Hello, Ashland

Goodbye to Bend and all the great people, clients, professionals, and friends and acquaintances, I met and helped or was helped by. It is time to move on, though. While we felt as if, after 3 growing seasons, we had finally mastered small greenhouse gardening in an  inhospitable climate with no soil,  what we really wanted was a place to grow food and watch nature thrive.

Hello Ashland! Up here in the woods, amazingly only 15 minutes from town, clients will be invited to see me in a private space, with the sounds of nature to add to the ambiance. It was gratifying to see our garden immediately begin to thrive as it never had in Bend, and I know the beautiful environment will enhance the healing that occurs for my clients. In-person sessions will begin Sept. 1 in this new space.

I also welcome intensive clients starting Sept. 1: Medford is 30 minutes away and Ashland less than 15, and both have a variety of hotels, motels, B&Bs, and hostels, as well as a fine selection of eateries and groceries. We are 30 minutes from the Medford airport. While a therapy intensive is hardly a vacation, traveling to a beautiful spot far from your daily environment offers a unique opportunity to break old patterns and create new ones. Follow-up in person or via video-chat assists you in maintaining your new learnings in your home environment. 

It has been stressful to move many miles for the second time in 2 years, and perhaps I have learned some new things about managing stress and the ways in which change affects me and others as well. Stress is always both good and bad: it forces new ways of seeing things and behaving, but it can cause strain on the system. Moving changes one's relationship to others, to resources, and to oneself. Out with the old, in with the new, to coin a phrase!

The new incarnation of the Center for Conscious Living will offer individual and family therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, which is the elegant, effective precursor to CBT,  Sensorimotor Trauma Therapy, and clinical hypnosis. I will continue to focus on physical symptoms that bridge the mind-body gap such as gut issues (irritable bowel, cyclic vomiting), headache (migraine, cluster headache), and chronic pain (RSD, CRPS 1, fibromyalgia); those difficult-to-treat issues that often defy medical treatment. Call for a free phone consultation.

Meanwhile, I shall be learning about my new environment and preparing a new space for seeing clients.

When should you see a psychologist for a physical illness?

I have been writing on the topic of mind/body medicine for over 20 years, and I continue to learn and be amazed by the human mind/brain. Long years ago, a brilliant scholar named Ernest Rossi began to write about hypnosis and neuroplasticity. He was, of course, not alone in this, but he was my first formal contact with the fascinating world of brain changing body. Despite my psychological training, I began to see the mindbody connection everywhere. A client with diabetes who suffered from severe psychological distress after an amputation presented with uncontrollable vomiting and raging fevers rather than diagnosible psychological problems. People with intransigent chronic pain ran from doctor to doctor and were accused of faking or drug-seeking, but with good psychological exploration and insight, their trauma could be found and they could heal themselves. Clients with autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis found improvement, often dramatic, with the application of psychological techniques. A client who had attempted suicide with a .38 to the head showed NO brain damage on MRI, demonstrated no physical disabilities from the shot, but had significant amnesia for his entire life prior to the incident! The amnesia remitted with psychological treatment.

These extreme examples of the intricate mindbody connection led me to view my clients with a much more open mind. Things I had diligently learned in graduate school held less sway versus the real experiences of my clients. Medications did not appear to work miracles despite being used in ways even our textbooks said were dangerous. Diagnostic criteria and diagnosible disorders from the _DSM_ changed over time, which confused me if those listed problems were diseases. Does the definition of influenza or diabetes change with each new edition of a manual? Do they sometimes disappear from the text? And despite modern times labeling many problems as diseases in what appeared to be both an attempt to put them in the bailiwick of physicians and to remove the stigma of causality from patients and their families, suffering seemed to be getting worse, not better, and reliance on medications increasing as well. Additionally, the number of clients coming to me already taking three or more psychoactive medications appalled me. Why, after all, were they still suffering if these medications work? I began to wonder about many things I had been taught and to question common treatment practices of people seeking mental health treatment as well as physical medical treatment.

Whose Pain Is It?

Having recently arrived in Oregon, studied diligently for (and yes, passed) my ethics exam, and at long last, received my license, I had a few months in which to explore the clinical issues prevalent in my new environment. Chronic pain kept popping up in conversation, sometimes right after "oh, you do hypnosis," and sometimes before.

What I gleaned from my participation in clinical groups and meetings was that the chronic pain treatment pendulum has swung once more. In short, and without citation: Long ago, MDs prescribed heavy doses of medication for pain patients, chronic or acute. The pendulum then swung to a fear of creating addicts. This was not entirely unfounded, as overprescribing of serious pain medication was rampant, and addiction was up. (When my children left a dentist with Vicodin for the removal of wisdom teeth, I knew something was not right). So docs lived in fear of government repercussions for overprescribing, and, as with most pendulums, now it had swung too far, and even deathly ill patients were constrained from receiving comfort, by over-regulation. Back it went, and back came too many addicted patients along with, guess what? too much chronic pain.

How Worry is like a Hamster Wheel........

Sometimes you just have to worry, right? Wrong! Worrying about something that might go wrong, is going wrong, or has already gone wrong is not going to change things, right? Right. So all the energy you expend worrying is not being spent productively on problem-solving. What it is doing is using energy and preventing you from focusing on the real problem. If your daughter is out too late, worrying about her is not going to get her home safely. If your boss is on a tear, and you fear for you job, worrying about his erratic behavior is not going to save your job. If a tornado is bearing down on your neighborhood, worrying is not going to save it.

Worry is a distraction--we take up mental space worrying, and we feel occupied, so we are less focused on hunting for that elusive solution or doing something else productive. But the worry itself is exactly like running in a hamster wheel--you are moving, you are active, but you are still in the same place. You might expend some calories, but you will not get any closer to solving the problem.

Worry is a uniquely human activity. And as with other activities in which humans engage, we tend to defend this one. After all, if it were not important, it would not worry me, right? I ought to worry about my daughter/job/house, right? The truth is that it is not the worry that is going to help you resolve the issue. Worry represents thinking things you have already thought rather than arriving at new ideas. Worry stresses your system, causes you to lose sleep, and generally moves you away from creativity into a rut. The issue at hand may indeed be serious, but worrying is not the answer.

Take that daughter--she is late, and you are rightly concerned that something has gone awry. You can actively search for her if you have some leads; you can call the authorities if it has been a seriously long wait and she is not answering her phone, or, if it is really the usual Saturday night teenager misbehaving, you can get some sleep and let her worry all night over the consequence her well-rested parents will impose. The point is that the actual process of worrying is not what gets her safe nor you closer to a resolution.

Your job is on the line; you have a moody boss, and today is one of those days. Recognize this for what it is and get to work--the hours you spend worrying that you are next for his wrath will not help you to avoid it. In fact, there is some chance that your worry makes you flustered and ineffectual that day and indeed puts you right in the spotlight you had hoped to avoid. Yes, your job is important. The point is not that it is no cause for concern if your boss is unpredictable, just that the actual process of worrying is not what is going to resolve the issue.

A tornado is reported in your area. Batten down the hatches and find the safest place to wait it out. Worrying and fretting will not keep you safe without action. Alternatively, it is tornado weather and you sit frantically by the radio listening to the reports--you lose a day of productivity, and nothing comes of it. Better to have a preparation plan for this season and know how to implement it, then have your ducks in a row come the actual threat.

The thing about worry is that we do it all the time. We worry about our kids. We worry about our jobs, our houses, our health, the economy, our weight, and whatever else we can find to fret over. This is a bad habit. It wastes resources, stresses our immune system, and achieves nothing. Humans get attached to the thoughts that run around in our brains. We hear that subliminal chatter and assume it is meaningful and important. In reality, our minds tend to run in the same ruts they always run in, and this limits creative problem solving. The problem is that we become so accustomed to the chatter in our heads, we never question its validity.

Time to get off the hamster wheel. Learn new habits of thought and reduce your stress instantly. Yes, it sounds easy, and with practice, it is. And the new habits you learn will help you for a lifetime.

Metaphors and Healing

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.

What is hypnosis?

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