Monthly Archives: June 2012

Mind Control Question Answer: Hypnosis and NLP

Sometimes people seeking help, coaching or inspiration ask ‘Do NLP and hypnosis involve some sort of mind control and if so, who will control my mind in a session?”. When that question is asked I first of all remind myself that treating yourself to an NLP or hypnosis session is a brand new experience for many people. It also may well be the first time that they have even mentioned to anyone that they have an issue that deeply concerns them or behaviours that they feel they cannot control (such as jealousy, fear, phobias, anxiety, addiction, compulsions, stuttering, problems related to eating, obsessive thoughts, panic attacks or blushing). They may be thinking this is one of the most important calls I will make in my life. It makes good sense that feeling safe is very important.

When I answer I like to take the time to explain everything that I can, so that each person can gain a down to earth idea of what they themselves may experience, enjoy and benefit from an NLP and hypnosis session. The clients who had similar concerns have said during the session that they ‘feel very safe’ and ‘much calmer and more in control of themselves now’ and after a session these clients exclaim ‘It was so different from how I imagined’, I feel so good now’, or ‘Wow I never thought I would get better so quickly, how amazing’ and ‘can I do more, I want to keep going!’, ‘this is a miracle’ and ‘I can control my mind’. I also draw from my experience of how knowledge of hypnosis and NLP is actually inextricably interwoven throughout my daily life, whether for communicating with people and animals, motivating myself to do housework, exercising and eating well and such like, starting new businesses, writing books or making videos, enjoying exams and challenges, making art or riding horses, being creative and getting a good regenerating night’s sleep. And I know, through 35 years of experience, that gaining a knowledge of these subjects can help you become:

more aware
more flexible
more creative
more resourceful
more able to behave how you want
happier and more joyful
more playful
more successful
more balanced
more relaxed
more knowledgeable

The knowledge will also help you to perceive yourself healthily, project the image of yourself as you wish to be perceived by others, and respond to external and internal events as you would most like to. So you could say that NLP and hypnosis sessions will enable people to gain self-control or control of their own mind, emotions, and body.

I was inspired to write about this question of control one day as I was enjoying some time relaxing in a splash of Scottish sunshine. As I zoned out it suddenly occurred to me that some people may miss out because maybe they wonder about this question yet don’t like to phone or email and ask, or they may wonder how going for an NLP and hypnosis session could help. So I thought it would be really helpful to answer and discuss this question here, as my experience continually demonstrates that doing NLP and hypnosis is safe and suitable for all ages and can be fantastic for helping us achieve freedom, peace of mind or to reach our goals and desires whether these are to excel at a sport or art form or to just be well in ourselves. I would like to take longer than I would if I was answering on the phone or email and using this extra time will allow me to share some inspirational concepts and also to answer rather differently by first asking you to consider:

Who or what exactly controls your mind right now?

I asked some of my Facebook friends this question and their answers included:

‘my unconscious, or maybe my subconscious’
‘ice cream’
‘is it the ego?’
‘I believe I control my mind. But then again, am I separate from my mind? If I *am* my mind, then it’s an interesting conundrum as to whether I can say I run my mind. Because that would equate to “my mind runs my mind”.
‘mmmm programming from cultural environment around me, you know school, mum and dad, religion, TV and popular culture, and the organization that I work for’
‘My other than conscious mind and my conscious mind me :)’
‘genetics or DNA’
‘Bit of Trans-derivational Search for that one! I would say I do – but it’s all about
focussed attention and unconscious processes!’1
‘my mum! … no on second thoughts my cat’
‘men in black!’
‘Spirit’
‘do you mean brainwashing or self control?’
‘my mind controls my mind, or it thinks it is in control’
‘I can control my TV more than I can control my mind’
‘As I understand it, different parts of my brain are responding to various stimuli in my
internal or my perceived external environment. That makes for a mix of impulses to action that get weighed versus one another with the strongest ones being what I am likely to do.’
‘well the billions of interconnected neurons in the brain interact, and the patterns manifest as singular thoughts, for example a person thinks around 70,000 thoughts every day and so these thoughts must surely control the mind.”
‘maybe gut and heart feelings really control my mind’
‘I am aware and I control my mind so that I can live the happy life that I want’

Whatever your answer is to the question, imagine for a few moments that you can now easily control your own mind.
What if being in control of your mind was as easy as opening and closing a door, or being in the flow like when you do something you find really easy, or climbing a few stairs, going up each simple step in time, in rhythm, or how about even closer to the meaning of rhythm, being carried on a murmuring silver escalator or closer still the way water finds its way naturally from its source to the sea? Soon you would most likely begin to sniff out new levels, tastes, landings, directions, tempos and viewpoints to add more spice, rhythms and generally just jazz things up, wouldn’t you.

With easy control of your own mind what would be different for you?

Would you be more YOU and more authentic, developing your passions, doing things you totally love doing, seeking out mentors and learning more, travelling and experimenting with new things, more motivated, slimmer, fitter, calmer, wiser and happier and how much fun would that all be? See now how you would look, stand, move, how would you sound and notice what you are doing, where you are and who you are with.

How good do you feel now thinking of this projection?

Give this feeling a number (10 out of 10 for the best feeling) and notice what number you choose. Okay! Now let’s move on, and find out what exactly are the steps to control our own minds and thoughts and how exactly a session with a hypnotist and NLP practitioner can be helpful.

External sources include everything in the environment around you. Aristotle (384 BC) is credited with stating that we have five main senses. So for example the woman in the photo below could hear all of the sounds around her, say of the photographer moving, even a plane far away; could see the lemon colour and interesting textures and everything all around; could feel the texture and weight of the fruit and the studio lights warm on her skin; could smell the juice, the rind, the pith and the environment around; and could also taste the acidic juice.

Do you remember the first time you tasted lemon?

As you watch these babies tasting a lemon for the first time you will notice how each of the individuals had a different experience, environments, parents and siblings way of giving the lemon and their response to the babies response. Many of these babies were supported and encouraged to experiment by smiling loving parents while others were surrounded by giggling older siblings. It follows therefore that how each baby filtered, categorized, stored (the V,A,K,O,G loop of data), responded to the event, remembered what happened from their viewpoint and how others responded (to their behaviour) is entirely personal to them. Because tasting lemon juice is such a powerful first experience the babies were probably most aware of using their senses of smell and taste and they were probably less aware of how they were using their other senses. In the book ‘Frogs into Princes’, Richard Bandler and John Grinder write

“Our claim is that you are using all systems all the time. In a particular context you will be aware of one system more than another. I assume that when you play athletics or make love, you have a lot of kinesthetic sensitivity. When you are reading or watching a movie, you have a lot of visual consciousness. You can shift from one to the other.”

And if indeed we ‘code’ our experiences and create our own thoughts so it would seem that we can gain control of our own minds. In the quote above the point is made that we can shift from using one sensory system to another. We use movement, expressions, non- verbal signals and language to both label and express our view about our experiences.The words that we choose relate to the representational system that we are accessing as we speak.

Internal sources include everything that you have taken in and made sense of through using your senses (memory) and created (imagination). So for example you most likely enjoy lemon and know now as an adult what to expect. This knowledge comes from your memory, so we could say that it is internal stored information. If someone told you that a new pink striped lemon that tasted of strawberries was for sale in the shops you would most probably picture it and imagine its taste, you might notice that your mouth and nose move as you imagine this new fruit or you might notice imagined sounds, internal dialogue or the noise of the shop. We use our imagination to build this type of construction and we use information from our memory as our building blocks.

What thoughts, sensations do you notice and what words come to mind when you think about tasting a fresh zingy lemon?
The illustration above gives you some idea of how language reveals which internal sensory system (V, A, K, O, or G) the person is ‘thinking in’ at that moment. An NLP practitioner will listen very carefully to you and use your chosen representational systems, (along with other information, and their knowledge and skills) to choose which NLP processes will be the most effective and comfortable for you. During a session your own awareness of how you have been doing things will increase and often highly important insights are gained. Once you have become aware of this processing it becomes easier to shape yourself. I first learnt about these concepts when I read the following words in Bandler and Grinder’s book ‘Frogs into Princes’.

‘Let me talk a little about how language works. If I look at you and say “Are you comfortable” you can come up with a response. The presupposition of your being able to respond congruently to my question is that you understand the words that I am speaking. Do you know how you understand the word “comfortable” for example?

Woman: Physically

You understand it physically. You sense some change in your body which is distinctive. That shift in your feeling state is distinctive from ‘terrified”. That’s a different response.

She senses a change in her body as a way of understanding the meaning of the word “comfortable”. Did anyone else notice how they understand it? Some of you will see visual images of yourself in a comfortable position: lying in a hammock, or lying on the grass in the sunshine.And a few of you may even hear the sounds which you associate with comfort: the babbling of a brook, or the wind blowing through some pine trees.

In order for you to understand what I am saying to you, you have to take the words – which are nothing more than arbitrary labels for parts of your personal history – and access the meaning, namely, some set of images, some set of feelings, or some set of sounds, which are the meaning for you of the word “comfortable”. That’s a simple notion of how language works, and we call this process transderivational search. Words are triggers that tend to bring into your consciousness certain parts of your experience and not other parts.’

What do you associate with Lemon?

Over the years since your first encounter with a lemon you will have come across other ‘external events’ which you will have linked with that initial experience. For example a friend remembered a lovely lemon coloured toy that she loved as a child and that her grandmother used lemon to clean her house and as an insecticide. She also remembered reading that researchers at Ohio State University found that when participants in an aromatherapy study smelled lemon oil, their mood improved and yet no physiological reason for this has ever been discovered.

What story do you tell yourself?

The lyrics of Bono’s song ‘Yellow’ are based on a home video of his mother wearing lemon yellow. She died when he was 14 and the more I listen to the song the more I wonder about his experience. Poets, singers and artists often make work about the connections in their thinking and their life experiences. It is these experiences and our responses to (and feelings about) these events that determine how our brains and lives develop.

Lemon

See through in the sunlight
She wore lemon
But never in the daylight
She’s gonna make you cry
She’s gonna make you whisper and moan
And when you’re dry
She draws her water from the stone

And I feel
Like I’m slowly, slowly, slowly slipping under
And I feel
Like I’m holding onto nothing

She wore lemon
To colour in the cold grey night
She had heaven
And she held on so tight

A man makes a picture
A moving picture
Through the light projected
He can see himself up close
A man captures colour
A man likes to stare
He turns his money into light to look for her

And I feel
Like I’m drifting, drifting, drifting from the shore
And I feel
Like I’m swimming out to her

Midnight is where the day begins
Midnight is where the day begins
Midnight is where the day begins

Lemon
See through in the sunlight

A man builds a city
With banks and cathedrals
A man melts the sand so he can
See the world outside
her there
A man makes a car
destination
And builds roads to run them on
A man dreams of leaving
But he always stays behind

And these are the days
When our work has come assunder
And these are the days
When we look for something other

Midnight is where the day begins
Midnight is where the day begins
Midnight is where the day begins
Midnight is where the day begins
Midnight is where the day begins

A man makes a picture
A moving picture
Through the light projected
He can see himself up close
her there
A man captures colour
destination
A man likes to stare
there
He turns his money into light
To look for her
She is the dreamer
She’s imagination
Through the light projected
He can see himself up close

Your brain also connects smells, sounds, feelings, emotions and other sensations which also make the neural connections stronger. The brain is considered “neuroplastic” or changing because in responds to life experiences, and then alters its structure and function. Our brain is constantly learning, altering and adapting. But the more you use and re-trace parts of your “neural network”, the function appears to be “hard wired” or automatic. “Use it or lose it”, “practice makes perfect” and “repetition is the mother of all learning”, are not just an expressions, they are neurological facts.

Knowledge allows you to become aware of the brains power to change and become the observer. Neuroplasticity makes it easier to do some things “automatically” … You can also break synaptic connections by not using the neuro pathway. Neural pruning is the term that is used to describe neurons dying off when not being used.’

Many people say that learning about NLP and hypnosis can enable you to become more flexible, gain control over your thoughts, change your associations with past experiences, exercise the ideas that you want and build strong neural pathways so these thinking patterns come more and more easily, and with these helpful behaviours you can achieve your goals whatever they are, whether they are to deeply relax or become more brilliant. So you can learn NLP and hypnosis to become

more aware,
more flexible,
more creative
more resourceful
more able to behave how you want to,
happier and more joyful
more playful
more successful
more balanced
more relaxed
more knowledgeable
self controlled

So how exactly can learning hypnosis and NLP help us gain self control?

(to be continued ..)

Thank you to all my friends who contributed 🙂

About Carol

Menopause Health – The Natural Way

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The Menopause, that time of life where a womens reproductive organs stop functioning. When we enter a different stage in our lives something natural that we are supposed to do happens; in fact we have no choice, it just happens and yet it seems to cause a lot of problems for many women. This seems to stem from a lack of hormones, and until the body readjusts to these lower levels certain symptoms can be experienced and in many cases are expected. Anyway, here are a few suggestions which may help.

Symptoms of the menopause?

I found as I was approaching this stage in my life that a lot of my friends were pre-occupied with wearing layers of clothing (to cope with hot flushes); worrying about sleeplessness, using their hormone levels to excuse bad memory or grumpiness. These are the only symptoms that I encountered amongst my friends and clients; although I have recently discovered that there are 34 symptoms that are accepted as being part of the menopause varying from those mentioned above to Panic Attacks.

In one study amongst menopausal women from Hong Kong, Pakistan, Mexico and Japan it was found that only 10% suffered from menopausal symptoms; whereas they found that 75% of women in the USA did. Their conclusion was that the main differences were diet, lifestyle and stress.

The symptoms last whist the body acclimatizes to the new hormone levels; and do not tend to occur in men as they don’t experience such a rapid decline as women do. Although some treatments for prostate cancer can suppress testosterone production to such an extent that men can experience a response similar to menopausal hot flushes in women.

Whats a Girl to do?

Some women decide to go for the pharmaceutical answer, taking HRT and have been very happy with this. Although nowadays they are discovering that this isn’t always the answer, and there are side effects connected to taking HRT.

Personally I’m a great believer in natural answers especially when dealing with something that is supposed to be natural, and especially when I know that there are women who do not have any of these so called symptoms. This tells me that there is a way for my body to make these changes easily.

Research has found that menopausal symptoms can be more persistent in women who have a low body weight, and in women who take little or no exercise and in women who smoke.

Many women have found that by cutting out all diary from their diet and switching to soya that they have found a huge difference and improvement. Soy isoflavones have shown benefits in providing relief from menopausal symptoms; they can reduce hot flushes and promote increased bone density those helping to prevent osteoporosis.

Supplements that may help with the menopause

Black Cohosh, is a flowering plant from Eastern North America and contains phytochemicals that are thought to assist in relieving symptoms of the menopause. It also contains isoflavones as found in Soya. Isoflavones bind to the estrogen receptors in your body and these plant estrogens work in a similar way to your bodies natural estrogen.

Dong Quai or Chinese Angelica is a herb native to China; its nickname is the female ginseng. It contains phytoestrogens that bind to the estrogen receptors in our body, increasing estrogen levels and also contains vitamins E, A and B12. Dong Quai dilates blood vessels and increases blood flow which helps to reduce hot flushes. Its also considered to be a mild sedative and can help reduce mood swings and stress.

Maca Root has been used in South America for centuries; it was thought to be an aphrodisiac and is still used today for its sexual benefits. It does not contain plant estrogen but instead is an adaptogen; that means it can help balance your body’s own hormone system and encourages the production of hormones. It also contains calcium, magnesium, zinc, vitamin B1, B2, B12, C and E.

Red Clover is from Europe and Asia and also contains phytoestrogens which help increase the levels of estrogen in the body. In a recent study in the Netherlands 44% of women taking red clover reported a reduction in menopausal symptoms and due to its high amounts of calcium its thought it may slow down or even prevent bone loss due to osteoporosis.

(Please remember that herbal remedies can be potent and always consult a trained herbalist before taking any supplements.)

These are just a few supplements that are on offer to menopausal women and what they have in common is said to be an ability to increase levels of estrogen.

Self help for the menopause

When working with women who want help dealing with menopausal symptoms my strategy comes from the experience I gained when I went through this period in my life. I found that hypnosis techniques enabled me to move through the menopause simply and easily without any of the so called symptoms. Using hypnosis to re-balance mind and body to acclimatize to the new lower hormone levels.

Its suggested in the various studies that have been held that Stress is a major factor in dealing with the menopause. Hypnosis and self hypnosis has proven to help reduce stress and taking time each day to relax and or meditate can be beneficial.

Simple stress reduction technique.

Use this technique to learn how to become calmer and more relaxed. The more you practice them, consciously at first before they become unconscious automatic responses. With practice you can become more relaxed and create a more resourceful state of mind.

Make yourself comfortable
Begin by focusing on your breathing, breath out completely, empty your lungs
And inhale slowly completely filling your lungs to a count of 10.
Hold your breath for a few seconds and then
Exhale as slowly as you can to a count of at least 10 completely emptying your lungs
Repeat this process and as you exhale each time relax
Begin by relaxing your jaw, gradually moving all the way down your body
Relaxing your shoulders, your chest muscles, your arms, legs
Breathing in comfort and relaxation with each deep slow breath.

The above exercise can also be used to reduce anxiety; and will also work with sleeplessness.

How to relax and sleep easily

During the menopause some women find that hot flushes, or night sweats awaken them in the night. Once awake some find it difficult to get back to sleep.

If you are having problems getting back to sleep; pay attention to your thoughts. Most people having difficulty sleeping have very busy thoughts.
Slow the thoughts down in your mind, change the tone to a sleepy one
Now focus on your breathing breath out completely, empty your lungs
And inhale slowly completely filling your lungs to a slow count of 10.
Hold your breath for a few seconds and then
Exhale as slowly as you can to a count of at least 10 completely emptying your lungs
Repeat this process and as you exhale each time relax
Begin by relaxing your jaw, gradually moving all the way down your body.

Menopause health

Obviously do contact your doctor if you have concerns about your health. The suggestions here certainly helped me, and seem to have been benficial for a number of my clients, and I hope that you find them useful too.

Tina Taylor

Stop Procrastinating – Lists That Actually Work

4 Replies

Hello

This is the second blog in a series about how to stop procrastinating and actually get on with things. As with all these articles, please keep in mind that each of them is just ONE piece in a range of things that people can do.

The Need-To-Do List

Do you keep a list of what you need to do? Or have you ever? I know I did, years ago. There I would be, in the morning, getting out my list of things I needed to do, thinking about what I needed to do that day, maybe thinking about what I needed to do first.

It didn’t work very well, of course, and I didn’t realise that my list was actually a procrastination strategy. At the time I didn’t know it wasn’t working. I think I do now.

‘My List Is Getting Bigger’

One of the most depressing things about my list-of-things-I needed-to-do was that gradually, over time, it got longer, and I found myself spending more and more time each morning transferring what I hadn’t done from yesterday’s list to today’s new, fresh and usually slightly longer list. And this took a while as it was in the days before computers (yes, there were such times…).

Words That Don’t Help And Words That Can

Words can be tricky things and most of us don’t realise how much influence the things we say to ourselves have on our thinking, feeling and behaviour.

Try this experiment. Say to yourself the following.

‘I wish I could take next Monday off work.’ If you don’t work then find something equivalent. Notice what thoughts and feelings come to mind.

Now say to yourself…

‘I could take next Monday off work.’ Once again pause for a moment and notice what thoughts and feelings come to mind.

Now say

‘I would like to take next Monday off work’. Again, stop and notice what feelings and thought come to mind.

And now repeat this with the words should and might.

Now I am realistic enough to appreciate that a fair number of people reading this won’t actually bother to stop and think these things through in the manner I am suggesting. I know that I have read countless books with ‘exercises’ in them and have actually bothered to stop and actually do these exercises only rarely. There is a very funny forward in a book on meditation by the author Robert Anton Wilson where he goes on, page after page, either joking how important it is to do the exercises or being serious about how important it is to DO THE EXERCISES, to get true value from the book. He used capitals and bold type too. I think in that instance I actually did do them, well a few of them…

‘Necessity’ words

Anyway to get back to the point, you could consider the above italicised words to be ‘possibility’ words. Actually they are classed as ‘modal operators of possibility’ within the field of NLP, but I like to steer clear of jargon where possible.

The next class of words I would like you to consider are what may be called ‘necessity’ words, so please do feel free to actually do this. Just stop for a moment and say to yourself

‘I want to take next Monday off.’ Once again notice what thoughts come to mind.

And now…

‘I need to take next Monday off.’

And then repeat with the words have to, must, and got to.

Usually there are different feelings and thoughts associated with these different words as you consider doing the activity.

The Magic Words

You don’t actually need much. On one level all you need is oxygen, water, food, a reasonable temperature and perhaps shelter from the elements. On this level a person might also need medication to stay alive…

Here are the words that work much much better. Stop and say to yourself…

‘I am going to take next Monday off’ or ‘I will take next Monday off.’

This is much more powerful, it’s a kind of commitment, when you think about it.

When ‘I am going to’ simply isn’t enough…

It isn’t enough, you know, just to say you are going to do something. Sure, it’s much more powerful than saying you should do something, might do something or need to do something, but it isn’t enough.

There are many people on the planet that repeatedly say that they are going to do something, and then never actually getting around to it. Consider the example of the guy who is constantly saying that one day he will start his own company, to eventually glance down and realise he has just been given his retirement watch…

The list of things you are GOING to do

OK, let’s get back to this idea of a list. Even if you didn’t really notice that much difference when you went through the ‘exercises’ above (if you actually did them, I doubt I would have done…), I do suggest you experiment with this whether it is with an actual physical list of things or just a mental ‘list’. Change the title of your list from ‘Things I need to do’ to ‘Things I am going to do’, and, crucially, do the following…

Decide WHEN you will do things and have an idea of WHEN they will be complete

Now your list (real or mental) may have a number of different things on it ranging from ‘feed the cat’ to ‘write my novel’ or ‘get fit’. So some things can be done in a few moments and some things are done over time. You aren’t going to write a novel in one day, however motivated you feel. So decide, in advance, how much time you are going to devote to writing your novel today, and when you are going to do this, today. You don’t have to write an exact itinerary of your day, minute by minute, just get a good idea of when, such as ‘I am going to spend an hour writing my novel early this afternoon.’

This can make a big difference, believe me.

How to screw this up…

Ok, there is a way you can really screw this up. However well you are phrasing your plans in your mind, or on paper or on your computer or smartphone, if, when saying to yourself, in your mind or outloud, something like ‘I am going to go to the gym this morning’ you say it in a whiny, tiny internal voice, or a bored, depressed sounding inner voice, you will not light yourself up with joy and excitement…

Use really powerful inner tonality

It’s a bit unusual for us to go inside and ‘change’ the way we speak to ourselves but I invite you to do it as an experiment. Imagine the richest, most wonderful most resonant, most loving voice you can, speaking from every single cell of your body, as you think about what you are going to do – bathe yourself in the sound of the voice. It can take a bit of practice if you haven’t done anything like this before.

There it is then, decide what you are going to do, decide when you are going to do it and use the most wonderful, full, empowering inner voice you can imagine, when you think about it.

Of course I am assuming that what you have on your list is reasonable and achievable and ecologically sound, ‘well-formed’ as some in the field of NLP would say, but that is for another blog…

Steve Tromans

PS Credit to John La Valle – I have heard John talk about modal operators in this manner on several occasions.

Read my first blog on procrastination here – https://www.justbewell.com/info/index.php/stop-procrastinating-one-important-step/
Visit the page on the main site here – http://www.justbewell.com/procrastination.html

Do feel free to leave comments and observations.

Behaviour Problems – They won’t listen to me!

2 Replies

It’s true, a lot of the time our kids do not listen to us, but that doesn’t mean they will not listen to us. Its all about what we are asking them to do or what we are forgetting to ask them to do.

Words have Power

Anybody who has practiced NLP or Hypnosis know’s the impact of language on the way we think, in fact everyone reading this is aware of the impact of language on our emotions and behaviour, consider this quote from Shakespeare:

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Would it be as often remembered and repeated if it was said like this:

Oh Rom’s, why does your name have to be that? Pretend he’s not your old man and Change your surname; or if you wont do it, promise you’ll love me and ill change mine.

It doesnt quite have the same impact, does it. And in the same way the language we use everyday has more or less impact depending not only on the words we use but the order in which we use those words.

Road Blocks or Diversions.

Sometimes children do things which we dont want them to do and many times I hear people (and myself from time to time) saying to their children, “stop it” or “dont do that” or “thats enough” and the child goes on doing whatever they were doing and it seems as though they “wont listen”.

“Stop jumping all over my furniture”, “dont fight with your brother”, “enough of that banging”,

One day your driving along on a journey you have a map marked out and you know exactly the route to take to get you to your destination, but then you come to a one way street and theres a road block, all routes are blocked off you have nowhere to turn, so you look around for a sign, showing you where to go but there isn’t any, what do you do now? Your basically stuck, you either go back from where you came and not get to your destination or you have to go on through the road block.

Now think about taking the exact same journey coming to the road block but this time theres all those yellow diversion signs set up leading you on a different route to your destination, a bit of a pain initially, but know you realise you have a choice, you have at least two different ways of getting where you want to go, not only that, you’ve also enjoyed the new scenary you have taken in along the way.

So when we are asking children to stop doing something (a road block) its really important to set up a diversion and tell them where you want them to go, the destination is whatever they are getting from the unwanted behaviour, (which in most cases will be something they need to do to develop and learn) and they can still get it but in new ways which now gives you and your child more choices.

“I know you want to have fun jumping around, and thats good. My furniture is for sitting on and eating on, do you think it would be a better idea to use your trampoline”. 🙂

This maybe a really simple Idea but also a very powerful one too.

Leonne Daniel

P.S If you have trouble controlling your own emotions so that you can make better decisions and remember to set up the diversions then look out for my furure blogs where theres more to come on controlling your state!

Stop Procrastinating – One Important Step

12 Replies

Hi.

My original idea was to do one blog with a bunch of bullet points, various tricks and tips and mental strategies to help people to overcome procrastination. But then I looked at other articles on the subject and discovered there were lots of similar articles so I decided to do it differently. So this article is essentially ONE tip, however I plan to cover the subject in a little depth. And OK, it may not be a critical step but I believe it is important. More articles on the subject of stopping procrastinating will follow…

Stop Trying

So you want to stop procrastinating. Well, there is one tiny word in English that can really get in the way of you getting on with things.

The word is TRY.

If you are trained in NLP, or in many schools of hypnotherapy, you may well know all about this. If you don’t, or even if you do, consider this…

If I say ‘I tried to finish writing all my emails last night’, or ‘I tried to remember to take the car to the car wash’, or ‘I tried to get to Italy last Christmas’, what am I actually saying?

I am saying I didn’t do any of those things, or at the very least I am implying that I didn’t.

So is this really such a big deal?

Oh yes, it can be a very big deal indeed, but the challenge can sometimes be getting a person to realise how important it is, to stop using this word in this way.

I find, like many things, it’s best done by example…

The Day Of The Three Bulimics

One morning, several years ago, I saw three women to help them to stop doing bulimia, one after another. I managed to help all of them to stop doing it, in fact the first two of the three stopped being bulimic after the first session, it happens sometimes. The third of the three, a law student, took me a few more hours, but for the purposes of this, she was by far the most interesting.

So we started by me asking her to talk me through a typical day, and what she said went something like this…

‘I try to get up in time’

‘Well I try and set the alarm for 6.30 because I like to try to get up in time to have a good breakfast. Then I try and get the 7.30 bus to college, and in the morning I go to lectures and I really try to be good with the food and I try and have something nice for lunch. In the afternoon I try and go to the library to catch up with some of the work, and then in the evening maybe I will try and call a friend and…’

If I could read your mind, dear, what a tale your thoughts would tell…

‘Stop!’ I said, ‘I can’t stand it! I bet you don’t get to the library to work much, in the afternoons, do you?’

And she looked at me with big eyes and asked me, in a hushed voice, if I was psychic…

‘Possibly,’ I replied, ‘but I’m not currently doing that, I am listening to you trying to do things’.

She just looked puzzled, naturally enough, so I started giving her examples like those already mentioned. I tried to finish mowing the lawn before it started raining, I tried to fix the dishwasher, I tried to close the window properly etc. She still looked bewildered.

‘Listen’ I said, ‘close your eyes and say to yourself, ‘I will try to get to the library this afternoon, and see what comes to mind.’ She did this and told me she had a fleeting thought of the library but then couldn’t get the thought of the canteen out of her head. So she asked me what she was supposed to think.

Use the word ‘just’, or the phrase ‘just make sure’, instead of ‘try’

That’s what I told her, so she closed her eyes and said to herself that she was just going to make sure she got to the library that afternoon, and then admitted that she did seem to be able to think of going to the library a bit more easily. I told her that it may take a while for her to retrain herself but from now on, every time she said the word try or even thought it, she was to stop, go back, and repeat what she had said or thought using the word just or the phrase just make sure.

She didn’t look impressed.

After all, she was there for me to help her stop doing bulimia and nearly fifteen minutes have gone by and I haven’t really mentioned that yet. But I guessed how important this may be for her, given that she had used the word so much, so I boldly carried on with the following story.

The ‘For Trying Hard’ certificate

My two eldest children spent part of their primary school education in a really good very small village school. In one school year they were in the same classroom. Like I say, it was a small school. Now, this school liked to reward the children for doing something well, you know, like doing a nice drawing, writing a good story, that kind of thing. However, we had a bit of an issue when the teacher started trying to give my children certificates which were entitled, ‘For Trying Hard’. Apparently, one of my kids told the teacher, a little uncertainly, that his dad (me) had told them they weren’t to try hard. And the teacher (nice guy) had smiled and told them that it was always important to try hard. And my other child had told him that they weren’t ever supposed to try they were just supposed to do it. And apparently my other child then added, ‘or not’…

I wish I had been there

My kids weren’t being cheeky, but they weren’t really equipped to explain this to the teacher. The teacher was fine about it all at the time, just a little puzzled, apparently. Next parents evening I was able to talk to him about it. I explained the reasoning and to his credit he dumped the certificates. I then saw that there was another pile of certificates that were entitled ‘for working hard’, and I asked him to dump those too. I pointed at them and asked him what those words meant. He said they meant ‘for working well’. I smiled and asked him why they didn’t say that then, as ‘hard’ can mean well, or diligently, but ‘hard’ can also mean tough or difficult or intransigent. I am not sure he got rid of them, but from that day forward my children’s always got ‘certificates of merit’ when they did well.

My client still looked puzzled

‘Can we talk about my bulimia now?’ She asked. I told that that we could as long as she promised to start using the word ‘just’ or the phrase, ‘just make sure’. She considered this for a moment and then, without even the slightest trace of irony said…

‘I’ll try to…’

So I stared at her, and I stared at her, and I stared at her, and I raised my eyebrows. A long minute went by, then suddenly she realised what she had said and laughed, a lot (often a very good sign, that).

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I know you don’t know how much of a big deal this is yet. Also, you may well find yourself catching yourself saying the word, or thinking it. When you do it would be a mistake to beat yourself up about it with thoughts like ‘Oh shit I just said the word, try, I must try not to do that again, OH SHIT, I just said it again…’. ‘Be patient with yourself,’ I said, ‘it can take a little time to fully integrate this learning, now let’s get this bulimia sorted as well….’

Seven Days Later

Seven days later all three women turned up again in the same order, on the same morning. As I said, the first two had stopped ‘buliming’ and I was delighted with that. When the law student walked in she actually looked even happier than the first two and I felt really pleased with myself as assumed I had sorted 3 out of 3 bulimics in one session each.

‘Stopped throwing up then?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I am still throwing up, though not as much,’ and she leaned forward, eyes shining and added, ‘but my life has completely changed!’

What a difference a word makes…

Or can make. She told me how she no longer struggles to get out of bed, she just gets up when the alarm goes. She just makes sure she gets to the bus stop on time, and last week was the first time she hasn’t been late every day. She is being better with food. She is going to the library every day and has almost caught up with the work. She is catching herself thinking things like ‘I will try and remember to call Barbara later, maybe go out for a nice meal,’ and amending those thoughts to ‘I will just make sure I call Barbara later’. The later in the day she is once again catching herself saying to herself something like ‘Ooh I must try and call Barbara in a minute ooh, YES, I WILL JUST DO IT NOW…’

Stop Procrastinating

Which brings me back to the subject of this article, namely, how to stop procrastinating and just get on with it. This is just one piece of what can be done, but better have one article in a little depth, I believe, than yet another list of bullet points similar to those you may well have seen before on this subject. Obviously, the word ‘try’ is OK in many contexts, such as ‘try this lovely cake’, ‘try this beautiful wine’, but the try of effort is one to be avoided unless you want to increase the chance of failing.

It can be good to fail

Well, it can. Often, at the end of a session with a client I will say something like, ‘now think about what was a problem before, and try to worry about it…’

Hope you find this useful. Just make sure you read it again… There is so much more to say about this subject, so more posts to follow…

Steve Tromans

Tel: +44 (0)7900 240192
Email: steve@selfhelprecordings.com
1 Harley Street London W1G 9QD

Changing Your Life for Good

I Have OCD

21 Replies

Credit to Richard Bandler, most of the following I learned pretty much directly from him.

And if only all interventions were as fast as this one turned out to be…

Several years ago a man came to see me. He had been suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) for about half his life, in his case, about 17 years or so. When he was school, in the last year or so, he had developed some obsessive tendencies, nothing too overwhelming, as far as I could tell. However, the school got in touch with his parents and his parents booked an appointment with a top psychiatrist. There he sat with his parents, a nervous teenager, in the oak-panelled Harley Street consulting room of this psychiatrist and he was given the following verdict by the doctor…

‘I have spoken to your school, I have spoken to your parents and now I have had the chance to talk to you personally,’ he intoned, ‘ and I can say that without a shadow of a doubt, you have obsessive compulsive disorder…’

What chance did the man have…

So from that day forward, armed with the knowledge and certainty and that he had this problem, he became very good at OCD indeed. His obsessive behaviour had ‘morphed’ over the years, and he had finally settled into the habit of cleaning his kitchen for two or three hours before he went to work in the morning. And this was a kitchen always scrubbed so clean that open heart surgery would probably have been safe there anytime…

Contamination OCD

This is one of the most common ways people do OCD. For whatever reason, they have developed a huge overwhelming fear of contamination or disease, and that fear is so overwhelming it overrides any attempt at logical thinking. So a person who has developed this sort of thinking/feeling/behaviour pattern will find themselves seemingly driven to take some action to try to stop having the horrible feelings. This can be a big bad habit. And incidentally this has nothing to do with intelligence, in fact the guy who walked into my office that morning was a very successful lawyer…

‘What do you want?’

That’s what I asked him, after a minute or two chatting about his journey and the weather etc. I always like to get to the point.

Now if you are actually in this business you will know full well that no-one ever answers that question literally. They think they are answering you, but they aren’t. The answer you get will be either a description of their issue or a mass of information which is entirely opposite from the information you asked for.

They will tell you what they don’t want. Now this is totally reasonable from where the client is coming from. After all, they want you to understand why they are there, the nature of their issue, and if you let them, they will sometimes go into a long description of the history of their issue. I don’t usually let them, it doesn’t usually help, in my experience.

In fact I have to repeat the question, several times, before they can begin to understand what I am aiming at. And this all has to be done lightly, or it will begin to sound like a gestapo interview. And this is just the beginning…

‘I have OCD’

That’s what he said, plain and simple. So I was about to repeat the ‘so what do you want’ question, but I reconsidered. If someone is suffering from obsessive compulsive patterns they are often a bit tense, to say the least. But this guy, although quite tense, didn’t seem overly so, so I tried something else…

‘No, you don’t have OCD’

I said that to him and raised my eyebrows. He looked puzzled, understandably.

‘Yes I do,’ he insisted, ‘I have OCD, I am sure of it.’

‘So you have three letters of the alphabet,’ I said. It is important to note that the tone of the conversation was light-hearted, if it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been doing this.

‘You know what I mean,’ he continued, half laughing, ‘I have OCD, the abbreviation for obsessive compulsive disorder’.

‘No-one has OCD’, I said, flatly, and he began to look puzzled, though he was still smiling.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you have a page on your website that says that you deal with people who have OCD, I’ve read it’. He had a point there. Mind you, if the page had said ‘you don’t have OCD please call now for help’, on-one would…

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘if you have OCD tell me where you keep it. In your pocket? In a cupboard in the kitchen next to the cleaning stuff? In a special place in the left hand side of your head or something?’

He was laughing now, ‘well obviously I don’t actually have OCD,’ he said. And then he stopped, and began to look totally bewildered and started swaying in his chair. If he hadn’t been sitting down I think he might have fallen over.

‘That’s right you don’t have OCD and you never did,’ I continued. ‘You can have a banana, you can have the complete works of Shakespeare, or you can have a nice holiday home. OCD isn’t something you can have, it’s obvious, now you think about it.

OCD is something a person DOES not something a person HAS

‘Obsessive compulsive disorder is something you have been doing not something you had, I told him, ‘a person can think ‘obsessively’ about something, a person can act ‘compulsively’ at times, but that’s it, you don’t have OCD and you never had OCD, do you see what I mean? Do you hear what I am saying?’

I stopped and let him process this for a couple of minutes. Eventually he looked up and in a slow-motion voice said,

‘So…..I…..dont…..have…..OCD…..and…..nothing……is……making…..me…..do…..this?’

‘Well I don’t think so,’ I continued, ‘unless you think that maybe you are haunted by the demon of OCD, and as it happens I do have a bell, a book and a candle in the room, and I find a little light exorcise can often be illuminating.’

And I stopped and waited, and it was like the dawn slowly rising in his face and this sparkly light came into his eyes (at least that’s how I remember it), and he grinned.

Sitting in the beans

‘So,’ he said, leaning back with his hands behind his head, radiating confidence, ‘nothing is making me do this, so nothing is stopping from going home now, pouring baked beans all over the kitchen floor, sitting in them, cleaning up a bit, and going down the pub for a drink.’

‘That’s right,’ I replied, ‘though you may need to change your trousers first…’

And he stood up to leave but I didn’t let him, at first. I pointed out that he had had just fifteen minutes of a two hour session and that there were more things that could be done to ‘help make these old obsessive things truly a thing of the past’. He said he was happy to pay for the two hours and I told him that wasn’t the point. He told me he REALLY wanted to go and do this, so I argued light-heartedly with him for a while as this was building the desire to go out there and play, and after fifteen more minutes he left the office with a spring in his step.

I didn’t speak to him again though I got two voicemails from him and an email several months later. The first voicemail went something like this

‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA, IM SITTING IN THE BEANNNNNS, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA’

I remember thinking that it was just as well he wasn’t leaving that voicemail for a psychiatrist.

In the second voicemail, a couple of days later, he explained that it had only taken him 22 minutes to clean the kitchen after the bean-fest, and that that morning it had only taken him 16.5 minutes. OK, a little bit exact but, hey, 16.5 minutes is better than 3 hours… Then a few months later an email telling me he was quite ok and that he was going to refer someone to me.

If only it was always this easy

This client was the exception rather than the rule, I wish I could help people this fast all time. Usually the above is just one piece from a range of interventions designed to help the client to stop being obsessive, to build more flexibility into their thinking. It can be an important piece though.

Denominalisation – an approach that can often pay dividends

I am aware that this may well be read by a whole variety of people, from NLP practitioners and trainers and hypnotherapists and other therapists, through to individuals ‘suffering from OCD’, or people who know people who have been doing OCD etc, so I am avoiding jargon as much as possible, though really there isn’t much jargon is this field.

A nominalisation is a verb that has been turned into a noun, or an action that has been turned into a ‘thing’. When you work to denominalise, you are working to change the noun back into a verb, the thing back into the action, so to speak.

For example, if someone comes to see me and they tell me they have problems with their relationship (noun) with their husband, I will say something like, ‘in what way have you been experiencing problems with the way you are have been relating (verb) to your husband’. Because, after all, you may well be able to help someone to change the way they have been doing something (relating) but how on earth can you change someone’s ‘relationship’ when such a ‘thing does not literally exist?’

On one level this may seem to be just playing with words, but in my experience it can be a useful game to play…

Steve Tromans

Tel: +44 (0)7900 240192
Email: steve@selfhelprecordings.com
1 Harley Street London W1G 9QD

Visit the main page on OCD here – Help For OCD

Barbara Stepp in Chicago has recently put a short useful video on how to cure OCD – here – Cure For OCD

Sports Performance Coaching to Swim the English Channel – a Matter of Life or Death

2 Replies

Over the years I have seen literally thousands of clients as well as teaching other therapists and practitioners all over the world. Many requests for assistance and pretty familiar and every week I receive e-mails for help with phobias, eating problems, anxiety related problems and other such issues. There are also times of the year when certain problems are very common. In the summer when people get married I see lots of people for public speaking issues and phobias of bees and wasps. By September I can count on receive lots of requests for assistance for spider phobias.

In September last year as I scanned the daily e-mails one in particular caught my eye. I read the following…

“Hello Nick! I am training to swim the English Channel this September. Whilst physical training is going well, I am sure I’d benefit from some assistance to deal with fears whilst in the water.”

My first thoughts on reading this were “Why on earth would anyone want to do that?” I agreed to meet Pete the client and began to hear the full story of why he needed help. In short Pete had been training to swim the channel for his son’s charity and during a recent practice swim he had a panic attack. Now every time he thought about this task he felt extremely anxious. He was not a professional swimmer and while he was experiencing this panic attack he kept thinking to himself

“Oh my god, if my arms go now, I’ve had it! People drown this way!”

This as you can imagine is not a good recipe for anyone wanting to swim the channel and he was also mindful that he had only 4 months before the actual event. Worse still he had paid a considerable amount of money ensuring that the event could go ahead and had received a great deal of sponsorship. In short a lot of people were relying on him…
As this task was for charity I agreed only to charge him for the first session and I would then see him free of charge for following sessions providing he kept a video diary during his practice. I learned from him that in order to be allowed to undertake this task you have to have a full health check and be able to swim at least six miles, so you can show you are fit enough. The actual swim is between 25 and 42 miles depending on tides! You are not allowed to wear a wetsuit and once in the water you can’t get out until you reach dry land in France.

Despite all precautions this could actually be a matter of life or death as it is a serious physical task and many factors including the weather are totally out of your control.
A key factor in coaching Pete was to use the tools from my PCW approach to removing anxiety, so he had a suitably calm but alert state when taking on this task. A key factor in helping him was giving him a full recording of each session we did together and ensuring that he listened back to these sessions to build his confidence. This is what he said afterwards about this aspect of the process

“Because I had your CD’s, so whenever I was wandering over the cliff tops and stuff like that for a walk, I was playing your audio and just changing perceptions, and the best thing was I could then get into the water, and you know that the swim this weekend was going to be more pleasant than the one the weekend before. As I was going through… I remember you made me question quite a few things that you assume are facts, because I would assume that the colder the water, the deeper it is, because I had a thing about deep water. And you would ask why. And you were right. As I was swimming and you go through this horribly cold patch, and I think it’s just an underwater river coming off the cliffs, but you immediately think it’s really, really deep water. And your first thought was how do you know its deep and challenge that assumption and that made me feel a bit better. Then you put in another thought which was that as long as it was deep enough to swim in, why was it a concern anyway, because as long as your arms aren’t scraping on the floor, whether it’s 150 metres deep or… the channel is 380 metres deep in some parts… why does it matter because you’re on the surface. It’s almost like you shouldn’t be scared of flying if the aeroplane is on the runway, what’s your problem? Maybe get concerned if you started to go down from a huge height, but the surface of the water is the safest place to be.”

On Sept 24th 5am he left Dover and began heading for France. Seventeen hours 55 minutes later he arrived on French soil. This is a great example of how to remove unhelpful anxiety and to build confidence in a real life context. This is what he said afterwards on the boat as he headed back to the UK

“Thank you for all your help – I couldn’t have done it without your help – You can now stand up in a room and say that your methods and techniques got this fat wheezing bloke across the channel, and I’d back you up 100%.”

Pete Windridge – France

We made a video documentary for his son, so when he gets older he can see what his dad achieved!

Nick Kemp

Phobia Cures live on the BBC