The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) describes 12 ideal “prototypes” of personality disorders. It provides lists of seven to nine personality traits per each disorder. These are called “diagnostic criteria”. Whenever five of these criteria are met, a qualified mental health diagnostician can safely diagnose the existence of a personality disorder.

But important caveats apply.

No two people are alike. Even subjects suffering from the same personality disorder can be worlds apart as far as their backgrounds, actual conduct, inner world, character, social interactions, and temperament go.

Diagnosing the existence of a personality trait (applying the diagnostic criteria) is an art, not a science. Evaluating someone’s conduct, appraising the patient’s cognitive and emotional landscape, and attributing motivation to him or her, is a matter of judgment. There is no calibrated scientific instrument that can provide us with an objective reading of whether one lacks empathy, is unscrupulous, is sexualizing situations and people, or is clinging and needy.

Regrettably, the process is inevitably tainted by value judgments as well. Mental health practitioners are only human (well, OK, some of them are…:o)). They hail from specific social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. They do their best to neutralize their personal bias and prejudices but their efforts often fail. Many critics charge that certain personality disorders are “culture-bound”. They reflect our contemporary sensitivities and values rather than invariable psychological entities and constructs.

Thus, someone with the Antisocial Personality Disorder is supposed to disrespect social rules and regard himself as a free agent. He lacks conscience and is often a criminal. This means that non-conformists, dissenters, and dissidents can be pathologized and labeled “antisocial”. Indeed, authoritarian regimes often incarcerate their opponents in mental asylums based on such dubious “diagnoses”. Moreover, crime is a career choice. Granted, it is a harmful and unpalatable one. But since when is one’s choice of vocation a mental health problem?

If you believe in telepathy and UFOs and have bizarre rituals, mannerisms, and speech patterns, you may be diagnosed with the Schizotypal Personality Disorder. If you shun others and are a loner, you may be a Schizoid. And the list goes on.

To avoid these pitfalls, the DSM came up with a multi-axial model of personality evaluation.

Diagnosing Personality Disorders is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

If you wonder how psychics work, read on. This article is for you.

Most psychics are plain scammers. They use cold reading to make calculated guess about the sitters. Cold reading is an interactive psychological technique which extracts information from a person through verbal and non verbal cues. More often than not, psychics utilize known psychology techniques that can apply to almost anyone. An example would be claiming the sitter is cursed and he or she could lift that curse for a fee, because most people visit a psychic when they are down and depressed, being cursed is a quick, convenient reason to blame. Paying the fee to lift the curse would be the quickest solution to their complicated life problems.

There seems to be several common factors in psychic readings. The psychic usually:

+Skillfully extracts information from non verbal cues such as breathing patterns, voice, dress, skin color, and body language.

+ Makes statements that seem to give information when they are actually out to fish for it. E.g. Prompts feedback from sitters by saying I see a man in uniform, why would that be?

+Feeds back to the subject what the latter wants to hear

+Makes general Barnum statements such as You are worrisome on the outside but insecure on the inside.

The sitter of the reading is the key to a ‘successful’ reading. The sitter’s willingness to connect vague ‘clues’ came up by the psychic will often decide how successful the reading is. Many sitters who try to contact their deceased loved ones are very motivated in the first place, and will take the psychic’s message as a sign that he or she have made contact with the other side. That is why psychics subtly encourage cooperation before and during the reading. Once the psychic gains the trusts of the sitter, the latter usually actively supply information and clarifications.

Although facial expressions and body languages could mean differently to people from different cultural backgrounds, many psychologists believe that certain facial and body expressions are universal to the mankind.

How to tell dominance: People who dominates have a tenancy to stand up with an erected body, speaks slowly and rarely, and look people in their eyes for an extended period of time. Because of the demonstrated link between testosterone and aggression, people with square jaws ( testosterone induced feature) are thought as more domineering and aggressive.

How to tell submissiveness: Submissive people touches themselves a lot when they are confronted with a difficult situation. This is because human have an inborn mechanism acquired very early on in life to link physical touching with comfort and safety.

Most important to keep in mind: Real, powerful psychics don’t advertise on the back of a supermarket magazine and do readings for $1.99.

Debunking Psychics is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

In fact they’re so powerful that many years ago a man, who was eventually caught and sent to jail, was using them to STEAL from tons
of restaurants.

More on that in a bit…

Pattern interrupts are so powerful because they work like this…

You break someone’s expectation of how a normal, everyday event should proceed by doing something highly unusual instead.

This creates momentary confusion of their conscious mind and opens a brief doorway to their unconscious mind.

At that precise moment you can then give instructions to their unconscious mind.

And it can be DEVASTATINGLY effective.

Take the man who was banged up in jail for using them. Turns out this dude was easily scamming restaurants left, right and centre. He’d go into expensive restaurants and begin to give an order to a waiter. Halfway through he’d do a pattern interrupt on the unsuspecting waiter. During the moment of confusion he’d give an instruction to ‘forget the bill’, then continue with the order as normal. 9 times out of 10, he’d simply walk out of the restaurant after eating all their nice chow and drinking their fine wine. And without paying a dime!

Of course when you use this kind of hypnosis power criminally, you’ll eventually end up getting busted.

And good job too.

But it doesn’t take away from the fact that pattern interrupts are an incredibly powerful way to access peoples’ unconscious minds whenever you need to.

In fact the friends of the greatest hypnotist of all time, Milton Erickson, use to REFUSE to shake his hand when they’d meet him!

That’s because he’d often have fun using pattern interrupts on them and then instructing them to do little tasks for him.

Mind you that crafty old wizard had so many conversational hypnosis tricks anyhow – if he really wanted to chat with their unconscious minds he could easily have done so – and without them realizing it either!

That’s the beauty of conversational hypnosis – people believe the instructions YOU give them are their idea.

Which is pretty handy!

If you’d like to discover more about pattern interrupts with conversational hypnosis and learn ALL the secret tricks and KILLER techniques of the great Milton Erickson then there’s only one place
to surf over to now.

Dark Hypnosis man busted & sent to jail is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

(Sigmund Freud, letter to Fleiss, 1900)

“If you bring forth that which is in you, that which you bring forth will be your salvation”.

(The Gospel of Thomas)

“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we cannot get elsewhere.”

(Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion”)

Harold Bloom called Freud “The central imagination of our age”. That psychoanalysis is not a scientific theory in the strict, rigorous sense of the word has long been established. Yet, most criticisms of Freud’s work (by the likes of Karl Popper, Adolf Grunbaum, Havelock Ellis, Malcolm Macmillan, and Frederick Crews) pertain to his – long-debunked – scientific pretensions.

Today it is widely accepted that psychoanalysis – though some of its tenets are testable and, indeed, have been experimentally tested and invariably found to be false or uncorroborated – is a system of ideas. It is a cultural construct, and a (suggested) deconstruction of the human mind. Despite aspirations to the contrary, psychoanalysis is not – and never has been – a value-neutral physics or dynamics of the psyche.

Freud also stands accused of generalizing his own perversions and of reinterpreting his patients’ accounts of their memories to fit his preconceived notions of the unconscious . The practice of psychoanalysis as a therapy has been castigated as a crude form of brainwashing within cult-like settings.

Feminists criticize Freud for casting women in the role of “defective” (naturally castrated and inferior) men. Scholars of culture expose the Victorian and middle-class roots of his theories about suppressed sexuality. Historians deride and decry his stifling authoritarianism and frequent and expedient conceptual reversals.

Freud himself would have attributed many of these diatribes to the defense mechanisms of his critics. Projection, resistance, and displacement do seem to be playing a prominent role. Psychologists are taunted by the lack of rigor of their profession, by its literary and artistic qualities, by the dearth of empirical support for its assertions and fundaments, by the ambiguity of its terminology and ontology, by the derision of “proper” scientists in the “hard” disciplines, and by the limitations imposed by their experimental subjects (humans). These are precisely the shortcomings that they attribute to psychoanalysis.

Indeed, psychological narratives – psychoanalysis first and foremost – are not “scientific theories” by any stretch of this much-bandied label. They are also unlikely to ever become ones. Instead – like myths, religions, and ideologies – they are organizing principles.

Psychological “theories” do not explain the world. At best, they describe reality and give it “true”, emotionally-resonant, heuristic and hermeneutic meaning. They are less concerned with predictive feats than with “healing” – the restoration of harmony among people and inside them.

Therapies – the practical applications of psychological “theories” – are more concerned with function, order, form, and ritual than with essence and replicable performance. The interaction between patient and therapist is a microcosm of society, an encapsulation and reification of all other forms of social intercourse. Granted, it is more structured and relies on a body of knowledge gleaned from millions of similar encounters. Still, the therapeutic process is nothing more than an insightful and informed dialog whose usefulness is well-attested to.

Both psychological and scientific theories are creatures of their times, children of the civilizations and societies in which they were conceived, context-dependent and culture-bound. As such, their validity and longevity are always suspect. Both hard-edged scientists and thinkers in the “softer” disciplines are influenced by contemporary values, mores, events, and interpellations.

The difference between “proper” theories of dynamics and psychodynamic theories is that the former asymptotically aspire to an objective “truth” “out there” – while the latter emerge and emanate from a kernel of inner, introspective, truth that is immediately familiar and is the bedrock of their speculations. Scientific theories – as opposed to psychological “theories” – need, therefore, to be tested, falsified, and modified because their truth is not self-contained.

Still, psychoanalysis was, when elaborated, a Kuhnian paradigm shift. It broke with the past completely and dramatically. It generated an inordinate amount of new, unsolved, problems. It suggested new methodological procedures for gathering empirical evidence (research strategies). It was based on observations (however scant and biased). In other words, it was experimental in nature, not merely theoretical. It provided a framework of reference, a conceptual sphere within which new ideas developed.

That it failed to generate a wealth of testable hypotheses and to account for discoveries in neurology does not detract from its importance. Both relativity theories were and, today, string theories are, in exactly the same position in relation to their subject matter, physics.

In 1963, Karl Jaspers made an important distinction between the scientific activities of Erklaren and Verstehen. Erklaren is about finding pairs of causes and effects. Verstehen is about grasping connections between events, sometimes intuitively and non-causally. Psychoanalysis is about Verstehen, not about Erklaren. It is a hypothetico-deductive method for gleaning events in a person’s life and generating insights regarding their connection to his current state of mind and functioning.

So, is psychoanalysis a science, pseudo-science, or sui generis?

Psychoanalysis is a field of study, not a theory. It is replete with neologisms and formalism but, like Quantum Mechanics, it has many incompatible interpretations. It is, therefore, equivocal and self-contained (recursive). Psychoanalysis dictates which of its hypotheses are testable and what constitutes its own falsification. In other words, it is a meta-theory: a theory about generating theories in psychology.

Moreover, psychoanalysis the theory is often confused with psychoanalysis the therapy. Conclusively proving that the therapy works does not establish the veridicality, the historicity, or even the usefulness of the conceptual edifice of the theory. Furthermore, therapeutic techniques evolve far more quickly and substantially than the theories that ostensibly yield them. They are self-modifying “moving targets” – not rigid and replicable procedures and rituals.

Another obstacle in trying to establish the scientific value of psychoanalysis is its ambiguity. It is unclear, for instance, what in psychoanalysis qualify as causes – and what as their effects.

Consider the critical construct of the unconscious. Is it the reason for – does it cause – our behavior, conscious thoughts, and emotions? Does it provide them with a “ratio” (explanation)? Or are they mere symptoms of inexorable underlying processes? Even these basic questions receive no “dynamic” or “physical” treatment in classic (Freudian) psychoanalytic theory. So much for its pretensions to be a scientific endeavor.

Psychoanalysis is circumstantial and supported by epistemic accounts, starting with the master himself. It appeals to one’s common sense and previous experience. Its statements are of these forms: “given X, Y, and Z reported by the patient – doesn’t it stand to (everyday) reason that A caused X?” or “We know that B causes M, that M is very similar to X, and that B is very similar to A. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that A causes X?”.

In therapy, the patient later confirms these insights by feeling that they are “right” and “correct”, that they are epiphanous and revelatory, that they possess retrodictive and predictive powers, and by reporting his reactions to the therapist-interpreter. This acclamation seals the narrative’s probative value as a basic (not to say primitive) form of explanation which provides a time frame, a coincident pattern, and sets of teleological aims, ideas and values.

Juan Rivera is right that Freud’s claims about infantile life cannot be proven, not even with a Gedankenexperimental movie camera, as Robert Vaelder suggested. It is equally true that the theory’s etiological claims are epidemiologically untestable, as Grunbaum repeatedly says. But these failures miss the point and aim of psychoanalysis: to provide an organizing and comprehensive, non-tendentious, and persuasive narrative of human psychological development.

Should such a narrative be testable and falsifiable or else discarded (as the Logical Positivists insist)?

Depends if we wish to treat it as science or as an art form. This is the circularity of the arguments against psychoanalysis. If Freud’s work is considered to be the modern equivalent of myth, religion, or literature – it need not be tested to be considered “true” in the deepest sense of the word. After all, how much of the science of the 19th century has survived to this day anyhow?

Critique and Defense of Psychoanalysis is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

The ability to do this to someone comes from The NLP Convincer
Strategy. This simply

means that for most people they only require a few pieces of evidence
to be convinced

and when that happens, by Gawd, they are
convinced.

In fact there is no doubt in their mind.

You can’t really blame the poor guy. The scammers just used his own
mind against him.

It’s the process that makes scamming smart people so easy. When the
smart people are

smug and condescending it makes if fun too.

Do you want to learn the NLP Convincer Strategy?

” Mind Control 101 – How To Influence the
Thoughts and Actions of

Others Without Them Knowing or Caring”

Sincerely,

JK Ellis

Confessions of a Mind Control Victim is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

They are persistent, relentless, stubborn, and insistent (except those suffering from the Schizoid or the Avoidant Personality Disorders).

They feel entitled to – and vociferously demand – preferential treatment and privileged access to resources and personnel. They often complain about multiple symptoms. They get involved in “power plays” with authority figures (such as physicians, therapists, nurses, social workers, bosses, and bureaucrats) and rarely obey instructions or observe rules of conduct and procedure.

They hold themselves to be superior to others or, at the very least, unique. Many personality disorders involve an inflated self-perception and grandiosity. Such subjects are incapable of empathy (the ability to appreciate and respect the needs and wishes of other people). In therapy or medical treatment, they alienate the physician or therapist by treating her as inferior to them.

Patients with personality disorders are self-centered, self-preoccupied, repetitive, and, thus, boring.

Subjects with personality disorders seek to manipulate and exploit others. They trust no one and have a diminished capacity to love or intimately share because they do not trust or love themselves. They are socially maladaptive and emotionally unstable.

No one knows whether personality disorders are the tragic outcomes of nature or the sad follow-up to a lack of nurture by the patient’s environment.

Generally speaking, though, most personality disorders start out in childhood and early adolescence as mere problems in personal development. Exacerbated by repeated abuse and rejection, they then become full-fledged dysfunctions. Personality disorders are rigid and enduring patterns of traits, emotions, and cognitions. In other words, they rarely “evolve” and are stable and all-pervasive, not episodic. By ‘all-pervasive”, I mean to say that they affect every area in the patient’s life: his career, his interpersonal relationships, his social functioning.

Personality disorders cause unhappiness and are usually comorbid with mood and anxiety disorders. Most patients are ego-dystonic (except narcissists and psychopaths). They dislike and resent who they are, how they behave, and the pernicious and destructive effects they have on their nearest and dearest. Still, personality disorders are defense mechanisms writ large. Thus, few patients with personality disorders are truly self-aware or capable of life transforming introspective insights.

Patients with personality disorder typically suffer from a host of other psychiatric problems (example: depressive illnesses, or obsessions-compulsions). They are worn-out by the need to reign in their self-destructive and self-defeating impulses.

Patients with personality disorders have alloplastic defenses and an external locus of control. In other words: rather than accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions, they tend to blame other people or the outside world for their misfortune, failures, and circumstances. Consequently, they fall prey to paranoid persecutory delusions and anxieties. When stressed, they try to preempt (real or imaginary) threats by changing the rules of the game, introducing new variables, or by trying to manipulate their environment to conform to their needs. They regard everyone and everything as mere instruments of gratification.

Patients with Cluster B personality disorders (Narcissistic, Antisocial, Borderline, and Histrionic) are mostly ego-syntonic, even though they are faced with formidable character and behavioral deficits, emotional deficiencies and lability, and overwhelmingly wasted lives and squandered potentials. Such patients do not, on the whole, find their personality traits or behavior objectionable, unacceptable, disagreeable, or alien to their selves.

There is a clear distinction between patients with personality-disorders and patients with psychoses (schizophrenia-paranoia and the like). As opposed to the latter, the former have no hallucinations, delusions or thought disorders. At the extreme, subjects who suffer from the Borderline Personality Disorder experience brief psychotic “microepisodes”, mostly during treatment. Patients with personality disorders are also fully oriented, with clear senses (sensorium), good memory and a satisfactory general fund of knowledge.

Common Features of Personality Disorders is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

Happiness is not something that others can take from you. It’s something that you would have to throw away on your own.

There will be times when things don’t turn out the way you want them to. Your best friend at work may turn out to be a power-hungry corporate animal that backstabs you at every opportunity. The promotion you worked so hard for may go to someone else. Your partner might decide to leave me, a day before we are due to go for a vacation together. You may lose most of your savings in a market crash.

These are things that can happen to the most loving, compassionate, careful and reasonable person. But after the initial pain and shock, the decision whether or not to let yourself languish in despair is entirely up to you. You can allow misfortune to form the bulk of your life, or you can choose to leave what’s past in the past, and move on.

One’s friendly and caring behavior towards others should not be motivated by the thought of equally kind and affectionate responses. You understand yourself best, and regardless of how reasonably and responsibly you live your life, there will be people who won’t see your point of view or share your motivations.

People have the right to act in any way they see fit. I don’t have the right to judge whether their behavior is acceptable or not. They have to bear the responsibility for their own actions, and so do you. By feeling sorry for yourself, you are simply continuing the work for them, long after they have dealt their blow. You have to decide that, as far as possible, you will not allow these people to disturb your mind.

There are many things for which you can be grateful. There are yet unexplored experiences in which you can find enrichment and meaning. There are yet others who will like you for who you are, and in spite of who you are. If you spend my time being resentful and miserable, you are denying yourself the satisfaction of enjoying what this life has to offer.

There are enough unhappy people in this world who punish themselves and others constantly in a bid to find redress and compensation. But there is no satisfaction in retaliation and revenge. It’s a waste of time and spirit.

“To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.”

Albert Camus

Commit To Be Happy is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

You know, I still meet people that believe that experiencing hypnosis is like being unconscious. I always reply, What would be the point of that? Spending money and time to be unconscious in someone elses company?? If I wanted you to be unconscious we would simply bash you over the head! So it is important that you also know that hypnosis is not about being unconscious and that you have the correct expectations about the hypnotic experience that you are going to have, should you choose to invest in one of our products or experience hypnosis for yourself with a hypnotist.

In order to understand hypnosis, it is important to understand and differentiate between our minds. By that I am referring to our conscious mind, where we are now and just below that level of awareness is our unconscious mind (also known as the subconscious mind, for the purpose of easy understanding they are the same thing).

The conscious mind is where we usually spend most of our waking time, you know that internal dialogue we have that thinks hmmm, what shoes shall I wear today that is your conscious mind. Your conscious mind basically does four things;

Firstly, your conscious mind analyses. What is that? Well that is the part of us that looks at problems, analyses them and tries to create solutions to those problems. It is that part of us that makes decisions all day every day shall I open the door?, Shall I have something to eat, even though they are automatic behaviours, we make a conscious decision about whether or not to do these things.

The second part of our conscious mind is our rationale, the part of us that, especially in western cultures, always has to know Why things happen and Why we behave in particular ways. This can cause us so many problems as we give any problems more and more credence and power. More conventional and traditional methods of counselling or psychotherapy are often very much concerned with looking at causes of our problems and it is my opinion that all this does is teaches us why they happen as opposed to giving us the skills required to changing unwanted habits and behaviours. The more we think about why we do things the more we seem to embed the unwanted behaviour into our psyches!

The third part of our conscious mind is will power, that teeth-gritted determination that so many of us are proud to demonstrate. How many times have we used our will power alone to make changes and found that our will power weakens and that change is temporary or non-existent.

The final part of our conscious mind is your short-term memory. By that I am referring to the things that you need to remember to function on a day-to-day basis, so that when your phone rings you know to answer it rather than stare at it wondering it is, or ensuring that you cross the road without being run over.

That is the conscious part of your mind, it is logical, rational and analytical, a bit like Mr Spock from the Start Trek series and as much as it pains me to say it, our conscious mind is frequently wrong about things.

Your conscious mind is wherever you happen to be pointing it at any given time. I am sure you have been in a busy, noisy environment, such as a restaurant or a bar and have been engaged in a conversation with another individual, and all the sounds going on around you just seem to blend into the background. Then someone else ten metres away can punctuate their sentence with your name and you pick it out as if it was being spoken to you. This illustrates that unconsciously, you are aware of many, many pieces of information every second of your life, sounds, colours, thoughts etc, yet your conscious mind allows you to focus upon what is pertinent or relevant to you at that moment.

If you take that conscious awareness and point it inside of yourself instead of outside into the world, you begin to become aware of your inner self, your unconscious self, which is the part of you that we work with in hypnosis.

Your unconscious mind is tremendously powerful and automates as much behaviour as it possibly can so that we do not have to think about it. For example, there was a time in your life when you had to be shown how to tie your shoelaces, and you concentrated on doing this. I suspect that by this stage in your life you know how tie your shoelaces very well and you dont even think about doing it, you just do it. I have a lonely Auntie who as a boy, my mother would ask me to phone on a weekly basis as she thought this would make her happy and I vividly remember hearing her lighting up a cigarette and heavily exhaling the smoke while on the phone, she didnt even think about what she was doing, she just associated smoking with being on the phone.

We are amazing learning machines and we learn behaviours and habits and then our unconscious mind automates them and does them on auto pilot so that we do not have to think about doing them.

Your unconscious mind has within it all your long-term memory. Just about every blade of grass that you have seen in your entire lifetime is stored away in your long-term memory that serves as an amazing storage centre. These memories affect us in varying ways, some more than others. Sometimes our ability to remember them is not as fluid as we need, as it is often not necessary to have all our memory in the forefront of our minds. For example, right now you are unlikely to be thinking about everything that happened to you on your last birthday, however, me just mentioning it, you can dig into your unconscious, long-term memory and remember.

Another example is if you have ever seen a live stand up comedy show. You watch the comedian and laugh (or not as the case may be!) heartily as you listen to lots and lots of jokes. Then when you leave the venue, you can remember none of them, or one or two at best! Then, a week later, a friend that you were with can say to you do you remember such and such a joke from last weeks comedian and you think oh yeeeaaah! as you bring that information out from your long-term memory. You know that you know the joke, it was just not at the forefront of your conscious mind, it was tucked away in the deeper unconscious.

Your unconscious mind knows more about you than you consciously that you know. Sound confusing? Well, just think, you are currently breathing, your heart is beating (I do hope!) you are digesting, your body is regulating its body temperature, it is doing a range of wonderful things without you having to consciously think about it. You are not sat around thinking I really must remember to breathe. We are not machines, there is an intelligence within us that knows how to do these things, and it is that intelligence that we tap into with hypnosis.

Your unconscious mind is where you get your gut feelings, your instincts and intuition that communicates with you sporadically from time to time. Like when sometimes, someone can be saying all the right words to you, but you get a different feeling about them.

Your unconscious mind is a bit like a computer. Throughout your entire lifetime it has been programmed with all your experiences, relationships, interpretations of the world, influences and all this has culminated in your computer functioning with that programming. Hypnosis is simply a way of accessing that computer and updating that programming so that it becomes instinctive and intuitive for you to make the changes that please you.

Your unconscious mind is the seat of your emotions and where your behaviours exist and it is the part of you that we work with in hypnosis. Hypnosis is a way of us stepping over your conscious mind and accessing the unconscious mind to make powerful and profound changes.

Now, I am sure that you have experienced natural trance states many times before, in fact I know it. For example, when you have been driving in a car and thought to yourself ooh, how did I get here? or when you have been reading a book and youve turned the page and thought I have no idea what I have just read, I am going to have to read it all again. I can remember being at school watching my history teacher teach me, yet my mind was a million miles away wishing I was doing something else. All common experiences, daydream like states that we all experience, many times a day. The only difference between these naturally occurring states and those that we use in therapeutic hypnosis, is that with the hypnosis, you intend to enter the state, you are in control of it and it is just like a slightly amplified, deeper version of the state. That is it. Sometimes it is simply like sitting in a chair with your eyes closed, not the magical mystical or unusual experience that some people are led to believe it is.

It is important here to know that you cannot be made to do anything that you dont want to do. Very important. I had a guy that a doctor referred to me, came to see me and said to me my doctor told me come and see you as I have emphysema and am going to die of it unless I stop smoking. I said to him, well I presume you want to stop, he said oh, no, I love smoking, it is one of few remaining pleasures. I had to send him away as I cannot make him do something that he does not want to. Can you imagine if I could do that!! Wow. I could go and see my bank manager and make him give me million pounds without returning it! You never read about Baddy hypnotists making people rob banks or anything else absurd, because it cannot be done.

People usually then say to me ok Adam, I hear and understand what you are saying and it all makes sense. However, I have seen stage hypnosis and seen people dancing like chickens, are you telling me that they want to do that? I am saying that these people are not being made to do things that they dont want to do.

When someone buys tickets to a stage hypnosis show, they are being permissive to the notion that they are going to see hypnosis for entertainment; they expect certain things to happen. Secondly, when the stage hypnotist asks the audience who wants to come on stage the people that agree to do so or put their hands up are saying yes, I want to be hypnotised, they are not being made to do anything they dont want to do. The stage hypnotist ensures that the individuals on the show are receptive and follow a large number of compliance exercises and it begins to create the illusion that these people are doing things that they dont want to do, when they are not. The hypnosis can step over the inhibitions of the conscious mind, so that the individuals behave with more openness, they just cannot be made to do things they dont want to do.

Anyone can be hypnotised. I work with insomniacs, heroin addicts, schizophrenics, people experiencing chemotherapy, these are all people that are often convinced that they cannot relax or cannot be hypnotised, and as long as they want to, they all can and they all do.

All that is required is that you have an open mind, that you expect it to work and have progressive, motivated thoughts about the processes, follow the sessions and allow them to help you help yourself to make the changes you want and deserve.

Finally, at the beginning of the recorded hypnosis sessions and/or individual NLP or hypnosis sessions with me (I cannot speak for other therapists, we all do things differently) individually, you may be asked to do a number of different things with your mind and you can be forgiven for thinking, well, he asked me to do this, and now something else, and now another thing, what exactly am I supposed to be listening to? The simple answer is that you listen and follow as much or as little as you want to, remember that is your conscious mind thinking those thoughts and that is not the part of you that we are working with and making the change with. I am sure that there will also be times when youll be thinking hmmm am I in hypnosis, what am I supposed to be thinking or feeling. Again that is your conscious mind thinking that thought and does not matter what it is thinking. It can be attempting to follow everything that I am saying or just wandering off and thinking about whatever you like, just trust that your unconscious mind is absorbing all that you want it to.

There will be times in the sessions when you may be asked to imagine things. Imagining things does not have to mean visualising. If I ask you to think of a favourite place, you can imagine what it would be like, you dont have to be seeing a picture perfect cinema version of it in your mind. You can imagine, sense, think, or just know it without seeing it or picturing it in every detail. If I asked you to imagine the sound your feet make when you walk across gravel, you know the sound I am talking about and you can imagine it, but you are not necessarily hearing it in your ears, you can imagine it. That is all you’ll need.

So, hypnosis is not like being unconscious, it is almost like having heightened awareness, it requires you to want the change, have an open, positive mind, as best as you can, and allow whatever happens to happen, without trying to grasp at what you think should happen, just letting it happen.

I wish you all the very best with whichever hypnosis product, or with any consultative sessions you are considering having with any qualified therapist or any training you plan to attend and I just know that having come this far, you really can do it, and make the changes that you want to make with hypnosis.

What is Hypnosis? is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

Psychotherapy is the use and application of psychological knowledge to help people understand themselves and begin to make appropriate changes, or to be comfortable with who they are.

Psychotherapy has several different theoretical models that have developed over time, the most commonly known being psycho-analysis. The therapy that I practise uses some of the best ideas from these differing schools of thought in order to help people achieve not only a rapid rate of improvement but also a lasting one. It has its basis in a cognitiveanalytical model that seeks to look at the process behind thought, and understand how it has developed, and of course how to change negative thought processes into positive ones.

Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a very effective method of treatment. It is a state of altered consciousness with increased and heightened awareness, which is often accompanied by deep relaxation; this in itself can be beneficial. Contrary to popular belief it does not involve becoming unconscious and has nothing to do with sleep.

Hypnosis cannot be forced upon people, but it is a state which people allow themselves to enter.

It is important to understand that, during hypnosis, people cannot be forced to do things that they would choose not to do. Hypnosis or “trance” as it is often referred to is similar to the experience of day dreaming, when you lose a sense of time and may without thought continue a task that routinely requires concentration, such as driving from one place to another but not actually remembering the journey. This is an example of an altered state of consciousness that we experience every day of our lives.

What is Hypno-psychotherapy?
Hypno-psychotherapy is the practice of psychotherapy with applied hypnosis being the primary approach. The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, the lead body for the provision of Psychotherapy in the United Kingdom, recognises the practice of hypno-psychotherapy.

Both hypnotherapy and hypno-psychotherapy utilise hypnosis in a therapeutic form, however an individual that only practises as a hypnotherapist may not have undertaken training in psychotherapeutic theory and practice.

For therapists to be able to register with United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy requires an extensive programme of 4 years training.

Short courses of study that are readily available may give an insight into the techniques and practice of hypnosis, but they do not in themselves enable the practitioner to be able to address all forms of presenting problems.

It is strongly advised that anyone seeking any form of therapy investigates the qualifications and registrations of the practitioners they approach for treatment.

A United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy registered therapist will always provide information relating to their qualifications and registrations if requested.

What Is Hypno-psychotherapy? is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com

Do you believe you have no control over your life? Are you who you are today, by choice or by fate? Will a change in your actions create a change in your life? Many people have given up on their dreams… they say, “Dreaming is only for the rich. When you have money, you can dream. When you have no money, don’t dream.”

That’s true… not everyone is lucky enough to be born with a silver spoon. If you are lacking in funds, it’s going to be difficult to start living life the way you want to. Money buys you freedom to follow your passions. But you don’t have to give up on your dreams, just because you lack money. Depending on where you are brought up, you will face limitations depending on your family finance, culture, and environment. Some of us are born to have easy lives, while some are born to take a more challenging path. Perhaps the limitations and obstacles you face today are part of your journey — you must overcome them to grow stronger on the path to achieving your goals.

When we are young, we all seem to have clear idea of what we want to be when we grow up. But somewhere along the way, these dreams get buried under the reality of daily living. The focus shifts from ‘living the dream’ to just ‘finding a good job with a stable income’. “Survival first”, as they call it. The sad part is that many people spend much of their lives doing what they don’t like, so they can finally earn enough to start doing what they do like. I say, that’s a great way to bury your happiness and turn into an economic slave. Doing what you dislike, day after day, will numb the sense of joy within you. Soon you will feel that your life has no greater purpose, and there is nothing to look forward to but work, work, work…. You will have forgotten how much fun it is to spend your time doing the things you like to do.

*~The Secret to Living Your Dreams~*

It’s painful if you don’t make enough money to live comfortably. But whats more painful is if the work you do has no meaning to you. Everyday you can drag yourself to work, perform meaningless actions, and then drag yourself back home. Apart from sleeping, work takes up the majority of our time. So if you’re not enjoying your work, you’re not enjoying your life. And life is so short, isn’t it? We probably have less than a hundred years to make our mark in this world. And you never know… you fail to look while crossing the road and BOOM! You could be gone tomorrow. So why spend your life doing something you don’t like to do? We don’t slog three-quarters of our lives just so we can enjoy one-quarter… we might not live that long. Realize that the essence of your life is happening right now — you are walking a path; making your journey through life. And if the work you do, is not designed to help you fulfill your higher purpose in life, then perhaps you are walking in the wrong direction. No point taking this path… change direction.

For your dream to stay alive, you have to act on it. It’s like a fire that grows brighter and stronger if you fan its flames and keep adding wood. If you leave the fire alone, never doing anything to keep it alive, it will burn itself out. When you fail to act on your dreams, they die.

A little girl called Leanne wants to be a ballerina. But her family is poor and unable to afford the fees of the fine arts dance school. Her father tells her not to dream because dreaming is only for the rich. But her mother says, “Lea, you can be whatever you want to be. As long as you put your heart into it, and never give up. Always hold on to your dreams because when there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Leanne remembered her mother’s words. She paid her way through a college degree in the fine arts, using money she earned from working full-time. She was talent scouted by the Royal Dance and Music Theatre of England, where she began her illustrious career as a ballerina. Earning in British pounds, she made more than enough to support her family and give them a comfortable lifestyle.

Leanne had a choice… to fervently believe in her dreams, and do whatever it takes to achieve it, or believe the World’s Greatest Lie… that at some point in her life, she lost control, and fate took over. She had to have the courage to step up to her dreams, and not give up just because she lacked money. If she listened to her father and put her love aside because dreaming was only for the rich, then she wouldn’t have lived to experience her passion. She would pass on from this world, with the music still left within her… buried under some obscure belief that she could never make money doing what she loved to do.

There is music within you, and you only need to coax it out. The daily grind forces us to forget what we love to do. Imagine you’re retired You have enough money to live comfortably, but not to splurge. How would you spend your time? What activities would you find purpose in? What would you do to amuse yourself? If you have an idea of what you would love to do but are not doing, then schedule some time everyday to do it. Making time for what you love is just like fanning the flames of your passion — the fire can only grow stronger. It’s what will bring a sense of purpose and meaning into your life; that spark of joy and wonder.

The happiest people are those who enjoy their work. They’ve managed to make money doing what they love to do, just like Leanne. And this can happen for you… if you are willing to reject the World’s Greatest Lie. Realize that you always have control over your actions, and therefore your results. The only time your start to fail in life, is when you stop believing in your ability to make a difference. You don’t need a silver spoon; you don’t need to be a genius. What you need is a sincere belief in yourself and willingness to take action towards your dreams. Believe me, you have what it takes. Just follow what British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill said in World War II: “…never give up, never give up.” And you’ll win the war.

The World’s Greatest Lie… is a post from: Reference Education Center | FTP2009Istanbul.com