Nov 17 2012

Oppose Opiates: Live Life – Vol. 128, Dec. 1, 2011

As I was reading the “Shape” magazine for this month I came across yet another article called “The Accidental Addiction”. It was a report on the sad situation of increased addiction of opiates given to professional people, many of them woman. It always starts out so innocently with a bit of unrelenting pain bringing them to the doctor who prescribes some form of opiate medication with that devil of a “high” to take all the pain away while giving them taking the stress away.

The article tells of a woman they called “Susan” starting her day getting high on Oxycontin and Roxicondone two forms of pain killers. She began to snort them when she was no longer getting her high, finding that she needed to continuously take them to not suffer the symptoms of withdrawal: feeling panicky, experiencing muscle cramps, diarrhea and nausea.

As a 32 year old nurse and middle class mom her odyssey started seven years ago with horrific pain. Apparently she had fibromyalgia and given a prescription for Oxycontin which did little for the pain yet helped her have the energy to get things done. From there things spiraled out of control.

According to the Prescription Research Center 139 million prescriptions were written for hydrocodone up from 112 million just four years ago making them the most prescribed drugs in the country. Being prescriptions drugs they are without the stigma of heroin a chemical relative of these drugs also known as Percocet or Vicodin. Each of these drugs are made from opium or a synthetic of it making them highly addictive sometimes after only a few weeks.They are easy to get and less expensive with insurance co-pays then street drugs.

About 50% addicts of the prescription pain killers are women, which is 20 to 30% higher than for illicit drugs use including marijuana. The reasons for this may be because: more women are affected by conditions associated with chronic pain, women are more likely to go to the doctor to get help, and the higher levels of the hormone estrogen hormone may make a woman more susceptible to feeling high.

If you are suffering from pain, the first thing you need to know is that not all pain is because of a physical condition. Many people have what feels like pain due to emotional trauma. This was true of one of my early clients Lisa E. You can read her story in her testimonial on this website. In other cases, one can get their chronic pain under better control by learning how to relax, taking away the tension that increases the pain one feels. Meditation is a great way to do this. If you want a more structured way of relaxing which includes suggestions of pain reduction, one can learn from a hypnotist in a few sessions how to use one’s mind to take control of the situation before you ever need to reach for any drugs. You can read the testimonial of Mary Ann McNulty on this website to see how that worked in her case with a fast intervention to get her pain under control.

Do make sure that any hypnotist you work with has experience in this specialized area. Check out their website to make sure they can help you.

If you have gotten to the point where you know that your out of control abusing the drugs and most certainly suffering withdrawal as Susan in the article is, please GO TO A  REHAB  program where they can safely get you off the drugs.

If you know you are getting out of control and you are NOT suffering withdrawal look for a hypnotist to help you to stay away from these drugs. In the testimonial section of this website there are two testimonials from my client Donna N. of her 30 year odyssey with addiction and how she finally dumped it out of her life. These days she is dealing with a tear in her shoulder ligament which caused horrific pain for several months and even with a prescription to use, she hasn’t touched it since she received it a few months ago. She claims her hypnosis is the reason for not even wanting to go there even with a non-narcotic drug.

There are many alternatives to taking drugs which only mask the pain anyway. It is much better to allow the healing ability of your mind to deal with chronic pain giving you the freedom from ever becoming an addict.

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Nov 17 2012

How to be happy in life by creating happy thoughts – Vol. 175, Nov.17, 2012

P1000392

P1000392 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the course of doing hypnosis for the past decade and more, I have learned that the one thing that all people are looking for is that thing called “happiness”. The interesting thing about this is that most people have a very strange idea of what would bring them happiness. Many are brainwashed by the advertisers to purchase ever more things believing that will increase the feeling of happiness. In truth once these items are purchased it only takes a few weeks to feel the same as one did before. Where it comes to income production, $250,000/year is the magic number. This is the amount where all needs are taken care of with enough left over for a very comfortable life style. Any more money has no impact on happiness. In some cases people believe that if they get married or have a child they will feel happy. However, unless it is a healthy relationship and a near perfect child, many challenges can arise.

So where does one find the happiness that is craved? Well, to be sure it is nothing that can be found from anything that is outside of you. The reason for this is that happiness is a feeling, and feelings come from the self. It is a decision that we make to allow ourselves to be happy from moment to moment, regardless of the chaos that may be encroaching on us. This is because happiness is really a state of mind. Given this understanding that it is from your mind which happiness comes, here are a few things that you can do to bring some happiness into your life:

1) Follow the advise of all the spiritual teachers by living in the moment. Think of the way a young child lives. The child lives from one moment to the next never worrying about either the past or the future. The child lives in a world open to curiosity through exploration right in the present moment.
2) Think about what your true values are: If you really value your family the way to show it is by giving them something more precious than anything you can purchase, your undivided attention toward what matters to them. As is often pointed out, most people lying on their death bed will not be concerned that they didn’t work more. They will be concerned that they gave and received love.
3) Think about what is fulfilling to you. If you are doing a job, or spending time in activities to please another, you are not living your own life. Given the relatively short period you are here living, it is up to you to get real with yourself about what truly matters to you and spend your time doing those activities!
4) If spending money on things is short lived, spending time and money on having memorable experiences is not. Take the time to figure out what those experiences are that bring you the most enjoyment and do those as often as you can.
5) Healthy relationships are very important. Spend time with those people who you can relate to in an easy manner where you are constantly finding yourself being stretched and with those with whom you have fun.
6) A healthy body and mind is most important so getting enough activity in and healthy food with plenty of water so your body and mind are able to function is most important.
7) Living to give of yourself is most fulfilling of all. If for some reason you aren’t feeling very happy go out and find someone whose life you can brighten up. The smile that you bring to that other person’s face will be enough for you to feel lighter and happier in every way.

It is up to you to take control of your own life pursuing those things that truly matter to you. Once you allow yourself to do that, happiness will be the end result.

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Nov 10 2012

Wake Up Doctors: Patients Need Pain Control Without Contaminated Injections – Vol. 174, Nov. 9, 2012

As many of you may have heard in the news this past few weeks the CDC has connected the fungal meningitis epidemic to the injected pain medicine, methylprednisolone acetate, a steroid in which eight people had died by October 9, 2012. The medication were injected directly into their spinal fluid. Unfortunately the compounding pharmacy that made the medication omitted the preservatives from the medication allowing for the growth of fungus such as the Aspergillus and Exserohilum the CDC said it found in nine patients. Compounding pharmacies usually would include a preservative to stop this from occurring. One thing that you need to understand is that compounding pharmacies are not regulated by the FDA, though they are called in when something like this happens.

Meningitis is very serious it being the inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spine. It can also be caused by bacteria and viruses as well as by fungus. Patients with meningitis can experience: stroke, confusion, dizziness and discomfort from bright lights along with other vague symptoms like: headache, fever, nausea, and stiffness of the neck.

My question to you though is this? Why take an injected pain killer when you are constantly hearing about all the issues with all sorts of drugs being recalled for worse side-effects than what they are being created to address? Pharmaceutical companies are being held accountable for lying about the efficacy of their products with the government forcing them to pay back huge amounts of money for patients’ care covered by the government under medicaid and medicare.

This does not even allow for the stress that one’s body goes through after having received a medication that may have been contaminated. Many times the patient has to wait for a few weeks to find out based on a culture that is done on the patients spinal fluid.  Here are a few ideas to help you to relieve your chronic pain and by doing so releasing stress associated with it.

By relaxing the body you are able to release the muscle tension throughout your body. From there you are able to remove the attention from the pain.

You can start your relaxation by reclining back and taking a nice, deep breath. Hold it for a couple of seconds and then release it. Do this a couple of times and then shut your eyes, From here you can tell your mind and body to “relax, relax, relax.” Do this for a minute or two and you will notice that your breathing will get slower and deeper as a result. Next work with some of the ideas below to help you to lesson your discomfort. Some may work better for you than others. With a bit of practice it will be easier to get into this state and reduce your discomfort.

1) Change your focus: Focus your attention on any part of your body that is without any sort of discomfort. Concentrate on that part of the body imagining it warming up. By doing this your attention will be taken away from the area that is experiencing discomfort.

Pleasant Imagery: Imagine yourself in the most beautiful and relaxing place that you have ever been. A place where you feel calm, secure and happy. Allow yourself to stay in that place for a few minutes allowing your mind to remove itself from the discomfort.

3) Remove the pain from your body: Imagine the pain has a shape and a color and a size. Go ahead and incrementally make the size of the shape smaller and smaller as you make the color dimmer and dimmer. When the size is very, very small, the size of a head of a pin and barely visible go ahead and remove it from your body. Just tell your body to do it and it will do so.

How about dealing with the stress of not knowing if you were contaminated or not?

By accessing the subconscious mind through these techniques one is relieving the stress as a by product. You may be amazed at what your own mind can allow you to do if you take the time to train it to do so.

Nov 03 2012

So You Want to Stop Smoking, But You Don’t Know Why It’s So Hard

Vol. 41, August 2006

I just had a client who decided it was time to give up smoking again. She wanted it to work for the long term this time for she is waking up every morning coughing for longer periods of time. It is obvious that her body is trying to tell her that she is poisoning herself and that she needs to quit. She is also sick of using her energy to figure out how she is going to fit in smoking while her grandchildren visit or while with all her friends who are now non-smokers. Continue reading

Nov 03 2012

Are You Among the 68% of Americans who Fear Of Death? Here’s How To Deal With It – Vol. 173, Nov. 2, 2012

Grim reaper crossed out with red X

Grim reaper crossed out with red X (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why do so many Americans fear death? After doing a bit of research on the subject I found that there are different types of fear of death.

1) Fear of pain and suffering to be experienced when one dies in a horrible accident or as a result of a fatal illness such as cancer.

2) Fear of non-existence not believing in the afterlife.

3) Fear of the unknown since nobody really knows what happens after one dies.

4) Fear of eternal punishment for what one has done while here on earth for both the religious and the non-religious alike.

5) Fear of loss of control since we are not in control of our deaths either in how we die or when we will die.

6) Fear of what will become of our loved one’s in our absence.

If you are so fearful of death that it has taken over your life you are suffering from what is known as thanatophobia. This is something that needs to be addressed professionally to regain control of your life.

Having a healthy fear of death can be useful for it means you are going to take precautions like: wearing your seatbelt while in a car, wearing bike helmets and making sure your stove is off before you leave your home.

There are certain conditions to having fears according to Yale Professor Shelly Kagan:

1) To make sense of having a fear of any sort, it has to be bad.
2) There has to be a real possibility for the event that one is fearful will happen.
3) There has to be a significant amount of uncertainty for the fear to be appropriate.
4) We need to know how bad the issue is for the fear to be appropriate.

Even when fear makes sense we have to keep the amount of fear felt to the size of the negative event.

Some people saying they are afraid of death are really suggesting a fear of death itself – of being dead. The relevant conditions Professor Kagan lists above are not present since it is a guarantee that a person will die at some time. There is nothing unknown about death occurring. When there is not any notion of how you are going to die, there is no reason to fear it because there is no experience at all once in the ground, according to Professor Kagan.

Here are some new ways of thinking about the life’s process which includes death:

1) Life is a cycle. When a person dies, another is born.

2) You will be remembered by others for the things that you shared together.

3) There is no need to worry about dying till there is some true situation in your life that allows for the conditions above to be relevant.

4) Know that death does not equate with pain.

Here are two simple ways to help yourself let go of the anxious feelings that the fear of death may bring:

1) It is impossible to be anxious and relaxed at the same time so doing meditation, yoga or self-hypnosis will also be very helpful to letting go of the anxiety.

2) Live your life every day to the fullest. Do things that you find fulfilling and fun, life is to be enjoyed. You will find that your fear will lesson.

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Oct 27 2012

Antistress: Stress Reducer Tips to Reduce Emotional Stress and Manage Your Life – Vol.155, June 29, 2012

Stress is a major part of American life these days. It is also the main reason why people get ill. Many people are working too many hours, stuck in long traffic filled commutes, taking care of their families and sometimes elder parents. No wonder it can be difficult to focus on taking care of yourself.

A few years ago I had a thirty something bank manger come in to see me. Her main complaint was that she was gaining weight unable to do the jogging that she once looked forward to getting in every day.

She told me that she had lots of work to do at her bank. Her father had passed away recently leaving her blind brother living in an apartment buildings her father had owned, a building that was going to be sold. This meant that my client needed to find new housing for her brother as well as deal with the sale of the building and the rest of her father’s estate.

With one hypnosis session we were able to have her discover that she had much help at her disposal if she were willing to ask. At her bank there were three employees that she could delegate good chunks of the work to get done. She had another brother who could help her with finding her brother a new place to live. She also realized there were a few professional people in her circle who could help her to deal with the estate without feeling that the whole project was on her alone.

Sometimes, it just takes a little bit of thought to figure out that you need not be the sole person to handle all that you have in front of you. It is always wise to remember that there are people around that if you were to ask, would most likely be willing to help you.

When my client came back the following week for her check in appointment she was in a much calmer state. She had delegated the work out to others as outlined during the previous appointment. With that done she found that all of a sudden she was able to get back to doing her morning jogs and eating healthier. The weight will now come off in a healthy manner for her.

If you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders do the following:

Write down all the projects that you have.
Look at the list and categorize it according to the different areas of your life
For example: work projects, home projects, things to be done for family members, etc.
In each of these domains think of the people that you have that are able to help you.
Ask each person on your list to help you out.

It really was this easy for my client to regain a great part of her life back by using this simple strategy. Remember that most things of any importance is done by more than one person.

If you are having a difficult time figuring out how to lift all the pressures that you feel you have to contend with, a hypnotist would be most helpful to get to the core issues and then quickly help to resolve them.

 

Oct 27 2012

Relationships: The Secret to Creating Those That Work – Vol. 126, November 17

There are many people out there on the internet who are teaching people how to go about attracting the right person for them. Many of these programs state that they are successful at teaching the skills that are necessary. Now, I haven’t done a study to prove if these programs work or not, however I do know that in the case of my clients learning how to attract the “right” person is NOT the beginning of the process. The beginning of the process for them starts at figuring out why it is that they are attracting people that are not able to provide them the love and support that they desire and deserve. Worse are those partnered with someone who is destructive to their sense of self-esteem and yet in some cases not even recognizing that this is the cause of inflamed health issues. Another thing that is very interesting to note here is that the presenting problems that showed up that were the cause of these issues was different in every case. With that in mind I am going to share some case histories to give you an idea of the many ways that people find themselves in relationship hell and what was done to improve their situations.

A few years ago a young women come in to see me with the main presenting issue being that she was bulimic. During the intake she admitted that she drank too much and alcohol and needed to get it under control. When she drank too much her impulse control was no longer evident. She would be attending industry parties where she would get drunk and ending up having sex with a man of who was present at the party. She was well aware of the conflict here between wanting to be respected in her profession and the behavior that she was exhibiting. In her case she needed to stop the alcohol intake permanently for she was unable to keep it under control. This allowed her to control her sexual behavior as well as to get her bulimia under control.

I had another woman who came in with the presenting problem of depression, unable to do her writing which is what really mattered to her. She was married to a wonderful, and successful man. The only problem was that she was being treated rather rudely by him. He would be on the phone with a co-worker and say something sarcastic about her. This of course harmed their relationship. When we got down to the cause of the problems it went back to her parents being very demanding of this couple’s time with their wanting to see their grandchildren yet always on their time line. Isn’t interesting that two retired people took absolute control of this situation. When the daughter (mother of the children and spouse to the gentleman above) made it very clear that she and her husband would decide if and when the grandparents would visit, all of a sudden the couple were able to get along as well as when they first met. The reason for this was that the husband felt threatened by his spouse’s inability to put him first in their relationship.

Another client came to me was feeling very alone in the world having no true friends in the area and desperately wanting to move back to her home state across the country. You see she had married a man who was blind. She bent over backwards to make him happy or so she thought until the day he told her he was moving to Africa to be with another woman. This client had no idea why it was that this could happen. In the process of doing our work together it was noted that she had a relationship with her father where some terrible abuse had happened at a very early age and with that came her decision to never allow another person to get close to her and hurt her ever again. She was a person for whom empty smiles were normal, no longer being able to feel her emotions. Once she was able to get her emotions back at least she was able to create much healthier friendships with the people in her life.

Last year I had another woman come into me who had social anxiety as she put it. In her case she had a tendency to always look away when people talked to her. This was something that she realized she was doing because of her discomfort in being too intimate with another. Again, there was some serious abuse that occurred in her family of origin that made it very difficult for her to trust men and so she tended to shy away from them. With a bit of self-esteem work and the clearing of that issue of the past she got together with a gentleman that she always liked in the past reigniting their relationship.

I recently received a call from a woman who was suffering with aches and pains coming from a muscular disease. She was unable to focus on her work and feeling run down and incapable of taking control over her life. She was married to a man whom she thought she loved till she recognized all the ways in which he belittled her, attacked her sense of accomplishments as he worked to control her. She realized that what she needed to do was to leave the marriage and allow herself the space she needed to be away from such a destructive person as her soon to be former husband, had become in her life.

A few years ago I had a bulimic come in to see me who really wanted to be able to stop her purging behavior. She was in an MBA program where she was getting decent grades and yet it seemed that back at home her husband found all sorts of ways to treat her as the 22 year old person she was when they met who was needy and dependent. In short he was infantilizing her and arguing with her about everything. She came to the conclusion that she had out grown the relationship given that her husband was unable to respect her for the growth that she had made through the ten or more years since they met and needed to move on.

A gentleman called a few years ago who was feeling a pain in his genital area. The doctors never found a physiological cause for this problem. Feeling it was an unconscious issue that was showing up as a physical symptom he came in to see me. The cause of the pain was that the girlfriend who he followed all over the world was no longer interested in seeing him, sick of his shadowing her each time she moved. She never really told him that she was unhappy being with him, though she had found other relationships every where she went, cheating on this man in the process. It was long over due for him to move on.

A gentleman called in worried about his sexual compulsions finding himself inside massage parlors as he traveled the state for his real estate investment business. He was feeling rather guilty and didn’t even notice that he was purchasing buildings further away from his home in an effort not to be caught. He had a spouse at home who he adored and a young daughter he was crazy about. He really didn’t want to continue with this shameful behavior. The problem here was that his spouse felt uncomfortable with her extra weight gain and didn’t feel sexy in the least not allowing them to have sexual relations in a very long time. We did some work with the wife to get her to better understand her own sexuality and the relationship took off from there.

These are only a smattering of case histories that I have regarding the underlying issues of why it is that relationships can create so much upset. What you need to realize is that if you are continually finding yourself unhappy in love there is most likely an unconscious remedy to this problem. Until you better understand what is going on, with the emotional and physical symptoms being an indicator of something deeper being at cause, the problems will continue to plague you. Hypnosis can be a very quick and easy way to get yourself back on track. In the hands of a competent practitioner you will find yourself not only in a much healthier relationship, you may find that you are no longer battling the physical and emotional health issues that were dragging down your enthusiasm for life.

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