The Antidote

Last week, a client came to see me who really felt deprived when she dieted. It's common. Counting points or watching calories forever is just no way to live one's life.

The antidote is simple. I told her to eat consciously. She was encouraged to eat each bite with full awareness, chewing thoroughly, without the distractions of reading or TV. And, I told her that if she wanting to eat something"wrong", to do so with full intention and awareness. That way she'd be in control, instead of being at the mercy of her resentments and feelings of being deprived.

The occasional intentional high caloric indulgence will make no difference in the long run. It will however, eliminate the internal resentments or feeling deprived and restricted by a diet. The focus shifts from walking the straight an narrow to enjoyment of life.

Chocolate Cravings

Every so often I have a client who needs help with chocolate. Several of them were eating one to two pounds of chocolate a day!

Since every thought that we have is expressed as a mental image, sound or word, physical sensation, taste, or smell, it was actually pretty easy to get rid of the compulsion, and rapidly at that.

Usually, when someone has a craving or compulsion to eat particular, foods like chocolate, they imagine it in a very enticing way. By changing the quality of mental representation slightly, its possible to eliminate the cravings and still enjoy the occasional indulgence. For someone who has been struggling with cravings that may seem impossible, but I've helped many people do just that.

It's common for people who crave chocolate to imagine the flavor and mouth feel of their favorite chocolate candy. If they simply change the imagined mouth feel to the texture of a baked potato the cravings disappear, and they then experience having control of their desire in a new way. It only takes a little mental rehearsal to shift the representation permanently.

I asked one client if their mental image of chocolate was life size, bigger, or smaller. She said it was bigger, and when I had her shrink it to life size it was "no big deal" any longer.

Another choice is to make chocolate undesirable by associating it with an unpleasant food's taste. Again, it only takes a few moments of practice to make the new thoughts permanent. People and cats learn quickly. My Siamese cat used to love to eat popcorn, until one day he got to a hot kernel before I could stop him. After that, he wouldn't touch popcorn again.

Paying Bills

One of my clients procrastinated paying his bills. He made it into a real chore by letting them pile up so that it would take him over an hour of work to get them all paid.

When asked how he represented paying his bills in his thoughts, he told me that he imagined the hour plus of work involved and accompanied the images with unpleasant inner dialog and feelings of impatience.

As it turned out, a big part of the issue for him was all the time that paying the bills took. So I pointed out to him that the easy way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Now he is paying one or two bills every few days, it only takes a few minutes, and it's much more pleasant to have a feeling of accomplishment than to let the bills pile up.

Sometimes just changing the imagined size of the bites can make all the difference between getting a task done and chronic procrastination.

$1Million a Year, Every Year

Recently a client came to me complaining that he was suffering from procrastination.

As it turns out, he was not getting some important tasks done at work, and it was costing him, and the company. He was losing the confidence of his co-workers, and the company was losing revenue, and was in some financial distress because of him. So, I asked him for an example of something that he was not getting done.

He said that he was putting off hiring a new sales person. The next question was then, "How do you mentally represent the activity of hiring a new sales rep?" That may seem like an odd question to most people, but for an NLP trained hypnotherapist the answer holds the key to the client's success.

As it turns out, the client was remembering that he had to fire the previous sales person, and it was very unpleasant for the client. He then imagined a long, tedious and unsuccessful search for a new employee that ended in another "we have to let you go" scenario. This all went through the client's mind in a flash, leaving him with a rather unpleasant feeling of futility.

Being curious, I then asked, "How much money will a new sales rep bring in for you?" The answer was, "a million dollars a year". So, I pointed out to the client that he had a million good reasons to make an effort to find a good employee this next year alone, and if someone offered him a million dollars to take the risk of an unpleasant "we have to let you go" conversation of two, would he do it?

The answer was a heartfelt "yes", and then he was ready for the next step.

So, he was instructed to change the content of his inner movie of the process of hiring to include all the steps, including multiple interviews until he found an excellent candidate who would be hired. To offer more mental flexibility, he included the possibility of needing to hire more than one candidate before finding one who would do a great job and stay with the company for years. I made sure that the movie ended in a success that included the benefits of the increased revenue, and the renewed trust and respect of his co-workers.

With a little mental rehearsal, the new movie replaced the old pessimistic one. And, the upshot is that the client is now getting lots more of his work done, and he's getting the company back on track again.

Momentum

When we are laughing our brains are pumping out feel good chemicals. And when we are laughing at something so funny that we can't stop, there is an opportunity to neutralize a fear, regret, or broken hearted feeling, because it takes some time to shift from uncontrollable laughter to another, less pleasant, feeling. We literally have to clear the laughter chemicals, and then make and respond to the not so good feeling neurotransmitters.

So when a client comes to me with a fear, I'll get her laughing and then mention briefly the fearful thought or object, and go right back to the funny images or triggers before she has time to shift into the fear.

It's fairly simple to set up a gesture, funny voice, or word that re-evokes the laughter. Comics do this all the time. Rodney Dangerfield would nervously adjust his tie, for example, when the audience laughed. Later, if a joke didn't work, he'd adjust his tie again to get a laugh.

Of course, it takes some skill and practice to get the timing down to do this conversationally. And, it helps to be funny, too. The technique can be used with resourceful states other than laughter as well. It could be a feeling of curiosity, or confidence, or any other positive and resourceful emotion.

Hypnosis can be used to amplify emotions by way of the imagination. It is the same principle that gives stories and metaphors the power to move us. So, the hypnotherapist can have the client remember, and amplify, an extremely funny (or other resourceful) memory while in trance to achieve the same results as a joke or funny comment. In other words, the client will start laughing, and the changes will be easy.

Left Big Toe

One of my clients mentioned in passing that she had internal critical voice: "You can't do anything right. You always make things worse...."

So I asked her the location of the voice. And, she indicated that it seemed to be coming from the left side of her head. When asked how she'd respond if it was talking to her from the direction of her left big toe, she replied, "I could care less what it has to say".

A week later I saw her for another session, and she complained that the voice was still there in her big toe. So I asked, "What is it saying now?", and she replied, "Nothing. It's sulking". Apparently, it didn't like being ignored.

This is a good example of how a simple shift in the location of an inner voice can make a big difference in its effect. We say a lot of things to ourselves, some of which we believe, and some of which we don't. A simple way to experience this for yourself is to say something to yourself that you believe, such as, "I know how to read" and notice where the mental voice seems to come from. Then say something to yourself that you do not believe, such as, "I'm 12 feet tall" and notice the location.

For most people the second statement comes from a different location. That is because we have to have a way of knowing what we believe and what we disbelieve.

There are variations, of course. For some people the difference may be tone of voice, or some other quality. But, there must be a difference, or we would be quite confused.

Once we learn to make these kinds of distinctions it can be easy to make some dramatic changes in our habitual ways of thinking. Imagine if all your internal dialog was supportive and helpful. How might that affect the quality of your life?

Food Going to Waist?

"Waste not want not" is a excellent practice for the conservation minded. It's a good thing to turn out the lights when we leave a room, or to consolidate trips to save gas when we run errands. However, food on a plate can be a very different matter, particularly when it comes to meals in restaurants.

A great many people are trained as children to eat whatever is on their plates. Unfortunately a lot of food goes to waist (and thighs) because of that early training. Our bodies actually have feedback mechanisms to let us know when we are full, but they can be overridden by childhood conditioning. That is why I tell my clients, "When I eat, if food is going to go to waist, it won't be mine!". And, yes, in case you were wondering, hypnosis certainly can be a shortcut to reconditioning those early habits and attitudes into something more useful.

I remind my clients that adults can make their own rules about eating, and if they choose to leave some food on their plates...well, more power to them. An old acquaintance told me once that his maternal grandfather would harshly ask him if he didn't like the food if he didn't eat everything on his plate. The next week his other grandfather would tell him, "A gentleman always leaves some food on his plate." So he was confused for a while, until he realized that he could decide for himself how much to eat.

Restaurants in particular often serve excessive amounts of food. And, a good practice for those who are interested in slimming down is to consider getting a "to go" box and then putting one half to one third of their meal in the box before they eat the first bite.

Once they have eaten the meal, if they are still hungry, the box will be happy to share.