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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

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/.

Friday, April 3, 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.

Thursday, April 2, 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.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Client Cooperation

(This blog was originally posted on March 6, 2014)

Whether you want to change a behavior to improve your health or you simply want to learn how to relax, hypnosis is an effective, natural and drug-free tool that facilitates behavior change by accessing the subconscious mind. However, you must want to change your behavior in order for hypnotherapy to work.

As I explained in my blog titled Emotional and Physical Suggestibility, “suggestibility” is how we communicate and learn. Even though you can be suggestible to many people, you are most suggestible to yourself. Therefore, I incorporate the specific words/expressions you used to describe your emotions and motivations/desire to effect the desired change when I craft your hypnotic script (suggestions). This means that you will be hypnotizing yourself.

Many people wonder if hypnosis will really work—and how it can work—on someone who has a razor-sharp mind and such a strong will (i.e., a stubborn streak) like theirs. Even though it is natural to subconsciously resist the process of becoming hypnotized at first, these initial doubts may even help to deepen your relaxation and comfort once you enter the hypnotic trance. However, you will not successfully change your behavior if you do not want to make this change.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The Pattern “Interrupt”

(This blog was previously posted on March 13, 2014)

Image courtesy of Microsoft

The subconscious mind controls 88 percent of our beliefs and behavior. Therefore, the mental script for an entrenched habit will trump the conscious mind’s logic, will-power, decision-making and reasoning faculties that want to change this habit every time. When I help a client to change a behavior in hypnotherapy, I utilize a technique called “pattern interrupt.” The purpose of the pattern interrupt is to give the SCM a time out while the individual engages in something completely different for a little while. Through this exercise, the client experiences how it feels to have the power and control to choose whether to engage in an activity that has been controlling his or her life.

When I work with someone to change a behavior, such as to quit smoking or lose weight, I first ask what specifically triggers the undesired behavior, and how he or she handles this kind of temptation. Next, we discuss options for dealing with the trigger without engaging in the unwanted behavior. It is important that the person comes up with these alternative behaviors in order for the client to remain motivated and enthusiastic about working to achieve his or her goal. The pattern interrupt should be simple and easy to do, whether it is taking ten slow, deep breaths instead of lighting a cigarette; drinking a glass of water instead of a can of soda; take the dog for a walk instead of playing a computer game. I will also reinforce these options as hypnotic suggestions so the subconscious mind will also start to recognize these new activities as “known” behaviors.

Every time you choose to do the replacement activity, even for just a couple of seconds, you are reinforcing a new behavior and creating a new known in the SCM. The great thing about the pattern interrupt is that anyone can do this. You don’t need to be in hypnosis or to have received a post-hypnotic suggestion to substitute an unwanted behavior. When temptation strikes, you just need to do something else for a little while… just long enough for the craving to subside and your subconscious mind to forget, for a little while, that this behavior ever existed, at all.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Because…That’s What You Like

(This blog was previously posted on February 3, 2014)

In an episode of the series Sherlock, titled His Last Vow, that ever-perceptive and insightful sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, pointed out the obvious to his good friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson. Watson had experienced certain stressful, potentially traumatic and even life-threatening events during his life because he had invited those situations to occur. Even his choices of friends (Sherlock) and life partner were being dictated by these subconscious messages, preferences, choices that Watson kept making, over and over again because, basically, that is what the good doctor liked.

Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explained this behavior in his Theory of Mind: Each person’s subconscious learns and adopts behaviors and ways of thinking from a very young age. By the time you are about 5 years old the blueprint of your future beliefs and behaviors is established, based on what you have learned during these early years of your life. For example, if you like (or even hate) to eat a particular kind of food, it is likely that you were given this or a similar item as a youngster. You associate the experience of eating this item with memories about how it tasted, if you like the taste, who served it to you/who was with you, etc. Other behaviors and interests (preferences) are learned in a similar way: Some people prefer to stay at home on a Friday night and curl up with a good book or watch something on television, instead of going to a party with their friends. Others enjoy skydiving and participate in various high-adrenaline sports; they think nothing of skiing down a “widow-maker” slope. Some people enjoy the hustle and thrum of having a busy social life while living in the center of a bustling city. Others prefer a quiet family life in the suburbs.

These are extreme examples of personalities at either end of a spectrum, but the drive or motivation behind these preferences comes from the same place: the subconscious mind. This is the place where you store and reinforce your beliefs and behaviors by doing what you do—without thinking about it—every time you say, think or do that behavior. Even if you do not consciously like or enjoy the belief or behavior that you reinforce, by now it has become comfortable, familiar (pleasure) to you—even if it is not “pleasurable.” According to Kappas, everyone carries the association and enjoyment (or not) of our “known” behaviors and beliefs throughout your life or, until you are motivated to change this belief or behavior.

I help my hypnotherapy clients to change their various unwanted behaviors; hypnotherapy works because and when the person wants to make this change. Your subconscious mind may know what you really want, but in your conscious mind you have the will-power, decision-making, reasoning and logic to literally change your mind.

Friday, March 27, 2015

The Hypnotic Script

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

It goes without saying that each hypnotic script that I create for my clients is unique. It has to be: since each person is idiosyncratic and individual, even similar issues such as the desire to stop smoking, lose weight or increase self-confidence to speak in public will be as unique as the person who is wants to replace or discard an unwanted behavior. Furthermore, the origins of that unwanted behavior or habit will vary as much as each person’s reasons and motivations to change it and the degree of their suggestibility (how they learn). While I have and know many basic hypnotherapeutic “ingredients” to help my clients achieve their specific vocational and avocational self-improvement goal, it is up to me to create the specific “recipe” that will achieve this objective.

I create and tailor hypnotic scripts in a three-part process:

1. First, I actively listen to what the person is telling me/explaining about his or her situation and goals to change a behavior. I will ask questions and even re-state or reframe what the person has said to make sure I understand what is going on.

2. Meanwhile, I will be processing/integrating this information into a basic hypnotic script that I already know is or will be useful to address this issue. Literally hundreds of generic hypnotic scripts exist to address various topics, but each one is not necessarily appropriate for or applicable to every situation.

3. Next, I construct the actual script using the client’s own words (descriptions) about why, how, when, etc., he or she wants to change the unwanted behavior based on his or her suggestibility. If the person is a physical suggestible, I know that the person’s subconscious mind will understand and process direct and literal suggestions such as, “Your eyes are closing.”) An emotional suggestible client’s subconscious will respond to indirect or metaphoric suggestions, such as “Your eyelids feel heavy.”

Once I choose a working framework for the hypnotic script I will use, I can be somewhat creative with how/when/where I include the client’s specific words or phrases in the suggestions. I may incorporate an imagery exercise or specific elements from a different (albeit related) script to support the hypnotherapy work I am doing with a particular client. For example, during hypnosis I like to include imagery around the color red to reinforce the idea of “stopping” the unwanted behavior (e.g., eating sweets, smoking, nail-biting, etc.) whenever the person sees this color. I can also decide—even at the last second—to not do a particular technique with a client, such as Inner Child work, if I see that the individual is abreacting (negative physical response) to some suggestions, which could indicate that his or her subconscious mind is not ready to accept or process this information.

Basically, during this process I am following the advice of jeet kune do creator and martial arts legend Bruce Lee: “Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.” I take the basic framework of a hypnotherapy process and subtly tailor the script to make it specific and relevant for the client I am working with, based on the fast decisions I must make about which material to use and how and when to use it during the session.