If you read that title and are still reading, then you’re probably aware that a QR code is a cool little gizmo that you can scan with your smartphone, and looks like this:

When you scan a QR code, it can do all sorts of things; the above one will open your phone’s browser at Wikipedia.

Send your Hypnosis Download straight to your phone
When you scan the QR code for the entry in your purchase history (which you get by opening a free account), your purchase will be downloaded directly to your phone. At least, it will with most phones, although iPhones and other iDevices will try to stream the file instead. We’re sorting out a workaround for this, but if anyone has any ideas, please let me know in comments.

While I’m here, I should probably let you know that opening a free account will also list all your purchases you’ve ever made with the email address you use to sign up. It will also give you wish list functionality on the site. And other stuff that we’re developing still, and I can’t tell you about yet.

Do you love this as much as I do? (OK, I’m a geek, it’s true). Or do you think it’s just unnecessary over-technologicalization. Let me know below.

If you read that title and are still reading, then you’re probably aware that a QR code is a cool little gizmo that you can scan with your smartphone, and looks like this:

When you scan a QR code, it can do all sorts of things; the above one will open your phone’s browser at Wikipedia.

Send your Hypnosis Download straight to your phone
When you scan the QR code for the entry in your purchase history (which you get by opening a free account), your purchase will be downloaded directly to your phone. At least, it will with most phones, although iPhones and other iDevices will try to stream the file instead. We’re sorting out a workaround for this, but if anyone has any ideas, please let me know in comments.

While I’m here, I should probably let you know that opening a free account will also list all your purchases you’ve ever made with the email address you use to sign up. It will also give you wish list functionality on the site. And other stuff that we’re developing still, and I can’t tell you about yet.

Do you love this as much as I do? (OK, I’m a geek, it’s true). Or do you think it’s just unnecessary over-technologicalization. Let me know below.

I used to write this section in our monthly Inspired Minds newsletter, but we figured it would be easier to read online, and all our blog subscribers would enjoy reading it too. At least I hope you do Read October’s Inspired Minds newsletter here.

Downloads Unwrapped – October 2011

Fear of sex – or how to love loving

We’re genetically programmed to enjoy sex. Not an overly romantic statement, but true.

We need to find pleasure in behaviours that connect us emotionally to others (so increasing our chances of surviving) or that enable us to produce kids to carry on the species. But sometimes things go wrong. Pleasure drives us to go toward the activity which produces the good feelings, but fear drives us to avoid what makes us afraid. Sometimes we come to fear what we should enjoy, and find pleasure in stuff that we should (or at least normally would) fear (ever seen that guy who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers?!). The wires get crossed.

Fear of sex can get started for all kinds of reasons. Some people fear intimacy – getting that close to another human being – perhaps because they fear emotional rejection or fear making themselves that ‘vulnerable’. Others dread sex because they feel they may be doing it ‘wrong’, or because it feels like an overwhelming pressure to ‘perform’. Or perhaps they have yet to have sex for the first time and feel frightened of the unknown.

One of my clients told me how he had been made fun of by a woman during an early sexual experience, and had feared sex ever since. Another cause might be previous sexual abuse, or even sex with an inconsiderate lover. Sex in such cases can feel like something violent and aggressive rather than something to be deliciously enjoyed and savoured. Sex has come to feel like threat.

What’s more, fear of sex can ripple out to undermine confidence in other areas of life and to block the development of deeper emotional intimacy with potential lovers. The new hypnosisdownloads.com session Fear of sex focuses on changing unhelpful patterns of response to both the expectation and actual experience of this potentially most wonderful of human activities.

Cocaine usage and shrunken testicles

Okay… maybe cocaine abuse doesn’t shrink testicles, but anabolic steroid abuse certainly can do so. Why? Because testosterone is produced naturally in the testes and if a man’s balls get the message they’re not needed to produce this muscle-building hormone (because there is now an ‘external’ supply of testosterone available) then they will shrink. Just as your leg muscles will shrink if you fail to use them enough. Ouch!

And what’s that got to do with cocaine abuse? Well, cocaine is a strong central nervous system stimulant that has a powerful effect on the reabsorption of dopamine, the brain’s ‘pleasure chemical’. Just as with the shrunken testicles example, if we continually artificially stimulate the pleasure centres in the brain, those centres may weaken and atrophy, and become incapable of carrying out their function without that artificial stimulation.

The old adage ‘the coarse drives out the fine’ indicates that the capacity to appreciate and gain pleasure from more subtle stimuli (such as a beautiful sunset) without the aid of coke may be damaged. The brain may lose the capacity, at least for a while, to generate its own pleasure response. This might not seem on the face of it as serious as some of the oft quoted side effects of cocaine usage (such as paranoid hallucinations, hyper irritability, heart attack and so on), but we are talking about a drug that can potentially strip a human being of the capacity to find life meaningful. Like any addiction, cocaine usage can be an ultimately ineffective attempt to meet missing life needs but it can also make it much less likely that a person can solve their own emotional problems. However, I’ve seen even chronic users comfortably grow beyond the habit, find genuine meaning in their lives without polluting their brains and live with the real ‘balls’ (whether male or female) they were meant to have. The Cocaine addiction treatment session uses a blend of the approaches I’ve found most useful over the years in helping people free themselves from the white stuff.

On choosing to live right

“We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” I’d like to lay claim to these words, but Aristotle beat me to it over 2,000 years ago. That we are, or become, what we do may seem kind of obvious, but it is an important and even profound truth. When working to help someone quit a 60-a-day smoking habit, for example, I will visualize their future or possible futures – the different selves they may become as a result of choices they make right now, today. If they continue their enslavement to the nicotine, they will be physiologically older, frailer and more decayed in a year’s time than if they stop today. One possible self may live a lot longer, choose to start projects that the more enfeebled self wouldn’t have been able to dream of. We become what we repeatedly do – or don’t do. Sometimes the unhealthy choices we make literally help turn us to dust – become something utterly different. The new Make healthy choices session isn’t about preaching clean living, it’s about helping people become profoundly aware in the moment how the habits of now can shape the you of the future -and sometimes that future is much nearer than suspected.

I used to write this section in our monthly Inspired Minds newsletter, but we figured it would be easier to read online, and all our blog subscribers would enjoy reading it too. At least I hope you do Read October’s Inspired Minds newsletter here.

Downloads Unwrapped – October 2011

Fear of sex – or how to love loving

We’re genetically programmed to enjoy sex. Not an overly romantic statement, but true.

We need to find pleasure in behaviours that connect us emotionally to others (so increasing our chances of surviving) or that enable us to produce kids to carry on the species. But sometimes things go wrong. Pleasure drives us to go toward the activity which produces the good feelings, but fear drives us to avoid what makes us afraid. Sometimes we come to fear what we should enjoy, and find pleasure in stuff that we should (or at least normally would) fear (ever seen that guy who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers?!). The wires get crossed.

Fear of sex can get started for all kinds of reasons. Some people fear intimacy – getting that close to another human being – perhaps because they fear emotional rejection or fear making themselves that ‘vulnerable’. Others dread sex because they feel they may be doing it ‘wrong’, or because it feels like an overwhelming pressure to ‘perform’. Or perhaps they have yet to have sex for the first time and feel frightened of the unknown.

One of my clients told me how he had been made fun of by a woman during an early sexual experience, and had feared sex ever since. Another cause might be previous sexual abuse, or even sex with an inconsiderate lover. Sex in such cases can feel like something violent and aggressive rather than something to be deliciously enjoyed and savoured. Sex has come to feel like threat.

What’s more, fear of sex can ripple out to undermine confidence in other areas of life and to block the development of deeper emotional intimacy with potential lovers. The new hypnosisdownloads.com session Fear of sex focuses on changing unhelpful patterns of response to both the expectation and actual experience of this potentially most wonderful of human activities.

Cocaine usage and shrunken testicles

Okay… maybe cocaine abuse doesn’t shrink testicles, but anabolic steroid abuse certainly can do so. Why? Because testosterone is produced naturally in the testes and if a man’s balls get the message they’re not needed to produce this muscle-building hormone (because there is now an ‘external’ supply of testosterone available) then they will shrink. Just as your leg muscles will shrink if you fail to use them enough. Ouch!

And what’s that got to do with cocaine abuse? Well, cocaine is a strong central nervous system stimulant that has a powerful effect on the reabsorption of dopamine, the brain’s ‘pleasure chemical’. Just as with the shrunken testicles example, if we continually artificially stimulate the pleasure centres in the brain, those centres may weaken and atrophy, and become incapable of carrying out their function without that artificial stimulation.

The old adage ‘the coarse drives out the fine’ indicates that the capacity to appreciate and gain pleasure from more subtle stimuli (such as a beautiful sunset) without the aid of coke may be damaged. The brain may lose the capacity, at least for a while, to generate its own pleasure response. This might not seem on the face of it as serious as some of the oft quoted side effects of cocaine usage (such as paranoid hallucinations, hyper irritability, heart attack and so on), but we are talking about a drug that can potentially strip a human being of the capacity to find life meaningful. Like any addiction, cocaine usage can be an ultimately ineffective attempt to meet missing life needs but it can also make it much less likely that a person can solve their own emotional problems. However, I’ve seen even chronic users comfortably grow beyond the habit, find genuine meaning in their lives without polluting their brains and live with the real ‘balls’ (whether male or female) they were meant to have. The Cocaine addiction treatment session uses a blend of the approaches I’ve found most useful over the years in helping people free themselves from the white stuff.

On choosing to live right

“We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” I’d like to lay claim to these words, but Aristotle beat me to it over 2,000 years ago. That we are, or become, what we do may seem kind of obvious, but it is an important and even profound truth. When working to help someone quit a 60-a-day smoking habit, for example, I will visualize their future or possible futures – the different selves they may become as a result of choices they make right now, today. If they continue their enslavement to the nicotine, they will be physiologically older, frailer and more decayed in a year’s time than if they stop today. One possible self may live a lot longer, choose to start projects that the more enfeebled self wouldn’t have been able to dream of. We become what we repeatedly do – or don’t do. Sometimes the unhealthy choices we make literally help turn us to dust – become something utterly different. The new Make healthy choices session isn’t about preaching clean living, it’s about helping people become profoundly aware in the moment how the habits of now can shape the you of the future -and sometimes that future is much nearer than suspected.

I used to write this section in our monthly Inspired Minds newsletter, but we figured it would be easier to read online, and all our blog subscribers would enjoy reading it too. At least I hope you do Read September’s Inspired Minds newsletter here. And if you have a moment, please take a look at Lyndsay’s request for charity help.

Downloads Unwrapped – September 2011

Self protection for therapists

Attitudes, moods and even ideologies are infectious. We want to influence our clients positively, of course, but it’s important to recognise that influence works the other way too – our clients can influence us. I’ve sat with extremely negatively-biased clients who view life through a fixed lens of dissatisfaction, regret, disappointment, hopelessness and bitterness – and these guys are hypnotic! If you’re not careful you can find yourself starting to feel as negative as they do. If we’re seeing lots of clients, not being objective enough, or not meeting our own primal human emotional needs outside of our clinic room, then we’re vulnerable to therapist burnout. If we get too ‘convinced’ – even subliminally – by the disempowering states that our clients bring in with them, then we’ll not be able to help them. Jumping into the raging sea beside them is not always the best way to rescue a drowning person. Better to throw them a rope from dry land. Avoid therapist burnout addresses this aspect of self protection from other people’s negative emotional states and ideas while keeping intact our capacity to also feel deeply inspired by our clients.

Sticks and stones… how to help children dealing with taunting

Name-calling, insults and being ‘made fun of’ can be hell for children -depending, of course, on how often it happens, how many people do it and, partly, on the intention behind it. It’s not that we should wrap our children in cotton-wool and protect them from even the smallest discomforting experience (that would leave them rather ill-equipped for the slings and arrows of adult life), but the better able children are, psychologically, to deal with insults, slurs and taunts, the stronger they’ll be generally. Resilience is important for lifelong mental health and resilience can be learned and developed.

People prone to low self esteem tend to ‘internalize’ negative stuff (that is, they exclusively blame themselves when things go wrong). If a child gets into the habit of inwardly accepting, even sort of agreeing with negative stuff that’s said about them, this may set them up for a psychological habit of mind that can reverberate throughout their life. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said: “No one can make you feel bad about yourself without your consent”. Learning this early on, not just as an idea but as a feeling, is a real benefit.

Staying calm in the face of taunts, recognising that insults say more about the insulter than the target, and – most importantly – not automatically internalizing the taunt, are the objectives of the new Handling insults for kids session. Because people don’t ‘play nice’ all the time and a child needs a good strategy for dealing with unpleasant stuff. This session uses gentle but powerful hypnotic storytelling to convey a message about optimism in difficult moments, choices over accepting or rejecting taunts, and the ability to see the bigger picture and so care less what other kids say when being nasty. It also gently suggests there is a difference between occasional gentle ribbing and verbal bullying.

If you don’t like it – do something

It’s all too easy to fall into victim mode, to neglect to use the power we have for self-direction in life, to go with the flow and let life happen to us rather than to steer our own ships. In the famous ‘Stanford prison experiment’ in the early 70s, young men who were treated like prisoners started to behave as helplessly as real prisoners (even though in reality they were free to leave at any time). (1) But life, too, can come to resemble the ‘prison experiment’ when we feel trapped by circumstances, relationships and work situations, and bemoan our dire straits without making the changes necessary to improve them. Unless we relish misery and dissatisfaction (some people do!) this habit of passivity can block fulfilment and other personal potentials. The new September session Make that change helps people to actually do something about what troubles them. Because so often what holds us back is doubt and fear – invisible but, for some, powerful chains that need to be broken.

Note

1. The research was led by Philip G Zimbardo in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University. He and his team wanted to see what happened when you place “good people in an evil place”. He found that most of the ‘guards’ in the experiment became sadistic and most of the ‘prisoners’ became depressed and afraid.