Hypnosis for gambling addiction

I had a client today for gambling addiction. She told me that she binges on the slot machines, and has done for years.
She described a pattern of behaviour in which about once a week she just could not resist going to the slot machines (called pokey machines in this country) and spending hours on it. Once she has started she feels unable to stop. When she runs out of money she would just go and get some more. She has spent up to $2000 in one night.
She has no interest in horseracing or any other kind of gambling. At other times she has actually no interest in it, and feels no pull towards it. It's just that something happens and she has to go and use the pokey machines.

Is gambling addiction the wrong diagnosis?

This sounded exactly to me like a black and white thinking. I got her to look at the symptoms of dysthymia, laid out in a grid that I use. She looked at it and said "I am all over this. Just about everything listed here applies to me. "
I explained that she was self-medicating by going to the pokies. Every time she felt overwhelmed by all the other things in her life she went to the pokies. The noise, the lights, the music, the focus attention – all of this took her away from her problems. It made her forget all about her issues. She agreed that that was exactly what she was doing.

We spent the rest of the session talking about dysthymia. She seemed very open to it, and very relieved to finally find an answer. She said that she had been to another hypnotherapist. After a few sessions she sensed that that other therapist was getting annoyed with her because she could not find anything in childhood which explained her gambling addiction.

After she had gone, I thought about the foolishness of that other therapist continuing to press for a reason when there is no reason. There is the famous quote that "to the man who has only a hammer, everything looks like a nail." I think that it is a problem for hypnotherapists who think that everything must be dealt with by hypnosis. There are many things that we are presented with, that do not come from childhood and cannot be reached by regression. I believe that in many cases what is called "gambling addiction" in fact is a part of a wider depressive illness. With this client I'm going to deal with the causes of the depressive thinking, and deal with the gambling problem that way.

In our next session I'm going to teach her self hypnosis so that she can learn to cope with her anxieties. Then I will teach her some thinking exercises so that she can learn to deal with the destructive thoughts. And finally I will show her how to deal with the childhood issues she came from the fact that her mother also had black and white thinking and took it out on the children.

Are you getting enough exercise?

Stress is probably the most common problem in modern life. And yet, how to deal with stress is well-known and easily achieved. You avoid stress by getting enough sleep, keeping your attitude positive, and working towards your long-term goals.

The question of course, is how to achieve those three things? It has been proven over and over that the answer is exercise. Regular consistent exercise is possibly the single most important thing in keeping your mind and body healthy.

Benefits of enough exercise

Exercise does not only benefit the body. It also has a direct effect on the mind. Regular exercise lift your mood, and leaves you feeling relaxed and calm afterwards. When you feel relaxed and calm, you are better able to deal with stressors as they arrive.

A healthy body actually leads to a healthy mind. Exercise releases any emotional tensions held in your muscles. Releasing muscular tension releases anxiety. Relaxed muscles help you sleep better. Relaxed muscles prevent you generating the hormones associated with stress. Serotonin, dopamine, noradrenalin and other hormones all affect our perceptions of stress.

Those hormones enter the bloodstream, are taken to the brain, and make you feel worse. They maintain the primitive fight or flight responses in your brain, and keep you keyed up, ready to take on any threat. Constant anxiety tends to fill your mind with negative thoughts. These feed on themselves, make you more anxious, because more stress hormones, which then makes you feel even worse.

The way out of this vicious cycle is to get regular strenuous exercise. Exercise creates a different set of hormones that tend to make you feel good. Feeling good, makes you think positive thoughts. Positive thoughts lead to positive attitudes. And your positive attitude makes you immune to the things that normally trigger stress in you.

Most people just do not get enough exercise.

Do you?

As well as telling your clients how to improve their mental balance, perhaps you should be prescribing a healthy dose for yourself as well?

How does an experienced hypnotist do self hypnosis?

I was recently asked what I thought was the best way of going into trance, and how I put myself into trance.

I find that my preferred method is simple bio-feedback.

I sit in a quiet place and focus on my breathing. Then I imagine relaxing my arms, my legs, etc. I very quickly (not more than ten seconds) go into a deeply relaxed state.

Then I just allow my mind to ‘open’. If nothing comes, then I focus on enabling a finger life. This usually opens things up as well making me even more relaxed.

I tried it just a moment ago so that I could check what I do do. Initially it was like a whole jumble of things came into my mind. After a few seconds, one or two of them in particular began to emerge and fade. While this was happening I felt my body relaxing more and more, my head began to fall back. Then I got an image, something like a roiling cloud, with something like an elephant’s trunk coming out of it. This then turned into something more like an atomic mushroom cloud. Then the important part became the two areas on each side of the “trunk”. And then I became aware of a feeling. I realized I was worried about money. (I have recently retired from my university lecturing post and my university income will stop at the end of next month. Clearly this has been weighing on my mind unconsciously.) I waited a few moments to see what would develop from that, I got the feeling that this would take a long time, but several solutions began to suggest themselves to me.
Because I was writing this blog post I chose to come out of trance. I still feel a bit spacey. But I have no doubt that I was in trance and beginning to go into my unconscious mind. The whole process probably took less than a minute.

I’m sure that everyone has their own way of going into trance, and mine is not necessarily the best, but that’s how I do it.

Good news for hypnotists – fewer smokers around

The war against the smoker

All round the world, public health authorities are moving towards stamping out cigarette smoking. In Britain, and many other European countries, smoking and enclosed spaces is totally banned. Some communities have banned smoking in public places outdoors as well. Smokers are increasingly taxed, vilified, and held up as per examples. There has been relentless pressure to stop teenagers starting, advertising has been banned. In Australia, government regulations decree that all cigarette packets have to be printed in a muddy brown colour, covered in horrific pictures of smoking related diseases, and almost indistinguishable from other brands. All of this has had a definite effect.

The anti-smokers are winning

Recent statistics from Britain have shown that the number of smokers in the population has fallen dramatically. The chart below, from the Office of National Statistics, shows a long-term decline in smoking. This is probably irreversible. Social and cultural attitudes have changed. Smoking will probably be extinct by the end of the century.

On the face of it this might seem like very bad news for hypnotists. However, what the chart shows can be looked at differently.

Actually, it is the hypnotists who are winning

There is a spectrum of smoking behaviour. Some people find it easy to stop smoking. Other people find it impossible. As more and more smokers stop smoking, the smokers who are left in the population are actually the people who cannot give up without help. Although there are fewer smokers, the smokers who remain are different.

And that is why this is good news for hypnotists. Although there are fewer smokers, these are the ones who most need hypnotherapy to get them off the habit. And as the number goes down, those who are left will be more and more cigarette dependent. Eventually we will be left with only those people who are psychologically dependent.

There will be plenty of business for hypnotists in the years to come.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31