Feb 29 2024

What Makes Anorexia & Bulimia So Hard To Treat? Vol. 664, Feb. 29, 2024

Over the past 22+ years that I have been in practice, I have found those with anorexia and bulimia who committed to ending their eating disorder were able to do so. However, this is not something that most of those who are allopathically trained would believe is even possible. This is because these folks have learned that these illnesses are only able to be managed at best.

Well, I can honestly tell you that this is misguided information because I have several past clients who have been able to end their eating disorders and move on in life. However, it was not an easy process in the sense that they needed to revisit the underlying traumas that had them develop the eating disorders in the first place. The good news was that by using hypnotism and neuro-linguistic programming they were able to do this release work in a hypnotic state, an altered state allowing them to make connections that would be impossible to make while working through the information in the conscious mind.

The issues that make working with these patients more difficult than many others is the fact that many have come to loathe themselves. My anorexic and bulimic clients use the word ‘loathe’ to describe how they feel about themselves. When one loathes one’s self it is very difficult to care enough about the self to do the healing work and make the changes in habits that need to be made. This is why we need to teach them how to fall back in love with themself so they will want to take care of their body which is the temple in which they reside. Once that is accomplished it is just a matter of going through the healing protocol including four sessions of hypnosis for addiction release and then working on creating a compelling future. Because when one has a compelling future that is more alluring than being ill, almost anyone can do whatever it takes to heal. My clients have proven that these steps work and have worked to keep them free of their anorexia and bulimia for two decades now.

I sincerely hope that learning that one can indeed overcome these illnesses when the healing protocol is based on healing instead of pathology, is inspirational enough to help those who suffer from these issues get the help they need so they too can move on with their lives without having their eating disorder control practically everything they think and do any longer.

A person on Quora asked me what the common experiences that people have while they are in the state of hypnosis are. This is how I answered that question:

Having been hypnotized myriads of times both in the clinical setting and on the stage of a few stage hypnotists I can tell you the following:

1. There are symptoms that allow one to know that one is hypnotized. A clinical hypnotist will tell you what those are so that you know that you have been hypnotized. Some of these symptoms are swallowing a lot more than usual, pulse and heart rate slowing down, circular breathing from the diaphragm, eyes will flutter, the hypnotist will be looking for the lines in your lips to be less deep, a slight color change in your face to a bit redder. (Some hypnotists will give their clients convincers like sticking their feet to the floor unable to move them to prove to the client they were indeed hypnotized).

2. The client may feel like they are heavy or lighter, sometimes one feels tingles in their fingers and/or toes, and time feels much quicker than it actually is.

3. It is much easier to gain access to the subconscious material that needs to be found and worked with while one is in the hypnotic state which is why it is used.

4. The work goes a lot quicker than conventional talk therapy because we are working. in the subconscious mind where the transformations need to happen.

5. In stage shows one realizes that the suggestion may not be real, however, the volunteer acts as if that suggestion is real. i.e. A suggestion given that a man is pregnant and giving birth – the man knows that he isn’t pregnant, but will act out the suggestion as if he is a good hypnotic subject.

6. Stage hypnotists have to be very good at discerning the volunteers who are actually hypnotized and those that may be pretending which they can tell by giving suggestions and seeing how the volunteer responds along with the above-given symptoms of hypnosis.

7. Mostly, when one is in treatment with a hypnotist who knows how to use the tools and techniques well, one can go to those hard places in one’s memory and transform it quickly to let go of that which no longer works and create thinking that does work better for the client.

I have been practicing hypnotism for the past 20 years and my clients have reported that this was the one way they found to clear out their issues when everything else they tried failed. It is important to find a hypnotist who has proven that they can help people with the issues that they have so that you receive the results that you are employing them to help you receive. Because the reality of the situation is that no one can heal another – all we as practitioners can do is facilitate another’s healing to the point that they allow us to. This means that we have to know everything that is bothering our clients so we can help free them of the issues.

Feb 22 2024

What Are Some Common Experiences People Have While In a Hypnotic Trance? Vol 663, February 22, 2024

A person on Quora asked me what the common experiences that people have while they are in the state of hypnosis are. This is how I answered that question:

Having been hypnotized myriads of times both in the clinical setting and on the stage of a few stage hypnotists I can tell you the following:

1. Some symptoms allow one to know that one is hypnotized. A clinical hypnotist will tell you what those are so that you know that you have been hypnotized. Some of these symptoms are swallowing a lot more than usual, pulse and heart rate slowing down, circular breathing from the diaphragm, eyes fluttering, the hypnotist will be looking for the lines in your lips to be less deep, a slight color change in your face to a bit redder. (Some hypnotists will give their clients convincers like sticking their feet to the floor unable to move them to prove to the client they were indeed hypnotized).

2. The client may feel like they are heavy or lighter, sometimes one feels tingles in their fingers and/or toes, and time feels much quicker than it actually is.

3. It is much easier to gain access to the subconscious material that needs to be found and worked with while one is in the hypnotic state which is why it is used.

4. The work goes a lot quicker than conventional talk therapy because we are working. in the subconscious mind where the transformations need to happen.

5. In stage shows one realizes that the suggestion may not be real, however, the volunteer acts as if that suggestion is real. i.e. A suggestion given that a man is pregnant and giving birth – the man knows that he isn’t pregnant, but will act out the suggestion as if he is a good hypnotic subject.

6. Stage hypnotists have to be very good at discerning the volunteers who are actually hypnotized and those who may be pretending which they can tell by giving suggestions and seeing how the volunteer responds along with the above-given symptoms of hypnosis.

7. Mostly, when one is in treatment with a hypnotist who knows how to use the tools and techniques well, one can go to those hard places in one’s memory and transform it quickly to let go of that which no longer works and create thinking that does work better for the client.

I have been practicing hypnotism for the past 20 years and my clients have reported that this was the one way they found to clear out their issues when everything else they tried failed. It is important to find a hypnotist who has proven that they can help people with the issues that they have so that you receive the results that you are employing them to help you receive. Because the reality of the situation is that no one can heal another – all we as practitioners can do is facilitate another’s healing to the point that they allow us to. This means that we have to know everything that is bothering our clients so we can help free them of the issues.

Feb 15 2024

How Hypnosis Helps with Immunity & Lowering Stress, Vol. 662 – February 15, 2024

“Research into the physiological influence of hypnosis has experienced a renaissance with the advent of psychoneuroimmunology. Reduction in cancer-related pain, immune regulation, and lowered stress are all benefits attributed to hypnotic interventions.”

I have been a practicing hypnotist for the past 20 years able to help those patients that the allopathically trained practitioners could not. Many of the clients that I have helped over the years have suffered horrendous traumas, though that is not true of all of them. Some just needed one to find the cause of the problem and help them heal it like the very young 61-year-old anesthesiologist who had insomnia. He had all the usual sleep tests and nothing was found physiologically to be problematic. Yet, he had not gotten a really good night of sleep in over 30 years. It turned out in his case that he had been interrupted from his sleep so many times during the 3 residencies he had completed that his body did not feel safe going to sleep.

Or the 42-year-old woman who had excruciating pain in her stomach in which there was no physiological cause based on the report from her doctor and no obvious emotional issue based on the input from her psychologist at one of the best hospitals in the US. In her case, the issue went back to being traumatized starting from when she was 4 years old through her teen years by her father who found many ways to antagonize her emotionally and physically. It was only when we helped her to heal these individual traumas from her past that she was able to finally let go of the stabbing pains in her stomach.

You see, our subconscious mind holds so many events in our minds and we cannot reach many of them on the conscious level which is how medical care is given. So, how is a patient to heal? The answer is that in most cases they never do take medications many of which are of negligible help if the truth be known because though the symptoms may be lessened, the underlying problem remains.

Here is the URL for the article in which I took the quote at the beginning of this post for your education:

https://lnkd.in/eJYbrJGE

Feb 08 2024

Is it Normal to Have No Secrets with Your Mental Health Provider? Vol. 661, Feb. 8, 2023

One of the things that I tell my prospective clients before they ever sign on with me is that I can only help them to the degree that they are willing to be honest with me about all that they are dealing with because I am not a mind reader and do not want to be one.

The point is that one cannot expect anyone to be able to help another unless the truth is put out there to be worked through.

Trust is the most important aspect of employing a therapist. One needs to trust that the information given will not be used against the patient such as forcing the patient to be hospitalized for observation if this is not required as happened to a client of mine when asked if she ever had suicidal thoughts. She answered that she did and was rushed off to the hospital in a police car for evaluation. She was not suicidal at the time she was asked this question. The question was if she EVER felt suicidal. So her answer was taken out of the context of the question. Understand that this particular therapist did not know this patient this being the first appointment and the action taken within the first 5 minutes of it.

The best bet is to build a relationship with the therapist so you know that you understand one another. Trust is built over time so allow that process to occur so long as you feel that your therapist is hearing what you are saying in the manner in which you mean it. The therapist is respecting your feelings while allowing you to be an invested part of the process instead of infantilizing you because you may have a mental illness (diagnosis given by a mental health provider with the ability to diagnose you). These are important aspects of being able to do the deep work that is necessary to have therapy be a productive endeavor.

So, yes, you need to be honest with your therapist, and your therapist needs to earn that trust from you during the process of engaging in therapy.

Feb 01 2024

Do Mental Health Providers Have to Deal With Their Own Problems in Counseling Sessions? Vol. 660, Feb. 1 ,2023

This is a question that many people on Quora have asked over the years and this is my answer:

This is a very good question and one that I would hope counselors (therapists) would answer honestly.

First, many people who enter the world of healthcare do so because they or someone close to them has been adversely affected by some disease process be it physiological or emotional. These folks want to learn more about the problem so they go to school to learn about it and then end up specializing in that area of medicine.

For those who are providing mental health services, most master’s and Ph.D. programs for clinicians are made to go through some therapy so they understand what it is like and get an understanding of the dynamics between the patient and the clinician. However, too many of them never really get to the heart of their emotional issues and end up projecting their issues onto their patients falsely believing that this is a supportive thing to do. It is one thing to empathize with a client’s challenges, it is quite another to tell them that it is okay to be (fill in the box because they have every right to be angry or whatever) when the healing comes from being able to take responsibility for their part in the dynamic whatever it was even if it was just staying with the other person and learning how to forgive and let go of the issues surrounding the negative emotional events so they can get on with their lives.

Second, as I used to tell those folks who would be at the hypnosis conventions I used to attend frequently, “If you are not using hypnosis yourself you have no business in selling it as a service.” This is simply because few people will follow the guidance given by a person who is not using the healing modality being sold. This is not only true about hypnotism, it is true of any healthcare provider who is not following the guidance that they are giving to their patients themselves. This means using common sense approaches to remain strong and healthy, body, mind, and spirit.

I also guide potential clients of hypnotist and neuro-linguistic programming to make sure that the person that they are employing to do this work has used hypnotism and neuro-linguistic programming themselves to improve their life and is continuing to use self-hypnosis. We need to be in integrity and congruence with what we are doing with our clients and patients for them to receive the benefit of what we are doing with them. Otherwise, they will most likely not follow through on what we are telling them because there is not enough trust in the healthcare provider.

So, yes, mental health professionals need to have had therapy and work with therapists to take care of whatever ongoing issues may occur in life. This does not mean that one is in therapy for life, that is also ridiculous. However, to believe in what one is selling, one needs to be a consumer who has received a benefit from that which they are selling.

Jan 25 2024

What Are Some Good Activities to Do Before and After a Therapy Session? Vol. 659, Jan. 25, 2024

This was a question that a person on Quora asked and this is how I answered it:

Sessions go by very quickly when you have an agenda that you want to get through. They go very slowly if you have no idea what you want to talk about. So, do yourself and your therapist a favor and write down a list of things that you would like to cover during your session. Things such as concerns you have at work, problems that you are encountering with the people in your life, thoughts and/or behaviors that you are not able to control and that you want addressed. These are just a few examples.

After the session, you could write in a journal what you learned from the session and different perspectives that you could give to the issues or new behaviors that you could put into effect based on what your therapist suggested.

Too often patients are too fearful to speak about the things that need to be spoken about. From the questions I received and the answers that I read, too many patients are concerned about how their therapist will judge them should they open up about what is going on with them.

Look, if you are unable to trust your therapist to listen to what you are saying with compassion then you need to change therapists.

Dec 31 2023

Happy New Years 2024!

I have to say that I have a practice every year two times a year where I go over the things that I have accomplished for the year and determine what is next on my list of desires that could be done during the year as well as longer-term projects that could take a couple or a few years to complete. One time is around my birthday in September which is close to the Jewish New Year (yes, I was raised as a Reform Jew), and again near the beginning of the regular New Year on January 1st. 

I used to keep index cards for every area of my life where I wanted to accomplish things. However, I have not done that since leaving Massachusetts in 2013. However, it needs to be acknowledged that I accomplished about 97% of the goals that I had on those index cards through the many years I kept that practice. 

I have to admit that one of the best decisions that I made back in September 2021 after my Master’s in Peace & Conflict Management was completed at the International School of the University of Haifa, was to not return to the US. There were many reasons for this decision the most important so far as I was concerned was to not be treated as a second-class citizen in my own country for not being willing to take what has been proven to be a bioweapon as the injections were indeed developed in the defense department of China with money from the US defense department. We can tell by the horrific number of adverse effects that these injections have had that this could be the only truth behind their development. I am forever grateful for being immersed in biological and mental health research and practice from the time I was 13 gaining the knowledge that I did where many others were without it. Education is the best anecdote to societal stupidity based on lies being stated as fact and endless censorship of those who spent their lives studying the components being used to dictate what people could and could not do. I never was in a shutdown because I went to countries where that was not policy deliberately. I went to places that many would never go to such as my home last year and again this year in Golem, Albania where the food is all organically grown, where the government stays out of my business, and where my days are my own including almost daily walks along the seaside of the Ionian Sea which is about a 3-minute walk from here.

Another interesting thing that I was able to do because I was already in Eastern Europe was meeting up with an American family I have been friendly with for over 20 years in Belgrade, Serbia during the 3 months I had to leave Albania after my tourist visa expired. I was able to watch their college-aged daughter compete in the World’s International Rowing Competition in Belgrade with them which was something that only happened because the stars aligned to have us all there for that event. It was a fun event and better for being with a family that has helped me out a lot over the years, especially during my mother’s last couple of weeks of life.

I am completing a Master’s in Instructional Design, a topic I had zero knowledge of before starting but knowing that I would be able to design a great training for those mental health providers who treat anorexics and bulimics with that particular program. All the courses are built on the previous one. Now I have great training which I am going to test empirically in a Psy. D. program given by the same university.  It is 4 more years of study minimum to gain that credential which will prove to those who were allopathically trained in mental health that they could do a lot better for their patients especially those who are fragile and dealing with the number one mental health killer of anorexia by integrating hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming into their healing protocols. 

It is my firm belief that the older we get the more important it is for us to have constructive projects that are meaningful to us. Certainly, for those of us who love what we do for a living, retirement is out of the question.  Rather it is a matter of figuring out the next phase of the work to be done. In my case, it is training others in the healing protocols I have found to help anorexics and bulimics fully let go of their negative thoughts and behaviors by facilitating life-giving thoughts and behaviors based on developing self-love and self-respect along with a compelling future that is more important to them than keeping their old dysfunctional ways. 

I also have found that living among people who are unconditionally loving and caring brings a bright attitude toward life. It does not matter that we can’t speak one another’s language, Google Translate does the job most times along with some sign language. When necessary someone can always be found who speaks English to help with the translation. 

What I am sharing with you here is a way to come into the New Year creating a life that works for you. Not for those who have placed demands on you, but for you based on your values and interest in this life. The only person who can determine what works best for you is you.

What I found is that the less I own and the less I have to take care of the more flexible my life is to fit what I care about most. I also have to admit that traveling the world to many countries that are as different from the US as possible has given me a much broader understanding of where I want to fit in this world. 

I do not have any plans of returning to live in the US again, it is much less expensive with much better food and attitudes in other places in the world. However, if there is a good enough reason to bring me back to the US I will make that decision at that time because one never knows what opportunities can be had till they arise. I am a firm believer in taking every opportunity that I can especially if I find it a bit scary. Because this is where growth occurs. And, if one is not growing one is dying which is why it is important to always have audacious plans especially as one comes to the last half of one’s life. 

I wish you a significant upgrade in your life for the New Year by being sensitive to what your inner guidance is guiding you to do next. 

Suzanne 

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