Month: October 2016

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cream of tartar smoking

Stop Smoking with cream of tartar?

    Yesterday I was dealing with a stop smoking client. I saw her last week. I explained  to her the psychology of why she smokes in order to motivate her to stop. This seems to have worked.   Last week she thought she wanted  to stop smoking: this week she is determined to stop smoking.  And apparently,  is willing to try anything and is in fact is trying everything all at once. She is using nicotine patches, affirmations, hypnotherapy and cream of tartar.

    Cream of Tartar? She told me she had read on the Internet that taking a teaspoon of cream of tartar mixed with orange juice would remove all the nicotine from her body. 

    I had never heard of this so I decided to find out about it. After all, if it worked then I need to start telling clients about it. I quickly found a source on-line, in fact several sites described it. On examining the sites it became clear that there was just one site that all the others were using as their source. On checking that site, it became clear that there is no scientific study cited as evidence for doing this. In fact none of the websites offered any sort of proof at all. Most sites said something like 'it is said that' with no attribution and my conclusion is that they are all relying on each other. 

    How likely is it that Cream of Tartar might work?

    It is actually Tartaric Acid, potassium bitartrate,  a mild acid commonly used in baking. In very large quantities it is poisonous, but a teaspoon a day will do no more damage than altering the acid balance of your stomach perhaps and giving an incredibly sour taste to the orange juice. The sour taste is probably what influences the people who say it works. The strange taste will act as a placebo and will remind the smoker about how much they want to stop and could well have an effect. The orange juice contains citric acid, and ascorbic acid as vitamin C. And lots of sugar, so it is probably not a good mixture for most people. 

    I won't be advising my stop smoking clients to start drinking it. 

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    gastric band fallacy

    Clients who want to fail

      Some clients want to fail. Some clients are afraid of failure, others are afraid of success. Being a therapist you have to deal with whatever the client brings. You put yourself under constant pressure to get the right result. We worry about whether we have enough knowledge, enough training and whether we are good enough at all. And we are very disappointed when we fail.

      We always assume the client  wants to succeed too. But there are also clients who want to fail. I was reminded of this by a client I saw recently. She has a long history of drug abuse, emotional outbursts, destructive behavior and failed relationships. She is clearly unhappy, her life is out of control and she is afraid that she will attempt suicide again. 

      And yet I got the distinct impression that she does not want the therapy to succeed. She is willing to go through the motions, to say the right things, to pretend to go along with what other people want for her. But deep down inside she is afraid of not being able to cope if she does change.

      She feels that if she gets cleaned up from drugs then she will be on her own again. She does not believe that she has the strength to survive without drugs. Stopped taking them before has always left her feeling awful. That feeling just  got worse and worse over time until she no choice but to go back on the drugs and ended up more dependent than ever. She knows that stopping is not the answer for her. So she is not going to stop. 

      This attitude is entirely understandable. She is simply protecting herself from future pain. 

      What can you do when the client wants to fail?

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      hypnosis and epilepsy

      Hypnosis and Epilepsy

        Hypnosis and epilepsy worries some people, and believe that epileptics should not be hypnotized . This is not true. There is no reason why an epileptic should not benefit from hypnotherapy. There is nothing in hypnosis that would cause the onset of an attack, so there is no reason to avoid it.

        There is no special procedure to use, just the normal approach. It is sensible to talk to the person about their epilepsy. Most epileptics already have their condition under control and know what to expect and what to do. All that is necessary is for the hypnotist to learn what to do in case an attack comes on during the office visit. The simplest way is to simply ask the client how to tell if they are having an attack, and what they would like you to do if one happens to strike while you are there.

        Epileptics know exactly what they need and have been through it many times, so there is no great mystery: it is just something that happens occasionally in their life. The hypnotist just needs to accept that there is a remote possibility of an onset, and be ready if one happens. 

        It is just an illness, it has to be treated with understanding, and can be worked around. Hypnosis and epilepsy is really not a problem. 

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        hypnosis script drinking

        Hypnosis Script for Drinking

          I was recently asked why I don't have a hypnosis script for drinking and alcohol abuse.

          In my view drinking is always a symptom of something else. Smoking is a habit: drinking is a cry for help.

          I have a great deal of sympathy with alcoholics and problem drinkers. In my view they are simply self medicating and trying deal with unwelcome thoughts and feelings in the only way they know how - by numbing it with alcohol. Drinking is the only tool they have.

          There is no such thing as a successful script for drinking. Abusing alcohol is not a hobby or something the client wants to do. They need help to understand their own behavior. You need to find out what is causing the feelings in order to get them off the alcohol.

          Therefore a script will not do it. The causes are many and unique to the individual.
          The feelings are always associated with childhood upbringing so you have to get the person to go back to the origin and either do Gestalt re-modelling or try some sort of Regression to Cause.
          The origins are too deep and pressures to keep drinking are too strong for a one-way hypnosis. Unless you engage in a dialog with your client's unconscious you will not find the root of it, and if you don't find the root of it then you won't be able to remove it.

          That is not to say that drinkers cannot be helped by hypnotherapy. They can. There are many techniques of hypnosis and NLP that will help. However things like Regression to Cause really can't be reduced to a script. A competent hypnotherapist should be able to tailor the technique to the client based on experience and training.

          I don't believe that you can use a script and expect to get lasting results.
          That is why I do not offer a straight hypnosis script for drinking.

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          how to word suggestions

          Self Hypnosis Suggestions

            Self Hypnosis Suggestions

            I received a query about Self Hypnosis suggestions:

            I have a question about self-hypnosis. Is it better to give self-suggestion like:

            I am now a billionaire

            0r

            You are now a billionaire

            Okay this is just an example I am just wondering which is better to word, in first or second person? Or should you do both within the script???

            This question has been debated endlessly. No one has ever come up with an answer that satisfies everybody. It is not simply a matter of wording. 

            1. Can you do anything in self hypnosis? Self hypnosis refers to the process of putting yourself into trance. Once you are in trance, you are not actually capable of forming logical thoughts. If you can, then you are not in trance. So if you can't form coherent thoughts then you can't form sentences and the words don't matter.
            2. Do you mean creating a recording you will listen to so that you put yourself into trance? I have never met anyone who has done this successfully. It is no problem to write out a script and record suggestions. But few people like the sound of their own voice, and since you wrote it you know what comes next and why you used those particular words. It is hard to get enough detachment to go into trance as you would if someone else was doing it.
            3. If we are actually talking not about hypnosis but about affirmations, does the exact wording matter? Again, millions of words have beer written about affirmations and there is no clear answer.
            4. If you have been brought up being told you are stupid and useless, then constantly reminding yourself that you are smart and capable will help to overcome your early programming. If you are an idle layabout then no amount of telling yourself 'I am a winner, I am a millionaire' will work. You just become an idle layabout with an inflated view of yourself. Changing the wording to 'You are a winner, you are a millionaire' doesn't really help.

            You can play the recording (without the induction) over and over as you drive or at home doing something else and the words will eventually work their way into your subconscious. Whether they work or not is unknown. We are exposed to a massive amount of advertising but not all of it hits the mark. It is the same with self hypnosis suggestions.

            The best way is to take yourself into trance with some relevant image in mind, and let your subconscious work on that for you. That process doesn't use words so the difference between 'I' and 'you' doesn't apply. 

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            fear of driving

            Fear of Driving Phobia removal

              Fear of Driving

              This phobia is fairly common. A surprising number of people get the shakes when driving over a high bridge or into a tunnel. Usually it is hard to pinpoint exactly why.

              Yesterday I treated a woman who wanted to end her Fear of Driving. She said that she was OK around the back streets and normal driving. But when she got to a road with a drop off at the side, or a narrow part, she lost all her confidence. 

              The source of the fear

              I asked when this started and she said it began about three years ago and had got progressively worse. She told me she was out driving one day  when suddenly, out of nowhere, came an overwhelming sense of fear. Since that day she has been afraid of the feeling coming back. She tries to avoid driving so that she will not be exposed to feeling again. 

              This is a classic description of how phobia is created. You are doing something distinct like driving or flying, and then you experience an overwhelming fear, and then your mind links the fear to the activity, and you have a phobia.

              Normally it is impossible to say exactly what created the link. But in this case, the woman recognised the fear. Her son had died suddenly ten years before and this was the same overwhelming pain she had experienced at the time. Something she was doing or thinking at that moment reactivated the initial feeling. The pain gets linked to the driving activity,  and the Fear of Driving phobia is triggered.

              Most phobias are not about the obvious activity. Fear of Driving is not about the driving, it is about not wanting to get that old fear again. The cure for phobias is to eliminate the origin of the fear. 

              In this case the mother had never gotten over the death of her son. She was still carrying around that dread that something else bad would happen. So the answer was to lay the old fear to rest. 

              Removing  fear of driving

              I hypnotised her and put her into a deep trance. Then I suggested that she visualize a chair in front of her. Then I gently suggested that there was someone sitting in the chair, someone who wanted to talk to her. Someone who was taken away from her and didn't get the chance to say goodbye. I suggested that this person wanted to give her one last message before going away. 

              I developed a dialogue saying to my client what a son would want to say to his mother. Then I  let her say to him what she wanted to say. I suggest that he was reaching out to her, and most movingly, she extended her arm out to where the chair might be. And slowly, tears rolled down her face. 

              I finished the session by suggesting that her son had a gift he wanted to pass to her, and that he was saying "I'm OK mum. It's time to go now. I love you". He then got into a car and drove away, until the tail lights faded in the distance. 

              I let her come back to the present in her own time. She said to me "I feel such a feeling of relief".  And that was the end of it.

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