Paul on WBZ radio

Radio host invited Paul Gustafson to talk about hypnotherapy on WBZ’s Nightside with Dan Rea.

12 Reasons a mentor is important

12 Reasons a mentor is important

1 Mentors support growth

Mentors encourage and enable another person’s professional or personal development. A mentor can help focus their efforts by setting goals and giving feedback. As a result, companies that want to build employees’ skills often create mentoring programs. The mentors’ knowledge can help train and create a high-quality and productive workforce. Employees appreciate workplaces that encourage development, as it can demonstrate that their employer values them and wants to see them grow.

2 Mentors serve as a source of knowledge

Mentors can provide specific insights and information that enable the mentee’s success. For example, they offer instructions on how to perform particular tasks or develop useful skills. Individuals starting their career can benefit from such guidance, as it helps them feel comfortable in the role more quickly. For example, a mentor can help a person starting a business learn how to develop their initial business plan and budgets.

3 Mentors can help set goals

A mentor can help their mentee set personal or professional development goals. For effective goal-setting, they can create SMART goals—specific, achievable, relevant and time-based. These goals can help focus the mentee’s efforts and make it easier for the mentor to track and assess progress. They may identify smaller tasks in pursuit of a larger objective to develop specific skills or meet particular priorities.

4 Mentors maintain accountability

A mentor helps hold their mentee accountable for their goals. By tracking progress, the mentor helps the mentee stay focused and on track towards completing them. It can also ensure that the mentee does not forget about the goals they have set. Knowing that someone else is watching can serve as motivation, as the mentee likely does not want to let the mentor down by failing to meet goals.

5 Mentors offer encouragement

When the mentee finds themselves struggling to perform their job or reach a goal, they can turn to their mentor for support. This encouragement can motivate them to keep moving forward despite challenges. A mentor can also identify and express their mentee’s strengths to instill confidence in them. Having a strong sense of confidence can make the mentee less likely to give up on their goals.

6 Mentors help make connections

A mentor can help build their mentee’s professional network. When the mentee identifies professional or personal goals, the mentor can connect them to potential opportunities or individuals who can help them. As the mentor typically has more industry experience or a higher-level career, these connections can be valuable for career advancement.

7 Mentors are willing to listen

When an individual has ideas, they can use a mentor as a resource to discuss or try them. The mentor can provide unbiased advice or opinions using their relevant knowledge and experience. With these insights, the mentee can better understand what steps to take and whether to pursue the idea or walk away. Similarly, a mentor can also listen and advise them on daily concerns, such as workplace conflicts.

8 Mentors serve as a trusted ally

Trust represents a core element of mentoring relationships. The mentee must trust that the mentor has their best interests in mind and will provide accurate and honest guidance. The business world can also be competitive, so they need to rely on one another to keep confidential information private when necessary. Communicating regularly and following through on their promises demonstrate two methods of establishing trust in these relationships.

9 Mentors can offer constructive feedback

A trusting mentorship relationship enables honest feedback. By establishing trust, the mentee understands that constructive criticism aims to build their professional growth rather than make them feel bad. Mentors can identify weaknesses and advise them on ways to improve. Because this is a professional relationship, the mentor plays an objective role. Meanwhile, a friend may hesitate to identify the mentee’s weaknesses because they do not want to appear critical.

10 Mentors provide guidelines

For individuals just starting their career, a mentor can help set guidelines on professional expectations. For example, they may clarify the priorities of the role and proper workplace behaviors. These guidelines can help the mentee establish appropriate work habits that enable them to focus and perform their job successfully. These effective work habits can help them be more productive and impress their supervisors.

11 Mentors have relevant experience

When possible, individuals should choose mentors who have the experience relevant to their profession or goals. When mentors convey their successes, the mentee can use them as an example to strive toward and copy the steps they took. Mentors can also share the mistakes they made along their journeys. The mentee benefits because they learn lessons about the mistakes’ negative impacts but do not have to suffer the consequences themselves. Learning about these experiences can also help prepare the mentee for the challenges they can expect to face and provide demonstrable advice on how to overcome them.

12 Mentors are a free resource

Mentorship typically occurs due to networking or company programs, so mentors do not seek payment. They offer to serve this role because they genuinely want to help the other individual grow and establish a more authentic and personal connection. The lack of payment also opens up mentorship for all types of people, rather than restricting this resource to only those who can afford it. (Indeed.com)

Hypnotherapist Paul Gustafson RN CH offers a 6-class mentoring program for new certified hypnotherapists interested in taking the fast track to professional success. Paul incorporates high-end audio and video along with creatively effective sessions which offers eager clients consistently positive results. [more]

Paul’s multilevel approach includes a dynamic client office experience, digital recording of client sessions, MP3 file sharing, cable TV show production with search engine optimization, blogging and social media distribution. [contact]

Anxiety Disorders and Hypnotherapy

Anxiety Disorders and Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy — or hypnosis — is a type of nonstandard or “complementary and alternative medicine” treatment that uses guided relaxation, intense concentration, and focused attention to achieve a heightened state of awareness that is sometimes called a trance.

The person’s attention is so focused while in this state that anything going on around the person is temporarily blocked out or ignored. In this naturally occurring state, a person may focus their attention — with the help of a trained therapist — on specific thoughts or tasks.

How Does It Work?

Hypnotherapy is usually considered an aid to certain forms of psychotherapy (counseling), rather than a treatment in itself. It can sometimes help with psychotherapy because the hypnotic state allows people to explore painful thoughts, feelings, and memories they might have hidden from their conscious minds. In addition, hypnosis enables people to perceive some things differently, such as blocking an awareness of pain. Hypnotherapy can be used in two ways, as suggestion therapy or for patient psychoanalysis.

Suggestion therapy: The hypnotic state makes the person better able to respond to suggestions. Therefore, hypnotherapy can help some people change certain behaviors, such as to stopping smoking or nail-biting. It can also help people change perceptions and sensations, and is particularly useful in treating certain kinds of pain.

Analysis: This approach uses the relaxed state to explore possible unconscious factors that may be related to a psychological conflict such as a traumatic past event that a person has hidden in their unconscious memory. Once the trauma is revealed, it can be addressed in psychotherapy. However, hypnosis is nowadays not considered a “mainstream” part of psychoanalytic psychotherapies.

What Are the Benefits?

The hypnotic state allows a person to be more open to discussion and suggestion. It can improve the success of other treatments for many conditions, including:

Phobias, fears, and anxiety
Some sleep disorders
Stress
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Grief and loss
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
It also might be used to help with pain control and to overcome habits, such as smoking or overeating. It also might be helpful for people whose symptoms are severe or who need crisis management.

What Are the Drawbacks?

Hypnotherapy would not be appropriate for a person who has psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, or for someone who is using drugs or alcohol. It should be used for controlling some forms of pain only after a doctor has evaluated the person for any physical disorder that might require medical or surgical treatment.

Hypnosis is also not considered a standard or mainstream treatment for major psychiatric disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or serious personality disorders. It is not a substitute for more established forms of psychotherapy or medication treatment used for these types of conditions.

Some therapists use hypnotherapy to recover possible repressed memories they believe are linked to the person’s psychological problems. However, hypnosis also poses a risk of creating false memories — usually as a result of unintended suggestions by the therapist. For this reason, the use of hypnosis for certain mental disorders, such as dissociative disorders, remains controversial.

Is It Dangerous?

Hypnotherapy is not a dangerous procedure. It is not mind control or brainwashing. A therapist cannot make a person do something embarrassing or that the person doesn’t want to do. The greatest risk, as discussed above, is that false memories can be created. It is also not a recognized standard alternative to other established treatments for major psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression.

Who Performs Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is performed by a licensed or certified mental health professional who is specially trained in this technique.

WebMD Medical Reference

Hypnotherapy’s meditative effect

Hypnotherapy’s meditative effect

Most clients are pursuing hypnotherapy for the first time. They are not only new to hypnosis but have no experience with meditation, guided imagery or progressive relaxation. Most want to overcome long-term personal challenges with weight, stress, addiction or fear.

There is a common thread of frustration when clients discuss their situations: dieters fail; medications, at best, are just symptom management; and traditional talk therapy is often described as a constant reminder of the problem with no sustainable solutions. New clients may not know much about hypnotherapy but they have a really good idea of what hasn’t work so far.

Important components to success with hypnotherapy involve comfort and trust. If new clients are comfortable with the practitioner, the surroundings and trust that this individual is acting in their best interest, then chances of a positive client experience are greatly enhanced.remote hypnosis program

My sessions run about 20 minutes. With clients wearing Bose noise-cancelling headphones, my voice is evenly mixed with soothing music and nature sounds delivered through a high-end audio system. It’s during this relaxed, receptive level of thought, where positive supportive suggestions and imagery can become quickly rooted.

The initial advantage of hypnotherapy over other modalities is that it feels really good. Overwhelmed, stressed-out clients typically experience deeper relaxation than they’ve experienced in a long time, on the initial visit.

Another even more significant advantage is the meditative effect. People who routinely meditate are more relaxed, focused and mindfully aware of what is important to them. They don’t act impulsively, they make better choices, and they are happier, healthier and live longer. Think of hypnotherapy as goal-oriented meditation.

In fact, most clients experience unexpected freedom, clarity and relief in areas unrelated to what they came to fix because of this meditative effect. In general, they are more relaxed and confident which usually translates into better communication with others and a sense of feeling more in control. Clients also typically report increased depth and quality sleep; awakening more refreshed and energized.

My clients get an MP3 recording of each session for home reinforcement which they can access with their phone. By listening to sessions on a daily basis this relaxing, mindful perspective becomes their new baseline, making it much easier to succeed with their goals. [contact]

by: Paul Gustafson RN CH