Something to Think About

Photo by Rick Hustead

This evening when I was checking my social-media accounts, I came across an evocative post that described various incidents that prevented a handful of individuals from getting to work at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In one case, someone’s car wouldn’t start so the individual never made it to the office at all. In another, a child didn’t get ready for school in time; his tardiness meant that a parent was also late for work in order to get the child to class. One person’s alarm didn’t go off in time. Another decided to take a call (rather than let it go to voice-mail) before heading out to work. And so on.

I bet most if not all of the people described in that post was silently or verbally cursing whatever (or whoever) was causing the frustration and delay. How long did it take until news of the first airline crashing into the Twin Towers turned that frustration into gratitude and relief?

Reading about these scenarios reminded me of times in the past when I have rushed to attend an event or complete a project, only to be stopped in my tracks by circumstances beyond my control. Back then, I am sure that my frustration and even anger would have been palpable.  But since then I have come to appreciate these uncontrollable events—including traffic jams or having to rewrite most of a document because I forgot to save it before the computer crashed. As Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., liked to advise, it is always possible to take a negative experience and “turn it around” to become a positive one. Who knows what challenge I might have faced a few miles up the freeway if that big-rig hadn’t stalled out on the hill? Or, having completed writing a new draft of the document I lost, I realized that the current version is much better after all. Come to think of it, I can think about several occasions in which a delay, a wrong turn or a mistake have resulted in a much better outcome for having experienced those inconveniences. It’s something to think about.

 If you are interested in reading the original Facebook post I described at the beginning of this essay, you can check it out at https://www.facebook.com/Calminsense-Hypnotherapy-183965798312732/.  

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/.

© 2016

Dealing With Traumatic Memories

Photo by Rick Hustead

“Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten.”

– Leaving Time, Jodi Picoult

One of the great things about the mind is its capacity to help us deal with a painful or even traumatic event in our lives. On the one hand, the plasticity of the brain enables us to adapt to an uncomfortable environment and learn lessons from that experience to avoid getting into a similar situation in the future. On the other hand, the mind also naturally knows how to block out and even forget the memory of that event so we can continue to function and fulfill daily activities to facilitate our basic survival. In other words, this kind of case-specific amnesia functions like a life-saving balm.

For example: someone contacts me for hypnotherapy to overcome an intense fear of driving and being in a vehicle following a serious car crash. This person knows the facts about what happened but does not remember anything about the collision or the moments immediately afterward when firefighters had to cut him out of the vehicle with Jaws-of-Life equipment. That is okay. I do not need to know these details to create an effective hypnotic script that will help to increase the client’s comfort and self-confidence while driving or being in a car. In fact, this gap in the client’s conscious awareness of the crash facilitates the physiological and psychological healing process as he works toward achieving the avocational self-improvement goal of being comfortable behind the wheel.\

Consequently, I do not use age-regression hypnosis to help a client access a repressed memory following a traumatic event. Doing so would be similar to ripping a scab off of a deep abrasion before the original wound has had a chance to heal. If and when the person is emotionally, physically and even spiritually ready to address what happened, these memories are likely to return organically in spontaneous flashes of recollection or through dreams. If and when that happens, I can use various hypnosis, therapeutic guided imagery and Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques to help the individual become desensitized to and deal with how these memories and consequences of this event. It may also be necessary to refer the client to a licensed mental-health provider and/or a physician for additional assessment and care if this issue falls outside of the scope of my expertise as a certified hypnotherapist.

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/.

© 2016

How to Increase Suggestibility

Photo by Rick Hustead

Sometimes it is necessary to change a client’s suggestibility. One common reason to do this is to balance out the person’s suggestibility, such as if the individual has a high-emotional suggestibility score and does not seem to experience physical sensations. Alternatively, a high-physical suggestible person may want or need to have a less “literal” interpretation of information; in this case, it would be necessary to increase the person’s subdominant emotional suggestibility.

To successfully accomplish this, the hypnotherapist must understand how the mind works in the context of right brain/left brain theory. This theory posits that each hemisphere (half) of the brain is responsible for processing information that it receives. The right hemisphere is generally associated with symbols, pictures and images (inferences), while the left processes language and words (direct and literal). Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D. believed that the most effective way to communicate with a person is based on his or her suggestibility and how the client’s subconscious mind communicates with his or her conscious mind.

According to Dr. Kappas, the right side of the brain is associated with physical suggestibility. Since each hemisphere controls the actions of the opposite side of the body, the hypnotherapist must work with the left side of the body to increase physical suggestibility. While the client is in hypnosis, the hypnotherapist should give suggestions to enhance physical suggestibility while the person clenches the left hand and tightens the fist, which sends more sensations to the right brain. Alternatively, to increase emotional suggestibility/logical response, the client should tighten the right fist while the hypnotherapist gives appropriate suggestions to increase emotional suggestibility.

“The more you have the client do this, the greater the [desired] suggestibility becomes,” Dr. Kappas 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/.

© 2016

Secondary Relationships

Photo by Rick Hustead

This is dialog from a scene in the 1996 film Twister, in which two tornado chasers discuss filing for divorce.

Billy Harding, introducing his new fiancée to his estranged wife, Jo: “She’s a therapist.”

Jo Harding: “Yours?”

In my blog titled, My New Office, I explain how the furniture in this space is positioned to prevent my (the hypnotherapist) invading a client’s space. Many people are initially nervous and wary about hypnosis the first time they come in for a session, including those who are seeking hypnotherapy as a “last resort” to overcome an unwanted behavior. Furthermore, characteristics such as the person’s suggestibility and their Emotional and Physical sexuality (personality) may require greater physical distance between us during the therapy.

It is also important to maintain a professional boundary between the hypnotherapist and his or her clients. By this I mean that the therapist must separate (and keep separate) his or her personal life and interests from the client’s. It is not uncommon for clients to start to feel similar emotions for the therapist that they already carry for someone in their own life to their therapist during the hypnotherapeutic process. Or, the person may develop strong feelings for the therapist that have nothing to do with those he or she has for a significant other at home. This phenomenon is called transference. With the client already highly suggestible to the hypnotherapist, it is easy to see how this can occur.

Counter-transference is the phenomenon in which a therapist reciprocates the client’s feelings/emotions. Like the client, these feelings for the other person can be negative or positive. The conflict arises when the professional can no longer provide effective hypnotherapy for the client because these strong emotions erode the ethical parameters of this professional relationship. Whether the therapist has become unable to provide unconditional positive regard for the client or has become too emotionally and/or socially involved with the person outside the therapy setting, the therapeutic relationship is untenable and should be ended.

The scene I quoted at the beginning of this essay illustrates this conflict of interest. Billy Harding does not explicitly say that he met his new girlfriend because she was his therapist when his marriage to Jo started to break down. In addition to the fact that this kind of secondary relationship is unethical and unacceptable in the context of their therapeutic relationship, it also makes the new couple’s partnership potentially more fragile. It could be argued that Billy took the unrequited emotions he still carried for his estranged wife and transferred them onto his therapist. The therapist then broke a golden rule of therapy and got romantically involved with her client. Regardless of the emotional bond they shared outside of the relationship, they sacrificed the progress of the emotional “work” Billy had been doing in his therapist’s office up to that point. His feelings for his soon-to-be ex-wife did not get resolved enough to stand up to the real-world challenge of asking Jo to sign divorce papers to officially, finally ending their marriage.

To prevent transference and counter-transference in my hypnotherapy practice, it is important to establish strong professional boundaries around the therapeutic relationship that the hypnotherapist shares with a client. The hypnotherapist’s role in a client’s life is to use tools such as hypnosis and guided imagery to help the individual achieve vocational or avocational self-improvement goals, not to become that person’s new best friend, dog-walker or spouse.

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/.

© 2016