Children are often better candidates for hypnosis than adults, says one clinical psychologist, and the process can help resolve such problems as pain, anxiety, bed wetting, and asthma.
Robert Shacter of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine talked about children and hypnosis on The Saturday Early Show. He says children tend to respond to hypnotic suggestion better than adults because they are more in touch with their imaginations.
Children can be hypnotized as early as age 3, he says, adding, “But in my personal experience, I have found that children ages 5 or older respond best to the treatment.”
Here is part of a pre-interview with Robert Shacter.
The easiest way to hypnotize a child is to have them focus on a point, he explains. They will do that until their eyes begin to feel heavy, and they become sleepy. You now have them in a trance-like state. Once they are in this state, you begin to tell the child stories that can alleviate whatever problems they may have.
What role, if any, does the parent play during a hypnosis session? As in any therapy, it is important for parents to know what is going on. But in the actual session the parent is either not there or in the background. So they really don’t play any part in the actual therapy.
How many times does a typical child visit a hypnotist? Most children attend 4 to 8 sessions with a qualified hypnotist. During that time, the hypnotist can teach a child how to hypnotize himself.
How do I know if my child if a candidate for hypnosis? Most children are good candidates. It just depends on whether the problems they are having can be helped by hypnosis.
Here are some of the problems that might be helped by hypnosis:
- Pain. Hypnosis is very effective at alleviating the pain of children undergoing cancer treatments. What we do is help the child go somewhere else, away from the pain. By accessing the unconscious, the child creates images that forces them to focus on something other than the pain they are feeling.
For example, if you squeezed your hand very tightly to the point that it hurt and then someone asked you to focus on something else, you would not be as aware of the pain in your hand.
- Anxiety. A child who is anxious often breathes more quickly and has a higher heart rate. With hypnosis, we can teach them to breathe more slowly, lower their heart rate and take them away from whatever is making them anxious.
- Bed Wetting. Many doctors prescribe medicine for children who have a bed-wetting problem. But now more physicians are turning to hypnosis, which has very positive results. Part of the reason that it works so well is that kids play an active role in their treatment rather than just taking a pill.
- Asthma. When children with asthma feel their throats constricting, they begin to feel anxious and breathe more heavily. With hypnosis, you teach the child to calm down and bring them to another place.
How effective is hypnosis in children? In the right child, hypnotism can be very successful. There are some children who have a harder time letting go, but for those who can, the results can be very positive. Another plus of hypnosis is that unlike drugs, the risk of harm is low.
Why aren’t more doctors using hypnotism? It’s just not taught that much in schools, and some people still don’t want to recognize it as a viable alternative. However, it is becoming more popular, and many insurers will cover it.
By: Ellen Crean
This common personality trait may take a toll on your waistline. Find out why—and what you can do about it.
Picture this: You’re at a restaurant and plan to order grilled chicken with vegetables because you’re trying to eat healthier and shed some extra pounds. Your friend, on the other hand, wants to order a burger with the works and a heaping side of fries—and encourages you to do the same.
So you switch your order just so your friend won’t feel bad about what she’s eating. Being concerned about other people’s feelings is a great trait in certain areas of your life, but when it comes to eating, it may backfire—and your waistline may pay the price.
New research from Case Western University found that people-pleasers tend to eat more. In the study, involving 101 college students, participants completed a questionnaire to determine their levels of preoccupation with pleasing others and maintaining social harmony, otherwise known as “sociotropy.”
They were then paired up in rooms with a female actor who took a small handful of M&Ms from a bowl and offered the rest to the participant. Researchers found that high-sociotropy individuals were more likely to eat greater amounts of M&Ms than other participants and admitted that they were trying to match the actor’s eating habits to make her feel more comfortable.
“People pleasers don’t like to pose any kind of threat to others,” says study co-author Julie Exline, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at the university. “They don’t want to outshine someone and in this case, the way you’d be outshining is to eat healthy or really light when the other person is eating junk.”
Not sure if you qualify as a people pleaser? Ask yourself whether you agree with any of the following phrases used in the study’s questionnaire: “I worry a lot about hurting or offending other people”; “I’m very sensitive to criticism by others”; “I’m easily persuaded by others”; and “I’m too apologetic to other people.”
Susan Albers, a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and author of “50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food”, says that you should also consider whether you frequently regret your decisions. If you often find yourself saying, “Oh, I should have done this instead of saying yes to that event” or “I wish I didn’t eat that cake my friend brought over,” your worry could be taking a toll on you, including your waistline.
People-pleasing aside, there’s a good chance you’ve mimicked your friends’ eating behaviors whether you realized it or not. Researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands paired up 70 women and observed them eating in a mock restaurant, noting bite timing for both participants. The experts found that women tended to mimic each other’s eating behavior. In other words, they were more likely to take a bite within five seconds after their eating companion took a bite rather than eat at their own pace.
The participants were also more than three times as likely to mimic the intake of their eating companion at the beginning of the interaction—in this study, the first 10 minutes—compared to the end of the interaction, or the last 10 minutes.
Whether it’s to make a good first impression—which might explain the mimicry timing results—or because seeing someone else do an action may physically trigger you to copy them, one thing is clear: “Women feel pressure to match or mirror other people’s eating habits,” says Dr. Albers.
Sure, we’ve all been there before. It’s tough to say no when your grandmother offers you a piece of her homemade pie or to slow down when all of your girlfriends are digging into nachos at happy hour. Every once in awhile is fine, but if you find yourself in this situation a lot, it can have detrimental effects on your health. “When [these negative social eating habits] start to become more of a pattern, you need to start paying close attention,” says Dr. Exline.
By: Abigail Cuffey
We recently returned from a walking trip in Spain along the Camino de Santiago. Although the trek is about 800 kilometers, we walked only the last 220 kilometers and met some wonderful people along the way. We spent one pleasant evening chatting to a plastic surgeon and a retired banker who were biking across the Camino (no small thing – trust me walking is easier). As is the custom when meeting people in their own homeland, our talk turned to healthcare in Spain. Both were bemoaning what they felt was a growing problem in Spain: obesity.
Although it didn’t appear as bad to us as it is in the U.S., obesity is clearly on the rise in the world, a problem that I’ve recently heard referred to as the “industrial global diet” high in meat, fat and sugar. In other words it’s cheap food. High in calories. Terrible to one’s health.
Italy, the home of the Mediterranean Diet, also has an obesity problem, more the result of rising wealth than worsening poverty as more of the population adopts the industrial diet.
According to Dr. Angelo Pietrobelli, associate professor of pediatrics and nutrition at the University of Verona, “Unfortunately, in particular among adolescents, they try to avoid Mediterranean diet because they try to ‘imitate’ the U.S. diet.”
During the 1940s, physiologist Ancel Keys, noted that the people of the seaside town of Pioppi, were living longer, healthier lives and had a much lower rate of heart disease than their well-fed Northern European counterparts. He ended up studying their diet during the 1940s and ‘50s and the Mediterranean Diet, high in fresh vegetables, fruit and fish and low in meat, was introduced to the rest of the world. Keys himself adopted the diet and died at 101 years of age.
The problem was that the Mediterranean diet was actually a poor man’s diet, “a diet of poverty, not of choice” according to food historian Zachary Nowak of the Umbra Institute of Perugia.
Obesity is not confined to Italy where about 36% of kids aged 12-16 are overweight or obese, but is spreading to Greece as well as Spain where more young people are abandoning the Mediterranean diet in favor of fast food joints.
Too bad this is what kids want to emulate about Americans.
I have been a hypnotist since 2001 and continue to be amazed who quickly clients can shed the emotional burdens of their problems. They walk in my office looking as though their problems define who they are, and leave feeling refreshed and confident.
If you want to experience a rapidly dramatic retake on your perspective of a particular problem or struggle I recommend hypnosis. Clients certainly recall past problems but the overwhelming majority feel completely disconnected and free to move forward.
Once the positive shift is initiated then the process of repetition ensures that it lasts. My clients receive a CD or MP3 of each session for home reinforcement. For decades this aspect of the process was never mentioned in hopes individuals would keep coming back paying for sessions. My philosophy has always involved training clients to become self-practitioners, their success is greater, longer lasting and as a result they do my marketing for me. It’s a win-win situation.
Paul Gustafson RN CH
On May 6th 1954, Roger Bannister had thoughts of running a sub-four minute mile, which had never been done before. Not only did he succeed but he opened the door for 45 other runners to have the same dream and in tern, accomplished the same feat over the course of the next eighteen months. We follow the path of our most dominant thoughts. Hypnosis helps us to powerfully reshape our feelings and expectations which can lead to dramatic life change. I’m sure Roger would agree.
By: Paul Gustafson RN CH
