When Physical Problems Show Up in Your Handwriting

(This blog was originally posted on May 2, 2017)

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Handwriting reveals a lot about a person’s behavioral tendencies and attitudes, including propensity for stubbornness or over-analysis, levels of self-esteem and self-confidence, empathy and extroversion/introversion (see my blog titled All About Emotional and Physical Sexuality, Part 1). It can also reveal if the writer is experiencing any physical or emotional issues. When a stick-figure “body” is drawn over a letter, the body-part that is affected will show up as a weak (faint) or wriggling stroke or line in the corresponding area of the letter. For example, when my former editor had appendicitis, the lower-right quadrant of all of the oval letters in his writing—o, a, b, g, p—were faint or had a tiny gap, until after his surgery and he was healed.  A potential problem may also be reflected if the corresponding area of the letter is very thick and/or has a trailing line (end-stroke).

In accordance with the California Business and Professions Code 2908, if a client mentions a symptom or behavior that is out of my scope of expertise as a certified hypnotherapist, I always refer the person to a licensed medical or mental health professional for further evaluation. I do not use handwriting analysis to diagnose medical or mental-health issues and always defer to the expertise of the professionals in those fields to provide diagnostic and continuing care.

That being said, following are some examples of how a physiological or psychological issue may be revealed in a handwriting sample:

• If the person has a problem with the feet or legs, the writing will show a break (gap) in the stem or at the bottom of a loop. Weakness in the upper or lower torso will be reflected in a corresponding break in the upper- or lower-middle part of the loop, etc.

• Affecting words or symptoms of a specific disease, such as cancer or arthritis, will be written at a downward angle (baseline slant). This indicates that the person is trying to get rid of an illness or condition. Negativity and pessimism are also manifested in downward-angle writing.

• The tendency to squeeze letters in a word close together, presence of a check-mark (√) at the base of the stem and has a weak/faint “i” in the writing suggests that person is holding back sexually.

• Emotional/Psychological problems are revealed in openings (gaps) at the bottom of a letter—especially an “o” and an “a”—which indicate incongruent behavior.

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/.

© 2018

Thoughts of the Day

Photo by Sara Fogan

Every now and then I like (and need) to take a few moments and remind myself about what is really important to me, in my life. If you follow me on my Calminsense Hypnotherapy Facebook page you may have seen some of these quotes before on this page, or will in the future. Many of these Quotes of the Day are beautiful examples and illustrations of the work I do as a hypnotherapist, so I will probably draw on them in future essays.

• “The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.” – Zig Ziglar

• “The difference between a goal and a dream is a deadline.” – Steve Smith

• “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln

• “Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.” – Chinese Proverb

• “Ask for nothing less than inspiration.” – Deepak Chopra

• “Be careful about trying to get what you deserve. You might get it.” – Bruce Van Horn

• “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” – Mother Teresa

• “There comes a time when you have to choose between turning the page and closing the book.” – Lolly Daskal

• “Never lie to someone who trusts you, and never trust someone who lies to you.” – Gary Lindberg

• “Our attitude towards suffering becomes very important because it can affect how we cope with suffering when it arises.” – Dalai Lama

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/.

© 2018

Default to the Known

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has

practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee

(This blog was originally posted on May 2, 2017)

 

Photo by Rick Hustead

During my tenure as managing editor of Black Belt magazine, I became very familiar with this refrain/admonition: “You fight the way you train.” It didn’t matter that you have practiced your martial art for thirty years and have a tenth-degree black belt in that style. If your training and competitive expertise are in point-sparring versus contact fighting, chances are you will still be in trouble when it comes to defending yourself against someone who jumps you in an alley. The problem isn’t bad technique; you just defaulted to your subconscious “known,” your comfort zone. Over the years, your repeated training to pull your punches to not make actual contact with an opponent ultimately over-rode the natural instinct to connect a devastating punch or kick with the attacker’s body to defend yourself.

I keep this philosophy in mind when I help my hypnotherapy clients achieve their self-improvement goals by creating a new subconscious mental script to facilitate their desired behavior change. By the time they contact me for hypnotherapy, chances are they have been practicing that unwanted action or belief system for many years. No matter how many times they tell themselves they absolutely, positively do not want to smoke one more cigarette or eat another piece of sugary/fried food, this message is coming from the Logic/Will-Power/Decision-Making and Reasoning faculties based in the Conscious Mind. No matter how much you want to get rid of that negative habit, the Subconscious Mind will have a different perspective.

All those memories and positive associations (pleasure) with doing the “unwanted” behavior are stored in the Subconscious Mind, and the Critical Area of the mind, which is positioned in both the Conscious and Subconscious areas—is a great gate-keeper to prevent change in this status quo. For the Subconscious Mind, change—even desired change—equals pain, and it will fight very hard to prevent change from occurring. To our frustration, this usually means succumbing to temptation to smoke just one more cigarette or polish off your child’s left-over fries, and we go back to practicing those actions we want to stop once and for all.

The great thing about hypnosis is its effectiveness to overhaul or even delete those mental scripts that keep us in that loop of practicing unwanted habits. When you are in hypnosis, I can talk directly to your subconscious mind and, using your motivations, reasons and goals for the behavior change, rewrite that negative script to facilitate desired behavior changes. Once these new mental scripts are in your Subconscious Mind, resistance to making these changes melts away and are replaced by consistent repetition of new, healthy actions and belief systems to reinforce and achieve your self-improvement goals. With hypnosis, we can create a new “default” behavior and connect that metaphoric punch with the desired target: achieving your self-improvement goal!

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/.

© 2018