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 July’s Inspired Minds newsletter here.
Mark
Dancing in your bed
Martha looked sadly at me, lines of pain etched on her aged face. “I’d really love to see
Swan Lake again,” she said wistfully. What an impossible dream. She’d been telling me about her life long love for the ballet while we worked to relieve the pain that made her long term illness even harder to bear. There was no way she’d ever be well enough again to go to a ballet performance.
Chronic illness has many psychological aspects, from feelings of fear to a sense of helplessness and loss. Hypnosis is all about dissociation. When you dream at night, you travel from your bed (in the sense that you lose all conscious awareness of it) and you disassociate from your usual self. In the hypnotist’s chair you may ‘forget’ the chair and the room as your mind travels free. Likewise we can help someone dissociate from their pain and suffering.
So, using hypnosis, I helped Martha ‘see’ the whole
Swan Lake ballet without actually leaving her bed. While caught up in this magical experience, she became wonderfully relaxed and comfortable. This new session uses hypnosis in a similar way to make chronic illness feel more manageable and enable sufferers to hypnotically experience pleasure and relaxation in spite of their illness.
Shrinking and stretching time
A performance of
Swan Lake in the theatre takes several hours, yet Martha was able to enjoy the entire ballet in less than half an hour of clock time.
Time distortion is something we all experience everyday. Time ‘drags’ if we are uncomfortable or bored and ‘flies’ when we are having fun. We can use this natural variation in time perception when helping people with intermittent pain (such as the contractions of child birth) by making the painful times seem short and the pain free times seem longer. Similarly, we can focus on stretching time out during a short holiday, so that we can relish every moment more fully.
If I work with frightened flyers, I might suggest that ‘time will fly’ and an eight hour flight can feel like just a few hours. Or I might slow down the sense of time for a tennis player who wants to feel they have ‘all the time in the world to return that thunderous serve’.
Married to a depressed husband
But talking of time dragging, living with a depressed person can be, well… depressing! What sympathy and attention is available is commonly focused on the person who is actually depressed, while those living with them must cope as best they can. In the new session Coping with a
depressed husband we look at some differences in how men and woman typically communicate when they are depressed, and at how a wife or partner can cope with her partner’s low mood without becoming depressed herself. This is important because swallowing the limited depressive perspective of another person can drag us in to pessimism and general negativity. This session helps people stay empathetic while still retaining enough objectivity and detachment to look after themselves too.
Mark’s Tip for the Top
Mmmm… July’s personal favorite… let’s see… Well, because I’d really like summer to feel longer, I think this month’s favorite for me has got to be
time distortion. I’ve used this wonderful hypnotic approach with athletes, phobics, people in chronic pain and even a racing car driver. It works so well because, like all hypnotic phenomena, it’s essentially a highly focused extension of what we all naturally experience. It’s great to be in control!
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