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Hypnotherapy, Jane Fonda, and Body Insecurity

Comment by Deborah Marshall-Warren, 12th August 2011

Jane Fonda was one of the pioneers of exercise videos for women, and later admitted to undergoing cosmetic surgery to keep her figure. She puts her ‘body insecurities’ down to her upbringing and suggests that her late father, the actor Henry Fonda, contributed to them. She said "He was a good man, and I was mad for him, but he sent messages to me that fathers should not send: unless you look perfect you’re not going to be loved." [Daily Mail 12 August 2011]

Interactive hypnotherapy is specific in that it allows you to access a key event, when a father, such as Jane’s, said something that implied that to be loved one must be perfect - to the conversation in the past that is 'feeding' your experience of yourself. The process of hypnotherapy lets you go directly to the specific 'body insecurity file' that is influencing your experience of yourself right now, and open it and edit it.

Fast-track interactive hypnotherapy can take you to specific influencing events and experiences in any particular year. You can go directly to the first day of school, when you felt abandoned, rejected, frightened and insecure - having been left there by a parent whom you implored not to leave you. You can go directly to the eleven-year-old who overheard her parent's best friend comparing her with a sibling. You can go directly to the thirteenth year, to the teenager humiliated and feeling dirty when she discovered she was bleeding. You can go directly to your seventeenth year to the young woman who submitted to a termination and to this day has experienced a sense of guilt and shame and blushes for 'no apparent reason at all'. Of course you may say that you knew about each and every one of those events. What you may not have known is how a particular event has been impacting on your life up to this point. Fay wanted each successive boy¬friend to spend all of his spare time with her, a desire that naturally strained every relationship. In hypnosis Fay met her father and discovered that she was desirous of his time and attention too. Her father's response to young Fay's natural inclination to be with him was, "I can't spend all my time with you." Hypnotherapy can give you a sense of enlightenment and surprisingly immediate links with past and present personal circumstances. You gain accurate clarity and understanding about what really happened. It can help foster another perspective. Constructively and positively you discover that it was as painful and traumatic for your parent to leave you on that first day at school as it was for you. It did not mean that your parent was abandoning you. Your parent continued to love you all through that first day. The eleven-year-old 'ugly duckling' can meet her beautiful and successful 'swan'. She will be amazed, delighted and so happy to discover her.

Within the hypnosis you can reassure and assuage the fear and shock of the emerging young woman within you and speak to any peers or others who may have contributed to confusion on the first day you experienced menstruation. As to the seventeen-year-old inner self, you can reassure her that she made the right decision at the time, and that if she had not made that decision then she may not have been able to step through the doors which have opened for her now - be it a job, an opportunity, or a relationship. After the grieving the way is open for the seventeen-year-old you to begin to grow up into her successful future, and for you to move forward into the future free from looking forever at the past. With this new clarity and understanding comes freedom from the feelings of 'shame'. So the symptoms of blushing, which until now had unconsciously been fuelled by 'shame', will become less and less, and indeed may immediately disappear.

Flagship Fragrances: Creating and celebrating your own Label!

Comment by Deborah Marshall-Warren, 31st January 2011

As a feeling human being you possess many gifts and talents. These gifts are like the facets of a diamond - expressions of a whole. Yet, do you feel whole? How many of us are whole beings? More often there are gaps. We all have gaps, and the majority of us seek to fill these gaps, with our work, with our social lives, with our material possessions. And, as much as we want to fill them in inside ourselves, the gaps seem to be getting bigger. We work longer hours, longer hours than were possibly worked during the Industrial Revolution. We have more things, and yet still the gaps get bigger. Is it any wonder that we often ask ourselves: what is missing in our lives? The answer so often is -- our true selves and our true sense of connection with our divine selves, that which truly makes us special and unique, our ‘free gifts’!

Marketing companies seek to focus our attention on anything but our true selves, our real essential qualities. The notion of a free gift has a very different meaning for them. We are bombarded with pictures of many ‘things’, which the ‘creatives’ in the advertising world seek to endow with qualities, feelings, personality, language, and an identity which may, given the right line of appeal, seem to fill the gaps, and give us a sense of identity, which we feel we lack. The advertising industry is a great observer of gaps. Advertisers identify the gaps that arise in our whole beings. Having identified the gap, they create a product tailored to that gap. They then give the product the same name as the gap. The product is fronted by a person who personifies the gap, acting out the imagined essential behaviours, and the spoken thoughts of the gap. And we buy it! We buy the whole ‘act’. In exchange for paying a price that is worthy of the real quality itself, the product that pretends to offer the missing quality can be yours. Joy is yours! Peace is yours! Power is yours! Happy is yours! Valentino is yours, that seemingly elusive, exclusive, expensive feeling you can’t quite put your finger on. Now you can relish the fruits of success by wearing the perfume around you. All this is filling the gaps. But for how long?

Advertising inspires desires. And yet more than one spiritual teaching cites desire as the cause of, and route to, great unhappiness. Indeed, advertising does not just identify the virtues. Advertising identifies the vices, and cloaks them with a sense of acceptability. You can buy perfumes with such perverse titles as Envy, Poison, and Ego. After all, they are vices in name only!

We delude ourselves when we buy into the advertising gap. We buy a label of someone else’s design to create a statement about ourselves, either because the name or the label appeals. Or because we hope that the name or the label will fill our gap. At least, for now. So, we cloak and spray ourselves with a designer label, one designed by someone else. We wear the label that fills the gap for a time at least, and then we search for another, because it does not suit the new season or it no longer suits our seasoned selves. Our gaps are deep and wide and seem to take a lot of filling! When will we stop, and consider that we have within us the ability and the power to design our own ‘labels’ in our inner minds? The power to plug into and switch on a resource within ourselves, which will enable us to fill up with the joy of spirit and the spirit of joy, the spirit of being happy, and the happiness of spirit -- to energize and equip ourselves with labels designed and fashioned for us and by us. Tailor made. Custom made. Couture. Today (January 2011) there is such a thing as a National Perfume! Lithuania has pioneered a new type of national symbol to convey the character of the ex-Soviet Baltic state in a fragrant way! The foreign ministry has already sent bottles of the new fragrance to all ambassadors accredited to Vilnius. The project is promoted as a good example of how to communicate Lithuania to the public in an innovative way! "We wanted to create something special, representing Lithuania and the Lithuanian character," Mindaugas Strongvilas, an ‘expert’ in emotional communication said.

Choose to celebrate and to create your own fragrant ways ... to splash on character, that honours and does yourself justice in an individual and personal-flag-waving way.

Stick-Thin ... or the Healthy Size and Shape you choose to Be? ... Choose your words mind-fully!

Comment by Deborah Marshall-Warren, 28th November 2010

An advertisement appeared recently for a live weight-loss event toting the headline "I can make you THIN". As any professional hypnotherapist knows, it is in the nature of the subconscious mind to take words and phrases literally. Which is why we each may continue to carry labels that were given to us during childhood or teenage years that we continue to ‘believe’ and sometimes continue to play out in our adult and maturing lives.

The subconscious mind does not necessarily have a preference for being ‘thin’ and ‘fat’ but it does act completely and absolutely upon the instruction delivered to the subconscious mind, just as a computer does ‘run’ the software installed. A preferable and safer message to the subconscious would be, "I can make you the healthy size and shape you choose to be", so that the subconscious mind will work towards achieving the weight that suits your body shape and body type.

Hypnotherapy can be the most magical and life-transforming of all complementary therapies, and I do champion the saying that "When you believe you can, then you really can"! (But on the other hand do bear in mind that hypnotherapy does not come with any automatic guarantees of success. Remember that guarantees come with toasters and kettles, and not with any medical or alternative therapy!)

Is Gillian facing her Phobias, or her Natural Fears?
Down under in the Celebrity Jungle!

Comment by Deborah Marshall-Warren, 21st November 2010

"Is Gillian McKeith the biggest scaredy-cat ever seen in the jungle?" asked a national newspaper. Her daughter, Skylar, says her mum really is terrified of spiders, snakes, bugs and water. And so might many of us remark too had we ‘chosen’ to opt in to a highly paid ‘extreme televised sport’ like Celebrity Jungle.

Supportive daughter Skylar continues to say, "If someone was sitting on their sofa and one thousand cockroaches dropped on their head, they’d jump up and start screaming, so her [Ms McKeith’s] reaction is perfectly normal." On this point I agree. Absolutely. Wouldn’t we all?

Allegedly Ms McKeith had no idea she’d have to face her worst fears before arriving Down Under - as the family don’t own a television set. Neither do I, but I sure do know I wouldn’t be up for I’m a Celebrity whatever the mouth-watering salary. ‘Truth’ is invariably stranger than fiction.

Despite claiming she was terrified of water and unable to swim, Gillian plunged underwater to retrieve one of the ‘stars’, while being surrounded by a whole host of aquatic critters. Courage and bravery stepped up in the moment to support her in conquering her fears.

Alongside Ms McKeith is the more grounded and practical former X Factor participant Stacey Solomon, who suggested to Gillian that given her increasing personal concerns she should leave if she did not wish to face her fears. Ms McKeith allegedly retorted: "You’re the classic person who doesn’t understand what a fear is versus a phobia. You don’t understand phobia, it’s like taking a person who can’t swim and throwing them in ten feet of water and saying, ‘Off you go, see if you can swim’."

Phobias are actually of a very different nature from normal fears. In my experience clients tend to have extensive knowledge about the topic of their phobia - be it daddy long-legs, moths, spiders, birds, lizards, or stinging nettles ... or whatever. I am often amazed by the knowledge and the precision of my client’s ‘interest’ in what they truly fear, and do their utmost to avoid at all costs.

Phobia cases illustrate how associative memory works in the brain: when one part of the pattern comes to the notice of the mind (e.g. the mind notices a spider, a snake, a bug or water), then the other part is also immediately evoked (e.g. the fear erupts into the mind). And so the person feels fear and doesn’t understand what the fear is about: the rational mind says, ‘This is only a spider ... what is there to be afraid of?’

It is important to notice that the underlying mechanism is that of matching patterns. The unconscious mind just sees certain specific things and is triggered to act in a certain way. It acts very simply. Whereas other therapies tend towards looking for elaborate plots to interpret the stories the truth is that the subconscious mind is quite dumb.

In general terms, there are two ways of explaining why something goes wrong - a conspiracy theory or a mistake theory. Freudian analysis would come up with a conspiracy theory, that the subconscious is deliberately conspiring to produce fear because of its own agenda which is probably sexual. In fact, what has happened is a mistake. At some point the subconscious mind has made a mistake and is reacting to the creepy-crawly in a way that is inappropriate.

The mind is always looking for patterns - it is continually bombarded by different stimuli and it craves order. It is always striving to bring things forward as a pattern. If a child, or a young adult experiences a trauma - an extraordinary event - then the child or young adult cannot fit that incident into the pattern of events she has experienced thus far in life and so, when she has one of these events (for instance, seeing a cat die in response to eating a lizard) the child or adult may not know how to fit it into her view of the world. If this memory stayed in conscious awareness the mind would repeatedly become occupied in trying to integrate it into the pattern it sees in the world. As a self-defence against that obsession, however, it is stored as a subconscious memory. There is thus a natural defence mechanism in the mind to render the memory unconscious. When the memory is made unconscious, by being repressed inside the subconscious mind, then the conscious mind is free to get on with its life without being irritated by this memory.

Later on, the mind has matured and has acquired a richer world-view. The matured mind can make sense of a more complex world. It has a wider and more nuanced repertoire of concepts to deal with what happens in the world. Death is an example of this. You now know that life comes and life goes and that you can integrate this into the bigger pattern. A child or young adult may not possess that comprehension. And when unexpectedly confronted by sudden death the child cannot integrate that event into her world-view and stashes it away in the subconscious - where it remains even after the growing person has acquired an understanding of death. The same is true of many other disturbing incidents, not just death. So in hypnosis, by bringing that subconscious memory back into conscious awareness you give the conscious mind a fresh opportunity to integrate it. Now, because of the maturation of the mind and because of the mind's richer resources it is able to accomplish that integration. So when the person subsequently sees the creepy-crawly ... or whatever used to trigger the problem ... that memory still responds exactly as before, but now because the memory is conscious that person can see exactly where the memory is coming from. When she now sees a lizard and recalls a memory of grief she knows it is about the cat dying and so it is not a problem. She can handle it knowing it was a notion of death, of fear, and now it is linked to something limited - the cat's death. Bringing past experience into consciousness is often sufficient to heal it.

The following simple analogy might help to illustrate this model. Imagine someone working in a kitchen she's not familiar with and an alarm goes off. This person does not know what the alarm is about. It may be the fire alarm. It may not. On enquiry she is told that it is just the oven and it merely signals that the cooking is finished. So then she can handle it. Anxiety attacks work in a similar way: a sense of alarm arises but the individual does not know what it is about so it is deeply disturbing. When the origins of the alarm are known consciously it is no longer disturbing, or much less so.

Phobias are extreme responses, and I for one believe that anyone considering Celebrity Jungle should know themselves sufficiently well enough to consider whether they can transcend their natural fears. A mature adult knows what they are likely to meet in this kind of ‘chosen’ and paid television experience. It is possible to prepare well ahead by choosing to ‘defuse’ a phobia. And interactive hypnotherapy is a very effective way to do so.

What X Factor star Katie did next ...
to free herself of panic attacks

Comment by Deborah Marshall-Warren, 14th November 2010

Anxiety is like a modern-day virus. Anxiety can attack com¬pletely out of the blue and is a possibility for each of us at any time in our lives.

The X Factor rising star Katie Waissel is choosing hypnotherapy in a bid to beat her nerves. The singer allegedly began experiencing panic attacks just as possibilities of super-stardom dawned! Allegedly the story goes ... "She fluffed her lines on last week's show and is terrified the same thing will happen again," a source told the Daily Mirror. "She's really worried about stage fright", which can go with the show for any kind of performer, whatever their talent may be. That includes presentations, public speaking engagements, and best man or best girl speeches too!

The eruption of anxiety in the form of a panic attack is in¬creas¬ingly common. Panic attacks do not announce themselves. They are downright rude. They barge in and take over when you would least expect them to turn up. X Factor star Katie Waissel is on the verge of phenomenal potential success - really not the best moment for panic attacks to arrive!

They seem to seek us out at odd times and places and often when we are having ‘fun’. You could be out and about - in a shopping centre, on holiday in the sun, feeling happy and relaxed, or travelling on a train, a bus or an aeroplane. People who speak about their experiences of panic attacks gener¬ally report the experiences as being very frightening - their personal diagnosis is often described as, "I thought I was having a heart attack", or, "I thought I was going to die". Suddenly the buttons are pressed full on - all survival stations are put on red alert.

People who experience panic attacks and people who fear flying, or lizards have much in common. Collectively they do not know the reason for the sudden impulse of emotion or behaviour. They do not know what lies behind the veil. Part of their response is inevitably a fear of the unknown.

Interactive Hypnotherapy is a way to lift the bonnet of the inner engine, to give yourself a fuel change - to let go of any residual low-octane fuel so that you can live a higher-performance life and a smoother ride, a more emotionally comfortable life. Yes, you may know about the original trigger event. But, what you may not know is how that event is fuelling your reactions and responses in the here and now. The surprises in a hypnotherapeutic session are quite often the 'links' and the 'connections' between the situations, cir¬cum¬stances and original trigger events that are revealed to be under¬lying the problem. These are the surprises and, as such, can lead you to reflections at the end of the session such as: "But ... I knew all about that happening. Yet, I'd no idea that it was affecting me in this way." It seems that your subconscious mind will alert you to what you are ready and open to receive.

Therapy and counselling have for years provided long-term answers. For many it has offered a long-term commitment to a contract - a contract lasting anything from six weeks to six months and sometimes years - once, twice or even three times a week. After completing that long-term contract you may have ended your therapy with understanding - but with no change, no trans¬formation and sometimes feeling even worse.

I applaud Katie Waissel for choosing hypnotherapy as a first resort and realising that hypnotherapy is a fast-track way to make lasting and permanent change in your otherwise successful and happy lives. But, do be aware that a range of therapeutic methods are lumped together under the title of ‘hypnotherapy’ and a 40-minute telephone conversation cannot have the same impact as a deep, 90-minute one-to-one session of interactive hypno¬therapy in a comfy reclining chair.

Dr Christian Jessen and "Quackery"

Comment by Deborah Marshall-Warren, 27th May 2009

Why do so many medical professionals feel it is necessary to knock complementaty therapy, and do so with maximum prejudice? I don't know the answer to that question, but I recently noticed another instance of it in the London Evening Standard, in a column authored by Dr Christian Jessen - who, although he is medically trained, is described primarily as a "charismatic TV presenter" on his own web site (www.drchristianjessen.com). The article is entitled "Alternative therapy for back pain smacks of desperation" on the online edition of the Evening Standard, but more crudely "Let's See the back of Alternative Quackery" in the print edtion that was read across London on the evening of 27th May 2009. The message is the same: Dr Jessen wants nothing to do with any therapy outside the mainstream of established medicine. And if the NHS itself is recommending such therapies then heaven help us!

Dr Christian Jessen has damned all forms of alternative therapy, in this apoplectic protest against guidance issued by the NHS National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). The guidance in question consists of the modest proposal that acupuncture be used to alleviate back pain. Dr Jessen's grounds for wanting to sweep all alternative therapies off the face of the country is, apparently, just his ignorance of the evidence for how well they work. It's a form of argument much used by blinkered people: refuse to look up and read the evidence that supports the efficacy of the therapies, so you can claim it does not exist. Dr Jessen wrote, "There is no scientific evidence to support the efficacy of so-called 'complementary' treatment." Now, an honest sceptic might have said, "I disagree with how the scientific evidence was compiled", or "I don't think the scientific evidence is strong enough to warrant the NHS offering complementary therapies." But that is not what Dr Jessen says. He simply denies the existence of the evidence altogether! Since anyone with access to the internet can readily pull down numerous scientific studies of alternative medicine, Dr Jessen's claim immediately falls apart, along with his credibility. While the rest of the healing profession is moving toward 'evidence-based medicine' and even old-fashioned 'reality-based thinking', Dr Jessen is driven in the opposite direction purely by gut feeling. Speaking of which, he could begin his catching-up on the literature of alternative medicine with NICE's own recommendations on the use of hypnotherapy for irritable bowel syndrom (IBS). NICE tells us "Hypnotherapy has the highest probability of being the optimal strategy for cost per QALY thresholds under £20,000". Unlike Dr Jessen's ex cathedra damning of all complementary therapies, this is not based on gut feeling but on the hard work of scientists who have taken the trouble to test hypnotherapy and other therapies. The NICE guidance (which anyone can freely read on the internet) gives full references so that you can check the original peer-reviewed research papers (none of which exist according to Dr Jessen). As well as citing the scientific evidence for the efficacy of hypnotherapy, the NICE report gives a perfectly common-sensical rationale, namely "IBS is ideal for treatment with hypnosis, as there is no structural damage to the body". There's nothing magic about it. Hypnotherapy treats the mind, and the mind affects the state of the gut.

I have been practising interactive hypnotherapy for more than fifteen years and have seen at first hand, day after day, the efficacy of this particular complementary therapy - for a wide range of challenges faced by clients. I am delighted to see more and more published clinical trials that confirm the efficacy of treatments that therapists have made available to their clients for many years. Mr Jessen's vitriol would be laughable were it not for the sad fact that many people who would benefit substantially from complementary medicine will be dissuaded from trying it, and doctors will be dissuaded from recommending it. All because Dr Jessen couldn't be bothered to do his homework.

Further reading:

If you have some time, take a look through the guidance for GPs’ patients, Primary Care Trusts, and Gastroenterologists on the subject of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), issued by NICE (National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness), a body operated by the NHS in the UK (www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/pdf/IBSFullGuideline.pdf). Within that document, look up the following page references.

Page 31: the flowchart says for "[for IBS of] more than 12 months duration, consider psychological interventions: Hypnotherapy, Psychological therapy, CBT".
Page 40 says the same for patients for "Refractory IBS".
Page 374 poses the question "Does hypnotherapy have a role in managing IBS symptoms?" and answers it affirmatively for "gut-directed hypnotherapy". It also describes how "IBS is ideal for treatment with hypnosis, as there is no structural damage to the body".
Page 458 states "Although there is currently a lack of research in hypnotherapy, the GDG agreed there is potential for long-term benefits to the NHS from this behavioural therapy that need to be investigated further, including its use as a first line therapy. The GDG therefore decided to include hypnotherapy in one of its top five research recommendations, with the potential for this intervention to be considered as a first line therapy option."
Page 461 states "Hypnotherapy has the highest probability of being the optimal strategy for cost per QALY thresholds under £20,000" (this is in a comparison of the cost-effectiveness analysis of the three psychological interventions psychotherapy, CBT and hypnotherapy).
Page 464 mentions evidence in children with IBS, which showed that hypnotherapy is clinically effective as a first line therapy. The reference pages include all of the original papers that NICE used to reach its decisions about hypnotherapy. NICE has looked for the evidence for the value of hypnotherapy for IBS and found it in several peer-reviewed journals. That Dr Jessen cannot find any evidence for any complementary therapy for any presenting problem can mean only that he just did not look for it.

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