Categories
hypnosis Panic Attack

Seven Steps Towards Freedom from Panic Attacks

Your trolley is half full, mind trying desperately to remember that item you know you’ve forgotten, something for dinner, or was it the bathroom, looking along the rows of checkouts, shortest queue… fastest queue… it’s so busy… so many people… can’t move… can’t get past… palms starting to get a little slippery on the handle… it’s hot in here… where’s the exit… not too far away… people in front… people behind now… feeling trapped… why can’t she scan faster… why can’t you have your card ready to pay instead of spending 10 minutes rooting around in the bottom of your bag keeping us all waiting… heart rate increasing… mouth getting a little dry… people looking at me… finding it difficult to breathe… can’t get any air in… going to faint… need to escape… need to get out…

If any of that sounds familiar, then you probably know all about panic attacks. Well you probably know all about them from the inside. You will also know all about how after that first time you experienced one – whether it was in a supermarket, cinema, theatre, aircraft, out in a busy street…, you became wary. Wary of going out; wary of trusting your body not to let you down; wary of people being around you, especially strangers.

You’re not sure but you think you might have been having a heart attack, or a severe drop in blood pressure, or a brain tumour. So you visit your doctor who checks you out very thoroughly and pronounces that you are as fit as a fiddle. ‘You’ve probably just had a panic attack’, opens the door and bids you farewell as if you’ve been wasting his/her valuable time, or as if this collapse of your whole world is the most trivial of health problems and ranks with a minor cut or bruise.

But you know that something is wrong. Seriously wrong.

And quite suddenly your world was no longer safe. But the worst part of it was, that deep down, you knew it wasn’t your world that was the problem. It was you. Your body was no longer reliable. You couldn’t trust it to keep you safe and comfortable. And the nightmarish aspect of it all was that you couldn’t predict when it would let you down. I mean you’ve shopped in supermarkets quite happily all your life, but now they are dangerous places and perhaps best avoided, or only visited with a trusted and close friend so that if anything happens there will be someone with you to deflect the embarrassment.

Then you have another.

Step 1: Decide right NOW that you will do whatever you need to do in order to free yourself from this problem.

That’s when life gets really difficult and your world starts to close down quite quickly. You can never be sure when the next one will hit so you avoid anything that even slightly reminds you of the circumstances surrounding a previous Attack.

Step 2: As soon as you notice yourself hyperventilating (rapid breathing/breathlessness/difficulty breathing in), just close your mouth – and keep it closed.

The only problem you have is Fear. Fear of what might happen to you. Fear of dying. Fear of ending up in hospital. Fear of being carted away in an ambulance. Fear of lying on the floor with a circle of people around you. Fear of acute embarrassment. Fear of not being able to ever go back to that place in case someone recognises you.

So just forget for a minute what the fear is about, because that’s just cosmetic. Fear is the problem.

Step 3: Just accept that during a panic attack you are frightened. Don’t pretend anything else is going on.

Now, if you were out wandering alone in the African bush and there just 30 feet away was a full grown rhinoceros, you wouldn’t be at all surprised if your heart rate increased suddenly. If it then took a step towards you, you wouldn’t be in the least surprised to find your breathing rate increasing, your mouth getting a little dry, your gut feeling uncomfortable and so on.

Interestingly these are exactly the same ‘symptoms’ that you experienced while having a panic Attack. In the supermarket it was an embarrassment. Here it could save your life. Increased heart rate gets more oxygen to your muscles so you can run or fight, or climb a tree, rapid breathing gets more oxygen in your blood, dry mouth is an indication of a withdrawal of fluids from your extremities so that in the case of injury you won’t lose so much blood. Gut discomfort so that if the worst comes to the worst you can easily create a smelly distraction to give you time to escape (this evolved in the days before underwear was invented). Your body is working perfectly to keep you safe. And you feel pleased that it does so.

Yet when your body does exactly the same thing in the supermarket, you are unhappy with it. Maybe we should get supermarkets to stock rhinoceroses!

You can’t have a panic attack if you are smiling.

Step 4: Next time you feel those first warning signs, have a look round, with a smile on your face, and ask yourself ‘Where’s the rhinoceros?’

What causes all those ‘symptoms’? It’s adrenaline, released by the adrenal glands sitting on top of your kidneys. Adrenaline is a hormone and consequently is produced in tiny amounts that have instantaneous effects on a whole range of body processes. Now what you might not know is that your mind can’t tell the difference between fact and fantasy. Just picture yourself cutting a juicy, bright yellow lemon in half, picking up a piece, holding it under your nose and breathing in that wonderful fresh scent and then gently squeezing it until sour lemony juice drips onto the tip of your tongue. I’ll be very surprised if you don’t get an increased saliva flow – yet there’s no lemon, just a mental image. Your brain really can’t tell the difference between real and imagined, fact or fantasy.

Adrenaline is produced in response to danger – perceived or real. So if a mild fear thought about say, finances, relationships, getting home in time, problems at work, socially and so on wanders through your mind, you might not notice it, but your adrenal glands will. Now physiologically sensitive people will notice the effects immediately, focus on them and worry what they mean. This is another fear thought and releases more adrenaline. Then you notice the intensification of symptomology and think ‘oh my God! I was right to be worried, it’s getting worse’. This is another fear thought, releasing yet more adrenaline, and so the whole process snowballs and before you know where you are you are in the middle of a full blown panic attack, and you have no idea where it came from because you weren’t noticing all the individual little steps that happened so fast it seemed instantaneous.

Step 5: Remind yourself that you aren’t going to die. No matter how bad you feel, no one has ever died from a panic attack.

Step 6: Remind yourself you are ONLY feeling the effects of an adrenaline release.

You may not know why the adrenaline was released. You may not be able to track down the thought that released it, but all you are dealing with is an adrenaline release that is either escalating, or reducing. When it starts to die down, because you haven’t done the physical stuff, like running away or fighting, you will still feel uncomfortable, this is when you may feel light-headed, get jelly-legs or feel a bit wobbly or nauseous. It’s still just adrenaline you’re suffering from. You’d be more likely to die without it than with it.

Step 7: Carry a notebook and pen with you at all times. If you experience yourself having a panic attack, get the notebook out and start to make a note of all the symptoms you are experiencing and make a pact with yourself that whenever you do this you will continue writing down your symptoms (you could score them on a scale of intensity of 1 to 10 as well if you like) until they start to reduce. As soon as you notice them start to lessen you can go from wherever you are to somewhere ‘safer’, but you must stay in the place where the symptoms first became noticeable until they start to diminish.

When you do this you break the Fear Cycle.

When you break the Fear Cycle you are on the road to freedom.

Author: Michael J. Hadfield

Source: Hypnosisiseasy

Categories
hypnosis weight control

Hypnosis for Weight Control – Why Diets Can’t Keep the Weight Off for You

The trouble with diets is that you have to think about food all the time. Though “At first a diet can give you a sense of control. You are taking charge of your eating patterns. You may see success as the scale drops. But soon you are fighting cravings for forbidden foods, as well as hunger pangs and a lack of energy from the lower calorie level. Eventually you rebel against the diet and start “cheating.” If your cheats are small you can still be losing weight, although more slowly. But soon you may go into full rebellion and return to your old eating habits” Am Psychol. 2007

This is how the well known yo-yo effect starts. You get all enthusiastic, go wholeheartedly into the new diet, lose some pounds; then after a few weeks, or a few months, the enthusiasm starts to slip, you’ve done really well, and you want to give yourself a treat or a day off, then that day happens once a week, twice a week, three times a week and the treat happens once a week, once a day, three times a day…

The pounds slip back on, the clothes slowly tighten up again, and you look in the mirror one morning and think I was doing so well…

…or no matter what you do, how closely you stick to the diet, nothing much happens. Others lose pounds, you lose ounces, or even gain them. Life is so unfair…

…or you spend the whole ‘diet-time’ thinking about food, thinking about what you can and can’t eat, counting calories, or points, or syns. Until you get fed-up with the whole thing and give it up…

…for a while…

…and then, usually after Christmas, when you go try on the new summer outfits…  it all starts all over again.

The trouble, I hasten to add, is not with what the diets suggest you eat. The vast majority of them provide good healthy rules for eating that will provide you with a nutritious and balanced intake of food. And lots of people do lose weight using these tried, tested and very successful methods.But the weight doesn’t stay off. The reason is the reasons for weight accumulation are not being addressed. One of the assumptions made is that weight is purely the product of what you put into your mouth and how much energy you expend. Lots of energy expenditure i.e. active life, low calorie intake equals weight loss. Sedentary lifestyle, high calorie intake equals weight gain.

That’s simple maths and it’s perfectly true. You eat fewer calories than you expend and your body has to get those extra calories from somewhere. What you are told is that it gets them from the fat it has carefully stored away under your skin, for just such an emergency. But the truth is that it takes it from lean muscle tissue, because the body knows that lean muscle burns calories even when resting and the body is trying to conserve energy because food seems to be in short supply.

Another assumption is that it is about metabolism or genes. But the territory that is not normally explored is the territory of emotional eating. If it was explored you would find associations with food and being good buried in the subconscious. When you were good as a young child, sweets, candy, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, cookies, were the reward for that goodness. When you pleased your parents, this is frequently the treat that was given. But very soon that got twisted and you assumed that if you didn’t get it, you had been bad. And so eating this sort of food gave your subconscious mind the message ‘I am a good and/or loveable person’. The only reason your subconscious would need to be re-assured about that is if it didn’t believe it already. But when you stop giving yourself these ‘treats’, then at a subconscious level, you feel you must have been bad and you are driven to eat something forbidden just to reassure yourself that you really are good.

Now, when hypnosis is used in weight control, the focus is not purely on changing your eating habits. The focus is on changing you deep down inside. Or more accurately, correcting a view of you (someone who is not loveable) that is mistaken, and bringing back to the front the more correct view of you which is that you are as special and as loveable as everyone else.

You will eat differently, and will eat less, but that is purely because hypnosis reconnects you with you, so you listen to your body and feed it when it’s hungry. What hypnosis doesn’t do is give you rules about what you can and can’t eat. By reminding you of the truth about you, we release a power, or an energy, that starts to work with you rather than against you. When you work purely to a diet plan, without addressing underlying subconscious issues (and I’ve only touched on one here – there are many more) there are two of you. One wanting to be slim, and one needing the re-assurance of treats. And the one needing the re-assurance of treats will work to sabotage the diet plan – because their needs have been ignored.

A hypnotherapist works on improving how you feel about yourself, they also install post-hypnotic suggestions that will make it much easier for you to not only have no desire to eat the foods full of calories, but also assist you in achieving a pleasure in eating foods that are good for you that outweighs any pleasure you ever obtained from eating sugary sweet sickly foods.

This control is short term and just to break the habit element of eating. For in truth, you can eat anything you want and stay slim. The emphasis being on want. Hypnosis retrains your mind so that what you want is to nourish a body you care for – easily, effortlessly. Once this is achieved it remains.

When you already feel good about yourself, you have no need to demonstrate that by eating foods that are bad for you. Wholesome, attractive, tasty, well-prepared food is what you deserve – always.

If you want to know more, or would like some help in easily and permanently losing weight and feeling good, then check out my website.

Author: Michael J. Hadfield

Source: Hypnosisiseasy

Categories
hypnosis weight control

Weight Loss, Diets, And Fat

The trouble is fat. Bodies just make the stuff. If fat had never been invented, we could all eat what we like, stay beautiful, and never have to diet or lose weight. Unfortunately some fat is essential to good health. It is a handy insulator that helps regulate internal body temperature, and it really does come in handy when we have flu and don’t have the energy, or the desire, to eat.

“I’m allergic to food.  Every time I eat it breaks out into fat.”
~Jennifer Greene Duncan

However, fat really is necessary and needs to be a part of a healthy diet. The trick is to have just the right amount.

Far too many people consider that whether or not you accumulate fat is down to simple maths. If you eat more calories than you use then you get fat. If you use more calories than you eat then you lose weight. This is the basis of all the calorie reduced diets for weight loss.

For people with an active life, this isn’t too bad. If you spend your work day sitting on a chair and your evenings and weekends sitting on a couch, then calories in have to be reduced to almost zero to make you lose weight.

Yo-Yo diets

But thousands of people use this simple maths to create the Hell of yo-yo diets; the Hell of being unable to eat what they want when they want; the Hell of social isolation because they don’t have enough will power to eat lettuce when all their friends have huge plates filled with steak, fries, onions, mushrooms… and desserts filled with cream.

And thousands of people use this simple maths to watch the pounds fall off for a week or two, then slow down, then accumulate, then fall off again and they fight a constant battle with themselves and their diet. They can even end up hating who they are because their bodies won’t do what they think their minds are telling them to.

Diet clubs

I visit a coffee bar that has a meeting room where Weight Watchers and Slimming World diet clubs hold meetings. I feel a little sad when I see women arriving for their weigh in and nipping into the toilet to relieve themselves of those few desperate ounces so they might just tip the balance and clock up a loss rather than a gain. Because, of course, the public humiliation of having gained a pound, never mind two, is more than can be tolerated. I feel sad because there is a much better, much easier way to lose weight without public weighing or a gimmicky diet.

This is no way to live.

This is not happiness.

I know how to lose weight without dieting.

And this is all down to that simple maths…

…simple maths that is just plain WRONG.

Dieting fights the body’s own intelligence

You see bodies are intelligent. Your body is an intelligent system. I bet that when you were a child you cut yourself. And I bet that within a few days there was almost no trace of a wound. This is the intelligence I am talking about. You did not have to tell the body to start vasoconstriction to reduce blood loss. You did not have to send the message to rush platelets to the damaged blood vessels to start to shore up the hole. Nor did yo have to tell the body to form fibrin to hold the platelets in place and eventually form the protective clot. And I bet you didn’t have anything to do with then rushing white blood cells to gobble up any invading micro-organisms to prevent infection.

And then there’s the whole process of making an invisible, or almost invisible, mend that follows on from this initial reaction to bleeding.

Supply & Demand

Fat is survival. When food is in short supply, fat is deposited. Now you would think that fat would be laid down when food is plentiful. So consider this: from the days when our body systems evolved. Plentiful food would have been frequent small meals (fruits & berries eaten while they were gathered). Eating would stop once the stomach was full – because there was plenty more where that came from. In these circumstances there is no need for fat deposits.

But infrequent meals and very large meals when eating is continued after the stomach is full (a successful hunt after several days without game), is a very strong message to the body that food supply is uncertain so fat deposition would be helpful.

Most people who are overweight eat past fullness. This tells your body food shortage.

Most people who are overweight get little exercise. This tells your body that there is no food to find, so conserve energy.

Most people who are overweight go on diets. This tells your body that food is in short supply.

And what your body does when food is in short supply is to LAY DOWN FAT and conserve energy.

Energy conservation

Now I mentioned the simple maths that is the basis for the calorie reduction diet plans designed to help you lose weight. Because your body is intelligent, when food is in short supply and it needs energy (Calories) it does something quite brilliant. It burns up lean muscle rather than burning up fat. The reason it does this is that lean muscle tissue uses up calories by simply being there. Take two people in the same room sitting watching tv, one very fat, the other very fit. The fit one is burning up many times more calories than the fat one. This is because lean muscle tissue burns calories just by existing. A fit individual will use up 500-700 Calories a day just lying in bed. So the intelligence of the body says – we need to get rid of lean muscle because food is in short supply and we will stand a better chance of survival if we save our fat calories for real emergencies.

The consequence of this of course is that, as you diet, your muscle/fat ratio slowly shifts in the direction of more fat. The effect of this is that your body’s metabolic rate is lowered (your intelligent body’s energy conservation planning). Making it ever harder to lose weight the next time you start a diet. So next time you start a diet you will give up sooner because each time you repeat the cycle – it gets harder to lose weight.

If you diet regularly all you are doing is accumulating more and more fat, making it harder and harder to lose weight – because the weight loss is largely from muscle loss and you have less muscle to lose.

You cannot fight this.

You cannot effectively lose weight, long-term, like this.

Lose weight without dieting

If you want to lose weight, you have to work with your body’s intelligence, not against it.

You may not appreciate that you don’t have to diet to lose weight. You just have to eat differently. But you can still eat what you want. It sounds too good to be true. And it gets better. It can be fairly effortless. No more fighting. No more will power battles.

More details are available on my website.

Author: Michael J. Hadfield

Source: Hypnosisiseasy

Categories
hypnosis weight control

Food – Master or servant?

Normal is an interesting word. Normal is just what most people do, or maybe even behaviour that others accept without question. Normal does not mean best. Normal does not mean healthiest.

Overweight is becoming normal, yet overweight clearly is not the optimum condition for our bodies.

Why?

Why is food controlling the minds of so many people? This must be what is happening because the body isn’t designed to be fat. It is designed to store fat, but that’s something completely different.

What bodies have are mechanisms that create sensations that are understood as time to start looking for something to eat. These sensations we call hunger. And sensations that are understood as time to stop eating. These sensations we call satiety or fullness. If we only took notice of these sensations and started to look for something to eat when we felt hungry and stopped eating the minute we felt sated, it is unlikely that anyone would have a problem with excess weight.

So why don’t people listen to their bodies any more?

Maybe because food has become something it was never intended to be – the Master.

A typical day for many people:

  • Wake up – Breakfast
  • Spend morning looking forward to break time and snack
  • Spend rest of morning looking forward to lunchtime
  • Clock decides when it is time to eat lunch
  • Spend afternoon looking forward to break time and snack
  • Spend rest of afternoon looking forward to going home time and eating a meal.
  • Clock decides when it is time for evening meal
  • Watch TV
  • Have supper (clock or commercial breaks decide time for supper)

Just have a look at your own day and see what it is in you that dictates when and what you eat. If it isn’t internal feelings or sensations then food is your Master.

And yes, I know that when we are employed it isn’t possible to eat at any other time than official breaks. I’m not suggesting that you can be doing anything other than what you are doing. I’m just drawing your attention to what is actually going on.

The art of cooking, using fresh ingredients is dying. You only have to look around any supermarket to see the vast number of ready meals, and the amount of money that is invested in meals that are 95% fat free (which is just another way of saying that one-twentieth of this meal is pure fat), or gives the impression that it has been lovingly cooked just for someone who wants to eat more healthily. Why are these foods so popular? They are popular because they carry the subliminal promise of continuing to allow food to be your Master while not suffering any adverse consequences – like unattractiveness. And because everyone wants to be seen as attractive, the lie is accepted.

Eating is undeniably a pleasurable activity – especially when the food contains a reasonable amount of fat (fat makes food palatable) and/or a reasonable amount of sugar.

The trouble is that manufactured food has very little flavour. It has plenty of sodium, and spices, and herbs, and chemicals, and garlic to fool your mouth into thinking there’s some flavour, and it frequently has added colour so it looks more palatable than it actually is. Real food has flavour. And real food satisfies so there is a greater experience of pleasure, and satisfaction is reached sooner, so less is required. If you want to experience real flavour – get yourself a big plant pot, fill it with soil-based compost, place it in a sunny spot, and sow some carrot seed in spring. Pull the carrots when they are about two or three inches long, wipe them, and bite.

If you want a healthy body, and you want to be just the right weight for that body, then for you to achieve that you have to want it more than you want to eat. Or you have to find something that gives you more pleasure than food and have that instead. That way you don’t have to give up anything. So start to notice the eating triggers – those things that dictate to you that it’s time to eat something. When one of the triggers goes off, just check in with your body and sense if it feels hungry or not. If it does, by all means have something to eat, but after every few mouthfuls just check in again and see if your body is starting to feel full. If it is then just stop eating and forget about how much food is left on the plate, and forget about how much you paid for it too.

If you feel you have to eat at specific times, then just do the fullness check.

Doing this will put your food back into its rightful place as servant and give you back control of your life.

Many people with a weight problem, don’t really know what Healthy Hunger feels like, so they can’t correctly interpret the messages that their body sends. If you want to experience Healthy Hunger, and you are in good health, then just don’t eat anything for 24 hours, and only drink water – as much of this as you want. If you have any concerns about this, or you have health problems other than weight, then be sure to consult your doctor for advice before engaging with this exercise. Be sure you do this on a day when you can rest and take gentle exercise, and be sure that you don’t engage in any activities where concentration is needed for your safety. By the end of the 24 hours you should have a nice sensation that suggests eating something nutritious would feel good, so break your fast with some juicy, sweet, fruit. After this you will become aware of a much gentler pleasurable sensation that says it’s time to start preparing some food. This sensation of Healthy Hunger is there to assist us in enjoying and obtaining greater pleasure from what we eat. So instead of looking forward to mealtime, look forward to feeling hungry.

But don’t forget that if you choose to no longer be influenced by the pictures on the packets of food from the factory (and remember that prepared food comes from a factory – it’s just the picture on the packet that was taken in a kitchen), then you release yourself to buy delicious, fresh, maybe even organic, fruits, nuts, meats and vegetables. If your body is fed well-cooked wholesome foods it will be satisfied more easily.

So make a choice right now to be in control.

And remember all you have to do is simply:

Eat when you’re hungry.

Stop when you’re full

And enjoy every mouthful.

This isn’t a restrictive diet.

Nothing is banned.

It’s a recipe for pleasurable weight loss.

If you feel that you would like some help and support during the period you would like to be losing weight then visit my website, or if you would just like to know exactly why diets don’t work then click here.

Author: Michael J. Hadfield

Source: Hypnosisiseasy

Categories
hypnosis IBS

Irritable Bowel Syndrome – Relief is at Hand

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a strange problem. Strange because although it is defined as what it is by the Medical Profession, they define it as a non-disease. So what exactly is a non-disease? A non-disease is a physical problem that is common enough to warrant a label, but upon investigation shows no evidence of any physical abnormality. In other words, the gut of someone with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) looks just the same as the gut of someone with a normal healthy digestive tract.

So how do doctors identify IBS as the problem?

What they do is look at all of the symptoms, and if the symptoms do not apply to any other disease in their list of diseases – then it is diagnosed as IBS.

To me this seems a little unscientific to say the least. Still at least it gives the sufferer a diagnosis and a label. And, after all, that is what most people want from their doctor.

Okay, so there is a diagnosis. Surely that is the precursor to a cure or at least to some medication that will remove the symptoms?

You would think!

Unfortunately there is no cure for IBS. Nor are there any drugs that effectively medicate the problem.

One of the problems that the medical world has with IBS is its inconsistency. Some people suffer a great deal of pain, others less so. Some have diarrhoea, some have constipation – my most recent client suffers from both. Some can go out, some end up virtually housebound because of the necessity to always be within running distance of a toilet.

IBS is a horribly, debilitating, quality-of-life destroying problem that affects over 10% of the western world. IBS is a very common problem.

A lot of people find IBS seems to be connected with their diet and that cutting down on certain foods brings alleviation of symptoms. Others would practically have to eat nothing and would still be suffering. But since it is foods like wheat or dairy that are most problematic, and since foods like wheat or dairy are in almost every manufactured food and, therefore, difficult to eliminate – sufferers frequently continue to eat and put up with the suffering. It seems easier to have some pleasure in life, that is food, and swallow laxatives or diarrhoea treatments to deal with the resultant problems.

One of the clear associations with IBS that has emerged is that of stress. Stress aggravates the bowel. A lot of work has been done that shows that, even if nothing else is attended to, that stress reduction alleviates IBS symptoms and provides relief. And by far the best techniques for stress reduction are hypnosis and meditation. Meditation takes some determination to learn and requires regular (daily) practice. Hypnosis is easier because all you have to do is listen. You can listen to a CD or to a hypnotherapist in a one-to-one session.

However, to just use hypnosis for stress-reduction would be a waste of a very powerful healing resource. Hypnosis can impact and relieve symptoms. Hypnosis has been known to cure (though significant relief from symptoms is a more likely outcome of treatment). To find out more about how hypnosis can quickly bring about relief from IBS symptoms – visit my website for more information.

Author: Michael J. Hadfield

Source: Hypnosisiseasy