Charleston Hypnosis Center

Can Hypnosis Help You Heal From a Broken Heart?

2012-02-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

A Broken Heart Doesn't Have to Cloud Your Life Forever

“Can youhypnotize me to forget about someone?” I hear that request more often than you might expect. The truth is hypnosis can't make you forget the one who caused you heartache. However, my intention in writing this article is to inspire readers that you can use hypnosis as a powerful facilitator to help you understand your own personal journey and even heal after heartache.

The demise of a relationship, even one we know should or must end, can cause severe psychological and emotional stress. In shamanism, one of the oldest spiritual practices known to humankind, there is a core belief that when we suffer an emotional or physical trauma, a part our essence or soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. A shaman would be called in to perform a ritual called "Soul Retrieval" which was considered crucial to the person's healing process. As a hypnotherapist, I have had the honor to guide many clients through a similar sacred process to reclaim their energies, heal emotionally, and move forward.

In this article, I will share some brief stories of how hypnosis has helped my clients to heal after a break-up or divorce. (The names below have been changed for privacy.)

Stories of Betrayal Haunted Him: Jim had been divorced for two years. His wife had been the love of his life. She cheated on him with a best friend and the two went through a very bitter, ugly divorce. The whole experience left him "gun-shy" to date again for fear of getting hurt. In a very powerful hypnosis session, Jim was able to release the negative emotions from that experience and gain a much needed sense of closure helping him to feel free to move on.

The Ex-Boyfriend Who Haunted Her Dreams: Carrie had been married for over ten years when she came to get help with recurring dreams about an exboyfriend. It had been years since the breakup of her college sweetheart and first love of her life. Despite time passing and marrying another man, she kept dreaming that she was back at school, desperately trying to find her first love. She would frequently wake up frustrated and sad. Hypnosis helped her to understand the purpose of her recurring dream, gain some deep inner wisdom and the dreams stopped.

Obsession with the Other Man: Anne was married to a great guy. She described him as the perfect, loving, husband and father to their three children. Despite ideal circumstances, she found herself falling in love with another man she had met through work. Even though she knew it was wrong, she entered into a one night stand with the co-worker followed by a deep and intense emotional affair which they conducted via emails and texting. Anne knew that this love addiction would destroy her marriage if didn't stop. She sought help from a skilled therapist and used hypnosis to understand the unconscious reasons that compelled her obsession.

She Couldn't Say Goodbye to a Soul Mate: Susan found herself stuck in a long-term relationship that she knew was unhealthy for her. Her boyfriend treated her disrespectfully, often criticizing her in public and flirting with other women in her presence. On several occasions, she had even caught him cheating with other women. Each time that she would end the relationship, deep feelings of abandonment and grief overwhelmed her and she would end up take her cheating boyfriend back. In a past life hypnosis session, Sue remembered two previous lives with this man. In both, they had been husband and wife and circumstances had caused his untimely death which left her feeling devastated and alone. After hypnosis, Susan felt empowered to end her relationship with this man in this life.

These cases are just a few examples of the after effects caused by the psychological and emotional stress from a painful break-up or divorce. Here are some common symptoms that can be related to unresolved pain or grief:

FeelingEmotionally Detached or Numb
HabitualReplaying of Past Conversations or Memories
DebilitatingFear of Getting Hurt Again
Obsessionwith the Lost Lover
Griefthat Has Not Healed
Angerthat Doesn’t Dissipate or Transfers to Other People in Your Life
Problemswith Forgiveness
VictimMentality
Insomniaor Stressful Dreams Related to the Break-Up
Headachesand Other Physical Problems
PostTraumatic Stress
Manifestationor Worsening of Addictions to Numb Emotional Loss and Pain
ImmuneSystem Deficiencies Caused by PTSD
Hopelessnessor Depression
FeelLike a Part of You is Dead or Gone

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, seek advice from a medical doctor or licensed mental health professional before using a complimentary health modality like hypnosis.

Carolyn Myss, the best-selling author of several books on the subject of the mind-body connection to health and healing believes the emotional energy we divert focusing on painful memories, or in our efforts to suppress them, is the single most common cause of illness and disease.

If you resonate with the stories in this article and are interested in incorporating hypnosis into your own personal healing journey, please contact me and ask for a free consultation to discuss how hypnosis can help. All sessions are personalized and confidential.

In addition, I have created two very powerful and soulful Guided Meditation recordings on this topic. Click on the image to link to my online audio store for more information.

Heal Your Heart: Guided Meditation

Attract True Love: A Guided Meditation

The Secrets to Successful Smoking Cessation

2012-02-11T14:59:00.001-05:00

Smoking Cessation Secrets from an Expert

"How many hypnosis sessions will I need to quit smoking?" I smile everytime someone asks me this question. It is like asking "How many licks will it take to get the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" The truth is that it is different for everyone.

Over the past twenty years, I have helped hundreds of smokers to successfully quit smoking using hypnosis. This article will expose some of the most important secrets every smoker should know before you try to quit.

Secret Number 1: The amount of time that you've been a smoker has no correlation to how easy or difficult it is to stop smoking.

In reality, it has more to do with your will power, motivation, as well as, your fears and resistance. One primary benefit of hypnosis is that it can help you address all of these aspects to work in your favor.

Secret Number 2: You don not have to be ready to quit smoking before you start.

Hypnosis is considered a behavior support program. It can help you overcome self-sabotage and mentally prepare to quit.

Secret Number 3: People who successfully quit smoking with hypnosis fall into three categories.

I will describe the three successful types of quitters below.

Some People Quit Smoking with Just One Session

Type 1: Lightswitch Quitters:
The first type of client quits with just one session! Yes! For you,  hypnosis seems to flip some sort of mental light switch that takes the brain from smoker to non-smoker in just one hour. When, I first began my practice and saw this happening for my clients, I truly became a believer in the power of hypnosis and the mind itself.

How Do I Know if I am a Type 1? You honestly don't. The subconscious seems to have an agenda all its own. I have worked with clients who expected to flip a switch and it didn't happen. Then, I have worked with doubting Thomas clients who have surprised themselves and quit with just one session.    The important thing to know is don't be discouraged if you need more than one session. Further, don't blame yourself or the hypnotherapist if one session doesn't work for you. It usually indicates that you are just a different type of quitter.

Type 2: Quitting is a Process Not an Event:
The second type of quitter is the one who takes two to three sessions to stop smoking. My clients who fall into this category express feeling stress and anxiety just thinking about giving up cigarettes.  In a process to quit, you will find that you are much more successful if you use the power of hypnosis to help you mentally prepare before the actual smoking cessation session.

Ending Cigarettes Can Be a Journey

What is involved when you need a process to quit? For most clients, a helpful first session would teach you how to replace cigarettes with healthier stress reduction tools. Another session might help you to work through self-sabotage or mental resistance. The third session usually is the one where you will actually receive suggestions to quit. If you need a process to quit smoking, audio recordings containing post-hypnotic suggestions to reinforce whatever you need for mental support are as important as the sessions themselves.

Type 3: Quitting Cigarettes is Like Losing My Best Friend:
Lastly, for some smokers, the process of quitting can be a grief filled one evoking similar emotions that are felt during a break up with a lover or best friend. If you are this type of smoker, you may have heard yourself say, "I love smoking!" or "Cigarettes are my best friend!"

Quitting Smoking Can Feel Like Losing a Friend

Why am I emotionally attached to something I know is bad for me? Some people associate cigarettes with a way to bond with others. Then, when they try to quit, they feel alone and grieve the loss of the connection to other smokers. Furthermore, people who grive the loss of cigarettes often smoke to avoid uncomfortable situations or feelings like boredom, anger, or sadness. Then, when they stop they feel emotionally out of control or sad because the cigarettes have been there to help.

Hypnosis Helps You No Matter What You Need: No matter where you are in your journey to become a non-smoker, know that it can happen and that hypnosis is a powerful tool to help you quit smoking easier. Avoid comparing yourself to others or criticize yourself because you need help to quit. Don't get discouraged if you need a process versus one session. Don't give up if you know that a break-up is in store. We have all lived through those especially with a little help from others.

Read more about using hypnosis to Quit Smoking. Call Rebecca at (843) 597-9200 or email rebecca@charlestonhypnotherapy.com for a FREE consultation and let me tell you about the smoking cessation program that is right for you.

Words That Secretly Keep You Overweight

2012-01-24T08:49:00.000-05:00

As a hypnotherapist, words are my tools. They are what I use to help others release unwanted habits, develop confidence, or achieve a goal. Words can have an unconscious effect on people both good and bad. Certain words may cause a different feeling for you and your neighbor, like the word, "snow." Some people love it, others hate it. Other words seem to have a universal effect on people.

The Word 'Diet' is Associated with Deprivation

Think about the word "DIET." A good majority of us cringe just saying the word. A DIET is a set of rules you follow in order to achieve a goal weight or size. Most of us associate it with a sense of deprivation which is a very powerful feeling that leads to self-sabotage.

The Diet-Binge Cycle

The result of dieting is often the Diet-Binge Cycle. The cycle goes like this: you diet, you feel deprived, you soothe yourself with comfort food and overeating, you feel guilty that you overate or binged. And then, you go and diet again. ..a never ending cycle.

To stop the Diet/Binge Cycle, Hypnosis and Guided Imagery can help. You can learn how to change the beliefs that you have about certain foods so that when you make changes in eating patterns, then you don't have to feel deprived. The same tools are, also, very powerful in helping you to separate out how you deal with stress and stressful emotions instead of using food.

Say, "Slim Down" Instead!

"LOSE WEIGHT" is another common term that could be thwarting you without you even knowing it. Think about how the word is most often used in the English language. Almost ALL phrases containing the words "LOSE", "LOSS" or "LOST" convey a feeling negative connotation. In other words, what you have lost is also very desirable to obtain, recover or have again.

Here are some of the most common examples where LOSING has a negative and oftentimes unwanted effect that will stimulate the unconscious to recover what has been lost:

Lose an Object Like Your Car Keys or Cell Phone
Lose a Game
Lose a Job
Lose Sight of the Goal
Lose a Loved One
Lose Your Patience
Lose Your Motivation
Your Motivation Perhaps?
Lose Your Mind!

Because losing sparks an intuitive desire to reclaim and recover, it makes sense that the common phrases used by huge companies like Jennie Craig and Weight Watchers might be sabotaging you!

Furthermore, from a logical standpoint, saying "Lose Weight" to become slim is like saying, "Lose Slowness" to run faster or "Lose Clutter" when you want your house to be clean. It doesn't make sense.

Your inner mind tends to take everything you say literally. It is why I tell clients not to criticize themselves with phrases like "I am so fat." The inner mind responds more willingly to positive suggestions and statements. For example, phrase your intention in a positive way by saying you are "shedding weight" or "getting rid of pounds." Affirm you desired outcome instead by saying, "I am slimming down" or "I am getting healthy." You might be surprised how just the simplest change in how you say something can make the biggest difference in your success!

How I Discovered the Power of Hypnosis

2012-01-17T07:55:00.001-05:00

I moved to southern California in the fall of 1991 at the age of 25. I distinctly remember the gratitude I felt. What wasn't there to love about my life? I lived a half block from the sand in Newport Beach, drove a cute, and fully paid for Volkswagon Cabriolet convertible, had made many friends, and was earning $65,000 a year working as an environmental engineer.

Newport Beach, CA Sunset

Despite this idyllic life, I felt bouts of sadness and hopelessness that would roll over me like the morning fog coming off the Pacific Ocean. I would try to talk myself out of the feelings by reminding myself of how wonderful my life was. It didn't work and I felt stuck.

It's funny how you know something is really wrong inside when your life is so good that you can't blame your unhappiness on anything or anyone around you.

My best friend suggested counseling. I resisted. Not because I didn't believe in the effectiveness of therapy but because I had been through so much of it already. Due to my father's alcoholism, I had participated in all kinds of therapeutic counseling including Ala-Teen, family therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and psychotherapy from age 16 to age 24. It helped immensely and I was able to detach from the dysfunction, stop feeling like a victim, and most of all, gain the powerful understanding that my thoughts create my emotions.

28th Street, Newport Beach, CA 1992

However, at this point, I asked myself, "What could they tell me that I haven't already heard? That I don't already know?" I know how I am supposed to be thinking and feeling to be happy but it's not happening!

Well, back then, southern California was a bit more progressive in complimentary health modalities than Washington, D.C. I had heard about hypnotherapy and that it could effect deeper levels of change than what we can reach consciously. Frankly, I always have had the attitude, "I'll try anything once. " So, I looked in the yellow pages of my local phone book (back before google and the internet) and found a list of certified clinical hypnotherapists. I remember picking a woman named Laurie Miller because her photograph looked "normal."

I will never forget my first session. I walked in there desperate for relief and, thus, fearless of the experience. I didn't know what to expect. Immediately, she made me feel safe and comfortable. I told her that I felt depressed and explained that it probably went back to my father and childhood. Then, she began the process of hypnosis with me.

She guided me to the source of my sadness and I found myself remembering a scene from age 10 where I had gotten hurt falling off my bicycle and had not been nurtured in the aftermath despite my cry for help. In a moment of clarity, while in this state of deeper concentration, the memory seemed to exemplify a pattern I experienced as a child of having to deal with sad or hurt feelings on my own. This, in turn, reminded me of a pervading sense of loneliness and disconnection that I had felt as a child. Back then, I learned to stuff the feelings since there was no one to validate them.

At this point, in the hypnosis session, the hypnotherapist guided me to rewrite the story "how it should have been." Immediately, I felt a huge flood of emotion as if I was that 10 year old again. Except this time, I let myself cry and imagined that I was nurtured through the experience. The session was especially cathartic and, by the end, I felt clearer in some inexplicable way.

That night I felt tired and I slept hard. Then, I will never forget. Two days later, I felt physically and emotionally lighter! Like I had literally and figuratively lost 15 pounds! I had no clue on the conscious level that so much emotion was still being held around that story. In fact, I imagine that days before, if you had asked me about that memory, I would have remembered it but I don't think I would have known that there was still so much emotion attached to it on a different level within. The hypnosis session was so powerful and healing for me that I went back several more times to continue the process.

That was when I realized that there is no such thing as time for an emotional upset or trauma that has not been cleared or healed on the emotional level.

Years can go by. We can talk about past hurts and traumas and choose to think about them differently in order to have more peace. And yet, if we do not clear them on the emotional level, we may have a very hard time feeling better.

So, it was then, that I knew that HYPNOSIS IS POWERFUL. The process so profoundly transformed me that I quit engineering to help others the way that I was once helped years ago. It is my mission to help those who know they want to behave or feel differently and need help, like I did, to make those changes happen on the deeper level where it is felt and known mind, body, and soul.

To Move Forward, Leave the Baggage Behind

2012-01-07T20:47:00.001-05:00

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - Andre Gide
Begin Again...It's that time of year. You know which behaviors are no longer serving you and that you sincerely want to overcome them. For most people, New Year Resolutions are our intentions for beginning life anew. Ask yourself:

"What do I want to change or let go of as I move forward in 2012?"
Some of the patterns or habits you'd like to change are probably obvious to you. Most commonly, we think of people who want to eliminate bad habits like smoking or overeating. Others will reveal themselves more subtly. However, when you dig deeper, you realize that the journey to your earthly Nirvana requires you leave your baggage behind - Mind, Body, and Soul.

Take time to go within and honor your truth....

· Is your gut instinct telling you to leave a stressful job, a toxic relationship or move somewhere new?
·Do you want to shed weight or overcome symptoms from a chronic illness?
·Are there negative or fearful beliefs that steal your energy and motivation?
·Is it time to release anger, resentment, or sadness that keep you from being happy?

Once you have identified 'THE LIST', it's time to let your creative mind help to move you forward in the right direction.

Guided Imagery is a tool which engages your creative mind to give you insight and help support a process of self-discovery and personal transformation where you can actively choose and discern which patterns are no longer serving you and which ones you want to change.

You can begin today. Sign up to 'Follow by Email' in the right hand column of this page and you will be sent a coupon code for a complimentary copy of an audio guided imagery called, Leave Your Baggage Behind. This recording is available exclusively at the new Charleston Hypnosis Center Store

Remember that you have the choice and the ability to create positive change in your life. You are not stuck in patterns that are not serving you! Setting the intention to leave the baggage behind is the first step! Using tools like Hypnosis and Guided Imagery give you the power to more fully realize the person you truly are and want to be in the world.

With Love and Gratitude,

Rebecca

Finding Your Way to Cope with Loss and Grief

2012-01-07T12:02:00.001-05:00

This is a reprint from a newsletter I wrote in November 2011, a month after my father suddenly died at age 69.

Over the course of 20 years, I have worked with a vast number of clients to heal from the grief of losing a loved one to death. In many cases, the loss came as a shock when the loved one died unexpectedly. In others, the loss is felt just as painfully when the passing was expected to happen due to illness or aging. In either circumstance, when we lose someone close to us, it is evident that on the emotional level, there is no such thing as time. The loss of a loved one can be felt for years, decades or even a lifetime.

To heal from the loss of a loved one, it is helpful to use techniques like hypnosis or guided imagery that go beyond your logical voice and connect with that part of you where true wisdom and healing take place.
Many of the unique imageries, symbols and affirmations that I use with my clients and in my Audio Hypnosis Recordings have been born out of my own journey towards peace and serenity.

"I am standing in a beautiful green meadow. There are shade trees and a brilliant blue sky up above. My father is there and he is young and healthy and smiling at me. I begin to cry. He says, "You don't have to be sad. What is real can never be taken from you." I reply, "Then are you saying that you were never real? Because you are not with me any more." He looks at me with such compassion in his eyes and he speaks with such certainty, "Now, I am always with you."

Then, I hand him my pain and sorrow in the form of a dark ball of energy. He transforms it into orange butterflies that rise above us and spread out over the green meadow. I feel as if a heaviness inside has released and I am ready to face the day with love and hope in my heart."

May you all know this peace. I would be honored to help you on your own journey to heal grief,
Rebecca Shaw, CCH Owner and Director
Charleston Hypnosis Center