Hypnotherapy For Smoking Cessation

email email email email email Q I’ve been in therapy on and off for a very long time and am not making much headway. Most of the therapists I’ve seen think I’ve got a lot going for me. Usually they don’t get why I’m there and somehow I just can’t make them understand that I really need help. I walk away empty handed every time. I’m in my fifties and so very tired of trying to find just a little peace of mind; I just don’t want to come to the end of my life without ever having been happy and content. I just want to wake up in the morning and know that its OK — that I exist and I don’t have to be sorry for being alive.

I’m the black sheep in an already abusive family. I’ve spent most of my life trying to understand what I did wrong. If I knew what I did wrong and could fix it then life would be OK – but there’s nothing. Years of discussion with family members and no one knows why — maybe I look like somebody that should have been forgotten — maybe I was a difficult birth — maybe they resent me for not being born in the old country like my sibs — who knows. My mother had 2 favorites. My father made her life an absolute living hell. He had 3 favorites. I’m nobody’s favorite – I just don’t fit in.

After years of trying to talk to them and reason with them, I cut off my family. With the exception of two sisters who keep in touch, I’ve broken off all other ties. I’ve been a little less stressed since then. But its given me more time to look at myself. I’ve come to understand that my problem is pretty deep self-loathing and very low self-esteem. I was looking for a solution when I ran across your website. I am fascinated. I would like very much to try some of your tapes but I don’t know where to start — there’s so much information on your website. Can you suggest a starting point for someone like me? Also, do you publish the subliminal scripts on your tapes – I would be a bit concerned about not knowing what the subliminal messages are? I would sure appreciate a little guidance.

A I’m glad you found the site interesting. Guidance:

First, just a bit of off the cuff general guidance: Life can be quite a complex struggle. I find it can be a great support in circumstances such as yours to adopt the supposition that life has a purpose — that the struggles of this life teach us certain things that are important and intended for our strengthening and enlightening. When one factors in the amazing capacity of the mind to hallucinate, dream, distort and imagine it is very easy to argue that there is as exactly as much hard evidence of an afterlife and a Purpose of this life as there is hard evidence that this is all just probabilities and accidents. Assuming a purpose makes such hardships, challenges and endured hurts seem more hopeful — and can actually, honestly, result in a great deal of strengthening and enlightening. It is interesting that pretty much everything in life can be seen as layered in opposites like an onion — layered either good, then bad, then good, etc., or bad, then good, then bad, etc. Struggles can really mess with your head, wear you down and rob you of the fun and the joy that’s available. But struggles can make you strong, smart, appreciative of life and it’s joys and lessons. Some of the most painfully messed up people are messed up because life or someone else has made sure they had no struggles to speak of.

Assuming that life is intended to be something more like boot camp than Disneyworld, and assuming that one’s life might go on through eternity, makes all the intense struggles in this life seem much shorter in duration (at least once they’re passed through). And if it turns out there is nothing after life, then once the lights go out, so does all hurt and struggle. And even if there is nothing after life, one gets the benefit of the mind game but will never have to feel any regret for believing in a fantasy. Also, it is helpful and practical to assume that there is no good reason to be impractical, negative or self loathing unless you really can think of a good reason to be.

Using hypnosis recordings can be a very cool way to work on a more effective, practical attitude that lets you enjoy life a lot more. Counseling can be very helpful, too, but it sounds like you haven’t yet found a counselor that has been able to feel what you feel. Try hypnosis recordings but don’t give up the idea of perhaps finding a counselor, too. You will find that if you see ten counselors, no two are much alike. The recordings can be very helpful and very economical compared to a therapist, but a good therapist can be a very, very helpful helper, healer, support and mentor.

So, guidance with respect to hypnosis recordings: You get one (unless you have a lot of ready cash and want to take advantage of the discount for multiple purchases) and see if you like it (e.g., within the first one or two listenings, you feel comfortable and interested, you feel hopeful about using it and you feel more positive and comfortable with your life and yourself). If you like it (nothing in life is one size fits all), you then get one, two, three or four more of the recordings focused on your issues and listen to them, one once a day or so — maybe just as you go to bed so they’re the last thing you put in your mind before sleep — for a week or two. Then you listen to one once a week on average for the next several months. You’ll find that you think about your life differently during the day and process it with a much more practical attitude. You will find that you work on yourself for anywhere from a few weeks to several months and then you sort of loose interest in the project. (Things go well and life doesn’t push the idea of self improvement.) Then six months go by — or 18 — and you start thinking about self improvement or dealing with stress and you pull out your recordings and start at it again.

As far as subliminal effects go, these happen because there are two separate recordings — often saying the same thing at the same time but then frequently saying completely different things. There is nothing embedded or hidden. Focusing on one set of statements, the other is only partially listened to and listening is more unconscious than conscious. There is no trick intended and you are welcome to look at the transcript of any recording you might want to listen to. It helps with anxiousness about being “done to.” If a person is anxious about the wording doing something unwanted, it takes much more listenings to get comfortable with the recording — so it really helps to read the transcript first. Having read the transcript, you will find it takes at most one listening to relax with the listening.

With respect to which for what guidance, Self To Self Partnering is probably the best to begin with as it addresses issues of self directed frustration, anger and etc. (which are common to survivors of high stress childhoods). Self loathing stuff leads to self sabotage — which is just plain impractical and which can mess with any attempts at self improvement. Healing Tree 2 focuses optimizing an attitude of resiliency and hopefulness about dealing with the great struggles of life. Who and How You Hope To Be focuses on increasing positive thinking and decreasing negative thinking. You can look over the transcript here, same username and password. Of the other tapes and CDs helpful for self esteem issues, if you would like to see the transcript, let me know.

I hope that answered your questions.

Dr. Johnson