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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Oct 27 2012

Perform Your Way to Success

Volume 66, July 2008- Perform Your Way To Success

I recently had the great honor of working with one of the Boston areas great performance icons. This gentleman is in his eighties and has been performing in the area for over 60 years at this point. He came in to see me because he was having some difficulty in writing the material that he uses in his performances. On top of that he has had some physiological changes due to his age that he was hoping to get under control with the use of hypnosis. However, the most important issue of all was his lack of self-esteem. In short he wasn’t feeling all that great about himself because he was not making the sort of money that his family would like him to have made. Continue reading

Oct 27 2012

Do You Have of Fear of Sleep? Here are Some Reasons and Strategies to Deal With It – Vol. 172, Oct. 26, 2012

"The sleep of Reason creates monsters&quo...

“The sleep of Reason creates monsters”, etching and aquatint by Francisco Goya (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are many reasons why a person may have a fear of sleep according to the article “Scared to Sleep” by Winnie Yu published in WebMD. According to Mathew Edlund, MD, director of the Center for Circadian Medicine in Sarasota, Fla, and the author of The Power of Sleep, sleep dread is very common. It is really a form of performance anxiety according to Alexander Obolsky, MD who as a psychiatrist specializes in trauma and stress.

For older individuals the fear not getting enough sleep causes them a lack of sleep.

Insomnia which affects about 40% of Americans is the most common form of this fear. When people worry that they can’t sleep, they find they can’t sleep.

Chronic nightmares is another fear based sleep disorder which is often experienced by adults who experience post-traumatic stress disorder. Of course children can also fear sleep if they experience nightmares. I would suggest you see a hypnotist to help clear this fear allowing for a good nights sleep.

Another cause of nightmares could be medications ingested. I had a gentleman call just yesterday. His doctor prescribed Chantix to him to help him stop smoking. He told me of two horrific nightmares he experienced while being on the medication. I have heard similar stories from others who have tried that particular medication.

Medication can also keep people awake if they are stimulants to your system. Double check with your pharmacist to find out exactly how your medications may be hindering your sleep either taken alone or in combination with other medications and/or supplements. Pharmacists are the specialist when it comes to understanding the chemistry involved in the medications and supplements you are taking so use their knowledge to help you out here. They are much better informed than your doctors ever could be given the ever growing number of choices out there and their information is free for the asking.

For those who suffer with sleep apnea they may fear stopping breathing during their sleep. A CPAP machine is the best way to handle this particular problem once diagnosed by a sleep clinic test.

I worked with an anesthesiologist who ironically had difficulty sleeping. During our work together we found out that he developed this problem after being awakened repeatedly while he was on call during his multiple residencies.

Having an old worn out mattress can also cause great problems creating back pains and pressure points of pain. Investing in a new mattress will take care of this problem.

Keeping a good routine before going to bed each night is a great way to let your body know it is time for sleep. I like to have a nice warm bath to relax. Once in bed the first thing I do is turn off my cell phones. I find that taking late night calls gets me into an excited state that hampers my getting to sleep. Next I read for a while, usually for an hour or so. Lastly I will listen to a hypnosis CD allowing my unconscious mind to work on any areas that I am working to improve in my life.

Whatever you choose to do it is always a good to:

1) Go to sleep at the same time and wake up at the same time.
2) Don’t eat or drink any caffeine for at least 4 hours before bed.
3) Don’t drink any alcohol for 3 hours before going to sleep because it lessons the depth of your sleep.
4) Take a warm bath or shower will help to relax you.
5) Keep your bedroom cool and dark.
6) Limit your bedroom activities to sleep and sex.
7) Reading right before going to sleep is a good way to relax before falling off to sleep.
8) Deep breathing, meditation or self-hypnosis are all a good help to fall into a good quality of sleep.

If you have an issue with getting enough sleep and you are not sure why, it is always a great idea to have a sleep specialist check to make sure you don’t have a physiological problem such as sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome. My client the doctor, had all the testing done before coming in to figure out what the unconscious issue was that was keeping him awake.

There are few things that are better than a good night’s rest. Remember your body needs the sleep to keep you healthy. With that in mind, it is worth it to do whatever you need to take care of this problem.

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Oct 20 2012

Vol. 96, January, 2011 – Why The Pain? Doctors Found No Reason

I received a call a year and a half ago from a young professional woman who had been experiencing pain in her left shoulder for most of her life. She had gone to a chiropractor to deal with the pain. Though the adjustments did help, the pain kept returning after a while. It then occurred to her that her pain may be caused by something that happened earlier in her life, something that she could not remember. Continue reading

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