Archive for October, 2007
Published by mark.tyrrell October 29th, 2007
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 Stop Rushing Sample [4:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (68)
Full hypnosis download Stop rushing
According to resent research conducted at Glasgow University, email is an increasingly stressful part of everyday life. Many of us feel compelled to check our mail every couple of minutes and to respond immediately to anything which has come in. Appointments, deadlines and professional punctuality have always been sources of stress, of course, but now they have all ‘speeded up’. And it’s not just email.
Texts, voicemail, deadlines that need to be done ‘yesterday’ – all wreak havoc with our biology.
In the past, we worked with the seasons and with natural daylight. We would plant seeds and watch them grow – which took time. We knew how to wait. When it was light we would work, and when it was dark we would relax and sleep. But now we can work from our holiday destinations, be on call 24/7 and rush headlong into an early grave after an unsatisfying life.
Shifting gear
So many highly stressed people who end up coming to me and my colleagues for help are chronically rushed in their lives. A bit of stress stretches us to perform and is quite healthy, but always feeling like you are playing catch up compromises your blood pressure, your immune response – and your mental health.
The problem is that everything starts being carried out at the new super fast speed. Eating a meal, having sex, taking a ‘quick bath’, playing with the kids – all these things are done with an eye on the time… I’m hoping the new download will help people ‘shift into a lower gear’ more easily. Go fast when needs must, but then conserve energy at other times, accessing a sense of stillness and present focus.
I’ve just recorded a new hypnotic download for hypnosisdownloads.com Stop Rushing. It’s designed to encourage the severely time pressured to change gear sometimes so that burn out is avoided. The pace of life is quickening all the time. Feeling you’re running just in order to stand still is no way to live. I hope this session helps a lot of people enjoy a change of pace.
Take care and slow down sometimes.
Cheers
Mark
Published by mark.tyrrell October 28th, 2007
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Socializing Motivation Sample [4:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (204)
Full hypnosis download Socialising motivation
I don’t know about you, but if I am too isolated for too long I start to get a little… well… stir crazy. We neglect our social lives at our peril, but sadly, it is often the first thing to go when we become over busy, stressed, depressed or pre-occupied. We need to nurture our friendships and social connections. Why?
Meet up with friends for great health
Research has shown that as a person’s social network shrinks, that person’s risk of death increases. And the correlation is almost as strong as the connection between smoking and mortality.
One study, reported in The Lancet, followed 61 women with advanced ovarian cancer. Those with good social support had much lower levels of a protein linked to more aggressive types of cancer. Lower levels of this type of protein, (interleukin 6), was also found to boost the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Women with weaker social support had levels of interleukin 6 that were 70% higher in general, and two-and-a-half times higher in the area around the tumor. (1)
Social contact with friends good for stress
A PhD professor at Carnegie Mellon University has shown that a strong social support network is a prime buffer against stress. It seems friends provide us with emotional support, a friendly ear, mental stimulation, a source of material help and advice and a sense of healthy self-esteem. People with many friends report feeling more control over their lives and generally happier.
The dangers of solitude
Other research has shown that having few friends and feeling lonely is bad for our health. Don’t get me wrong, we all need to be able to function independently and it is good to have some space and privacy sometimes (and some people may be naturally better suited to being on their own). But study after study has indicated that those with fewer friends die sooner after having had a heart attack than people with stronger social support. Having many friends also seems to reduce your risk of catching the common cold despite the fact you are more likely to be exposed to the virus.
Well socially connected people suffer less cardiovascular and immunity problems and have lower levels of stress hormone (cortisol) in their blood streams. (2)
We are meant to socialize
We are group creatures and clubbed together to survive and develop as groups. In fact, being connected to other people seems to help us throughout life. It seems we are even less likely to suffer the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline in general if we maintain a healthy friendship network throughout our lives. Comparing those who developed dementia with those who did not showed that those people who had higher social activities were 38% less likely to develop dementia. (3)
So although friends can sometimes drive you nuts, it seems that having friends is still important. And friendships, like anything in life, need to be nurtured and tended. If we get out of the habit of socializing regularly, we can lose social confidence and motivation to get out there and meet up. This new hypnosis session ‘Socializing motivation’ created for hypnosisdownloads.com is meant to instil a life long sense of the necessity and value of looking after one’s social networks, encouraging new friendships and maximizing social confidence.
Me, I’m off to look in my social calendar to see what’s coming up…
Mark
(1) In 1989, David Spiegel, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University, published a landmark paper in Lancet. It showed that women with breast cancer who participated in a support group lived twice as long as those who didn’t. They also had much less pain.
(2) Tasha R. Howe, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology at Humboldt State University.
(3) Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, vol 3 2003 .
Published by mark.tyrrell October 25th, 2007
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Ease Raynauds Disease Sample [3:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (60)
Full hypnosis download Ease Raynaud’s disease
My friend’s mum was wincing in agony. It was a winter’s afternoon in the early 1980s. I noticed her pain, but did not dare say anything. Later, I asked my friend what was wrong with her. ‘Oh nothing! It’s Raynaud’s disease or something. She’s had it for ages…’
Well, it may have been nothing to him, but it looked pretty painful to me. And I’ve discovered since that sufferers can find the changes that occur with this disorder both painful, frightening, and sometimes very serious. It’s no fun to live with.
What is Raynaud’s disease?
Raynaud’s disease is a circulatory disorder where contact with cold surfaces (or sometimes even just cold air) causes episodic numbness and pain in the extremities; especially hands and feet. Sometimes the nose and even the ears can be deprived of blood. During a Raynaud’s episode blood vessels constrict, reducing blood and oxygen levels in the afflicted areas. Occasionally Raynaud’s disease may be classified as ‘Secondary Raynaud’s’, which means that it may be a symptom of some other disorder, so it is important to be medically checked out just to be sure.
Colour changes in Raynaud’s
Because blood and oxygen leave the affected areas, skin colour can temporarily change. So the area may first become pale as the blood supply reduces, then turn blue as oxygen supply is cut off. When eventually the blood returns, the skin may turn bright red. There can be a great deal of pain when blood starts to return to these areas. Anxiety and fear of another attack can also bring on a Raynaud’s episode.
Hypnosis can certainly change the anxiety part, but what about actually changing what the body is doing using hypnosis?
Hypnosis and Raynaud’s disease
I have used hypnosis many times to help people lower blood pressure, manage pain and even cure warts. To cure warts, (2) blood flow needs to be restricted from the wart. We can also decrease bleeding to some extent using hypnosis.
Of course, I knew nothing about hypnosis back when my mum’s friend was so obviously suffering, but I have worked with Raynaud’s sufferers since.(3) It seems natural to use hypnosis in a download especially for Raynaud’s disease sufferers.
I hope this new session ‘Ease Raynaud’s disease’ helps improve this debilitating condition for many people.
All the best.
Mark
(1) Very rarely Raynaud’s disease has resulted in amputation.
(2) ‘The hypnotic control of blood flow and pain: the cure of warts and the potential for the use of hypnosis in the treatment of cancer’, Clawson, T. A. Jr and Swade, R. H., 1975 Am J Clin Hypn 17;3:160-9
(3) In a careful single case controlled study of a patient with Raynaud’s disease, Conne (1984) showed a rapid and dramatic vasodilation in response to hypnotic suggestion.
‘Biofeedback, cognitive-behavioral methods, and hypnosis in dermatology: is it all in your mind?’ Shenefelt PD, Dermatol Ther. 2003;16(2):114-22.
‘The behavioral treatment of Raynaud’s disease: a review’, Rose GD, Carlson JG., Biofeedback Self Regul. 1987 Dec;12(4):257-72.
‘Biofeedback, autogenic training, and progressive relaxation in the treatment of Raynaud’s disease: a comparative study’ Keefe FJ, Surwit RS, Pilon RN., J Appl Behav Anal. 1980 Spring;13(1):3-11.
‘Behavioral treatment of Raynaud’s disease’, Surwit RS, Pilon RN, Fenton CH., J Behav Med. 1978 Sep;1(3):323-35.
Published by mark.tyrrell October 21st, 2007
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Stand Up For Yourself Sample [3:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (707)
Full hypnosis download Stand up for yourself
In a classic episode of the comedy ‘Fawlty Towers’, Basil the hotelier, played by John Cleese, says to a particularly rude guest “Oh! You were talking to me! I thought for a moment there was a dog in the room!” He was, of course, sarcastically trying to make her aware of her rudeness in addressing him so abruptly. But – and here’s the point – the woman herself (who was actually quite deaf but didn’t like to admit it) didn’t think she was being rude. She was quite sure that it was Basil who was being rude.
Basil’s approach to ‘standing up for himself’ is not a particularly effective strategy. Sarcasm is usually wasted on truly rude people, who are often too insensitive (whether deaf or not) to pick up on it. In fact, in general it is a mistake to assume that people will just somehow ‘get the message’ without being plainly and clearly told that they are out of order. This is because people – especially those who are rude or dismissive towards you – will rarely be working from the same or a similar moral agenda to you.
“But if he respected me I wouldn’t have to tell him to talk to me politely! He must surely know I don’t like it!”
Not so.
We assume that other people are as decent as we are, and that can be a mistake. You don’t turn a lion into a vegetarian by throwing veggie burgers at it.
Trying to ‘be nice’ to people who are not nice to you in the hope that they will see the light and mend their ways just doesn’t work.
Standing up for yourself is about being very literal and clear with people. “I don’t want you to talk to me like that, because I find it rude and offensive. Do you understand?” is very different from hoping that someone will ‘get the message’ from one of your meaningful looks, or a bit of frostiness or sarcasm. Rude insensitive people are not mind readers (and even charming sensitive types aren’t very good at it), and if you don’t tell people that something is unacceptable to you, they will assume it’s OK with you by your implicit consent.
Stand up for yourself and be more honest
If someone is a chronic ‘non-stand up for themselveser’ (all my own work, that phrase), then they may have been taught that it’s unacceptable, or ‘not nice’, to make a fuss, or ‘upset the apple cart’. They may fear retaliation or generally hate confrontation. But if you never stand up for yourself, you risk being false with people – and so false to yourself. You become false with others by letting them think that you are happy with things you are not happy with. And you condemn yourself to a lifetime of biting your tongue and seething with inner resentment that just isn’t healthy.
Another benefit of standing up for yourself is that people may actually even like you more (if that’s important to you), or at least respect you more. According to some very respected research (talking of respect), wives who constantly agree with and placate their husbands (rather than sometimes standing up to them) are more likely to get divorced than their more feisty married girlfriends.
The new hypnotic download session Stand up for yourself from hypnosisdownloads.com is designed for people who need to protect their own interests by being firm when it really counts. Of course, it’s great to let some things go and be understanding up to a point. No one likes someone who is always terrier-like about everything. But this session should help people tip the balance in favour of championing themselves properly when they need to, and so feel more honest and liberated and also generally more in control of things.
Time to let the dog out.
Mark.
PS That research I mentioned was reported in ‘Responsive Listening in Long-Married Couples’, Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour (Summer 1999)
Published by mark.tyrrell October 16th, 2007
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Stop Apologizing Sample [4:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (192)
Full hypnosis download Stop apologising
I remember a client (I’ll call her ‘Judith’), a very pleasant woman, arriving for her first appointment exactly on time. Her first words to me? “I’m sorry.” She apologised as I showed her in, and again as she sat down. There was nothing (as far as I knew) for her to apologise about. Perhaps not so surprisingly, the help she needed was with self-esteem and confidence issues.
Is this really just a ‘British thing’? I mean, to apologize to the clumsy oaf who has just trodden on your foot in the queue? OK, maybe it is, but the tendency to over-apologise can also be a feature of low self-esteem and nervousness –issues not limited to the British, as far as I know. But we need balance here.
Saying sorry is important
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that being able to say sorry (and don’t you just hate it when people refuse ever to admit any responsibility?) is important (see my footnote below). It means you are sincere and sensitive enough to take mature responsibility for when you have been partly or wholly the cause of something going wrong.
But if a person keeps on apologising, begging forgiveness, grovelling and seeking constant reassurance then it becomes something they are doing for themselves and not for the person they are apologising to.
Desperate search for reassurance
People who constantly seek reassurance come across as lacking in confidence and personal authority. If we need to apologise we should be big enough to say it clearly and (if we are in the wrong) say it without conditions. “I’m sorry… but you shouldn’t have…” isn’t a real apology at all.
Apologising for the weather, for other people’s behaviour, for the fact that we live and breathe and take up space on the earth has two effects. Firstly, it demeans us, positioning us lower than we need be: “I am not worthy!” And secondly, it can make people begin to feel that maybe we are responsible for stuff: “Mmmm – this person is apologising all the time… I wonder what they’re hiding?”
The chicken or the egg
You may think that a tendency to keep on apologising unnecessarily must be a symptom of ‘deeper issues’ that need to be addressed, but it’s also possible to see personal psychology as an interconnected system. You change one part of the system and hey presto! people find they become more confident as a result. You smile when you are happy, but smiling more can actually make you feel happier. If you look at something as a system, you see cause and effect as a two-way street.
With this in mind I produced ‘Stop Apologizing’ a new hypnosis download for hypnosisdownloads.com. The first thing I focused on with Judith was to lessen the amount of social victim signals she was sending out to others. When she stopped apologizing all the time people began to see her differently and she began to feel different. By changing one cog in the machine the whole machine can begin to work differently.
Mark
Footnote: Survey - Apologizing may be key to marriage
A survey conducted in San Francisco found that people who stay happily married are twice as likely to be able and willing to apologize to their partners as divorced or single people. The willingness to apologize to partners may be key to a lasting marriage suggested the survey of over 7,590 US adults (Zogby International pollsters). The survey found happily married people are 25% more likely to apologize first, even if they only feel partially to blame. Divorced and single people were more likely to stay single the harder they found it ever to apologize and make capitulatory gestures.
Published by mark.tyrrell October 14th, 2007
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Stop Blaming Yourself Sample [4:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (517)
Full hypnosis download Stop blaming yourself
A tendency to think in very black-and-white terms is usually driven by over-emotionality. If you want to make an emotionally appealing speech, you need to talk about good and evil and right and wrong.
Trouble is, life isn’t always that simple, and being too ‘all or nothing’ about things gets us into psychological problems.
Take self-blame, for instance. A person who tends to always blame themselves for everything that goes wrong is missing part of the picture. Strong emotion drives black-and-white extremes of thinking because thought is often driven by emotion. If you are constantly firing off the ‘fight or flight’ response (which is a rather black-and-white survival function in itself), then you are going to think in oversimplified ways.
‘I am totally to blame!’
‘I ruined that relationship’
‘I am such a loser!’
‘I hate myself.’
These are all extreme statements. We need to accept some responsibility for what happens to us, but we also need to understand that we can, at best, only influence events but not control them completely. After all, if a relationship fails, well, there were two people active in that relationship. Self-blame grabs all of the responsibility out of a situation: ‘It’s entirely my fault!’ Never mind that my ex was chronically moody, his or her parents were set against us, we both had huge work pressures, etc. No, all outside factors are ignored as the self-blame takes over.
Notice this!
Self-blamers will often do something else rather interesting. They take all the blame for stuff when it goes wrong, but if the same thing goes well, they don’t correspondingly take the credit. No, the credit for that success goes to others! Talk about biased thinking. So, if the relationship fails it’s all my fault, but if it works it’s because my partner is so understanding, or I’m just ‘lucky’, or the stars are in my favour. All situations have multiple aspects and there are often many reasons for why anything succeeds or fails. Even success and failure are relative. If you were in a good relationship which has now ended, then it was successful for a while.
No wonder self-blame and back-and-white thinking often go hand-in-hand with depression. If you take someone out for the evening and they remain miserable, that is not your fault. Self-blamers would feel that it was totally their fault.
The new hypnosis session Stop blaming yourself from hypnosisdownloads.com will, I hope, help widen such limited perceptions so that automatically blaming yourself (whether because you were always blamed as a child or because you happen to be a black-and-white thinker) becomes a thing of the past. Accept responsibility where it is due – but don’t grab more than your fair share.
Mark
Published by mark.tyrrell October 11th, 2007
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Try New Things Sample [3:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (297)
Full hypnosis download Try new things
Labels stick to us – but only if we keep re-applying them to ourselves.
A piano teacher told me, aged nine, that I ‘would never be a musician’. After one lesson! And I believed that statement for many years – till later I discovered that I could play music perfectly well!
People often tell me they’re not good at something because they are not ‘the type’ who does that sort of thing. But where does this idea of what ‘type’ you are come from? You weren’t born with these concepts.
In the latest ‘Try new things’ hypnotic download for hypnosisdownloads.com the idea is to get people, whatever their age, or even if they have been conditioned to regard themselves as useless at something, to open up to learning and experiencing new things.
And if they are trying hypnosis for the first time, then they are well on the way to developing new skills already!
Give it a go. You never know, you might like it!
Mark
Published by mark.tyrrell October 7th, 2007
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Stop Being Defensive Sample [4:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (293)
Full hypnosis download Stop being defensive
When we have put effort into something, be it a painting or an essay or anything else that we have really worked hard at, it can be hard to take constructive feedback or ‘positive criticism’ from another person about it. It’s all too easy to feel that we are under personal attack, and should leap on to the defensive to protect our self-esteem.
But the fact is that putting all your energy into preserving self-esteem means you actually have less energy available to focus on really improving your tennis game, your IT knowledge, your skill in Spanish, your sculpturing technique or whatever it is that you want to improve. Sure, we all like to be applauded and recognised for good work, but unless we can also take less than perfect feedback about our performance, our further development in the field is likely to be limited!
Defensiveness is emotional
When we respond to criticism by becoming highly defensive, we are really responding with anger and/or upset – a state of emotional arousal which reduces our ability to access logical thought processes in these times. So by staying calm you improve your capacity to determine whether someone is really criticising you or is trying to help you constructively.
If they are, in fact, trying to undermine you (i.e. their remarks are overly personal and attacking), then becoming emotional will only get you stumbling blindly into their trap – so it’s better to remain calm anyway. That way they can’t really get at you. If, on the other hand, you recognise that actually they’ve got a point and their comments can help you improve, then you have got something potentially highly valuable for free! Having this kind of detachment about yourself – especially in the areas of life you’d like to improve in – means you become more of a ‘learning machine’ and less of a ‘self-esteem maintaining mechanism’.
Interestingly, marriage expert John Gottman found that defensiveness in a relationship (one or both partners displaying extreme over-sensitivity to any less than perfect feedback about themselves) was a major predictor of future marriage breakdown.
When someone is emotionally defensive, others tend to feel uncomfortable around them, as if they have to ‘tread on egg shells’ all the time.
In the new download I’ve just produced for hypnosisdonwloads.com Stop Being Defensive, I focus on using hypnosis as a way to develop calm emotional detachment when listening to feedback about oneself. When we can relax and detach, we don’t need to take anything too personally, especially when it’s not even meant to be taken personally.
Mark
Published by mark.tyrrell October 2nd, 2007
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Diabetic Diet Sample [4:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (182)
Full hypnosis download Stick to your diabetic diet
B F Skinner, the famous behavioural psychologist, held that we humans are all conditioned at a very simple level by reward and punishment. We are little more than clever trainable monkeys (or donkeys, if you ask me!). The theory goes like this: If I get an electric shock enough times while sipping alcohol, eventually I will no longer want to drink alcohol because of the immediate unpleasant association. If a rat gets rewarded with a sugary drink every time it pushes a lever, it will be motivated to push that lever. Get a reward and you will do more of the rewarded behaviour. Get a punishment and you will do less.
But I think there’s more to it.
Take smoking (or even sticking to a diabetic diet). When someone lights up a cigarette they get an instant ‘reward’ (because of dopamine receptors in the brain and positive associations they have built up around the habit). The ‘punishment’ that smoking dishes out comes along much later (impotence, cancers, faster aging, etc.). Yet, in spite of the fact that the punishment is so delayed, and seems unconnected with the behaviour of putting a cigarette in your mouth, millions of people manage to quit smoking – and most do it with no help whatsoever.
In contrast, if I have a severe peanut allergy, I don’t have to use too much will power to avoid nuts because I know I will be instantly ‘punished’ for consuming the said nut. My airways may close, I may go into shock, I may even die! That’s a no brainer.
Now of course a diabetic may experience certain immediate unpleasant consequences of letting their eating get out of balance (too much carbohydrate, for instance), but the really severe punishments, as with smoking, come much later (although always sooner than you thought they would). Blindness, amputation, heart disease, coma, etc are all just concepts until they actually turn into ‘punishments’ for real ‘some time in the future.’
The idea of this new hypnotic download session from hypnosisdownloads.com ‘Stick to your diabetic diet’ is to link the long term likely consequences of straying from a good diabetic diet to a sense of immediacy. Instant gratification maybe OK for mice and monkeys (or dogs and donkeys), but we can all learn something very important from people who stick at something because they know it has real long term rewards, rather than just reacting to ‘what feels good now’.
Diabetes on the increase
In the USA almost 21,000,000 people have diabetes. That’s 7% of the population! Diet and other life style factors play a huge part in increasing the prevalence of diabetes. It’s also estimated (by the American Diabetes association) that around 54,000,000 Americans are pre-diabetic. And other western countries are not far behind, it seems.
With carbohydrate-rich sugary foods so widely available, with their promise of ‘quick fix’ energy release and tastiness, it’s perhaps never been more important to develop ourselves beyond the reward/punishment simplicity of a laboratory rat.
I hope many diabetics – and also people at risk of developing diabetes – get a lot of benefit from this new session – stick to your diabetic diet.
That’s all for now.
Mark
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