Downloads Unwrapped – January 2012

Your life story matters

We all have a sense of narrative – a plot and characters. Some of these characters are ‘evil’, some are ‘good’, some are ‘heroic’. We can see patterns in our own lives, triumphs perhaps, and maybe the odd disaster or two. And how do you place yourself in your own life story? Hero or heroine? Victim? Villain, even? Or just a disinterested observer of life? I once asked a client to write down the story of her life as a story. She literally began with: “Once upon a time…” and then went on to describe all the ins and out of what had happened to her and what she had made happen throughout the years. I noticed that she herself featured in this story mainly as the ‘victim’ character. I asked her to write the same story out again, but this time from the point of view that she was the ‘heroine’. This exercise had an amazing effect on her.

She started to see herself and her life in a new, more positive light. She began to appreciate that there were times she had shown resilience, determination and courage, qualities she’d never seen in herself before. We are all surrounded by stories, on the news, in the gossip we hear, even TV plot lines. But the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves may be the most important of all. With this in mind, we’ve produced Your life story which should help you not only to see the narrative of your own life and the patterns of your choices and behaviour more clearly, but also to start to write a whole new plot if you choose.

Prime your mind to supercharge the placebo response

Placebo is immensely powerful. The key factor in whether, for example, an antidepressant works for someone (or not) seems to be whether they expect it to work (or not).⁽¹⁾ A placebo response is the expectation of future improvement or wellness. A placebo pill is generally an inert substance such as a sugar pill presented as an active medication so that the person taking it believes it to be a real medication and therefore expects it to work.

When someone gets better after taking a placebo, it doesn’t mean that their ailment was ‘all in the mind’. Expectations and mental and emotional processes do play an important rule in modulating things like the immune system and the pain response.⁽²⁾ However, it used to be thought that you had to believe that your medication was real in order for the placebo to get your psychological and or physiological healing systems into gear. That seemed logical. Only it isn’t true. Amazingly, it’s been found that knowing that what you are receiving is a placebo doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t work for you.⁽³⁾ The new Placebo primer download can help real medication work even better and be used to prime yourself to feel a certain way regardless of whether you are on medication or not. For example, if you want to be relaxed and comfortable at tonight’s social engagement then setting your mind to expect that is, in a way, using the placebo response. We are going to love getting the feedback for this session.

Kids who gain confidence gain all kinds of other benefits

Being an under confident child can prevent learning from being as quick or thorough as it could be. This is because anxiety and worry can crowd out reasoned thought and the acquisition of new information and skills. Add in the emotional fallout of low confidence – the way it prevents the child from feeling able to enjoy times with other children, the way it prevents children developing healthy self esteem, so making them feel not as good as others, or not able to achieve or expect the best for themselves in life – and you have a pretty sad situation. Children learn through story telling (as do adults, of course) and story telling around the camp fire is perhaps the oldest form of ‘psychotherapy’ there is. Stories are naturally hypnotic and can lay down healthy templates for the child’s development and wellbeing even when times get tough. The new Confidence for children is designed to reassure and relax but also to inspire and enable a child to increase their sense of self confidence, not just now but throughout their future life as well.

Notes

(1) See: The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch PhD
(2) See: Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing: New Concepts of Therapeutic Hypnosis by Ernest L. Rossi
(3) See ‘Placebos work even if you know they’re fake: But how?’

In uncertain times it’s pretty forgivable to find comfort in any ritual, any habit, you can. But it’s sadly true that many of the ways we use to comfort ourselves can, in fact, end up damaging us. If we need a lot of comfort (which can happen) eating for that comfort can be highly detrimental to health.

And the more we eat for comfort, the more comforting we may feel we need. Because we are eating so much and putting on weight. And then we have ourselves a perfect vicious circle.

One part of the problem is that ‘comfort foods’ tend to be fattening foods. They tend to give us a quick hit of blood sugar by releasing insulin into the blood stream. Insulin is the hormone that helps us store fat on the body. And ‘comfort eating’ can soon turn into ‘binge eating’ – home alone, in front of the TV, and hey presto, we’re undermining our health and putting on fat like there’s no tomorrow.

Our Stop comfort eating download has been a favourite on hypnosisdownloads.com for a while and we’ve had great feedback for it, and now we’ve put some fresh ideas into it and made it even better. Comfort eating is such a trap. And it’s such a relief when it stops.

All my best

Mark

Self confidence and a healthy level of self esteem are vital for children, enabling them to feel they can explore their world by learning, without having to worry constantly about how they compare with other children or how they might ‘fail’. Lots of situations can knock a child’s confidence, from being bullied to going to a new school or moving area, or going through a family break up. Early school years can be challenging and attitudes such as pessimism, defeatism or low self-worth can all too easily be ‘caught’ from others.

The new hypnosis session for children uses hypnotic story telling (the ideal way for a child to learn), to enable children to absorb attitudes of resilience and habits of self confidence that can not only help them as children but also throughout life. To be able to trust your own opinions and feel you are okay in having them, to feel able to focus your attention positively on work and play and not be overly swayed by ‘group think’ or be too prey to worrying about what others think of you – these facets of living are important to all of us. And a great time to develop them is when you’re young.

We’re really excited about the new Confidence for children now available at hypnosisdownloads.com

All my best

Mark

We all build up a narrative for ourselves, weaving it out of selected instances that stand out to us from our past, or in response to ‘narrative feeds’ from others. Sometimes we feel we are the hero or heroine of our narrative, sometimes the victim, and sometimes even the villain of the piece. Much of this narrative may be unconscious. But we all have a sense of the coherence of our lives and the narratives we weave about ourselves and others are a primary source of identity. As such, they have the power to shape (and reshape) our sense of self.

We are all storytellers, even if we just tell stories to ourselves about the roles we have played (or are playing or will play) in our own and other people’s lives. Some stories damage us (such as the narrative that goes “I have always been unlovable/unlucky/dysfunctional”) and some have the power to ennoble us and help us be resilient ( such as “I have always found a way to make things work – I never give up!”).

When we become fully our own ‘authors’ rather than allowing ourselves to be ‘authored’ or ‘scripted’ by others then we start to truly become individual. We start to live more comfortably in our own skin, to feel we are living through our own eyes and not trying to be some character someone else has invented.

The new Your life story download will help people become more flexible around who they believe they ‘are’ in relation to what they have done or what has happened to them. If we condemn ourselves to some negative or minor character role in life then we miss out on giving ourselves the best of all chances.

All my best

Mark

Placebo is incredibly powerful – because expectation is incredibly powerful.

A placebo is an inert (that is, inactive) substance or ritual that we believe will cure us. It’s the belief that forms the expectation of future wellness that then produces that wellness. People have been relieved of great physical pain by taking placebo, and placebos are as effective as antidepressants in lifting symptoms of depression. It’s the expectation that is key.

But here’s a thing. It was long believed that for placebos to work the person taking them had to believe they were real drugs. But it’s now been established that we can know quite well that a placebo is just a placebo but it can still work for us. This is astonishing. For example, in one study people were given pills that were clearly labelled as ‘inert substances/placebos’ for irritable bowel syndrome and still showed significant improvement. (1)

Now it’s important to understand that when placebos ‘work’ it’s not because the person wasn’t ‘really’ ill or couldn’t have had ‘real’ pain. What happens is that taking a placebo prompts a very real healing response within the patient’s body. When a real drug works, it will work even better when someone expects it to work well. So placebo medicine might be a significant part of all (or at least some) medical treatments.

We see the placebo response as a form of post-hypnotic suggestion. So it makes perfect sense to use hypnosis to ramp up your expectation that whatever medicine you are taking is going to be super effective for you. The new hypnosis download Placebo Primer is designed to do just that. When your subconscious and conscious expectations become more positive then you are much more likely to experience more of those positives.

All my best

Mark

Note

(1) See: Kaptchuk TJ, Friedlander E, Kelley JM, Sanchez MN, Kokkotou E, et al. (2010) Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. PLoS ONE 5(12): e15591. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015591

Placebo is incredibly powerful – because expectation is incredibly powerful.

A placebo is an inert (that is, inactive) substance or ritual that we believe will cure us. It’s the belief that forms the expectation of future wellness that then produces that wellness. People have been relieved of great physical pain by taking placebo, and placebos are as effective as antidepressants in lifting symptoms of depression. It’s the expectation that is key.

But here’s a thing. It was long believed that for placebos to work the person taking them had to believe they were real drugs. But it’s now been established that we can know quite well that a placebo is just a placebo but it can still work for us. This is astonishing. For example, in one study people were given pills that were clearly labelled as ‘inert substances/placebos’ for irritable bowel syndrome and still showed significant improvement. (1)

Now it’s important to understand that when placebos ‘work’ it’s not because the person wasn’t ‘really’ ill or couldn’t have had ‘real’ pain. What happens is that taking a placebo prompts a very real healing response within the patient’s body. When a real drug works, it will work even better when someone expects it to work well. So placebo medicine might be a significant part of all (or at least some) medical treatments.

We see the placebo response as a form of post-hypnotic suggestion. So it makes perfect sense to use hypnosis to ramp up your expectation that whatever medicine you are taking is going to be super effective for you. The new hypnosis download Placebo Primer is designed to do just that. When your subconscious and conscious expectations become more positive then you are much more likely to experience more of those positives.

All my best

Mark

Note

(1) See: Kaptchuk TJ, Friedlander E, Kelley JM, Sanchez MN, Kokkotou E, et al. (2010) Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. PLoS ONE 5(12): e15591. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015591

As with many other things in life, it’s not so much about what work you do as what state of mind you are in when you are doing it. What we expect to experience from some piece of work before we do it can also be the deciding factor in how much we procrastinate (because we see it as boring or routine, or overly challenging and therefore too stressful).

But when you are in a certain state of mind, when you engage wholeheartedly in work – be it cleaning, checking tax returns or writing a novel – without reluctance, expectations or perfectionism, then you experience flow in your work and you can ‘get into the zone’ with any kind of work. A kind of Zen-like state of being ‘one-with-your-activity’ can be achieved washing the dishes or interviewing a prospective employee. What’s more, there are any number of creative ‘tricks’ for doing this, from the woman who pretended she was on a cookery show when cooking to focussing on writing all your entries in your very neatest handwriting when filling out forms. These are all ‘gateways’ enabling the transition from everyday consciousness to ‘work-Zen’ to happen more easily. The new Enjoy your work download is designed to help people help themselves feel more focussed while doing any kind of work and have less narrow expectations from their work.

All the best

Mark

I haven’t acted professionally myself since… well… ever, to tell the truth! But I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of actors.

Our new hypnosis download Method acting isn’t just for professional actors. It’s for anyone who does – or is going to do – any level of acting, from appearing in a college play (something I did do!) to treading the boards on, just off, or nowhere at all near Broadway. So you could be a stage or TV or even a movie actor, or a new recruit to an amateur drama group, but the point is you want to ‘get into character’ and you want to do it well.

Personally, I like my actors to really be actors. I don’t specially enjoy watching some ‘personality’ playing themselves over and over. And I really admire the ability of some actors to ‘become’ the character they are playing and make you believe for a while that they really are the person they are portraying.

This new hypnosis session is for anyone who acts (and even for those who would just like to feel what it’s like to inhabit another ‘identity’ for a while). Hypnosis is a brilliant way to learn how to leave yourself behind for a while and inhabit a character in its totality – moving, thinking, looking and being as they are for a while.

All the best

Mark

Downloads Unwrapped – December 2011

Stuck in a rut and trying to get out

Ever felt you were stuck in a rut? That life had (or has) become predictable, unchallenging, and somehow ‘small’? Of course we all have a need to feel safe and secure in life. But at the same time we all have a need to feel stretched, surprised and excited too. So we must find a balance. It’s true that we can lose balance by not having enough routine or predictability, and then we may feel that life is too out of control, too ‘exciting’, perhaps even threatening. But we can also lose balance by having too much routine, always knowing exactly what’s coming next. And some of us have a greater need for predictability and routine, while others need more excitement, challenge and elements of the unexpected.

So everyone has to find their own path, but we can all agree that feeling ‘stuck’ and basically bored with life is a recipe for depression and a signal that we need to make a change if life is not to lose all its meaning and savour.

But of course if you’ve got into a rut you can also get out of one. This is done partly through a change of attitude but also through a change in behaviour. The fact is that it takes courage and inventiveness to escape a rut because even a ‘prison’ can be comfortable. The new Stuck in a rut download focuses on helping people recapture or develop the creativity and courage to make their lives more meaningful, interesting and exciting in healthy ways. Because meaning is the energizing fuel that makes us all feel alive.

Remember who you are at all times – be centred

You might sometimes talk, or hear others talk, about the importance of ‘being centred’, but what does it actually mean? In his mind blowing book Multimind: a new way of looking at human behaviour ⁽¹⁾ Robert Orstein describes how, in a sense, we are all full of different ‘characters’. For example, we feel differently as parent, employee, lover, friend, customer, sibling, son, daughter, etc. All these different ‘selves’ can crowd out the essential and central sense of who we fundamentally are. When people get swayed or easily upset by others then they tend to be less centred. Actually the term ‘centred’ is often used in certain martial arts that focus on keeping your physical and mental balance, so that you are less easily ‘thrown’ – physically and psychologically. Feeling connected with our true sense of self regardless of the ebb and flow of social pressure or external circumstance is what the new Be more centred download is all about. A way of knowing who you are and keeping your perspective, no matter what.

Share the love: How to express love more freely

Okay, you could be forgiven for thinking we are really expressing inner hippy this month, what with ‘being more centred’ and now – Heavens to Betsy! – we’ve got Express love! But if I can just explain why this is important for non-hippies, all will become clear.

When we are in a relationship, and have been for some time, it’s rather easy to fall into a pattern where we act ‘as if’ divinely appointed to regularly show our partner what’s ‘wrong’ with them. To nag them, in effect.

After all, aren’t we being generous in pointing out their faults so they can improve? But in fact a stream of criticism is like hammering nail after nail into the coffin of a relationship (or, indeed, a friendship). On the other hand, expressing admiration, pleasure and, yes, love, is one of the most effective ways to ensure a relationship will endure and continue to reward and satisfy.

One of the commonest regrets people feel when someone dies is that they didn’t tell that person they loved them before they went. We are not with people forever and important people are gifts we need to appreciate.

This doesn’t mean you have to go around telling everyone how much they mean to you all the time. But sometimes it’s important. However, some people have a real problem with it. Maybe they were raised in an undemonstrative family who didn’t go in for physical expressions of affection. Of course, love can be expressed in all kinds of ways apart from physical affection, including relaxed acceptance of another person “warts and all”, or through romantic gestures and, of course, with words. Some people are reluctant to express how they feel because saying it aloud, or even in a romantic gesture, makes them feel too exposed and ‘vulnerable’. And it’s true, it can take courage. But finding the honesty and courage to tell those most important to you how you feel about them can make your life (and their life) more satisfying, because relationships really do matter. The Express love download is for everyone who feels they could be more demonstrative and expressive of their love.

Notes

(1) Robert Orstein, Multimind: a new way of looking at human behaviour. Macmillan (1987).

Feeling energetic, full of beans, motivated and abuzz with vitality makes life feel worth living. The ‘life force’ not only helps us not only to go for our dreams and be much more likely to achieve them, but also to be happier, more buoyant, optimistic and self confident.

All kinds of things sap energy – over-working, not meeting our emotional needs, poor diet, uncontrolled spiking and crashing of blood sugars, etc. Constantly feeling exhausted sucks the meaning from life and can make us extremely miserable.

The quick energy booster hypnosis download has been up for a while but, as with all our sessions, we like to update and improve them once in a while to make sure we keep ahead of the field. And much as I liked the old energy booster session, I think the new one is going to knock spots off it, as they say. We all need more energy, both in the short term sometimes (without having to resort to gallons of caffeine) but also to live the kind of life that both conserves and generates more personal energy, drive and focus.

All the very best

Mark