Category Archives: Basic & General

Is hypnosis for me?

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Is hypnosis/hypnotherapy for me?

Try these!

Exercise 1 – Postural Suggestion:

  1. Stretch both of your arms in front of you at shoulder level, palms facing up. With eyes closed, imagine a pile of books being stacked on your right palm.
  2. Imagine a couple more books, and then a couple more books being stacked on top of those books on your right palm. Feel the strain in your arm as it gets heavier and heavier, heavier and heavier.
  3. Now imagine a huge balloon filled with helium has been tied to your left wrist and is tugging it up into the air ….higher and higher ….higher and higher.
  4. Open your eyes and notice where your arms are relative to each other.

Exercise 2 – Postural Sway:

  1. Stand up with your eyes closed and imagine holding a big heavy suitcase in your left hand.
  2. Imagine bigger and bigger suitcases weighting down your left side, pulling you over.
  3. After 2 or 3 minutes, open your eyes and notice any changes in your posture.

Make sure you read the instructions clearly, then only you close your eyes and try them.

Most people who try these two exercises notice that their bodies/arms move at least a little in response to these suggestions (Exercise 1 works particularly well for me). If you don’t notice any movement, practice the exercises a few more times. If you still don’t notice even the slightest amount of movement, hypnosis may not be for you!

Also, some contraindications of hypnosis include people who are disorientated due to organic brain syndrome or psychosis, people who are severely mentally retarded, and people who are paranoid or hypervigilant. So these people shouldn’t be performing self-hypnosis or being hypnotised.

Supports for family members in grief

Basic & General, Issues & Debates

Sometimes when we don’t hear from a patient for long, we’ll start worrying about them, especially if they are depressed, or worse, with suicidal caution. But too many patients come and go every day in the clinic, it could be difficult to remember everyone.

Sometimes I think we wouldn’t even know if and when a patient ends his or her life, unless we read it from the news or the family member contacts us.

Yes family member does contact us and tell us about the news when it happens, not all the time, but they do. And one main reason they usually call us and inform us regarding the patient’s suicide, is that they want to question us.

“He’s been taking the medicine prescribed by the doctor regularly, how did this still happen?”

“How come the medicine he was prescribed with wasn’t helping?”

“The last time when she went to your clinic, did doctor say anything? Did she say anything?”

Yes, I understand this and that (sometimes I think they just need someone or something to point their fingers at). But we’re only an outpatient clinic, all we can do is not much, though we do try our best including using phone calls or emails to reach and support them in their daily lives.

The sister was in tears when she called. The last time I heard from the sister was almost a year ago. She said he’s gone, their brother, the six sisters’ one and only brother. He jumped off from the balcony of an apartment.

They still couldn’t accept the truth.

And no, she didn’t call to question us, to blame it on us. She called to ask if she and the other sisters should come for an appointment as they are all feeling really low and depressed.

She was explained that they can certainly come for an appointment if they feel the need, but this is part of grieving, absolutely normal for people to feel depressed, guilty, lost, empty, angry … And the duration of this period could be few weeks, or even up to few years (some research suggested 4 years as an average of grieving period after losing a love one). Some people can function absolutely well during this period (though never take that these people are cold-blooded, they just deal with loss differently) while some need to take some time off or even go for professional counselling services or help.

Sometimes it’s the part that we often overlook – the needs of the immediate carers and family members of our patients – alive or dead.

Metaphors (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

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The PDF file below is one of the appendices from the book “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Psychosis” edited by Eric M. J. Morris, Louise C. Johns and Joseph E. Oliver.

It’s a short story of hopes, combining some metaphors commonly used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Definitely worth reading, and re-reading to understand more about ACT, and get a feel of the center approach and techniques used in ACT.

Click here: See the wood for the trees (pdf)

 

Related reading on huibee.com:

Thought Challenging or Thought Accepting?

Mindfulness and Acceptance Tasks 

Where to find Hypnosis or Hypnotherapy in Malaysia?

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I’ve come across this question three days in a row, of people asking for hynotherapist in Klang Valley or Kuala Lumpur or Malaysia.

All the while I never really mentioned to people that I’ve a diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (accredited by the UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy), especially ever since I came back from the UK. I thought the Malaysians would hold so many misconceptions about hypnosis that if I were to tell people about this qualification of mine, people were going to be worried what I was going to do to them! (Make them give me all their savings?!)

But these people that I spoke to kind of change what I thought, although some of their beliefs of what hypnosis can do are still not quite true or slightly exaggerated (based on my training background of evidence-based cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy & clinical psychology).

Here I’d like to introduce a few basic introductory (text) books to self-hypnosis, mainly cognitive behavioural based and empirically supported, you can learn more about them and perhaps try to practise them at home, do let me know if you have come up with any problems or obstacles. Not that I’ll definitely be able to answer all your questions BUT I do know a number of therapists in the UK who use hypnosis to help people in their own private clinics.

Books: 

Alladin, A. (2008). Cognitive Hypnotherapy: An Integrated Approach to the Treatment of Emotional Disorders.

Heap, M. & Aravind, K. (2002). Hartland’s Medical & Dental Hypnosis (4th ed.)

Lynn, S. J. & Kirsch, I. (2005). Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis: An Evidence-based Approach (Dissociation, Trauma, Memory, and Hypnosis Book Series)

Robertson, D. (2012). The Practice of Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy: A Manual of Evidence based Clinical Hypnosis. (my review here)

Straus, R. A. (1982). Strategic Self-Hypnosis.

(The Alladin’s and Lynn & Kirsch’s text books are easy to understand, especially when you have some backgrounds in psychology or practicing self-help; The Robertson’s book is the most extensive resources on CBH you can ever find!)

Websites:

A wide range of resources about what hypnotherapy can do, a private clinic in South Manchester: Manchester Hypnotherapy & Counselling

N.B. If you do come across any hypnotherapist in Malaysia please do share it here!

Mindfulness and Acceptance tasks

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Following my previous post Thought Challenging or Thought Accepting, here is a few tasks that may help to explore on how to “accept” your thought without causing too much emotional distress.

Task 1

Pick a word that may cause slight distress in you (e.g. “cockroach”, “snake”, “work”, “boss”, “kids”, “boyfriend”, “presentation” etc). Now repeat this particular word as quick as you can (while still making sure that the word is pronounced clearly) for 30 seconds.

This tasks doesn’t make you feel better about “presentation” itself, but after repeating the word for so many times, you probably can no longer take the word so literally – it loses its meaning. Same goes to negative thought (e.g. “I’m a failure”, “everyone hates me”). If those thoughts pop up in your mind, try to see them only as some words, accept them as they are, but not to relate yourself to them, as if it’s just some unrelated persons saying it to you.

Task 2

Sit down in an undisturbed place, close your eyes and imagine a tiger (or a dog if you find it difficult to picture a tiger in your mind). Let the tiger does whatever it wants to do there in your mind, not to control what it does or doesn’t. If the tiger stays quietly, let it be; if it moves around, let it be, too. Do this for about 5 minutes.

Next, for 5 minutes, try NOT to think about tiger at all. Do not think about tiger. Whenever it pops up in your mind, suppress it, avoid it.

What do you realize? Which part of task 2 is harder? To accept the tiger being there and does whatever it likes, or to suppress the tiger, avoid the tiger?

Task 3

Take a few minutes to practise to complete the following sentence, “Right now I’m aware of …”, and putting different descriptions at the ending each time. For example, “Right now, I’m aware of the brightness of the screen”; “Right now, I’m aware of the sound of the air-conditioner”; “Right now, I’m aware of some numbness on my left foot”; “Right now I’m aware of my thoughts on completing the homework”. Name and describe, avoid making judgement. By using language to describe things, you get to control your attention and get to connect to your field of consciousness, rather than its content, so you’re becoming like an observer to your experience. This task requires more practice!

________________________________________________________________________

Now imagine this: A and B fell over badly in public.

A thinks, “this is so embarrassing, ah, but it’s so funny at the same time”, so he laughs at his own carelessness and let go of it.

B thinks, “this is so embarrassing! Everyone is going to laugh at me and watch me like a clown”, he gets so angry and ashamed.

Most of the time, it’s how we relate ourselves to those incidents, thoughts, feelings etc, it’s really not what that happens. If we choose to calm ourselves down and accept whatever that happens, that come to our minds, and allow ourselves to feel the waves of our emotions, the discomfort will soon no longer be “discomforting”.

Thought Challenging or Thought Accepting?

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Which do you think is better or more workable? To challenge your thought or to accept it?

Traditionally, the psychologists of Cognitive Behavioural approaches emphasize that our thinking style is what causes us to respond emotionally to events, so it’s our thinking style that determines our feelings, our ability to overcome and steer through when adversity strikes (Reivich, Shatte, 2002).

However, the Mindfulness and Acceptance-based approaches suggest that it’s not so much of the content of our thoughts and attitudes that matters, it’s our relationship with them, i.e. how we respond to them.

So the former approach traditionally teaches people to gather evidence and dispute the logic of unhelpful thoughts, whereas the latter approach says we can simply acknowledge the thoughts and distance ourselves from them, without getting into an internal struggle.

Have you ever tried to control or avoid unpleasant experiences and later coming to realize that it’s affecting you even more and causing more discomfort? (e.g. some noise while you’re trying to sleep; your worries; some palpitation and fears)

Psychological suffering (feeling sad, anxious, guilty etc) is very common and so realistically cannot be avoided. Our attempts to avoid or control painful internal experiences can compound and prolong our emotional suffering, at the same time damaging the quality of our lives.

I’ll subsequently write more posts on how to practise and achieve that. But from now on, start to notice those unpleasant experience, acknowledge them and accept them, instead of trying to control or avoid them.

10/9/14: Check here for some tasks  to explore Mindfulness and Acceptance.