Center for Conscious Living Notes

The Powerlessness of Getting Angry

2012-01-07T17:40:00.000-08:00

"He makes me sooo mad."
"That really pisses me off."
"I can't stand it when you do that."

We often think of anger as a powerful emotion--anger makes us red in the face, we feel a surge of power, our voices get loud. What we fail to notice is that the perception of power is vastly different from the experience of power. When you are angry, you are not in control. You are powerless over what you feel, and often feel powerless over your reactions. This is not power, but its opposite, powerlessness, loss of control, and weakness. When you are not in control of your reaction to a situation, you are indeed weak. The presentation of anger may serve to decoy the person or situation about which you are angry, it presents a loud and blustery front, but it takes away your power to regain control of the most important variable: yourself.

Ah, but since it appears that people, things, and situations MAKE us angry, how do we avoid becoming angry and thus maintain control? By following the famous ABCs of Rational Emotive Therapy. A is an Activating event--it is what we complain about that has "made" us angry--a fact of experience. C is the Consequence we create--behavior(s) and/or emotion(s). Which leaves B out of its place between A and C. B is the Belief or set of beliefs, whether conscious or unconscious, that is the true cause of C. Generally the beliefs that cause anger are irrational.

To illustrate: a man tromps your toes quite hard in a crowded elevator. Your initial reaction of pain is a normal, automatic one. The next reaction (emotional C), anger, and possibly the shout (behavioral C) "hey, look where you are going", is mediated by your beliefs that "he should be more careful", "he should look where he is going", "he should have waited for the next car", etc. Then you notice the white-tipped cane--the man is blind. Your anger is replaced by compassion, perhaps a lingering annoyance that no one in front helped him enter safely, a touch of shame for being angry at a blind man, etc. Thus the anger was NOT caused by your toes having been stepped on, but by the thoughts generated by your related beliefs. The anger, thus created, can be eliminated once the belief system is altered either by new knowledge ("he is blind"), or by a conscious choice as in this next example:

Your daughter is very late getting home one Saturday evening. You are frustrated that she is missing her curfew once again. You are getting angry, and thinking about how you will discipline her when she finally shows up. You feel yourself coming to a boil, and the words "grounded for life" and "never go out with those people again" bounce around in your brain. Eventually, you realize that losing sleep, pacing the floor, and planning the expected late-night ambush will do little to solve the problem of her frequent tardiness, but will result in her becoming correspondingly angry at you and creating a stalemate on the issue of improved behavior. You create a plan to deal with her in the morning, and head off to bed, your anger having turned to disappointment, and your self-control reasserted. You even manage to get some sleep, which your worried daughter, having created her own defensive, angry stance, ("where is the expected, unreasonable parental ambush?") is not able to achieve.

Success--you have managed your irrational thoughts ("that girl must respect the house rules", "I can't stand having a child who disobeys", "what a bad daughter I have"). By changing your thoughts into calmer ones ("it is a shame she has made another poor choice", "I need a plan to help her understand that if she is living here, there are rules she must follow", "children test the patience of parents; I remember that from when I was her age, but it will make for a happier household if she learns to cooperate".), you regained control over your emotions and behaviors. Changing your thoughts from demands and name-calling into preferences and facts helped you to calm yourself and create a plan. You put yourself back in control of both you and the situation.

Getting from anger to calm is a process. It begins, in the language of RET, with D, a Dispute: "Is it really true that she must respect the rules, or is that just my unreasonable demand of a teenager?", "It is not true that I cannot stand her behavior", "She can be unruly, but she is not all bad"). Following your dispute, you arrive at a new approach, the reasonable beliefs that will allow you to sleep, as in the example above. E is that Effective new belief or philosophy. And F is your new behavior and emotions: getting a night of good sleep and dealing calmly with the teen in the morning ("Honey, we need to talk about your curfew"). You win and so does she. Having a calm parent helps her to remain open to learning and improving.

Whenever you find yourself thinking "(he/she/that)makes me sooo mad", you have given away your personal power. To maintain power and control, change your thoughts so that you can be understandably upset, disappointed, concerned, confused, etc., without losing control over your reactions and thus, the situation. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, can help you learn to prevent anger and maintain control. Empower yourself!

End the Dieting YoYo: Holistic Weight Loss

2011-11-11T07:20:00.001-08:00

Allow me to begin by reminding my readers that "diet" is a four letter word. Not as in, "My diet is normally healthy," but as in "I am on a diet."

When you seek to lose weight, it is important to think of the long term. You might be losing weight for a special event, but the idea is to maintain your new shape, not bounce back to the old one the very next week. If you go on some sort of special "diet" in which you deprive your body of nutrients to lose pounds fast, you may indeed succeed at losing those pounds, but as soon as you return to eating adequately, you will likely put them back on.

The same, of course, applies to exercise. If you exercise fanatically to lose some weight, adding increased calorie burn to your reduced caloric intake, you are likely to lose weight. ...and likely to put it back on when you return to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Ideally, to lose weight and keep it off, we need to eat enough to sustain a slightly reduced body size. We need to exercise more, both to increase the metabolism and build muscle, not just to burn calories. Burning calories makes you hungry and less likely to continue your fat loss program. We have all been there, surrendering to starvation before we reach our goal and, feeling defeated, giving up the whole project in disgust.

So how do we do this? Create a diet plan for life--learn to eat for your body's needs: eat adequately to sustain your body and watch those nutrients--we tend to be hungry when we are not getting enough nutrition even if we ARE getting adequate calories! Which is why we seem to be able to consume enormous quantities of non-nutritive treats, but rather less of life-sustaining foods. It is harder to overeat steak than chips. It is also the case that a starving body craves fat, sugar, and salt--the nutrients that are scarce in nature. If your body feels starved, you will find yourself drawn to exactly the things you ought to avoid to lose weight! It turns out this is not a failure of will, but a built-in mechanism to avoid starvation in times of famine. Thus, consuming a nourishing diet is the first key to long-term fat loss.

Is late-night eating your nemesis? It is probable that you are starved for nutrients and your body is driving you to distraction when your sales-resistance is lowest. And late at night, what do we seek? Fast foods that are full of sugar, salt, and fat, of course. Eat right all day and you can win the fight against late-night eating.

Here is another fact: Modern humans exist in the first time in history when people can be malnourished and obese simultaneously. This is because we consume manufactured treats that reverse the trend of the natural scarcity of sugar, salt, and fat. These items, while inexpensive, are not nourishing, and lead to overconsuming and obesity. Even so-called "diet" products with artificial fats and sweeteners fail to help us trim down because they are non-nutritive and thus continue the tendency of the body to crave the real thing. The food industry knows what your body craves and generously manufactures a wide variety of such items to capitalize on your natural scarcity eating tendencies. Think before you consume.

In your new diet plan, arrange to eat FOR your day, not after. As with a machine, the human body works most efficiently when it is fed FOR what is has to do, not as you are winding down for the night. Research demonstrates that consuming the same number of calories per day late in the day versus early leads to weight gain. This means your mother was right--you need a good breakfast to start your day. It also means that eating a large, late dinner makes it tougher to lose weight and easier to gain. Additionally, breakfast cereals are better for livestock than humans. Humans do not do well on very high-carbohydrate starters. We need to train our bodies to use protein for sustained energy rather than carbs for high, short bursts of energy. Remember that high-carb consumption, after that nice burst of energy, leads to high insulin output and fat storage as well as the tendency to stress the pancreas and develop diabetes as we age.

When you begin to plan your exercise program, think about exercising both to raise your metabolism and to build muscle, a higher-calorie burning tissue than fat. This means do both aerobic and resistance exercises. See a trainer is you need help planning this program. Remember that exercise must be consistent to work--choose a program that you can sustain for the long haul, not one that you will become bored of after a week. And particularly not one that you hate! It is not a failure of will when you stop doing something you hate. You will stop exercising at some point unless you find a way to have fun at it.

Now you have some ideas of how to create a sustainable weight-control lifestyle. If you need a boost to get you started or to get you past a plateau or just to help you stay on track, clinical hypnosis might be the key. Clinical hypnosis has been shown to help individuals break bad eating habits, learn to control portion size, and maintain the motivation to change. Many of us who know what we should be doing to lose weight need some support and guidance to stay on track. Clinical hypnosis offers a self-empowering way to help you break through those barriers and lose that extra fat once and for all. When you come in for hypnosis, you are learning to tap into inner resources to find your own motivation and make long-lasting changes.

Falling into Fall

2011-11-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Ah, autumn. A beautiful time of year--crisp air, fresh apples, rich winter squashes, spectacular scenery. Along with the promise of bitter cold weather, snow, fewer lovely local vegetables, and less daylight. What is a person to do to survive the coming winter?

Some, of course are the lucky ones who are biologically unaffected by cold, shorter days, and less sunlight. Others love winter sports enough to be thrilled by the coming snows. Many, however, have to work to maintain a good mood and an active life as winter's chill pushes them into hibernation.
While calling your winter blues "SAD" (season affective disorder) and writing you a prescription is one way to attempt to alleviate your impending depressed mood, if we study biology, we can find others. After all, you are human and can make choices a bear cannot, so even though your body may be trying to get a long winter's nap, if you give it warmth and light and fresh foods and activity, you can stay happy and fit all year long.

Problem: Less sunlight--help yourself--use daylight-imitating lights in your home. Turn them on when you need to waken and keep them on until after your last meal of the day. Do not sleep more--use light and fresh foods to keep yourself in a more active mode.

Problem: Cold temperatures--help yourself--stay warm. Surrender to reality and bundle up. Wear those unfashionable hats and mittens. Keep your home comfortable, not freezing to save energy.

Problem: Warm, heavy foods help us feel better when it is cold--help yourself--Avoid eating the typical winter high-starch diet--maintain your good summer eating habits (or start now and create new habits) with leafy greens and lots of fresh foods now so abundant in stores even in the off season.

Problem: Less fun things to do outdoors--help yourself--find a new hobby or sport that involves physical movement, whether indoors or outdoors--take up yoga or rock climbing or dancing or cross-country skiing.

Fight back! Do not let winter blues make you into a hibernating bear.

In addition to working on your biology, work on your psychology. Avoid telling yourself and everyone around you how much you hate winter/snow/slush, etc. Do remind yourself how cozy a warm fire can be. Enjoy your comfy sweaters. Play in the snow while you are digging out your car for the 57th time. See more movies, and explore new indoor activities. Get outside on sunny days, even just to stroll around and sungaze. Enjoy a cool winter's night under a full moon. Trite as it sounds, keeping a positive attitude will make the winter seem less harsh and your life more joyous.

Certainly, this will not make winter perfect for sunlight-driven beings, but you can help yourself enjoy it more and feel better with a few good choices.

Educating the Minds of Children

2011-04-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

Education is a thing held sacred in the minds of Americans. No matter what we sacrifice to balance the budget, we must educate our children. What if it turns out that the fortunes being spent in public schools are being misspent? Year after year, the leviathan that is public schooling adds more specialty services for more children who do not fit the mold, but more and more kids seem to fall behind, fall between the cracks, fall over. As parents we hurt for our kids who suffer the labels of being different, not ok, not like the others, whoever those "normal" others may be.

There already exists a system that has the potential to solve the problem--once and for all. How do we educate the bodies of our kids? Martial arts, swimming, gymnastics, ice skating, and many other opportunities that life offers. And not one of those is organized the way classrooms of the mind are organized. We do not expect all seven-year-olds to have the same skill at swimming or achieve the same belt in karate. We do not expect all eleven-year-olds to be able to do a giant swing on high bar. But somehow we have created an expectation that all six-year-olds ought to be able to sit in a chair for six hours a day listening to an adult talk to them, and read at a certain level.

What can we learn from the model that works? Kids progress through the ranks of a martial arts program or a Red Cross swimming program or a standardized gymnastics program according to their skill level, regardless of age. If an adult wishes to learn one of these skills, he, too, enters at the appropriate level. Why do we attempt to force all children to learn a standardized selection of intellectual material at a standardized pace? Granted, at some point, we begin to regroup them into levels of intellect, but it is with judgment--you are in the basic (not good enough), the regular (normal), or the advanced (too good) level, not at the white belt, the yellow, or the orange.....fact-based--you have a certain set of skills to a certain degree of proficiency, and without value-judgment--you are a better swimmer when you achieve a higher level, but you are not a BAD swimmer if you have not yet passed your test. Goodbye test anxiety.

Worse still, regardless of the appropriateness of placement, schools assume that each student ought to learn a given amount of material in a set number of lessons which take place over a set number of weeks. Gymnastics academies do not. In the various physical activities, students may be tested for skills every certain number of weeks, but not all are expected to pass--and there is no stigma attached to not passing; a student simply remains in her correct level until the skill set is learned and the test passed. Students can even drop out without penalty--find a level beyond which they are not capable of progressing or have no desire to surpass.

When students compete at gymnastics events, this competition is not part of the basic skills learning process--students compete with other students who have achieved the same level. Age groupings may be superimposed so that ten-year-olds are not competing with nineteen-year-olds, but it is not considered necessary for each competitor to be the same age. Skill matters more than age. Thus, skaters practice with those of similar skill levels, and compete on a larger scale with similarly graded skaters. Ranks are not graded on a curve; thus in daily education, students compete only with themselves to master higher levels of skills, not with one another to master them better. Goodbye back-stabbing competition.

And, last but surely not least, a skating program is chosen only partly by location--I may lean toward a more convenient program over a less convenient program, but my final choice will be made by how the program matches my young person's needs. This also helps assure a grouping of students who mesh well--their parents select a program based upon their own criteria, above and beyond geography.

There are many lessons to be learned from this model. Children in a karate class tend to cheer one another on at test time since they are competing against a skill set, not one another. Children can master skills quickly or slowly or even not at all. A given swimming instructor is good for your kid, but not as good for mine--I can switch schools regardless of where we live, if I am willing to be inconvenienced by a longer trip. Competition between students can be healthy--a way to demonstrate mastery, but not as a primary motivator. If it were to occur that students leave in droves due to a certain teacher, the administration would be free to reconsider his employment and competent educators could be recognized for their skills as dictated by the profit motive.

The conclusion to be drawn is simple. There exists a model for education that is proven, widely practiced, easy to administer, highly successful, and avoids all the labeling pitfalls of modern schooling. Why do we use a less effective method for educating our children's minds?

Trauma, Pain, and the Freeze

2011-01-08T09:15:00.001-08:00

I get many questions about the link between pain and trauma.......for a start, chronic progressive pain syndromes like "complex regional pain syndrome type I" (formerly known as "RSD") have their basis, not in organic injury (though they often start with an injury), but in the flight, fight, freeze syndrome. In a moment of shock or fear, the system goes into auto-pilot and cuts off certain self-healing behaviors to assure safety. Sometimes, even after the injury heals and the moment of fear (auto accident, fall down the stairs, etc.) is over, the brain does not kick into recovery mode, and continues to perceive the limb as injured. We call this dissociation--in this case a divergence between perception and reality causing faulty operation of a system. This has the effect of rendering medication, surgery, and physical therapy ineffective (sometimes even harmful), as the key to healing is actually changing the perception! The freeze mode is an endorphergically charged pattern, which prevents even the strongest pain medications from breaking through, and represents wild oscillations of the autonomic nervous system, which can cause anxiety, insomnia, digestive difficulties, memory and concentration deficits, and, of course, PAIN. The key is in the brain--getting the perceptions in line with reality and exiting the freeze. RSD? Call for more information--you can learn to feel well!

Metaphors and Healing

2010-11-15T07:28:00.000-08:00

Ah, metaphors.....I was reading my voluminous e-mail today and came across the following link:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/this-is-your-brain-on-metaphors/

Fascinating, thought I, and no surprise. Clients have been speaking to me in metaphors for as long as I have had clients, and I have been teaching them to heal in metaphors. And I did not invent this concept....it long predates me.

"It is a pain in the neck." Client had a difficult work situation AND a pain....in his neck.
"I am all off balance." Client could not walk AND had a stressful housing situation.
"I can't catch my breath." Client held her breath tightly AND felt overwhelmed.
"I have a knot in my stomach." Client feels tightness in the gut AND is anxious.
"I can't walk away." Client has pain in the foot AND a conflict at home she feels trapped by.

Sometimes we call this "organ language," and it reminds us that the symptom speaks to the problem as well as its solution. Irritable bowel, chronic pain, headache, chest pains often speak volumes about the conflicts and overwhelming, seemingly unresolvable stressors in our lives. And given the penchant of the brain for creating these metaphors, with metaphors they can often be resolved.

Symptoms such as these are often in a gray area between medical and psychological. We call them psychosomatic, except that term has become a pejorative that means to clients "It is all in your head." Then, when they are referred to me, it tends to be with a certain sense of resentment as well, perhaps, as shame. After all, the highly paid specialist cannot help and if there is no medical fix, then are you indeed making up or imagining your agony?

NO! Not at all. The mind and body, inseparable expressions of the same entity--YOU--are communicating a need--a problem seeking a better solution. Medical doctors struggle with ailments that relate to such complex needs because the cure is not medical, it is psychological. Resolve the conflict, reduce the stress, relieve the perception of overwhelm, heal the trauma, and the organismic equilibrium is restored and then, voila, so are health and comfort.

Hypnosis and therapeutic imagery are valuable tools for unlocking these complicated disorders born of the overwhelming complexity of being human. Combined with Rational Emotive Therapy to attain better understanding of the task of being you, the entire treatment package results in a healthier, more resilient being.

Medical interventions such as pills and surgery often are the key to feeling better, and certainly often are essential to survival in a world full of biological challenges. But being in balance with the environment in which you exist and with your internal world are the keys to thriving. Beyond feeling better there is often healing--a true cure for disorders that represent disequilibrium--a self out of balance with its existence.

Call the Center for Conscious Living to learn more. It IS all in your head because help is within--and you can learn to unlock it.

Lessen Seasonal Allergy Woes

2010-09-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

'Tis the season for many of you to be sniffly and sneezy and have itchy eyes. What if you did not have to suffer the misery of seasonal allergies? You already know that the pollens, molds, and other irritants that cause your symptoms are not actually deadly poisons. Your body, however, thinks differently. That is why it is launching that all-out defense against them. Those miserable symptoms are your system's attempt to defend itself against those airborne irritants. Hypnosis can help you retrain your immune system to ignore those pesky, but harmless, molecules in the air. Call for more info or check out the article here:
http://www.centerforconsciousliving.com/allergies

Depression and Food

2010-08-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

Sooooooo, we have all seen on TV that depression is biological, right? And all of that stuff about how therefore you need pills to fix it. What if it IS biological--a natural response of the system to things not being right, whether inside or out......BUT there is no magic pill that cures it?
One of the first things I want to know from all clients is how they eat. Now this might seem rather odd for a psychologist to ask, but I have a purpose. If depression is biological. because after all, you are a biological entity, then it has biological causes and effects. In fact, I liken depression to hibernation. A hibernating bear eats a lot before going into that log for the winter. He eats a lot now and then when the sun comes out. He puts on a lot of fat and wakes up rather thinner one sunny morning. He is not discriminating about what he eats when nature instructs him to fatten up or when he is skinny and starved (ask those folks who think they can outsmart bears and hang out in Alaska prior to hibernation season!) .
When you are depressed, your eating patterns change--some of us eat too much, others too little, but few of us eat well when our mood is slumping. We may eat lazily as well, choosing faster, less nourishing items over slower, healthier foods.
What this has led me to conclude over years of observing clients is that if I can help them to eat better, at least some portion of that depression will lift without me ever applying all those brilliant psychotherapeutic techniques I learned in school. Simple, elegant, and cheap. (Well, except for the cost of real food over chips.)
I have also discovered that most of my clients are like I was when I first got out of college: they know a lot of stuff from TV and government ads and high school health class about food, but not really very much about actual nutrition. Hence, I have taken numerous classes in nutrition and obtained a certification in fitness nutrition so that I can better serve clients who are confused about food. Learn to make better choices in eating as well as better choices in living as YOU overcome depression now.
There is joy after depression. And there is an after........

Why "Center for Conscious Living"?

2010-08-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

A valid question, since there are many businesses with similar names.
The concept of living consciously means slightly different things in different contexts, but to Dr. Lloyd, my co-founder, and I, it meant getting away from the idea that our customers were "patients". When this business was conceived, the idea was to teach people rather than to fix them. We wanted to offer skills and ideas that our clients could take with them and use for the rest of their lives. You, our customers, have been since this business opened, clients who pay for a service. That service is not "me doctor, you patient," but a collaborative process where you and I discuss the symptom or distress that has brought you to me and whatever history is necessary for me to understand it well. We then work together to formulate a plan using tools that I have learned to teach to you, for you to overcome that difficulty and maintain the improvement long-term. These tools must necessarily include some form of homework, as what you do when you are not in my office is as important as what you do when you are in it.
Now this is not to say that you learn this skill once and for all and that no one ever relapses or develops a related problem. In fact, a very wise man, Dr. David Burns, author of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy , teaches that a relapse is actually a very good thing. If you get over your depression or headache and never relapse, how will you know what actually made it go away? If, however, you have a small relapse and make it go away AGAIN, then you are pretty certain that you have caused yourself to get better using your new skills, rather than that a remarkable coincidence had once occurred. Then you not only are once again rid of your original problem, you have the security of knowing that you have the tools to keep it away and tackle new problems that will certainly arise!
So, when I think of "Conscious Living" I am thinking of each client developing a new self-awareness that allows him or her the ability to get rid not only of the problem they first brought to me, but also to overcome later obstacles that life puts forth, and avoid some sorts of life problems altogether. I hope that each client who enters my office leaves one day very soon with new skills for tackling the mundane and not-so-mundane challenges of daily life.

Veggie Fest 2010 Aug 7-8.

2010-07-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

For local readers, it is almost Veggie Fest time. Veggie Fest is an event designed to promote healthy vegetarian eating (not the only sort of healthy eating, to be sure, but an option). Please check out their website and drop by for food samples, demos, and more.

Anti?-Depressants Again

2010-07-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

One can never overstate the danger of relying heavily upon anti-depressant medication as the first line of defense for every psychological complaint and a goodly number of physical complaints as well. Anxious? take Zoloft. Can't sleep? Try Paxil. Stressed? Take Effexor. Pain? Take Celexa. Smoking? Take Wellbutrin. IBS? Take more Wellbutrin.
The way I learned it in school, non-psychiatric MDs should NEVER prescribe psychotropic medications, because 1) they are not trained to diagnose psychiatric issues and 2) they are not versed in any other approach to such problems. I also learned how to do psychotherapy in school, which MDs do not. And it turns out that study after study demonstrates that psychiatric problems are responsive to good psychotherapy, but rarely to drugs. It also turns out that a good number of medical problems are more responsive to good psychotherapy than to drugs. Hypnosis works better for IBS and WARTS (yes, you read right) than anything else out there!
The following references will help you get over the drug-company driven belief that anti-depressants are so great we should put them in our drinking water!
Oh, and it is important to note that the side effects as well as the withdrawal effects from various antidepressants include anxiety and insomnia!
Be a skeptical consumer.

Efficacy and Effectiveness of Antidepressants: Current Status of Research.
H. Edmund Pigott, Allan M. Leventhal, Gregory S. Alter, John J. Boren,
NeuroAdvantage, LLC, Clarksville, Md. , Department of Psychology, American University,
Washington, D.C. , USA
"Meta-analyses of FDA trials suggest that antidepressants are only marginally efficacious compared to placebos and document profound publication bias that inflates their apparent efficacy."

http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ArtikelNr=318293&Ausgabe=254424&ProduktNr=223864&filename=318293.pdf

STAR*D Wars:
The Corruption of the National Institute of Mental Health and the Failure of Antidepressants

Friday, 30 June 2006, 12:33 pm
Opinion: Bruce E. Levine
"While the FDA’s trust of flawed and fraudulent pharmaceutical company data has long been a problem, NIMH’s STAR*D study is a kind of “boot on the face” for Americans. In STAR*D, U.S. taxpayers paid for a methodologically substandard study done by drug-company connected researchers, who drew unjustifiably positive conclusions about antidepressants. "

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0606/S00351.htm#a

What is hypnosis?

2010-06-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

Pretty much everyone has seen a stage hypnotist--he gets people to do odd and embarrassing things in front of an audience. When you think of hypnosis, you probably conjure up such an image and wonder if that was all an act or if you will somehow be at a disadvantage if you go to a professional for clinical hypnosis.
So what is hypnosis? In simplest terms, it is a narrowing of the focus of attention. So that person on stage is attending only to the hypnotist. By choice--or else why did she raise her hand, right? A stage hypnotist carefully selects volunteers from those with raised hands by observing their degree of attentiveness as he speaks.
In the clinic this translates into a way to tap into powers of your mind that you do not use to their fullest potential. The power to change bad habits, to project a happier future, to reframe an unpleasant past event, to calm your immune or nervous system. Hypnosis is not magic and it is NOT me controlling you. It is you being guided to learn to use that deeper potential of you mind to help yourself.
In my office, hypnosis is most often taught in conjunction with rational-emotive or cognitive therapy for overcoming phobias, depression, anxiety, or bad eating habits.
Learn self-hypnosis as a way to carry the new learning with you always.
Can clinical hypnosis help you?
Call the Center at 630-249-1983 for a free consultation.
http://www.centerforconsciousliving.com/hypnosis

Holistic Psychology?

2010-06-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

The practice of clinical psychology can involve many types of therapy as well as advice-giving and counseling. When I talk about holistic psychology, I do not mean a type of therapy, but a philosophical approach that informs my approach to therapy.

Many approaches to mental health rely upon what we call reductionism--the idea that the mind and the body are separate and can be treated separately. The whole idea that mental distress is cured by a pill falls into this category. In contrast, the holistic approach says that each individual is an indivisible whole and must be treated as such. Thus, a mental health issue such as depression is not a "mental illness", but an adaptation of some sort to the individual's current reality, and a whole picture needs to be formed of the individual in order to adequately treat the problem.

In the same way, physical ills are influenced by a variety of factors we call stressors. stressors can be internal or external, mental or physical. temporary or permanent. Even a cold is influenced by the weather and the state of your immune system, not just the exposure to a virus. Some illnesses are more multi-determined that others. Irritable bowel is more a disease of response to stressors than the flu, for example.

The holistic approach requires individual treatment planning and a collaborative relationship between professional and client, rather than a traditional doctor-patient relationship. In this regard, I often refer to myself as a teacher or even a tour guide. The client cures him- or herself--I lead the way. With this approach, you have a sense of control over your fate and gain mastery over the problem that was vexing you.