ELLIE HAS MOVED

The Transparent Hypnotist is at transparenthypnotist.com.

The Transparent Hypnotist

BIG, BIG, BIG NEWS!!! The Transparent Hypnotist is moving! I was going to wait until next month to celebrate the one year anniversary of this blog, but this just feels like the time is now.

Yes, we are now going to be in our own domain www.transparenthypnotist.com! No longer will I be living on the kindness of strangers at the big blue G (they have been getting grumpy - I may have over-stayed my welcome).

So go on, go check it out. If you are already a subscriber and read this through a reader, subscribing to the feed: http://feed.feedburner.com/TheTransparentHypnotist, it should be a seamless transition. You will not need to do anything.

If you subscribe to this blog through an address such as http://transparenthypnotist.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default, please change your feed to http://feed.feedburner.com/TheTransparentHypnotist. It will follow me no matter where I go (and sometimes I do get a little restless).

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X!#0!!!# Internet

I have recently had some Internet problems. My high-speed connection crawls, sometimes it goes down completely, or maybe it decides it has had enough of the transparent hypnotist. Rather than providing an advertising op for the company in question, I shant mention their name.

Like a rational person, I am surveying the playing field and looking at the competition. Oh how it flirts! In the fine art of seduction, the smooth velvety voice of temptation offers faster, faster, and so fast the page loads during my blink. And then, the sweet rustlings of interest begin - an auction for lifetime high-speed Internet. Now it does beg the question what is "life-time?" But, like most first blushes, these questions are pushed away with promises of winning a Nintendo® Wii™. Mmm. Golf at the office. Ellie's 18, perhaps?

Yes, I admit it; I am human (as we saw in today’s earlier post). I would love a Wii, but with everything else, I am not sure I could justify purchasing it. One could make an argument that after working with clients on sports motivation and concentration; they could use the game before the hypnosis session and after to see potential change? In theory, it is a cool idea, but I am not really sure how the Wii translates into reality.

Wondering how I went from the Internet to the Wii? Did I mention that Charter High-Speed® Internet is sponsoring this contest to win the Wii and also the auction for lifetime Internet.


Click Here for a Chance to Win a Nintendo® Wii™!

What Not To Say When Someone Wants Smoking Cessation

One of the hardest things to do when maintaining a transparent blog is to admit mistakes. Sometimes it would be much easier to not mention them and let them go unannounced (with the false ego-based assumption that I remotely appear infallible -lol). However, mistakes are a necessary part of life and are not really that negative in some realms. Rather they are opportunities for learning. Learn I did and maybe my experience will stop this from happening to someone else, maybe even you.

I totally missed the boat with a potential smoking cessation client this week. Often I get calls from people who seek my services for smoking cessation. Many do not make appointments directly, instead they tell me they are going on holiday the following week, giving a dissertation, or going to court and they chose to make the appointment following whatever event. So this time, I was asked if it would be better if they waited until after after the stressful event next week. Rather than creating a positive suggestion and saying "no, you will be tobacco free by next week," I said "Let's do it the week after." (And I am booked this week, which I neglected to say as well). So, they promptly told me they would call me back later the schedule the appointment - which they have not.

I am not beating myself up over this, but in hind sight, I think they were looking for reassurance and I did not give them anything to boost their confidence and I may have made them lose some belief about hypnosis that may have been important to their success. Lesson learned.

Woogie Treatments

As I sit drinking coffee first thing this morning, I am trying to decide where to go with this post. There was a story out on Monday (yes, another one) that has been itching at me. It was another negative slap to hypnosis, so I though I would just ignore it, but it will not let me. So, sadly, I must pass it along.

I am not sure what happened on Monday that caused the press to suddenly feel the need to write disparagingly about hypnosis. Maybe it was that there was a certain time that certain people did things to get caught fanning the fires.

And so, for you Tampa, Florida hypnotists, you carry the burden of another soul's double dealing. From what I hear, Florida has several laws about who can and cannot practice hypnosis. That is tough enough. Then there is counseling. Very often as hypnotists we find clients who want us to fill this role as well. For those who are licensed counselors or psychologist, this is a moot point. But for those of us who do not have the background and proper paperwork, it is a bit illegal for us to provide such services. I have known several hypnotists who become ordained ministers to get past these licensing issues (I speak from no-experience in this realm).

On Monday, Tampa Bay Online reported a story about a man who was on the board of directors at a Unity church (it does not say he was ordained) who was arrested because "he passed himself off as a mental health counselor to treat members of the church, even though he was not licensed to do so." This carries a one year sentence. Well, that is a no no, but why am I up in arms about this? Once again hypnosis is used in an odd way. I quote:

There were six victims in all, with their ages ranging from 18 to 40, and they were either former or current members of the church, Proffitt said. O'Toole often used hypnosis to treat them.

It is too bad he did not tell people he was a "coach." I doubt that would have changed the statement about hypnosis, though. But good grief, it mentions hypnosis like it is a woogie treatment (I could not think of another word and woogie wanted to come out). That is really unnecessary. I suspect he also used "talk-therapy." You do not read about that in such a way.

Well, just...just...YUCK!

Source: Tampa Bay Online

Happy National Sleep Awareness Week

A day late, but no matter. Did you know that this week is National Sleep Awareness Week. I almost snoozed right through it. LOL. Are any of you participating or doing anything for it? If so, feel free to mention it in the comment section of this post. Needless to say, I am doing little more than blogging about it here, but at least that is something.

It is sort of odd, too. Normally I have clients around who see me for help with sleeping better, but currently my roster is free from those. I work a lot with sleep issues because inevitably some one will come to me with a different problem and after the first session they will call me back to work on the sleep stuff. It seems that the night directly after their session was one in which sleep did not evade them. In fact many say their best sleep nights are after a hypnosis session (and sessions not necessarily related to sleep issues).

Here's a great quote you can use in your material. It comes from the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office of Communication in a press release they sent out on February 28, 2008:

Nationwide, an estimated 50 to 70 million people suffer from chronic sleep loss and
sleep disorders. Sleep loss is associated with health problems, including obesity,
depression, and certain risk behaviors, including cigarette smoking, physical inactivity, and heavy drinking.

We often spout these types of facts, but now you have a source in which to attribute it.

So, anyway, happy National Sleep Awareness Week. The National Sleep Foundation, who sponsors the activities of this week, has a lot of interesting resources. They offer the Sleep Challenge (you can win one of those fancy beds) to see how much you know about sleep.

A Cloud on Hypnosis

For a Monday, it is quite beautiful - warm and sunny. The week ahead seems well paced. And yet there is this ugly dark cloud above us. That is right - above US, not just me, but you and I. It is small, so it is probably nothing more than an irritation, but I am not one to enjoy an irritation, no matter how petite.

This cloud is in the form of words - hideous and reeking of misinformation. No, no one has fouled my name (as of today -LOL), but it fouls the good name of honest hypnotists. It comes in the form of a short article in the Lancashire Evening Post with the headline "Man used 'hypnosis' on girls." Granted, this does not say much, but it has a sinister bent (the juxtaposition of Man and girls) and sure enough, it is dark.

The basis story is this: a man played a game with a couple of little girls, "pretending" to catch them and hypnotize them, after which, he kissed and touched them. Perhaps you just breathed a sigh of relief (those more concerned with the good name of "hypnosis" - there is no sigh of relief for the perpetration of a heinous crime) and thought, "he was just pretending to 'hypnotize' the girls - he did not really use hypnosis." However, in my book, there is another crime that has been committed other than the one of sexual nature. It is a crime of ignorance and one that the media is promoting. Perhaps that is actually two crimes.

Here is the break down. The crime is in the misrepresentation of hypnosis. First,when the average joe reads the article, chances are, it will be skimmed or read lightly. Will he or she get that is was just a game and he did not hypnotize the girls? The other horrible side of it is how the idea of hypnosis was used in the game. It sounds as though he (the man) takes on the persona of an Ogre, catches the girls and hypnotizes them. The hypnosis is to...what? Is it to get the girls to do things against their will? Am I making a paranoid leap here? If it is indeed the idea of having someone do something against their will, well, let us take two steps back. Once again, the media's pull is strong when proliferating the myths of hypnotic arts. Yes, for all of you non-hypnosis-knowing people that maybe reading this, it is a myth that you will do things against your will when in hypnosis. This is at the heart of what is bothering me about this small little cloud of an article.

Source: Lancashire Evening Post