The Addictive Curve

Photo by Rick Hustead

The “addictive curve” is a behavioral model to describe the formation and perpetuation of addictions. For example, a person takes heroin and gets a “rush.” He then starts coming down, going lower than the state where he started, which creates a new “bottom.” Most people shoot up again as soon as they start to come down, which triggers the addiction. However, if the person waits to take the drug until just before reaching the level he normally should be, he will get even “higher” with this dose and then come back to normal.

A person can take any substance that has an addictive property—including coffee—and never become addicted to it if the individual doesn’t fall into the addictive curve. “What makes a heroin addict a heroin ‘addict’ is the feeling of coming back down,” Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explained. If you avoid the addictive curve (usually 12 hours) and wait to take the drug until you are back at that normal level, you won’t become addicted to it, he added.

Dr. Kappas demonstrated how he would help a client overcome a heroin addiction during one of his clinical case history sessions. The process entailed taking the individual off the drug “cold turkey,” then having him experience all the symptoms of withdrawal very quickly during hypnosis. Meanwhile, the hypnotherapist had the client release the feelings and go back to homeostasis while giving the hypnotic suggestion that the person did not need heroin. Dr. Kappas’s complete hypnotherapy-treatment strategy entailed taking the client from the homeostatic state back to an artificial high, then bringing him back down to experience withdrawal symptoms again, for 14 days.

“We can duplicate in hypnosis any feeling you can get from any kind of drug, from heroin, marijuana, cocaine, etc. many times we duplicate that feeling artificially so we can get the client down here to create artificial withdrawals,” he said. After the therapy program described above, however, “there’s no feeling (addiction) for heroin at all.”

A caveat: while alcohol addiction follows a similar pattern in terms of the addictive curve, hypnotherapists do not deal with alcohol addictions. “The alcoholic is much harder to deal with than the drug addict because alcohol is an accessible social drug, and there’s too many ways to cheat on alcohol. It’s a way of life,” Dr. Kappas said. The physical dependency on alcohol also tends to be stronger than the physical dependency on drugs, he added.

As I have explained in previous essays, the Business and Professions Code 2908 limits the scope of hypnotherapists’ professional practice to helping people achieve vocational and avocational self-improvement goals. Hypnotherapists must also seek a referral from licensed mental-health and/or licensed medical professionals when there may be a physiological or psychological origin of the client’s discomfort, which is outside of the scope of hypnotherapy. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are great tools to help a person follow Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous, etc. guidelines during rehabilitation from a substance addiction. However, when I work with an individual to help break this addictive curve I usually ask that the person continues to receive support from a sponsor and/or 12-step program during this process.

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

Just Do It!

Photo by Rick Hustead

Nike® has the right idea.

At some point, each of us has to do something we really don’t want to do. Whether it is a task at work or the obligatory visit to a relative, the desire to just “call it in” can be so overwhelming. But at the end of the day, there is nothing else to do but grit our teeth and get it over with.

For example, my horse hates working on the right in the arena. Like most horses, he is more comfortable and more flexible traveling left. I can almost hear his internal groan when I ask him to reverse direction. He still grunts when he has to pick up a right-lead canter since this direction is much more strenuous for him. However, over time the grunting has become less frequent and not quite so loud. In fact, my trainer and I agree that Galahad travels better going to his off-side. 

The same is true for people, too. When we have to do something we don’t enjoy or want to do, it is easy to slack off and do a less-than-stellar job to complete the task. However, we quickly learn that rushing through a project we don’t enjoy just to get the job done often produces more work in the long run. Whether your boss points out the sloppy work or a client notices the lower quality performance or you experience the consequences of a poor design first-hand, no one benefits a lack-luster performance. 

It is true that time passes whether we do the job right or put “just enough” work into the project to get it done. However, in the latter case we usually end up spending more time making up for the errors we didn’t (bother to) catch the first time. So, why not just do it?

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

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.

• “Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

•  “No one can create negativity or stress within you. Only you can do that by virtue of how you process your world.” – Wayne Dyer

• “Happiness is a state of mind. It’s just how you look at things.” – Walt Disney

• “We are all given possibilities—to make ourselves one thing or another.” – José Ortega Y Gasset

• “He who is outside his door has the hardest part of his journey behind him.” – Dutch Proverb

• “Taking care of yourself takes care of more than just yourself.” – Matthew McConaughey, Lincoln car ad

• “Stay away from people who make you feel like you are hard to love.” – Unknown

• “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” Cormac McCarthy

• “Your purpose doesn’t have to be something that makes you famous. It’s something that makes your life meaningful.” – Oprah Winfrey

•  It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.” – Eckhart  Tolle

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

Recreating the Family of Origin

Photo by Rick Hustead

When I was a freshman at Occidental College, I noticed something very interesting: all of the students looked the same. Well, not exactly the same, as in identical; but our similarity in physical features and even social backgrounds struck me as uncanny. One of my favorite instructors reminded me of my mother, from her general physique and gentle demeanor to the curly, salt-and-pepper dark hair they wore in a similar style. Maybe that resemblance contributed to her being one of my favorite professors. I remember that my fourth-grade teacher reminded me of one of my grandmothers; Mrs. Payne also happened to be one of my favorite grammar-school teachers. I don’t think that was a coincidence. One of the first good friends I made at Goldsmiths College in London, during my junior year abroad reminded me of my sister; they both even shared the same major in English literature.

On Tuesday, May 17, 2016, KFI AM 640 radio host Gary Hoffman and his featured guest, Wendy Walsh, Ph.D., discussed people’s subconscious tendency to recreate the “home” or family environment/social schema where they work. Dr. Walsh’s description of this behavior sounded a lot like Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Theory of Mind. No matter where we are or who we are with, we subconsciously want to return to those early experiences where we felt comfortable—even if we were experiencing pain in that situation. Both models made total sense.

Many people spend a majority of their waking day at work or at school/college. Whether it is a youngster’s first day in kindergarten or the first time newly minted CEO walks into the boardroom to facilitate a meeting, anxiety (pain) is usually the dominant emotion experienced. To alleviate this discomfort, we subconsciously look for any similarity between what he or she knows/knows how to do and other people with whom we have shared this previous environment or space. I remember the anxiety I experienced when the original owner of Black Belt magazine sold the company in 2001. All of the staff was anxious about our job security, even the senior editors and art directors. We all knew that the new line manager could easily decide this was a chance to “refresh” the current business model and get new writers and editors. Would our possible replacements actually be more skilled at our job or just a better social “fit” for the new boss? As it turned out, most of us kept our job and even got promotions when Black Belt magazine’s current owners bought and expanded the company a few years later. However, it was easy to see that new writers and editors that were hired were much more “like” and compatible with the new executive staff.

When I interviewed for college and, later, future jobs, I subconsciously looked for an environment where I already felt comfortable and shared interests/goals as the people with whom I would be sharing that environment. I have no doubt that Oxy’s college-acceptance board and my prospective employers had similar criteria when they considered how well I would fit in with them. The same could also be said of how I was originally recruited to join NRG—the business-network group to which I belong—and even, to some extent, how my clients “choose” to work with me as their hypnotherapist. What is similar? What is familiar? That is where we ultimately go—and stay.

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