of thinking or saying to myself, “I will not fall off my horse today.” Guess what? I do fall—or come very close to it. Some people might say those are examples of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy an example of a person behaving in a specific way to achieve the subconscious mind’s goal?

                When I work with my hypnotherapy clients, I teach them how to frame (or re-frame, as the case may be) their thoughts and self-talk so they are always giving themselves a positive message or suggestion. Rather than say, “I can’t be late for this meeting!” tell yourself, “I will leave five minutes earlier so I will be on time for my meeting.” Or, in the context of my first example, I now tell myself, “I am a strong rider. I can stay on my horse and have a good ride.”

Your subconscious mind will work just as hard to fulfill a positive goal as it will to achieve a negative one, so why not set it up for success, right from the start?

  

 

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/.

© 2015

Cross-Training

 (This blog was originally posted on February 9, 2014)

Gina Miles, 2008 Olympic Silver medalist (individual)
Photo by Sara Fogan 

 

                To get really good at something, you must often learn and practice other skills that will complement and improve your primary vocation or avocation. We typically hear and use the term “cross-training” to describe this philosophy in a sports or athletic context. For example, many professional football players lift weights to increase strength, run to improve endurance and even take ballet and/or gymnastics to learn how to jump and tumble in a safe way. Gina Miles, an equestrian who won a silver medal in eventing (“combined training”) at the 2008 Olympics, must focus on three discrete equestrian disciplines—dressage, cross-country and show jumping—as part of their training and competitive repertoire.

                Even if you are not a professional athlete, you can still apply this philosophy of learning new and related skills to improve your “performance” at work. If you are a project manager or supervisor at work, you probably have to participate in specialized workshops and attend conferences to learn, master and maintain the skills you will need to do your current job. A reporter must maintain a standard of writing and communicating to the reading/viewing audience, in addition to keeping up with current events and research skills to produce an accurate report.

                The great thing about cross-training in these contexts is that learning and mastering new skills is a great opportunity to increase your self-confidence and self-esteem. The more skills you possess, the better equipped you will be to apply these abilities to achieve goals/solve problems in any area of your life. Your conscious mind possesses the logic, reasoning, decision-making and will-power to learn those new skills; your subconscious mind internalizes this information in that will enable the conscious mind to apply the skills and succeed in your new goal. Best of all, the excitement and pride you feel when you master these new skills creates a new, powerful “known” message in your subconscious mind: I can do this, too!

 

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/.

© 2015

Past-Life Regression and Hypnosis

 

(This blog was originally posted on January 13, 2014)

 

 

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

 

 

 

                Past-life regression is based on the person’s religious belief that he or she lived before and has been reincarnated. I offer PLR when a client specifically requests it, such as to explore what happened in the person’s previous life and how a specific event(s) from that lifetime is affecting him or her, today. It is also a useful technique to help a person identify a source of distress in the following situations:

·         Resolve a fear/phobia that the client absolutely cannot identify the source or cause;

·         Open up another creative pathway in the person’s imagination;

·         Travel to another country to become familiar with the culture;

·         Unexplained medical issue/condition, but the client MUST HAVE A MEDICAL REFERRAL from his or her physician to rule out a medical cause or condition as the cause of the discomfort;

·         Obesity/debilitating inability to gain weight (MEDICAL REFERRAL REQUIRED).

 

Most people have an authentic life experience during the PLR. I include the information that the client receives and shares with me to reinforce the subconscious message or lesson that the person received during the PLR. This experience often provides new perceptions about something that is going on in the person’s life and provides new insights for dealing with it. In addition to reinforcing this new knowledge in a post-hypnotic suggestion, I also provide an instruction for the client to “vent out” the issue in dreams so that the person can use the insight learned during the PLR session but will not be suggestible to the experience(s) of that past life.

 

 

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/.

 

Watching Blackfish, Part 3

 

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of watching Blackfish with my family was seeing their reactions to the marine biologists’ and former SeaWorld trainers’ interviews. For many trainers, their attitudes about orca captivity evolved over the years, starting with genuine excitement, pride and love for the work they did training and performing with the killer whales. They explained how they loved to share their passion and knowledge about the orcas with park visitors; they loved the bonds they had created with the animals in their care. Eventually, however, the only reason they continued this work was so they could continue to care for the animals, because their real-life, behind-the-scenes experiences at the park were very different from the happy image the public saw in advertisements.

During the film, I watched as my nephews experienced a similar wave of emotion about the park. Afterward, they asked why people still go to marine parks to watch orca, dolphins and other marine mammals perform in a show when someone can just take a whale-watching trip and see the animals in the wild. Here are a few reasons why these parks remain popular:

         Whether you are talking about zoos, ocean-theme parks or circuses, animal entertainment is a “known” entity for a lot of individuals. These venues have always been around (or so it seems). Many people visit them with their families as part of a family vacation, and then recreate this positive experience with their own children, a generation later. These visits represent a familiar experience of comfort, love, family time, etc.

·         Hypnotic modalities also influence our beliefs and behaviors. As I explained in my blog about hypnotic modalities (Gullibility, Suggestibility, Hypnosis), three factors contribute to an hypnotic modality: 1) The other person has authority over you or perceived control over the environment; 2) The other person has an important theory, model or logic that makes some sense to you; and 3) The other person overloads you with so many message units or stimuli that you start to go along with whatever he or she is saying. (This is how the hypnotic state is created.) For example, people who visit marine parks and watch the orca performances might experience sensory overload from the bright colors or lights, loud music, cheering, smell of popcorn or other snacks, and even the sensation of heat from the sun, drizzle or a breeze as they sit in the stands. Those audience members who are sitting close enough to the pool will even enjoy the sensory experience of being soaked the orca smacks his or her tail against the surface of the water at the end of the performance (sensation overload). An orca trainer or other park representative wearing the park uniform/wetsuit and a microphone (authority) would narrate what the audience will be watching during the performance and provide specific details (facts/information) about the animals (doctrine). And then, of course, the audience gets to experience the performance, including being soaked by a spray of water when an orca smacks his or her tail on the water at the end of the show. In this closed environment, it is easy to understand how and why people get caught up in the excitement and supposed mystery of these performances. After all, how many people do you know get to work and interact with a killer whale? Even the former trainers who were interviewed in Blackfish conceded that, at the beginning, they believed what they had been taught about orca behavior during their training and happily disseminated this information to their audiences.

Like those trainers who eventually saw through the misinformation about these animals in the doctrine they had been taught, my nephews came to their own decision about whether captivity is harmful to the physical and emotional well-being of orca. As we all watched the documentary, I saw them ride a tide of curiosity and laughter to skepticism, outrage and sorrow that mirrored that of those trainers. During the course of these three blogs, I have described the subconscious thought processes likely helped to formulate their (and your) intellectual and viscerally emotional responses to Blackfish, whatever that response happened to be. For more information about this game-changing film, visit http://blackfishmovie.com/.

 

 

 

 

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/.

© 2015

Watching Blackfish, Part 2

(This blog was originally posted on April 28, 2014)

As a practicing hypnotherapist, I spend a lot of time wondering, exploring and analyzing facets of behavior so I can create an effective hypnotic script that will help my clients to achieve their vocational and avocational self-improvement goals. I admit that this has become a subconscious, occupational behavior for me in a lot of non-clinical contexts, too. No matter where I am or what I am doing, I automatically contextualize every behavior and emotional reaction in terms of Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s models of suggestibility and sexual personality. Yesterday was no different. As I settled into my seat on the sofa to watch Blackfish with my mother, sister and her two sons, I was as riveted by my family’s responses to what they were watching as I was by the content of the documentary. I described their responses to the film in yesterday’s blog (Watching Blackfish, Part 1; 4/27/14). Today, I will explain the “hows” and “whys” behind my and my family’s behaviors and reactions to Blackfish as well as those of people who were interviewed for the film in the context of Dr. Kappas’ model of suggestibility and hypnotic modalities.

Suggestibility: Suggestibility (how we learn) is established by the age of 14. The primary caretaker—typically, mom—influences what type of suggestibility the youngster develops. (For more information, see my blog titled “Where Does Suggestibility Come From?” blog on 12/28/13). My sister, mother and I tried very hard to not reveal our emotions or thoughts about the film to the boys so they could to come to their own conclusions about Blackfish’s Big Question: Do orca belong in captivity? At age 10, the youngest was still very “physical” (direct and literal) in his interpretations of what he was watching. The orca trainers were shown smiling, nodding and enthusing about the information they were providing during a SeaWorld performance. The orcas’ mouths were open as if they were smiling, too. My nephew perceived that everyone was having a great time and he asked his mother to take him to the park one day. The picture of smiling people saying that they and the animals were having fun was consistent with what he knows (a known) as being happy or having fun.

 A little and while later in the film, a former trainer described the day a three-year-old orca calf was separated from its mother. The baby was being shipped to another park, and its mother was inconsolable with what the trainer and other marine biologists interpreted to be grief. How did we, the audience, trainers and the biologists know that the mother was experiencing grief? The orca was making a plaintive, screeching noise over and over again, which the scientists identified as calls of distress and even long-distance location calls previously heard when wild orca are looking for a lost member of the pod. The trainer who witnessed the separation and just about everyone who knew that a child had just been forever separated from its mother (and vice versa) only needed to watch and listen to her to understand what was going on. This was a great example of emotional suggestibility (audience and observers), who saw the emotional pain in one creature and then interpreted and internalized this distress as if it were our own. My youngest nephew was visibly distressed to see and learn that the baby would never see its mother again. Could this happen to me?

A little later in the documentary, a list of human/animal “accidents” recorded at the park flashes on the screen, interspersed with video clips of a few of these incidents. As he watched, my older nephew asked why no one had stopped the interactions if this kind of thing kept happening. He pointed out that it probably wasn’t a good idea to put humans in a tank with predators like killer whales. This observation would also be consistent with that of an emotional suggestible: captive orca + human has resulted in human injury or death several times, so why wouldn’t it happen again?

I will address how hypnotic modalities likely influenced our emotional reactions to the documentary—and visitors’ responses to their experiences at ocean-theme parks—in my next blog.

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/.

© 2015

Watching Blackfish, Part 1

(This blog was originally posted on April 27, 2014)

 

I watched Blackfish (again) today. My sister wanted to borrow my DVD to watch with her sons; it had been a few months since I last saw the documentary, so I invited them over and we saw it together. I did warn her that some parts of the film might be sad or traumatic for her youngest child to see; I was very proud of him when my sister told me that she had warned him about that, but he believed the movie was very important and he should see it. So, my mom, my sister, her kids and I all gathered around the TV to watch it. In a way, the movie is about the effect of captivity on extended (matriarchal) families, so I thought it was appropriate that we were all going to see it, together. We popped popcorn. My youngest nephew likes to add hard-shelled chocolates to the popcorn, so I dumped some left-over Cadbury mini-eggs into the mix. My oldest nephew—who is almost 15 and a genius with technology—helped to get the DVD going in my dad’s (very complicated) Blue-Ray/DVD player.

The film affected me as it has every time I have seen it: I felt sad, frustrated, angry and even hopeful for the fate and future of these magnificent animals. This time, I was able to watch Blackfish through the eyes of two youngsters who didn’t know anything about the film or the ongoing campaign to end captivity of dolphins and whales. Although my sister and her boys have seen orca in the wild, the kids have never seen them perform at a marine park.

                Within the first few minutes of the movie, the younger boy started to ask questions and react to what he was watching: a dark screen, and then audio from the 9-1-1 calls start coming in. Someone is requesting emergency assistance to Shamu Stadium because a female trainer is being attacked by a killer whale. “Wait. Did that guy say the whale just ate her?” My nephew wanted to know, his eyes big as saucers.

                Later, in another scene, trainers are shown interacting with some orca. Happy music is playing in the background; the audience is cheering, my nephew is smiling. “Mommy, can we go to SeaWorld?” I must have grimaced, because the next question he had was whether the park was a good or bad place for the animals to be living in. My sister replied, “Watch the movie and decide for yourself.”

                By the end of the movie, we had watched fishermen capture and separate orca calves from their families to become stars in shows at marine parks. We had listened to interviews with biologists and former trainers about behavior of captive versus wild orca. We heard the trainers’ anecdotes about their interactions with the orca they worked with and how they felt about that work then and now. We had watched video analyses of the grief reactions observed in a couple of captive female orca whose calves had been taken away from them to perform at other parks. We had seen clips of accidents in which some trainers emerged from the training pool with lacerations, broken limbs and almost drowned. My older nephew observed sardonically that a bloodied trainer who was shown smiling and waving into the camera was doing this because he was “happy to be alive.” He added, “It wasn’t very surprising that when you keep a predator in a very stressful situation around humans, that people get hurt!”

When images of Tilikum’s family tree flashed on the screen and indicated that this orca had sired more than half of the orca in SeaWorld’s collection, both of the boys said in unison, “That isn’t good.”

                Everyone in my home audience finally breathed a sigh of relief and smiled when several of the former trainers go whale-watching and finally see wild orca, swimming free in the ocean. I was interested and ultimately gratified to observe how my sister and her sons reacted to what they saw in the film. Of course, the questions I had had about their reactions as a hypnotherapist (and observer of human behavior) were: How and why did they react to Blackfish the way they did? Did anyone—and if so, who—influence these reactions?

                I will address these issues in my next blog.

               

 

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/.

© 2015