The Transparent Hypnotist

Sooooooooo….did you all read my silliness as a guest blogger at Wisdom Hypnosis on Friday? Many thanks to Debbie for letting me have some fun on her blog!

Answering yesterday’s question

Do I give into my temptations and lie to clients with ideas about gaining their trust?

I suspect I am guilty of a few white lies here and there or perhaps spinning the truth would be a better answer. These maybe in the form of slight exaggerations and such - I am human.

However, in relationship to how this question came about - the temptation to lie to clients who come to me for help with smoking cessation so I can commiserate with them - I do not lie. First, I am not sure I could be that convincing and unless you have got a really strong personality and conviction, I am not sure such a lie would add rapport. I feel like it might change the balance of the pre-talk, with the energy spent making the lie consistent and convincing, thus taking me away from concentrating on the client.

What I do say if I feel they need me to relate to them more (and any smokers out there are probably going to laugh here) is that I have had coffee addiction. No, I know it is not the same. However, for my own health I needed to cut back on my coffee consumption (and switch to decafe more). My heart did that lovely racing thing and meditation proved to be ineffective. When I tried going cold turkey, you guessed it, headaches abounded, I had the energy of a slug, and from what my loved one’s say, I was unbearable. My doctors said I did not need to give it up completely, just knock it back a lot (the equivalent of two and a half to three pots a day was a bit over the top). So, do enter self-hypnosis from the wings and throw in some nice affirmations, you now are reading the words of someone who has less then a cup of coffee a day and no more than three cups of tea (that includes mint and herbal). No headaches. My energy is good. And no one seemed at the time of the cut back to shy away from me.

It is the closest I can come to a smoking addiction (or other addictions), but I can speak honestly and also use it as a testimony of my own thoughts on the value of self-hypnosis. Did I become a hypnotist just because of that? That is a story for another day.

Lily Allen has made it back into our hypnotic consciousness. A while ago, she was featured here for using weight loss hypnosis successfully. She is doing it again and effectively becoming the poster child of celebrity hypnosis stories. Go Lily!

The young British songwriter/performer sowed a few wild oats, but is settling down into pregnancy nicely. So, hypnosis for child birth here? Not quite (but I hope so). No, she is getting all healthy on us and quitting the old ciggy habit, no more cancer sticks for her or her unborn child.

Lily is using hypnotist Susan Hepburn for this, the hypnotist who helped her lose weight. Maybe Ms. Hepburn will grace us by answering the 10 questions one week.

Source:
Thaindian News

Also, I just wanted to clear the air a little more. For those of you who are faithfully (or even occasionally or maybe even once) visiting the transparent hypnotist, your support has meant and does mean a lot to me. As this blog does do blovertising on occasion, I suspect (and have been told) that it may be hard to know what to comment on and so on. First, comment on anything you like. You are ALWAYS welcome to do that. And if it is something within the blogvertising that you disagree with, please do not hesitate to comment. If for some reason comments are not appropriate, I will disable them. I moderate comments, as well, to avoid certain spam issues (and the inappropriate immaturity that occasionally surfaces on the Web).

However to be a little more transparent, I have created a new label that will accompany such post. They will know be known as “blogvertising” or will say “Sponsored by.” Please also know that I chose these on a basis of what is going on in my practice, so I still try to keep them informative or applicable. But also I blog about programs and sites I like as well, often with no monetary gain.

Again I thank you all for reading, writing in, and participating. Know that you are appreciated.

When I think of winter, an image that comes to mind is one where it is cold, raining or sleeting, and there huddled together at the entranced to buildings are the smokers, taking their five minutes to catch a quick fix. Maybe it is me, but I really am not a fan of the cold. I think that would be so humiliating to be forced to stand out there and give in to the quirks of my subconscious mind.

It is nice to see certain employers actively taking a stand and doing something to try to help these people. And yes, I am aware the employer has everything to gain from doing so: healthier employees may equal a higher quality output (people do still care about that, don’t they?), less health care expenses, and maybe even better morale. In a press release today, PG&E announced that they are trying out group hypnosis for their employees to help with smoking cessation. So big clap on the back for PG&E. They are testing this out in San Francisco, Fresno and Sacramento, and if it proves successful they will make it a company wide program.

They started the pilot this past summer and had a 60% success rate for people quitting cold turkey. It is possible this is the number who quit by using hypnosis (it is not clear in the release). The hypnotist involved is Mary Mitchell, who regresses her group back to the time when each member tried his or her first cigarette. Then she uses NLP to replace the thoughts of this moment with the positive suggestions for change.

Source: Sacbee.com

While cleaning out my email inbox, I have just come across an article that is a perfect resource for anyone doing anything with the Great American Smokeout. It was from a few weeks ago in The Daily News in Newburyport, MA and was written by Julie Kirkwood. It was about a small study by hypnotherapist Karen Pischke (actually a registered nurse) and the doctors at Salem Hospital. The study was designed for smokers who were hospitalized for smoking-related heart or lung problems. They gave the patients a choice of various tools to help them stop smoking, including hypnotherapy. According to their study, each participant that had just one hypnotherapy session had a 50 percent chance of quiting and remaining smoke-free for six months. This compared to the 16 percent of those who used the nicotine replacement patch. For those participants that combined hypnotherapy and the patch, it had the same rate as hypnotherapy alone.

This hospital chose to do their own study because they did not agree with the past studies on hypnotherapy and smoking. Based on the studies published in the Cochrane Library in 1998, the reviews found so many inconsistencies in the results, no conclusions were made. Apparently most of the studies had no controls and it was difficult to tell what sort of hypnotherapy was used.

So this particular study did have a control group comprised of patients who chose to quit cold turkey. Also, they factored in Pishke as a hypnotist and thought that maybe her skills and method may have played an important role in the success factor, even though they tried to standardize her method. Perhaps we need to do a study on methods and hypnotist personality types? They also thought that because the patients were allowed to self-select their quiting method, this could have biased the outcome. Interestingly, more women chose to use hypnosis, where as men choose to quit cold turkey. And then there is the fact that all the participants were motive to quit since they had all just suffered a frightening health events related to their smoking habits. For those who were not interested in quiting, they were not invited to participate and for those who did participate and chose to use hypnosis or nicotine replacement, they had extensive counseling.

Their finding? One needs motivation to quit.

Source: If you want to kick the habit, a local study is finding a hypnotist may be your best bet

It is a busy month already. Just thought I would give you a heads up in case you are not aware that Thursday, November 15, is the Great American Smokeout. For all of us in the smoking cessation business, this may be a great chance to get some free publicity and help the public. For those who are thinking about quiting, this might be a great quit date for you.

This event was started by the American Cancer Society in 1976 in California. Since then it has blossomed. Here is an interesting fact: only one in seven people have tried support (such as hypnosis, nicotine replacement, counseling, etc.) when quitting smoking.

To learn more about the event, visit www.cancer.org. They have some great resources that may help you in your business, as well.

Smokers. It is always the smokers who are my problem children. It is just so funny (okay, I am trying to drain my sarcasm); they suffer so. Tonight as I post this, I have two thoughts about smokers and cigarettes,as I work to get it all out of my system.

First - its not your granddaddy’s cigarette anymore. That’s right, for all of you out there who say, “Well, my granddaddy lived to the ripe old age of 99 and he smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes everyday and he never got no cancer,” have I got new for you. One - just think how much longer he might have lived if he never smoked. Actually, I am sort of kidding on that part…BUT…that leads me to two. Your granddaddy probably smoked a much different substance than today’s monsters. No, I do not mean he smoked anything other than good ol’ tobbaccee (and if he did, I don’t want to know). But chances are for a long while, granddaddy may have rolled his own cigarettes, and if you live anywhere near tobacco county he probably knew exactly where the plant came from. Look at everything that is in a cigarette (need I run through the list? Let me know and I will)…most of it has little to do with tobacco. It is all the other nasties that make them so repulsive to our health, I suspect.

The other thing about cigarettes is that I think we have so much more to learn about the mixture of nicotine and the other substances and how this react mixture reacts in the human body. With the hatefullness and vileness that I hear from smokers, they seem so much more defensive of the idea that they are addicted than do the crack addicts I have worked with. So, I am truly thinking there is more to the substances in the cigetters than we already know. Of course there is sugar and that has its own problems…but I think it could be worse than what we think we know.

And I am sorry for the surmon, but the vileness (for that is what it was and has earned the redundancy) of that which I hear from smokers can be truly awful. And today was one of those days.

Today is a gulp it down and hope the taste is good because there is little time to savor the tea.

I am back to thinking about smokers. Upon Michael’s recommendation awhile back, I read Terrance Watts’ Easy Quit Smoking Program. I found it to be brilliant and pretty detailed. The author gave lots of clues on how to deal with all types of people and their habits. His approach involves a bit of acting during the pre-talk, but if you can pull it off, on paper it sounds powerful.

So recently, I decided to employ some of the techniques. Well, I guess when one starts new things it is good to be challenged up front to get the worst out of the way. So, it always seems to go for me (yep, tiny pity party). What a strange thing this universe is…sometimes it seems like tough love, as opposed to a kinder approach.

I share this with you because, I am trying to be transparent, but it also helps me learn. My client was interesting. He was in the medical profession and had watched people die from lung cancer. Lots of disassociation there. He said it did not bother him to think about himself going through such a disease and death. His view of death was one that if it happened two minutes from now, that would be fine. And yes, he would take a risk if I offered him two cigarettes, one being a stick of cyanide and he would not know which one. Then he asked me if I had ever been a smoker, which I have not and he said that was obvious.

So, rather than justify myself and my empathy of the quiting game, I followed Mr.Watt’s model and asked the dear doc why he had even come to me and wanted to give up the cigs. Now here he had a fine reason. He felt shame every time he recommended patients to stop smoking; he did not want to be a hypocrite anymore. So that is where I went with forming suggestions for the session.

And that is that, I must run along with the rest of the day.

The other day I mentioned working with a client on smoking cessation. I hope you read Michael’s comment on it. It was very helpful.

In listening to my client, she mentioned that someone had suggested she try a mass hypnosis session for her goal of being free from cigarettes. These sessions are done by a traveling hypnotist who comes to town once a year and does a mass hypnosis session with several hundred people at once, relatively cheaply. Interestingly enough, this particular client choose to do individual sessions because she wanted the one on one experience and thought it would be more beneficial.

But guess what, I am not going to rally against the hypnotists who do this sort of work. I know there has been some news in the past about frauds, etc. and I am sure there may be some. Rather, I will say that my favorite “confusion” induction comes from Robert Otto, a hypnotist who engages in mass hypnosis and seems to have great success. Indeed, I am a bit envious of his talents, and use this to motivate myself to continue learning.

Many clients ask me about these mass sessions and if they “work.” I admit to a little delight (and a sigh of relief) when I hear that they thought about going to such a session, but opted for me instead, simply because it means that they are making an effort. They have put some thought into their process of change. It is not that they chose me over another hypnotist, but that they weighed the options and made a choice. It shows initiative to some degree and this is always positive.

Now the people who attend the mass hypnosis sessions, do I think little of them. I certainly do not. I do not begrudge anyone in their efforts to help themselves. I hope that they have educated themselves in the process and made the correct choice that will work for them. There are just as many success stories with mass hypnosis, as not.

The client who brought all this to mind mentioned mass hypnosis because the person who told her about the mass session idea wanted to know why she chose to quit smoking in several sessions, when perhaps she could have done it in one. It was her choice to ween herself off rather than just diving in, and she had under lying reasons for this as well. It was not just smoking she wanted to work on, but wanted greater insight into herself (regression, etc.). With a mass session, the attention is focused to a group, and my client wanted the individual attention.

Recently, I have been working with a client on smoking cessation, which has focused me on the process. We have had a few sessions and it seems to be going well, slowly cutting back on the cigarette consumption. I find for many smokers it seems like this is a really good solution, going slowly and gently into cessation. The process reminds me a bit of facing a terminal illness (negative I know, but stay with me). Giving up cigarettes can be a similar mourning process, so it seems. It has all the traits. Denial. Bargaining. Anger. Grief. And finally acceptance.

It also seems to be a love/hate relationship for many. It has becomes a comfort blanket, a friend. However, I think many who are on the page of giving it up, either find the comfort blanket becoming embarrassing (try standing out in the rain in midwinter just to get a few puffs) or the friend a bit backstabbing. But like an unhealthy co-dependency, the attachment is perverse. So, I am wondering if approaching smoking cessation as a mourning process would be an interesting way of looking at the change work that is necessary for success?

Any thoughts?