Inspired by Jean's recent post re ABC's Diane Sawyer's coverage of hypnosis I thought some of you might be interested in Fox 21's recent "test" of hypnosis. Christina Salvo overcomes her snake phobia and provides a full report and blog coverage of the experience.

For those interested they can find it at:

http:/www./puebloconews.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=97880

Stephen
www.ask-the-hypnotist.com

 

 

This just out from the National Institutes of Health.   

People who spend their years feeling worried, tense and angry may not like how things turn out. A researcher says that, the more people do that, the greater their risk of developing mild cognitive impairment.

Mild cognitive impairment – a little forgetting or a little less clear thinking – doesn’t sound that bad. But it can be a warning of approaching Alzheimer’s disease, which is why Robert Wilson of Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center looked into it.

``What we found is that negative emotions are bad for your cognition and your risk of Alzheimer’s disease.’’

This doesn’t mean constant worry causes Alzheimer’s – just that there seems to be some connection. Wilson also says being happy doesn’t prevent it.

Stephen

Back on the theme of “academia catching up with what Consulting Hypnotists know,” I found a recent (2005) study out of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston interesting. It may also be of help to those of us who work with that important task of preparing clients for successful surgery.

Anyhow, what happened was that researchers in the Department of Radiology there monitored over 150 video interactions of patients with their health care providers during “internventonal radiological procedures.”

Having previously noted that patients are often prepared for procedural discomforts with descriptions of pain or undesirable experiences, the researchers were interested to understand the affect of hearing such statements on patients' pain and anxiety levels. They monitored interactions to note which patients either heard statements that described painful or undesirable experiences as a warning before they actually received such potentially noxious stimuli or as an expression of sympathy after having received them.

The researchers then recorded the patients' rating of pain and anxiety after the painful event.

Result: Warning the patient in terms of pain or undesirable experiences lead to them reporting experiencing both greater pain and anxiety. Sympathizing with patients in such terms after a painful event did not increase reported pain but did result in greater patient anxiety.

Thus, contrary to common belief in the medical field and elsewhere, warning or sympathizing using language that refers to negative experience does not make patients feel better and likely, will increase their discomfort. What the mind expects tends to be realized!

Conclusions: This research supports a) the need to educate, wherever practical, health care providers on the consequences of inappropriate communication to patients, and b) makes it fair to anticipate that preparing the patient/client with appropriate positive suggestions prior to and post surgery is likely to have a positive influence on their interpretation of this potentially painful and anxiety inducing experience.

Hope this is of interest to some of you,

Well, those of us who routinely use any of a variety of uncovering techniques when working with our clients do not need convincing of the efficacy of this approach. It is so much more reliable for the client than just taking a bet on Direct Suggestion alone. However, it's always nice to know that the academic world is catching up to us.

A 2005 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis reports that in a trial of five Direct Suggestion sessions over 2 months, 3 cases under investigation of psychogenic dermatitis yielded results that were “unappreciable and unsuccessful.”

The same patients subsequently were treated using ideomotor questioning, regression to onset and reframing - followed by Direct Suggestion; all of course under hypnosis. This time around the approach proved an effective treatment (no cases of relapse after 1 year of checking).

What can we note from this?

• Once again, it pays to do the “uncovering work.” Don't take short cuts!

• This could well have been a report of the “hypnosis doesn't work” category if the trial had stopped at the Direct Suggestion phase as many trials have. All reports of hypnosis not working have to be carefully read to see what was actually done while the client was in hypnosis. Because of course, it's not the hypnosis per se that counts, it's the work that is done while the client is in hypnosis.

Hello all,

Well, a fun week for me in the “getting the word out about hypnosis” department.

Last Monday's talk seemed to go over OK. One important lesson there – never pre-judge your audience. The average age was very much on the “mature” side, as their coordinator had told me to expect leading me to wonder prior to the talk how they would react to hearing about an alternative therapy. I had accepted with the idea that some would have younger relatives etc. who they might pass the word onto.

Turned out that when asked, 3 of the 25 present to my surprise had already experienced hypnosis and stood up to tell the rest of the group about it. Result – appointment requests from both those present as well as later from their younger family members to whom they had passed the word on to.

Also completed my first Hypnosis Video for my web site (ask-the-hypnotist.com). I am planning a series of short videos to explain Hypnosis to my web site visitors. The contents will not be news to anyone here but I have uploaded it as an example of what you can do with a simple camera and some free software. I still have lots to learn in terms of presenting style but from it you can see that no one here should be intimidated by the technology. I think video will be another great tool for letting your potential clients get to feel comfortable enough to pick up the phone to call you. I was also surprised that people are already actually finding it among the millions of videos on Youtube! Any constructive feedback (thank you Celeste – she saw a preview!) always helpful and welcome.

Stephen