Jay Tinsman, MA

California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Individual and Couples Counseling and Brief Hypnotic Psychotherapy

2755 Cottage Way, Suite 5,  Sacramento, CA  95825  (916) 203-5310

 

 

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BAD HABIT?  WAKE UP FROM THE TRANCE YOU’RE ALREADY IN! 

For reasons of privacy I won’t use names, but a person I knew went up on the stage at a hypnosis show and did some entertaining, funny things.  Nothing that “crossed the line” of course, but pretty out of character.  When some friends joked with her about what she did in front of the audience, her response was “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did that!  I must have really been hypnotized.  It seemed OK to do those things at the time.” 

Jump to daily life.  Stage hypnosis and clinical (“professional” or “office”) hypnosis are two very different things.  The stage is for fun and entertainment, period.  People who look into clinical hypnosis usually have identified a problem to fix, or a goal to achieve.  Problem habits, problem feelings or thoughts, and maybe they don’t even know why.  In this way it’s like a “trance,” automatic behavior, unthinking, linked to environmental cues.  “The phone rings, I want a cigarette.”  We have learned lots of automatic behaviors and thoughts as we learned to function in life, and most of them are useful.  We just get in our car and do all those little things to drive and don’t think too much about it. 

But if we have a bad habit, uncomfortable feelings, or are stuck, one way to look at it is we need to wake up from the “bad habit” trance we're already in.  If you have a counterproductive habit, do any of these apply?  “I don’t know why I do it, OR—I have rationalized why I do it, OR—I do it without thinking about it, OR—I can’t imagine how I would cope without it, OR—it scares me to think of changing it."

This is another way of looking at tough habits we wish we could break.  The solution?  SNAP those fingers!  Wake up!  Wide awake, smell the coffee, realize the TRUTH with ALL parts of your mind, and the truth will set you free.  As soon as you get the truth into every part of your mind. 

One of my teachers a long time ago said “we shouldn’t be trying to hypnotize our clients, we should be waking them up from the trance they are already in.”  Food for thought.

Since the habit may be long-standing and stubborn, it may have worked its way into many parts of your mind and your life.  It may be stubborn, because it has learned over the years how to control you to keep itself alive.  If you wake up, your habit will be “whispering in your ear” to put you back to sleep, back to the automatic behavior.  It’s hard to wake up.  You really have to give yourself permission to do it.  That’s an area where clinical hypnosis shines.  The message for your unconscious:  wake up, you don’t need your bad habit to feel peace of mind.    --Jay T.
 
 
 
DID YOU KNOW?  In order to benefit from marriage or couple counseling, you usually need five to ten sessions.  You don’t have to sign up for this, but just commit in your own mind to give it the time you need, even though your may feel (A) better, (B) worse, pick one, after a session or two.  Movement in either direction means we are getting somewhere. 

 

 

 

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