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NEW
POST! Metaphors
about Perception
Working with
Fear of Flying -
by Sue McIntyre
Dynamic Marketing - by Lisa Wallace
Dealing
With 'Drivers' in Supervision - by
Sue McIntyre
Working with
Horseriders
- Resourceful Riding - by Sue
McIntyre
Metaphors about Perception
The Bumble
Bee
Aerodynamic scientists tell us
that a bumblebee’s body is too heavy for its wings
and that it should not be able to fly.
Fortunately no one has ever told the
bumblebee this and so they don’t know it and they
do fly.
The Traveller
There was a traveller who
travelled for many days and weeks over snow-capped
mountains and through dry and dusty desserts,
until he came at last to a
city.
By the gate of the city, there
waited an old man and the traveller rode over to
him.
“Tell me Father” he said “what kind
of people dwell in this city?” and the old man aid
“Tell me, my son, what are the people like in the
city you have left?” The
traveller replied, “O Father,
they were the most dreadful kind of people –
arrogant, mean, unkind”. Whereupon
the old man said “ It is most unfortunate, I have
to tell you that the people who dwell in this very
city, are just like that”. And the
traveller went on his way and did not enter the
city at all.
A few days later, another
traveller came upon the city and came to the very
same old man, waiting by the city gates. “Tell me,
Father,” he said, “what are the people like in
this city?” and the old man said “Tell me, my Son,
what are the people like in the city you have
left?” and the traveller replied, “O Father, they
were the most wonderful kind of people – kind,
generous, warm hearted”. And the
old man shook his head. “How
strange” he said. “The
people who live in this city are people just like
that”.
Working with Fear of Flying - by Sue
McIntyre
Anxiety
about air travel is a very common problem.
It has been estimated that in excess of 30 million
people in Britain and the USA want or need to
fly but remain either earthbound or terrified
in the air. Stewart Agras, an American
psychiatrist and his colleagues at the University
of Vermont, as far back as 1969 reported on
the basis of 325 randomly selected persons that
flying is, along with going to the dentist,
the fourth most widespread common fear and affects
198 out of 1000 in the population – following
snakes (390), heights (307) and storms (211).
In
working with clients who struggle with travelling
by air, I’ve found it useful to consider
- Is there a generalised
anxiety disorder?
- Is there a problem with
panic disorders and agoraphobia?
- Are there specific phobias
such as being strapped in, sight of deep
water, falling, fire, darkness etc.?
- Are there social phobias
such as entering a room full of strangers,
being told what to do, being judged etc?
These
considerations may warrant further exploration,
perhaps in the form of hypno-analysis, in order
to modify or remove the underlying belief that
predisposes the client to anxiety.
These
beliefs centre usually upon issues concerning
acceptance, competence or control and represent
a particular and persistent way of construing
the world. The first relates to fear that
you or your behaviour will not be acceptable
to others, the second to concerns that you are
not equal to others in coping with situations
and the third to feelings of being dominated
by events out of your control (or being domineered
by others). Anxious flyers can often be
helped to identify the source of their major
concern – it might be a critical parent, teacher
or friend (if acceptance is the primary issue);
failed tasks in the past (when competence is
the concern); or an authoritative parent or
relative (when control is the major preoccupation).
Some
medical conditions may also require particular
precautions and clients presenting with any
of the following might be well advised to consult
their GP.
- Blood
disorders
- Cardiovascular
problems
- Central
nervous system disorders
- Ear,
nose and throat problems
- Gastro-intestinal
problems
- Metabolic
problems
- Respiratory
problems
In
addition, air travel is contra-indicated for
those with infectious diseases, those who are
seriously ill and in advanced pregnancy – beyond
the 35th week for long international
journeys and beyond the 36th week
for short journeys.
Anxiety about air travel can
be explained as being due to the faulty appraisal
of flying as a threat, which in turn produces
changes in thoughts, feelings, bodily reactions
and behaviour. Symptoms are the body’s way
of dealing with threats and danger and behavioural
responses involves either fight, flight (escape),
freeze or faint as adaptive defences.
Eliciting from the client
specific problem areas can be useful in matching
symptoms and techniques. Common difficulties
involve no or little knowledge about how planes
fly, uncomfortable body symptoms and irrational
ideas and negative thoughts about flying.
Ignorance of the principles of flight is probably
the easiest to remedy with such information
readily available via the Internet or public
library. An excellent book entitled ‘Taking
the Fear out of Flying’ by Maurice Yaffe devotes
an entire chapter to this subject. A client
recently recommended 'Flying without Fear' by
Captain Kieth Godfrey - although I haven't read it
myself. Bodily symptoms and worrying
thoughts both lend themselves to hypnotherapeutic
interventions.
Defusing worrying
thoughts
Since people can drift in and
out of an hypnotic state quite spontaneously
throughout the day and because we know that the
presence of an emotion is likely to enhance an
hypnotic suggestion, it makes sense to take
particular note of what people are saying to
themselves – their internal dialogue and the
images they create to complement this.
Combined with anxious thoughts associated with
flying for example, internal dialogue along the
lines of “I will ruin my family’s holiday because
I am terrified of the flight” is dangerously
counter-productive. It is necessary for the
client to become aware of their thought processes
so that they can challenge and re-frame
them.
Automatic thoughts have
several distinguishing features from other kinds
of cognitions, which make them easier to
identify:
- They occur
spontaneously
- They are idiosyncratic to
each person
- They are difficult to
switch off
- They often lead to similar
thoughts
- They are believed
regardless of how irrational (i.e. bypass
conscious critical facilities)
- And they are hardly ever
noticed – so are rarely challenged or
questioned.
- They are generally
formulated in terms of absolute statements and
ideas and lead one to expect the worst.
- They tend to appear in
abbreviated form – words, phrases and images –
and confirm the labelling of flying as a threat
dangerous to self or aircraft or both – for
example “flight tomorrow ……panicky last
time….turbulence…crashing…who would take care of
the children?”
Uncritical acceptance of
automatic thoughts is an excellent formula for
feeding anxiety, for such narrowing of perception
excludes any possibility of alternative
considerations. This cognitive ‘tunnel
vision’ involves selectively attending to only one
set of clues (negative ones!) from a much larger
range often manifesting in distorted thinking –
such as
- Catastrophising –
assuming the worst situation will happen given
any possibility for an undesirable outcome (e.g.
one change in engine tone means your numbers
up!).
- Selective
abstraction – that is selecting
information that fits in with your preconceived
ideas (i.e. picking out reports of aircraft
accidents from the newspaper and dismissing the
hundreds of successful take-offs and landings
that happen every day) to prove the point that
flying is dangerous.
- Polarised thinking
– interpreting events in dichotomous terms (e.g.
unless a flight can be absolutely guaranteed
safe, it must be dangerous.
The shared belief amongst
anxious flyers is that something terrible is going
to happen over which they have no control. Beck and Emery
suggest that three questions need to be posed to
facilitate a restructuring of distorted thinking
errors.
These are
- What is the evidence upon
which your beliefs are based?
- Is there an alternative way
of construing the situation?
- What are the consequences,
EVEN IF they happen?
Peter A Bakal M.D. (A
Reframing Approach for Flight Phobia) points out
how airlines unintentionally feed distorted
thinking and condition people to fear flying by
using expressions such as “terminal” for the
airport building, “departure lounge” and the “last
and final call” for the boarding call. One of the
first messages given on the plane is how to cope
with a crash and how to use oxygen in case of an
emergency.
Anxious flyers need little help to create a
picture – they arrive at the “terminal”, are asked
if the place they are going is their “final
destination” and are told this is the “last and
final call” for flight ………”terminating at
Christchurch airport”.
Bakal’s technique involves
reframing the negative suggestions prevalent in
flight terminology, Ericksonian metaphor-type
suggestion therapy followed by future pacing
(visualising a successful flight). He reported
excellent results with a series of 21 patients
followed up for three years.
There are many
stress-reduction and relaxation-type audio CDs
available on the market which may help to support
a comfortable flight. I produce a range* of these
myself which you can view at www.helpmyselfhypnosis.com
Affirmations may have a useful role to play here
too – read ‘Creative Visualization’ by Shakti
Gawain and ‘You can Heal Your Life’ by Louise
Hay.
Uncomfortable body symptoms
such as muscle tension, palpitations, sweating,
high blood pressure, light-headedness, tingling
sensations and nausea may respond to a range of
techniques available to the hypnotherapist. To a greater or
lesser extent, progressive muscle relaxation,
diaphragmatic breathing, autogenic training and
biofeedback will help although diaphragmatic
breathing will only have a limited influence on
high blood pressure and biofeedback is unlikely to
help directly with light-headedness, tingling
sensations and nausea. These are all
techniques that clients can learn to apply for
themselves, which has the added advantage of
implying a sense of control.
- Progressive Muscle
Relaxation – may lessen the experience
of distressing symptoms. There are
possible contra-indications for sufferers of
arthritis, fibrositis and
atherosclerosis.
- Diaphragmatic
Breathing – important during air travel
because the air becomes thinner outside the
aircraft as you climb away from the earth’s
surface.
At altitude the cabin is pressurised to
the equivalent of 5-6,000 feet above sea level,
which means that there is less oxygen that you
are probably used to but importantly, there is
always plenty for everyone’s needs. You would not
ordinarily feel the difference unless you
breathed rapidly and shallowly, which is what
happens when you get anxious. Diaphragmatic
breathing will enable you to move more air with
less effort and thereby compensate for the
reduced pressure.
- Autogenic Training
– defined as a systematic set of exercises
developed in Berlin earlier this century by two
physicians, Johannes Schultz and Wolfgang
Luthe.
Basically self-hypnosis initiated by
verbal cues to relax but in contrast to
progressive and deep muscle relaxation, it
involves no direct instructions to tense and
relax muscles.
- Biofeedback
Methods – involve the use of
instrumentation to learn voluntary control over
the automatic nervous system. There are
three basic
stages
(i)
AWARENESS that the response
is maladaptive (i.e. not productive) and the
realisation that particular thoughts as well as
bodily events can influence this.
(ii)
CONTROL of the response using
the external signal as indication of progress
and
(iii)
Learning to TRANSFER the
control developed into general life situations as
well as travelling by plane.
Biofeedback can be used to
validate and monitor progress and to discover
whether progressive muscle relaxation exercises,
diaphragmatic breathing exercises, autogenic
training or cognitive techniques best facilitate
the relaxation process.
Of course, regular exercise
is an effective way of producing both bodily and
mental relaxation. It provides a
means of reducing muscle tension, general
physiological arousal and helps to empty the mind
of stressful preoccupations.
Practical Hints for Air
Travellers
- Drink non-carbonated drinks
– gases expand at altitude and carbon dioxide
may reduce the availability of oxygen. However, if
you do hyperventilate, then breathing over a
carbonated drink is sensible.
- Avoid drinking alcohol –
alcohol lowers the oxygen in your bloodstream
and makes it more difficult for you to replace
it. It
also has double the effect that id does on the
ground – i.e. makes you tipsy at altitude much
more quickly than the same amount would at sea
level.
- In addition to carbonated
drinks and alcohol, it makes sense to avoid
beans and curries that may cause gas to expand
in your abdomen. This cannot
readily escape and may cause discomfort – not to
mention flatulence when gas is trapped in the
stomach or large intestine!
- All airports and planes are
now non-smoking of course but it would help to
avoid smoking both before and after a
flight.
This is because carbon monoxide produced
from smoking reduces the oxygen-carrying
capacity of the blood. If you must
smoke, try to cut down at least, for peripheral
blood vessels are constricted due to this, which
lowers oxygen rate even further.
- Use the Valsalva manoeuvre
(close off the air supply to your nose with one
hand and blow strongly against the pressure
until you feel air passing through your
Eustachian tubes – the pathway that connects
ears and throat), swallow, yawn, move your lower
jaw from side to side or suck a sweet to reduce
‘popping’ sensations in the ears and equalise
the pressure between the middle ear and the
atmosphere.
* I have the
following CDs and MP3 downloads available at the
moment. There are plans for lots
more! A new title is just about to be
released - watch this space...
Help Myself Hypnosis (teaches
self hypnosis)
http://www.helpmyselfhypnosis.com/Self%20Help%20Hypnosis.htm
Hypnosis for Horseriders -
http://www.helpmyselfhypnosis.com/Hypnosis%20for%20Horseriders%20Riding%20Confidence.htm
Stop Smoking -
http://www.helpmyselfhypnosis.com/Hypnosis%20Hypnotherapy%20CD%20to%20Quit%20Smoking.htm
Lose Weight -
http://www.helpmyselfhypnosis.com/Lose%20Weight%20Weight%20Control%20Self%20Hypnosis.htm
Dynamic Marketing - by
Lisa Wallace
Attracting clients is
something we all have to work at, whether you are
just starting out or have been running a practice
for years.
Unlike other complementary therapies, where
doing a good job means you can keep clients
for years, we operate within the paradox that the
better we do our job, the quicker our clients move
on.
Although we do go on to get referrals from
our happy and satisfied clients, this will still
only account for a proportion of the number we
need to earn an income.
As any successful
hypnotherapist will tell you, in order to generate
the number of clients needed to sustain a
practice, you will need to have multi-channel
marketing.
In the nutshell, this means that you need
to look for as many ways as possible to introduce
you and your services to potential clients. You also need
to expand your client base to encompass as wide a
demographic as possible. The fewer
marketing channels you have or the narrower your
client demographic, the fewer clients you will
have. It
is not a difficult concept to grasp, but it can be
difficult to implement, especially for therapists
who find the concept of “selling” their business
difficult.
Many hypnotherpists that I
have spoken to feel that their skills and
abilities should be able to speak for themselves
and as their reputation grows, so will their
client base. Again, there is some truth in
this, but how can you build a reputation if you
don’t generate clients to begin
with?
The easiest marketing
channels are those that can be considered
passive. This is where we put the
information out there and wait for people to come
to us. This can include print advertising in
newspapers, magazines and the Yellow Pages, as
well as advertising on the Internet.
However, this is exactly where many
hypnotherapists become stuck in terms of practice
development. For many this is as much
“selling” of their services as they feel
comfortable engaging in.
But the reality is, this
passive approach is not enough. The way then
to expand on the potential audience is to also
engage in a more dynamic form of marketing.
Marketing takes you out to potential clients,
possibly even before they know that they want or
need your services. With this kind of
marketing, you need to sell yourself and your
services because ultimately that is what the
customers are paying for. This is what
differentiates you from other hypnotherapists in
the mind of the client when they decide the time
has come to make an appointment.
Clients are consumers and
consumers, whether they are buying services or a
product, want to engage in a relationship with the
provider of that service or product.
Starting that relationship with the client before
they even know that they want one, allows you to
achieve two things. Firstly, it creates the
idea in their mind that they might want the thing
you are offering and secondly that you, as opposed
to your competitors, should be the person they
choose to provide it.
As with passive marketing,
there are some types of dynamic marketing that are
taught as standard on therapy courses. The
two most widely used are giving talks to local
groups and writing columns for local papers or
magazines. This however, is really just the
tip of the iceberg in terms of
possibilities.
When looking at opportunities
for engaging in dynamic marketing, there are three
key elements that you want to try and encompass
whatever your plan is:
- A large audience, as you
don’t have the time to sell person by person
- Establish a need for your
services
- The ability to link
yourself to pre-existing goodwill, so that it
applies to you as well.
The first of these points is
pretty self-explanatory. Look for events or
publications which are well attended or have large
readerships and which open themselves up to a
range of people in terms of age, education and
income level. The wider the audience the
more successful it will be at generating
clients.
The idea behind the second
point is to introduce people to the idea that they
need your services in ways that they had
previously not understood. You do this by
generating or illuminating a need that the client
might have for your services but they were
previously unaware of. Although most people
will have heard of hypnotherapy, it is still
incredible how limited that knowledge is as far as
the diversity of areas that it can provide
positive benefit. Some examples of creating
this need are:
Use
“national awareness” days to link into your
practice. For instance on National Stress
Awareness day in November, look for events in your
area that you can take part in, and contact your
local paper to write a column providing tips on
how to deal with stress. People may not be
aware that hypnotherapy can help with stress in a
variety of ways so it is up to you to create this
awareness as well as the service you can
provide. For more information on “national
awareness” days contact your local PCT or search
on the Internet.
Look
for other businesses that could be
complemented by the services you offer and look
for opportunities to tap into their client
base. This might include
- Independent travel agent to
help with flying phobias
- Wedding consultants or
dressmakers to help with weight loss before the
big day, issues of public speaking for the
father of the bride or the best man.
- Driving Schools to help
with students who have confidence issues about
taking their final driving exam.
Contact local support
groups or organisations that focus on issues
that you can help with such as pain management or
chronic fatigue syndrome. Offer to set up a
stand at their next meeting to talk to people
about how your services might benefit them.
This can often be linked with a talk, but the key
is to connect with people on an individual basis
so that they can see how you can help their
specific issue.
The last point is about
looking for opportunities to align you with causes
or events that people already feel quite positive
about. This association helps soften the
barrier that people put up when confronted with
something new and allows you to get your message
across with less resistance. These types of
events can include:
Health and well-being
fairs – contact your local gym, leisure
centre, PCTs as well as large local
employers. Ask about any events they have
coming up that focus on health and well-being that
you could take part in. People who attend
these events do so because they want to learn more
about taking care of themselves. They will
generally feel quite positive about the
organisation that has set up the event, as it
shows that they care and by association, so do
you.
Charity events – events
that are run by, or on behalf of, charities are a
great way of introducing your services and helping
with a good cause. One way to start is to
contact a range of charities and ask for
information on events being organised in your area
so you can get involved. Think laterally and
include charitable organisations like the PTA or
animal rescue centres, which hold fairs at
different times of the year and are always looking
for stands that are different. Be open to
the types of events that are being held and be
creative as to the opportunities that exist for
you to showcase you and your
services.
If you can’t find an event
linked to a charity that offers the opportunity to
promote your business, then think about organising
your own. Charities are well aware that you
are using their name to connect with potential
customers and accept this, as they are the ones
who ultimately benefit from the money that you
raise. The key here though is to live up to
that association rather than to take advantage of
it. If you are doing an event for a charity
then you need to make sure that the benefit is not
just in your direction and put in as much effort
to raise money for them as you do in generating
potential clients.
These are just a small sample
of the possibilities that exist as far as dynamic
marketing is concerned. Look around your
catchment area to see what else might exist for
you. Accept that in order to be a successful
therapist you also need to be a businessperson and
that this does not in any way diminish the work
that you do with clients. The two aspects
can and should go hand in hand, because without
clients there is no opportunity to provide
therapy. Therefore, it makes sense to see
marketing, especially dynamic marketing, as an
essential tool in helping people rather than
something to be avoided or
feared.
Lisa
Wallace is an Ashbourne based hypnotherapist and
is a tutor on Practice Set-up and Development at
CECCH in Birmingham. Lisa has also written a
book on this topic that is coming out this
year. If you would be interested in
purchasing an advanced copy or are interested in
attending one of her courses, please contact Lisa
atlisa@hypnocentric.com or visit www.hypnocentric.com
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