Cult deconditioning [6:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (205)

Many years ago I went to a lecture by Arthur Deikman MD (author of The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behaviour in American Society, Beacon Press 1994). He spoke about cult behaviour and how cults operate and why it can feel so hard to leave them. Leaving a cult, even one that abuses you, can feel very hard for many people. Cults brainwash people by a mixture of:

Meeting basic human needs for:

Of course, these needs can be met in a multitude of ways outside of a cult, but the ‘message’ of the cult is that ‘only we can give you these things’ and that life outside the cult will be devoid of meaning.

Cults will prey on vulnerable people whose basic emotional and even physical needs are not adequately met in life. A cult may seem to offer to meet all these needs in one package on a plate. This can feel overwhelming if you have felt lonely, frightened, purposeless and so on. If your needs are met healthily already, then you are much less likely to fall for a cult.

Other ways that cults brainwash

Cults have other ways to brainwash people:

A central all powerful cult figure

Cults will form around a central, often charismatic cult leader. Many cult followers may begin to have doubts about the cult, but these doubts may be ‘explained away’. For example, Jim Jones, the cult leader of the People’s Temple, would explain away sexual abuse of his followers as him ‘cleansing them of their sins’.

How could I have been duped like this?

Before a cult member gathers the courage to leave the cult, they may feel like they have ‘fallen out of love with it’. The ‘good things’ it supplied are starting to be outweighed by the bad things. They become aware of their own exploitation and feel they have had enough and want independence back. But the pressure to stay can also feel overwhelming, coupled with the fear of what will happen if they leave.

And just as when we have allowed ourselves to be abused in a relationship, we may feel like a fool for having fallen for the cult’s abuses. The more we ‘put into’ something, the more we want to justify to ourselves - and others - why we are right in acting and thinking in ways which support our actions. It takes a big person to admit to themselves and others that they were wrong.

The new download for hypnosisdownloads.com Cult deconditioning provides emotional support and encouragement for those planning to or already having left a cult. It will help to boost their confidence that they have done the right thing and reassure them they can go on to have a much more meaningful and satisfying life beyond the cult.

All the best

Mark

 Funeral Calm Sample [3:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (340)

Funerals can be very stressful events, of course. Many people fear they will not be able to keep it together and may ‘fall apart’ emotionally during a time when they want to be able to communicate their respects.

Much of modern life seems to be about having to look or seem a certain way that fits in with the image we wish to present to the world around us. However, a funeral is actually a chance to honestly express how you feel to people around you and that honesty of expression can be hugely refreshing –even uplifting.

Funeral calm - not all or nothing

When I have worked with people who dreaded falling apart emotionally at a forthcoming funeral, I found that they regularly assumed that there are only two stark options in such circumstances. Either you ‘let go’ and accept that your emotions are going to take over and there is nothing you can do about it. Or you ‘button yourself up’ and don’t let any emotion show at all.

Of course, as with most things, there is a middle way, a compromise. It may well be right and proper for you to express some emotion, but it’s also right and proper that you feel you have some control over your emotions, so that you can actually engage with the process of the funeral itself.

The funeral calm session from hypnosisdownloads.com prepares the mind to be in the optimum state for the funeral - which is, after all, an important part of life.

All the very best

Mark

Full hypnosis download Be more attractive to men

It’s often said that men only care about looks, or are only ‘after one thing’, but actually men are not so very different from women when it comes to what makes a woman attractive to a man.

Confidence and laughing at his jokes

It’s often said that women are attracted to confident men and that is largely true, but men also like vivacious, enthusiastic women who are sure of themselves and socially confident – up to a point.

Men and that old status thing

Because we men are, well… pretty competitive, we like a woman who is energetic and fun, and if she looks directly at us and smiles as well, we are bound to feel a strong pull (1). But however much she smiles, we are unlikely to go for a woman who we fear might be more energetic, bossy, loud, etc than we are. Research has shown, for example, that the women that men find attractive are the ones who laugh a lot… at the man’s jokes! But women who make funny jokes themselves – while sought after as friends by men – are not usually the ones who men want to be romantically involved with. (2)

Essentially, men like women who make them feel like men. In a day and age where women can do men’s jobs (or most men’s jobs) just as well as any man, it has become harder for a man to feel ‘masculine’. A woman who shows appreciation of a man’s uniqueness as a man becomes highly attractive to men.

The new session from hypnosisdownloads.com Be more attractive to men looks at the ‘universal attractors’ that attract men everywhere (and they are not as superficial as you might think) and encourages the unconscious adoption of magnetic qualities when it comes to becoming more attractive to men.

Mark

Notes

(1) Dr Clare Conway and colleagues at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland conducted experiments with hundreds of volunteers assessing how ‘attractive’ they found faces which were looking directly at them compared with faces whose gaze was turned away – even by a tiny amount. Significant numbers of both men and women found faces looking straight at them to be more attractive and more likeable.

(2) Eric Bressler, a graduate student at McMaster University who is studying the role of humour in personal attraction, discovered in a survey of 150 students that to a woman, ‘sense of humour’ means someone who makes her laugh; to a man, a ‘sense of humour’ means someone who appreciates his jokes.

“There’s a difference between producers (those who make you laugh) and receptors (those who laugh when someone cracks a joke),” said Bressler. “Women choose men who produce humour 62 per cent of the time; conversely, men choose women who appreciate their humour 65 per cent of the time.”

Bressler also found a marked difference when he looked at different relationships: “When it comes to friendships, men like to be around women who produce humour; when it comes to sexual relationships, they only dig women who laugh at their jokes.”

Full hypnosis download Instant rapport

The newly completed session Instant rapport for hypnosisdownloads.com is a great hypnotic boost. It’s not just for psychotherapists and hypnotherapists and people in the trade, but for anyone who wants to connect with other people and build rapport to form relationships and get their ideas accepted.

Rapport: the dance of life

Very young babies can be observed mimicking the facial expressions, body movements, eye movements and even the voice tonality of their mothers from only a few days old. We need to build rapport early on so as to ensure that we (as a helpless baby) can be looked properly looked after.

Empowering an instinct

Although the ability to build rapport is hard-wired into most of us by instinct, our use of this ability can be improved and developed. Rapport is, in behavioural terms, about mirroring, matching and leading the person we are interacting with, so as to align them positively with whatever we are focusing on. The instant rapport session makes sure these aspects are well covered. It also hypnotically rehearses future rapport building times. This has the effect ‘priming’ the unconscious mind to naturally use all the rapport building skills – because getting into rapport with somebody is as much to do with what you do with your mind as what you do with your body.

We all need to associate with, connect with and (sometimes) influence others. Some people are naturally great rapport builders, but the rest of us can certainly catch up and learn how to build great rapport.

Enjoy the dance.

Mark

Full hypnosis download Overcome fear and anxiety

When we originally put the Overcome fear and anxiety download up at hypnosisdownloads.com we expected it would be pretty useful for many people suffering from anxiety. What we didn’t expect was the huge volume of positive feedback we received – and continue to receive. So many people suffer anxiety and free floating fear in their lives and it’s great to know that this session can really help them.

Fear and anxiety: Who is in charge?

Fear is what you experience when you are confronted with a hungry lion coming at you. Anxiety is what you have when you imagine there might just be a lion out there somewhere. Fear can, of course, be a perfectly appropriate response if it serves the purpose of ensuring our survival (or the survival of those important to us). But because we humans have a highly developed imagination (and you can’t design or plan without a developed imagination) then we are also prey to the anxieties that our imagination cooks up. In the pathologising and medicalising culture of our times, it’s easy to assume that fear and anxiety is a condition like arthritis or diabetes, but in reality anxiety is a tool which is useful in the right context.

When not to have fear; when not to have anxiety

If you were travelling alone at night through a forest full of potential predators, then anxiety would keep you alert, hyper vigilant, and ready for action. That would be a good thing. Fear and anxiety are tools for us to use for our survival, but when we apply them to situations where they don’t help, then it can start to feel as if they are using us. Fear and anxiety are rather blunt instruments, useful in their place, but of very limited use socially, for instance, or when public speaking, or sitting at home, etc.

Like all tools, the imagination can be misused. It’s as if sometimes we forget who is really in charge. A hammer is a useful tool – but not if we keep hitting our own thumbs with it.

Using hypnosis to calm fear and anxiety

The Overcome fear and anxiety session encourages the unconscious mind to reorganize the way it uses the imagination and tackle ‘free floating’ anxiety – the sort you have when you know you feel fearful but not of anything specific. Too much fear and anxiety cause the ‘emotional brain’ to ‘hijack’ the ‘thinking brain’. This means that the more anxious we become and remain, the less able we our to think clearly and focus on short or long term goals. Highly successful people invariably have the capacity to control fear and anxiety levels naturally.

We live in anxious times and we’re happy to say the Overcome fear and anxiety session should go on helping many people deal successfully with their worries.

All the best

Mark