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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Its ok to say something sucks!

Its ok to say something sucks!

A lot of new age wisdom talks about not focusing on the bad or uncomfortable things in your life and to some extent I agree but not entirely. Awhile back I had a cancer patient in my office talking about how she was trying really hard to focus only on the positive and not let her mind wander to her negative feelings. It had been a struggle and she was there asking me to help her make it easier. “I want you to make it so I only think positive thoughts.” Hmmm, I thought, good luck with that.

I asked her how she really felt. “Well, most of the time I’m ok but quite frankly this really sucks!” Now she was being real and I far preferred that version of her. The truth is we have to acknowledge our feelings, the good the bad and the really screwed up. That doesn’t mean we have to swim in a deep pool full of them for hours but they do need to be given a voice. To suppress the parts of you that have negative feelings is not only disrespectful to yourself but also counter-productive. Those unacknowledged feelings don’t just go away they go deeper. When you keep ignoring them they will begin to pester when you let your guard down, like when you are trying to sleep.

Emotion is just energy in motion so don’t be afraid of your feelings. They are just feelings and can’t hurt you. The following are things you can do to help emotions (particularly unpleasant ones) come in and go out of your mind when you are done with them.

Journal: The undisputed king of emotional healing. Write down how you feel. Use the F-word if you need to, it’s ok to just let it out. A 20 page rant is good for you and will help you feel better.

Exercise: This is a suggestion from my friend Michele Meiche. Focus on an unpleasant emotion then go for a run while allowing that emotion to move through you. At the end of your run bring up a picture of the opposite emotion or situation and allow yourself to feel that for a while. It helps you see and feel both sides of a situation.

Yoga: This is kind of exercise too but in a different way. Most people don’t realize this but emotions are actually caused by hormones that float in your body. They have found receptor sites for emotions in tissues all over the body. Doing yoga will help you free old or stuck emotions from those tissues.

Eating: Never use food to deal with emotions with one exception. Very dark chocolate (over 70% cocoa) had been clinically shown to help release a love-related chemical known as phenylethylamine which can actually make you happier. My favorite is the Endangered species 88% Cocoa individual wrapped chocolate pieces. 50 calories each for those of you that care.

Being honest with yourself about all your feelings really is the healthiest way to be. Feeling bad for a few minutes a day will not make bad things happen to you, sometimes the bad just happens. Love yourself through all your feelings even the ones you wish you didn’t have. Eventually they too shall pass and you can move on.

Jill Thomas CCHT
Healthy Habits Hypnosis
760-803-2841
www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Get Some sleep

Sleep Troubles

Ahh… sleep. This is such a big issue for many of my clients and is a big source of personal frustration. Often people tell me they wake up and have to go to the bathroom then don’t fall back to sleep. Your body has a hormone that gets released at bedtime which should keep this from happening so unless you are drinking a lot of fluid at bedtime waking up is a sign that something else is going on.

I have done a lot of research over the years on this issue and created this list of suggestions that have helped many of my clients get a good night sleep. Hope this works for you.

-No alcohol or large doses of sugar 3-4 hours prior to bed: Sugar and Alcohol can have a similar effect on the body’s blood sugar. If you consume it too close to bed your blood sugar can fluctuate often causing you to go to sleep ok but become wide awake a few hours later.

-No Caffeine 3 hours before bed: This one is obvious but often forgotten. Caffeine affects your system longer than you think so stop the soda, coffee and tea well before bed.

-Try a little bit of protein right before bed: Blood sugar fluctuations can cause you to wake up. Try a bit of protein like a small piece of chicken or a boiled egg at bedtime. This will give your body something to work on while you sleep. Exception-protein shakes which are mostly sugar

-No news right before bed: In preparation for sleep your brain waves start to move into patterns similar to the hypnotic state so watching something violence (like the news…) right before bed puts the world’s problems deep into your mind at a time when its more open to suggestions. This is why we often have nightmares about the last thing we watched on TV.

-When wide awake for over 20 minutes get up: Tossing and turning for the next hour will not help you sleep and puts a strain on your relationship. Getting up usually helps to reset the body’s clock and will help you get better rest the next night.

If you are waking up with a “To Do” list in your head try just putting a small notebook by your bed and writing down your ideas. Sometimes if you just write it down you can go back to sleep.

Troubles and worries will always be there and allowing them to rule your life will only make you miserable. Try these suggestions plus the sleep MP3 available on my blog and you may find yourself sleeping comfortably again.

">http://www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com/Audio/Sleep.mp3

I am still doing my Bi-Weekly weight loss support group. The next meeting is on July 12th at 6:30 and the topic is “How to end Emotional Eating”. Hope you can join us!

Monday, June 20, 2011

End Sugar Cravings

Sugar Cravings

“When we taste human blood a sort of frenzy begins and it’s almost impossible to stop.” -Edward Cullen in the movie Twilight.

Substitute the word sugar for blood in the above statement and you are accurately describing how many people feel after they eat sugary foods particularly if they don’t eat anything else with it. Overeating sugary foods is a major factor in many people’s inability to achieve their weight loss goals. And as with many health issues there is both a physical and mental component to it.

On the mental side years of birthday cake, Valentine’s Day candy and “I love you” chocolates have trained us to associate feelings of love and connection with sugary foods. As a result many of us crave sweets when we want to feel more loved and connected with others.

On the physical side eating sugar often sets in motion a chemical chain of events that sends our blood sugar levels up and down and causes us to crave even more sugar not long after our first large dose.

In both cases sweets never fully satisfy your cravings so you just keep eating until guilt or the bottom of the bag compels you to stop.

So how do we make the cravings go away?

Ok you aren’t going to like this answer but on the physical side the only way to make them stop is to not eat sugar. Just cut it out of your diet, which is not easy to do since its in EVERYTHING. If you cut it out completely for 2 weeks your body will stop craving it.

On the emotional side when you get a sugar craving you have to stop and ask yourself “What do I really want?” or “What am I trying not to feel by craving sugar?” Then work toward giving yourself what you really need. Hint: It’s never more sugar.

The answer is usually something like “Something to do, I’m bored” or “Someone to talk to, I’m lonely.” In both cases sugar will not help at all but phoning a friend or just about anything else will and that’s what you need to do to really heal this issue. If you consistently feed yourself what you really want rather than the sugar you will start to get the information “I’m bored let’s call a friend” rather than “I want a candy bar.” That’s when you will have completely shifted out of this habit.

So what about artificial sweeteners?

BOOO! Those are so bad for you it’s hardly worth mentioning. And eating them increases your sugar cravings rather than decreasing them.

The following link will take you to an MP3 that can help you reduce your physical sugar cravings and increase your feelings of self love.

http://www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com/Audio/HealthyBodyMeditation.mp3

Jill Thomas CCHT
Healthy Habits Hypnosis
760-803-2841
www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

What are you afraid of?

What are you really afraid of?

The other day I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible fear of being abducted by aliens. (Note to self: no more movies about alien abductions right before bed.) As I lay in bed trying to calm myself down from what is undoubtedly the stupidest fear that has ever kept me awake at night, I realized it wasn’t aliens that had me afraid; it was something else. The aliens were just the object I assigned my fear to because that’s what I was thinking about. My real fear was under that, and it was something very real.

I have been in the process of getting my book ready for publication, and the fear that has me is of losing control of something I have worked so hard to create. That fear is something that could happen, and though there are things I can do about it, to some extent I will have to face that fear and move on.
The reality for most of us who are experiencing feelings of fear is that the real issue goes deeper than what seems to be in front of us now — the thing that’s being tossed around our minds late at night. Very often it’s the same fear I had … of losing control.

Control is an illusion and none of us really has as much as we think we do. At any time our life can be turned upside down by things well beyond our control. Accidents, financial issues and illness are real things we live with all the time. And just like the bully that preys on our weakness, fears can beat us up and take away our joy. The only way to handle them is to face them.

When you are feeling fear, worry or anxiety, ask yourself, “What’s under this?” And keep asking until you feel like you have hit the core issue. The core issue is usually something you can’t do a lot about and it’s often the thing you are most afraid of.

Jill Thomas CCHT
Healthy Habits Hypnosis
760-803-2841
www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com

Monday, June 6, 2011

Why we fail to acheive

Why we fail
I think one of the biggest reasons we fail to achieve our health and wellness goals is that we go into it hoping for success but on some levels expecting to fail.

Years ago I dated a math professor at a local university. One day over coffee he asked me a surprisingly philosophical question. “So Jill, let’s say you toss a coin 19 times and it comes up heads every time, what do you think the odds are of it coming up tails on the 20th toss?” I thought about it then answered “50/50 same as the first toss” “Yes, but you had to think about it didn’t you.” He was right, I had thought about it an embarrassingly long time. “That’s what my students do too. They get caught up to much in the back story and miss the obvious answer.” He was right and I realized the deeper meaning in what he was saying.

We get caught up in our own back stories about how we tried to succeed at something yet failed and think that means we will fail again. I am not going to say that if you dieted 19 times and failed that it doesn’t mean anything. It does, but it doesn’t mean as much as you think and it certainly doesn’t mean you are doomed to fail on the 20th attempt.

In order to get a different result what you really need is to do something different. If you are trying to lose weight don’t just go on the same diet that didn’t work the last 19 times you tried it, do something different. If you are trying to quit smoking don’t just toss the pack in the trashcan get some help from someone who knows how to help you succeed.

The MP3 that you can download from the link below will help you succeed with your health goals by giving your unconscious mind a clear picture of what your most healthy body is supposed to look and feel like. Your unconscious mind will take this image and help you form new habits that bring you closer to your goal.

http://www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com/Audio/HealthyBodyMeditation.mp3

Enjoy!

Jill Thomas CCHT
Healthy Habits Hypnosis
760-803-2841
www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Relief from Anxiety

Tools for managing anxiety

Since most of the clients I am seeing right now are coming to me for feelings of anxiety and worry, I thought I would share some great tools you can use to help manage those feelings. The most insidious part of anxiety is that it causes your body and mind to go into panic mode, which shifts your thoughts and energies into worrying about the problem. This shift turns off your creative ability, so now in addition to having a big problem you have lost the ability to tap into your creative resources to come up with a great solution. Often I see clients who have things they can do to help solve their problems but because they are in panic mode they can’t see those sometimes very obvious solutions.

Here are some great conscious-level tools you can use to help shift those feelings:

-Exercise: the undisputed king of handling anxiety, it has better clinical results than all the anxiety medications out there. If you need help my personal trainer Christine Burke is the best. Visit lightheartedfitness.com

-Doing violence to a pillow: Take a pillow and think about all your upsets and frustrations — all that’s bothering you — and while thinking about those feelings beat the stuffing out of a pillow. Emotion is just energy in motion and the more we move while we are feeling it the faster those feelings pass. Trust me, the pillow will survive and you will feel better.

-Ice water: Taking a break and drinking a large glass of water helps calm anxiety. I can’t say exactly why, but it works and it’s cheap.

-Natural CALM: This is a great calming product out there you can get at any health food store. It’s a magnesium powder called Natural CALM and it really helps you relax after an upset. It’s also great choice if you are an emotional eater since, unlike food, it will actually help you feel better.

-Meditation: second only to exercise in clinical results, and my personal favorite.

You can use the meditation below to help you bring peace and wisdom into any situation that is causing you anxiety. It should open and start when you click on the link but if you have any trouble email me and I will send you the MP3 directly.

http://www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com/Audio/ReduceAnxiety.mp3

Wishing you all great health and happiness.

Jill Thomas CCHT
Healthy Habits Hypnosis
760-803-2841
www.healthyhabitshypnosis.com

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Take away fears power

Take away Fear’s power

The kind of fear I am speaking of today is not the fear of something dark and shadowy that keeps you from doing something stupid like walking into an alley in the middle of the night by yourself. The fear I want to talk about is the one that holds you back. The fear that keeps you from doing things that would actually move you forward into the next phase of your life.

It shows up as a fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of looking stupid or a fear of getting laughed at. And it often keeps you from expressing yourself fully and being your most authentic self. That fear is the tool of the ego that wants you to keep things in the status quo and it will trip you up time and time again if you let it.

When I work with clients who tell me they are experiencing fear, that usually tells me it’s coming up because they are in the process of bringing something into their life that will take them to the next level. That fear is a resistance but also it’s a sign that you are on the right track. When it comes up it means there is something that needs to heal in order for you to grow into that next phase, whether it’s a new business venture, a new way of being or a new way of expressing your most authentic self. It’s a sign of something new and exciting trying to be born. You have to let it.

Like the ghost under your bed as a child that kept you afraid of the dark, this fear lives only in your own mind and has no basis in anything real. You must not give it the power to stop you.

How do you stop the fear from interfering?

Do what you most fear once, ten times and if needed 100 times until that fear no longer has power over you. Write 100 drafts of your book, talk to 100 new people to find a new friend, interview for 100 jobs if that’s what it takes; you only need one success to turn everything around.

But what if I fail?

Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections yet went on to become president. How many times did you fall off your bike before you “got it”? Everyone fails in the beginning; it usually makes you better.

What if people laugh?

After you graduated from high school did you ever actually see someone laugh at someone else’s creative attempts? Not very often, huh? Most people if they don’t like something will just ignore it and move on.

What if people don’t like it or me or whatever I am putting out there?

Truth is not everyone will and that’s OK; you can never do or create anything that everyone will like and you shouldn’t even try. Know who will be most receptive to your ideas and create it for them. Or even better, create it for yourself-just because, and if someone else likes it, great. If not, so what.

In the words of the almighty Nike sports, “Just do it.”

About Me

Jill combines her professional training as a hypnotherapist, weight loss consultant, and related work in the health and nutrition industry with many years of personal life experience to enable her clients to reach their lifestyle and wellness goals.