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Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Join Steve Bisson, LMHC as he unravels the complexities of therapy and counseling. Engage in straightforward dialogues, enriched with insights from special guests sharing a like-minded perspective. Each episode presents valuable, easy-to-digest information designed to help you perceive therapy, and those who partake in it, in a grounding, relatable manner.
Finding Your Way Through Therapy
E.182 Transforming Stress into Success with Hypnotherapy With Craig Meriwether
What if your mind held the key to your own healing? Join us for an insightful conversation with Craig Meriwether, a seasoned clinical and medical hypnotherapist, as we explore the transformative world of hypnotherapy. Craig sheds light on his vast experience tackling issues ranging from childhood trauma and PTSD to empowering entrepreneurs with confidence. Our discussion aims to clear the fog around hypnotherapy, debunking myths perpetuated by entertainment media, and reaffirming its voluntary nature and potential to enhance mental and emotional well-being.
Discover the dual nature of hypnosis as both an entertaining spectacle and a profound healing tool. We touch upon the mind's extraordinary influence over physical health, drawing from Dr. Irving Kirsch's concept of hypnotherapy as a "non-deceptive placebo." Through captivating stories of placebo surgeries and personal battles with depression and anxiety, we underscore the mind's power to foster personal growth and healing. Craig shares his unexpected journey into hypnotherapy, sparked by a chance writing contest, which led him to uncover the mind's potential to achieve remarkable feats.
From understanding the impact of subconscious messaging to overcoming public speaking fears, this episode is packed with insights. We analyze the importance of addressing subconscious traumas and stress levels, emphasizing neuroplasticity as a pathway to healing. Learn how hypnotherapy can help rewire your perceptions, influenced by the subconscious, to enhance your life. We wrap up by extending our heartfelt thanks to Craig for his invaluable insights, and inviting listeners to explore the global reach of therapy practices and the profound effects of consistent mental health strategies.
Craig's website can be found at
https://arizonaintegrativehypnotherapy.com/
Craig's Online Course for Test Anxiety Relief: Ace Any Test can be found at
https://aceanytest.com/
Finally, download his Program Yourself For Confidence – Download 5 Free Recordings Today! at
https://aceanytest.com/boost-your-confidence/
Freed AI converts conversations into SOAP note.Use code Steve50 for $50 off the 1st month!
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. A proud member of the PsychCraft Network, the goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Mesdames et messieurs, bonjour, bonsoir. Ladies and gentlemen, good day, good night. Welcome to episode 182. If you haven't listened to episode 181 yet, please do so. It was with Daniel Guspodarek, I think I got it right now. We talked about traumatic brain injury. We talked about how it affects therapy and all those great things, so I hope you enjoy that. Go back and listen to that.
Speaker 2:But on episode 182, we're going to be talking to Craig Merriweather. Craig is a certified clinical hypnotherapist, medical hypnotherapist and neurolinguist programming specialist. He founded Arizona Integrity Hypnotherapy, helping people eliminate negative emotions and limiting beliefs that may be keeping them from reaching their full potential. Over 12 years he's worked with childhood trauma, cancer patient with pain control, ptsd, with children who have anxiety, children with nightmares and entrepreneurs with confidence as well as peak performance, and he is also someone who created a book call and a course called Ace Any Tests. So please go look out for that. But anyway, just very excited. I hope you enjoyed the interview.
Speaker 2:And here it is Getfreeai yes, you've heard me talk about it previously in other episodes, but I'm going to talk about it again because getfreeai is just a great service. Imagine being able to pay attention to your clients all the time instead of writing notes and making sure that the note's going to sound good and how are you going to write that note, and things like that, getfreeai liberates you from making sure that you're writing what the client is saying, because it is keeping track of what you're saying and will create, after the end of every session, a progress note. But it goes above and beyond that. Not only does it create a progress note, it also gives you suggestions for goals, gives you even a mental status if you've asked questions around that, as well as being able to write a letter for your client to know what you talked about. So that's the great, great thing. It saves me time, it saves me a lot of aggravation and it just speeds up the progress note process so well. And for $99 a month I know that that's nothing. That's worth my time, that's worth my money, you know. The best part of it too is that if you want to go and put in the code Steve50 when you get the service at the checkout code is steve50 you get $50 off your first month and if you get a whole year, you save a whole 10% for the whole year. So again, steve50 at checkout for getfreeai will get you $50 off for the first month and, like I said, get a full year, get 10% off, get free from writing notes, get free from always scribbling while you're talking to a client and just paying attention to your clients. So they win out, you win out, everybody wins, and I think that this is the greatest thing. And if you're up to a point where you got to change a treatment plan, well, the goals are generated for you. So getfreeai code Steve50 to save $50 on your first month.
Speaker 2:Well, hi everyone and welcome to episode 182. You know I'm very excited to talk about this subject. You know, like I don't know about a whole lot about hypnotherapy. I do know a little bit, but I don't know a whole lot, and I'm looking forward to hearing more from Craig Merriweather, I got your name right. I always make sure people get that. My name is always butchered, so I want to make sure. But Craig, you know, contacted me and I thought it was a great, fascinating stuff, because I do like I'm curious about the subject. I don't know a whole lot. So, anyway, we're going to be talking about that. So, craig, welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. Hey, thanks.
Speaker 3:Steve, I really appreciate giving the chance to talk about this, especially with your audience. Obviously, they're very interested in topics of behavior and mental health and emotional health and so any way I can spread the word about hypnotherapy because I know there's so many misconceptions and myths around it just because of TV and movies and Las Vegas shows and all that. So it'll be fun to have a conversation about all that and see what happens yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that that's what I when I think about it. I've been to a couple of those shows where the hypnotherapy, where they make you do funny things, and I know that people always perceive it. The one thing I always tell people I don't know much about it, but you can't do anything you're not willing to do.
Speaker 3:No, no, it's more like somebody going to a Grateful Dead concert and it's all. I'm not going to one of those. They're going to make me dance and spin around. No, I'm not. You dance concert and it's all. I'm not going to one of those are going to make me dance and spin around. No, I'm not you dance and spin around because you want to or you know I'm not going to. You know a club because they're going to make me dance. No one's making you dance, no one's doing anything.
Speaker 3:You volunteer to get on the dance floor. You volunteer to go to the floor of a grateful dead concert and spin around, and every single person who gets up on that stage volunteers to go up there. Right, and that's what I think a lot of people get caught up in and I I understand it. They watch people, maybe on youtube video or comedy club or las vegas show, and they see people singing like elvis presley and dancing like michael jackson and quacking like ducks and barking like dogs, pretending they're on a roller coaster, whatever the gag is, and it's, it's funny, but you also don't want to act like the fool. It's embarrassing, can be humiliating, but to a certain kind of person, that's fun for them. Right, you know, and every single person again. Not only did they buy a ticket to be at that show, they sat down their seat and when the hypnotist comes out, he or she, they come out and they say hey everybody who wants to come up on stage and have a great time, and a bunch of people raise their hands.
Speaker 3:Now some people are kind of half halfway raising their hands. Other people are jumping up and down and and waving their hands around me, me, pick me. Who's the person gonna pick? You're gonna pick the excited person because they're gonna have a great show and you know you go to the las vegas shows, even the kind of names you've never heard of before still 80 bucks, and so they need to have a great show, they need to entertain the people. So they come back.
Speaker 3:So this person has a career as a entertainment hypnotist and so everybody who goes up there not only volunteer to get up there, they're actually going to run them through little tests to see how able they are to get into some sort of trance-like state, to get to that level of having fun. And every single person they'll go down the line. What's your name, where are you from? And you're here to have a good time and do you want to go to hypnosis and just have a fun night? Yes, I do. They. They say yes like seven times before this person makes them do something. So it's really about your intention your intention in terms of a hip hypnotherapy show or not hypnotherapy, but a hypnotist show, yeah is to have fun, to entertain you're you're an exhibitionist, you're an extrovert. That's not how I want to spend my evening and I don't think I know anybody who would be interested in volunteering for a show. But there are people out there. They want to have fun and that's how they do it. They want to show off and be the center of attention, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but they just like being up on stage and to them that seems like a challenge, an adrenaline rush and something unique and fun that you really probably aren't going to do once in your life. And so they get to be up there, have a good time, sing like Elvis Presley, dance like Michael Jackson, and at the end of the show they have a big smile on their face because they had a great time. So it's really about your intention. And if your intention is to entertain, to have a fun time, to have a silly video to put up on TikTok or Instagram, that's great. You're going to have that.
Speaker 3:On the other hand, what if your intention is to heal? And that's where this conversation can get really interesting because Dr Irving Kirsch called hypnotherapy a non-deceptive placebo, meaning that a placebo using mind to heal body. Of course, like, let's say, a pharmaceutical company is doing some sort of research on a high blood pressure medication, heart medication, half the group's going to get that sugar pill. We all know that sugar pill thing is to trick the people into healing themselves. They do that because they know mind will heal the body. They actually have to account for that in their research. So let's say they're doing this high blood pressure medication.
Speaker 3:Half the people in the study are getting the sugar pill. 30% get better. Literally 30% of those people healed themselves through Thalolone. They thought they were taking some sort of medication so they were tricked into healing themselves. But there was no medicinal value so they literally healed themselves. Let's say 40% of the group that was getting the real medication gets better. They actually have to subtract 30% because maybe they got better through mine too. The medication had nothing to do with it. They actually healed themselves because, oh, I'm getting medication, my body will and my mind will just heal itself. So really only 10% got better on the medication. That's good enough. I'll throw on the market at 50 bucks a pill but nobody really really looks at. Yeah, but more people actually heal themselves through mind, and so Dr Irving Kirsch calls this a non-deceptive placebo, because we're not going to trick you into healing yourself, you're going to do it on purpose, and that's really how powerful you are.
Speaker 3:There's tons of study in the literature and anecdotal stories that you hear about doctors of just like people, whether it's spontaneous healing they call them miracle healings or over time, realizing that they're in some sort of research and and people get that.
Speaker 3:There was that research done on the knee surgery that got so famous maybe a decade ago at this point BBC documentary about it, where they're trying to figure out whether flushing or scraping method for arthroscopic knee surgery was best, and so to get it published you have to have the control group, and so they literally did fake surgery on a third of the people fake surgery, wheeled them into surgery, gassed them out, pretended to do a surgery in case you're kind of halfway awake but not really awake.
Speaker 3:And since it's arthroscopic, they had video monitors of somebody else's knee surgery. There's a scalpel and asking for tools and all this stuff 45 minutes surgery. All they did was kind of cut the knee, like they would sewed up the knee with two little stitches I mean done nothing else to the knee and those people got as better as the other groups who actually got surgery. They literally these people who are in walkers and canes, are now grandparents, now playing basketball with their grandchildren and they had no idea they they healed themselves. They tried, they followed them for like two years and then told them they got fake surgery and they healed themselves. It's extraordinary what the mind can actually do to heal the body.
Speaker 2:You know well therapy helps you with that. I don't want to stop you, but you know like this is all good stuff, but we don't even know who craig merriweather is. I didn't even introduce yourself. So I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself, because this is a great conversation. I was gonna go and follow up and I'm like wait a minute, I didn't even ask him who he was. I know who you are.
Speaker 3:We had a conversation but how about my audience? Yeah, we're having a great conversation beforehand. So I just started running right into this because to me it's it's one of the most exciting things to be able to tap into mind. And the reason why I kind of got into this work is I grew up with my own issues. Depression and anxiety started when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3:So this is the 1980s and I've done my share of talk therapy. I mean when I, you know, there were some issues within my family and we were doing therapy and it was just, I don't know, it was weird and strange because it was kind of hippie-like and it was back in the early 1980s in San Diego and I don't know, it was just kind of weird and strange and off. And when I got together with my girlfriend in 1987, who's now my wife we 19 and and we realized right away we were had a pretty codependent relationship after about a year because of our own struggles within our own family lives and ourselves and we really glued ourselves to each other. We started relationship counseling at 19, uh, to to try and just make sense of what we were going through in our relationship and in our lives. That was extraordinarily helpful. I love talk therapy, you know, and done it on and off over the years. Just, you know, in terms of checkups, it's always great to have a second pair of eyes on something. Any champion, any gold medal Olympian has a coach, probably multiple coaches. Look at a baseball player it has a batting coach, a throwing coach, a running coach, a physical therapist, a nutritionalist, all that stuff. So it's always great to have a coach.
Speaker 3:And when I was growing up, you know, like I said, you know my high school years, really the only thing you could do back then when you're struggling depression and anxiety, you know, is whatever book you could find at the library or the bookstore, or talk therapy If you could find somebody who could help. But you know, a teenage guy is not going to go out and look for a talk therapy or even understand, maybe, what that was all about. Right, the issues within the family. When I was growing up I didn't at that point didn't have a great idea of what talk therapy was about, and so you know the ssri drug was didn't come out to what late 80s, early 1990s, really didn't become popular until the late 1990s. So it was really.
Speaker 3:Just you know. Maintain, you know, right, just try to get through each and every day and after a while it's just like, yeah, this is the way it is. You know, uh, this is how I, how life is. Why would you know any different? Sort of like describing color to a blind person. Why would you know any different? Uh, if this is the way you felt all the time, and you know, sure, there's there's sunshine here and there, but it's sort of like, maybe living in pacific northwest or maybe london or something, it's just like gray a lot of the time.
Speaker 3:And so I kind of struggled through that through the 90s, and it was really the birth of my son in the year 2001 that really thought, okay, I need to, I need to get my act together. Of course I'm older now, uh, I'm in my 30s, and I just had enough, you know, is that not that whole you know cliche of? You know, I'm tired of being tired and with the birth of my son, or at least my wife being pregnant, and it's like, okay, I got to get it together. I got to get together now Because, if you know, my mom struggled with depression. I struggled with depression and anxiety. There's a great chance that my son's going to as well, whether it's just mirroring what's going on in the home, whether it's a genetic component that gets triggered Either way nature or nurture there's a good chance that he's going to struggle with it as well. So what can I do to help that? Sometimes, if you're not strong enough to do it for yourself, you do it for somebody else, right, and so it's really a lot of trial and error, a lot of experimentation. This is 2001. So the internet's out there at that point had been for some years, and, of course, with the SSRI drugs came a lot of attention about depression. A lot of the conversations started happening about depression. It took it, if there's a I know there's a lot of controversy about that kind of stuff and that's not what this conversation is about but if, if nothing else, it brought that conversation to mainstream, I guess, if you want to say that, it brought it out of the shadows and you could have a healthy discussion about it, because you realized a lot of your friends were struggling with depression too and anxiety, and and so there's a lot more information about it.
Speaker 3:One of the things that I, when I was researching just on my own self, what I can do, the strategies, the techniques, what I can do. The strategies, the techniques, the tools was whenever there was a book, a blog post, a radio interview, a lecture or something, they'd always off more or at least often have some sort of bullet points at the end or a top five list, or here's what you can do to change your life. You know a Tony Robbins kind of thing, or whoever it was. There's like here's things you can do to change your life, and they'd usually all be different, but one was one.
Speaker 3:Pretty consistent was hypnotherapy. Always mentioned hypnotherapy, and so you see this word over and over again, this technique, this modality, and so I started looking into it and seeing what it was about, and it sounds fascinating Tap into the subconscious mind, heal the coding, if you will, the computer coding that may have been installed unconsciously, maybe through traumatic event, circumstance, situation in your life, and reprogramming you know your therapist, then when you were looking into that stuff, no, no, I never specifically like, did any hypnotherapy before that, like when I was seeing other kind of talk.
Speaker 3:therapy is more of your, I guess what people would think of as a stereotypical talk therapy session.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So I'd never done it before, and so I specifically sought out a hypnotherapist and was living in kind of central California at that point Santa cruz, just south of san francisco, and and found somebody to to work with and I thought it was amazing. I thought it was absolutely amazing and after some time of working on myself and practicing because it's not just what you might do in a session, as you know, right, and I don't mean to tell everybody, you, steve and your audience what you already know, but it's like it's- not just Some people do not know, so it's fine to say so it's not just that.
Speaker 3:You go to a therapy session, whatever modality you feel is right for you and the situation you're in, but it's what you do afterwards too. What are you practicing, you? Just for you and the situation you're in, but it's what you do afterwards too. What are you practicing? You know you just don't go, get to go to a personal trainer once and then you're in shape for the rest of your life. You got to go to the gym every day, or at least a couple of times a week, uh, to keep your body in shape, and we expect that. We know that. We know you got to eat right. You know you got to drink your water. You know we've got to exercise in some way, whether it's a dance class or martial arts or walking around the park or whatever it is, or going to the gym. We know that.
Speaker 3:So what about your, your emotional health? What about your mental health? Why wouldn't it be the same that, every day, you have to do something to maintain, if not strengthen and empower your mental health and emotional health, as well as your physical health? And so, uh, in terms of what I was doing, it was, of course, some hypnotherapy to help with the deeper pain and the deeper wounds that I was dealing with, but along with all the other kind of techniques and strategies I was using in my life at that time, I woke up one morning I'm just like you know that realize that heaviness had been gone for a while. I just, it's kind of like the reverse frog in the pot situation. It's just like, oh, I don't feel that heaviness had been gone for a while. I just it's kind of like the reverse frog in the pot situation. It's just like, oh, I don't feel that heaviness anymore, I feel really good, I feel lighter, and I realized I hadn't felt that depression and that anxiety in a really long time. You know, it's new baby, a new town. We moved to Flagstaff Arizona, new careers, and just a new town. We moved to Flagstaff Arizona, new careers, and just you know life.
Speaker 3:And so it was a kind of an on and off, of a trial and error kind of thing for a little bit.
Speaker 3:But I'd realized that I'd rewired myself, I rewired my brain, I reset my nervous system, and so since then it's just been this kind of exploration of how else can people change.
Speaker 3:And, you know, let one thing led to another, and this and that and the other thing, and all of a sudden I had the opportunity to actually train as a hypnotherapist, and because it just always fascinated me, especially when you look at athletes, when you look at people who have been in extraordinary trauma and the kind of healing that can happen. So not only you know something as something as extraordinary, as healing, as trauma, but also looking at, maybe, an athlete, it's really coming down to mind. We know how to create peak state within the physical body, so, and since gold medals are won by a hundredth of a second, basically nowadays, it's really coming down to mind. And so looking at the work they're doing in sports, psychology and mental rehearsal and all these different kinds of things, it just fascinated me beyond belief. And so I had the opportunity to go to the Hypnotherapy Academy of America Before we go down that road.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm going to reiterate the question I asked were you a therapist then when you started discovering hypnotherapy and all that, or were you working in another field? Or that's kind of what the question was. I want to come back to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I was not a therapist. What I had been doing was, I guess, being an advocate for changing your life. I wouldn't say I was on any sort of level of Tony Robbins or anything like that, but I had written a book Again, long story, but real quickly. I got involved in a writing contest with Hay House back in 2010 or so, and because I joined a mastermind group with some other friends in Flagstaff and we wanted to change the world, it was like how can we do that and support each other and encourage each other and watch out for each other? And I mentioned, yeah, there's this book contest. You two should like join this thing and write a book or something. I don't want to write a book. Why don't you write a book? I was like, okay, I guess you keep talking about you know, read out about depression, you have all these tools and techniques, and so I wrote a Such a guy conversation too.
Speaker 2:No, you do it. No, you do it.
Speaker 3:And you know it's kind of the thing. Yeah, you know, the other two took a step back and I was standing in front. I guess I'm doing it. And so, yeah, I wrote this book. It was those things where you had to submit a chapter every month and start off with 200 people and then it's down to 100 people, then it's down to 50 people and now it's down to 10 people, all that kind of thing, and so I made it to like the top top five or something like that. And while I didn't win the publishing contract, I did get my book out depression 180 and I was able to kind of start a little bit of a relationship with hay house and got into this book called um pearls of wisdom. But uh, and then it was right after that that I was like, oh, I can go to the hypnotherapy academy, so that's how that happened, and Louise Hay, who is the Hay House person.
Speaker 2:I just want to mention that because I think they still, to this day, do that contest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, 2010,. I guess it was a subsidiary called higher font. I don't know if that's still out there, but it was basically basically hey house. But yeah, you still do is. It was actually really fun. I'm sure a lot of people already had their book written and there's so many chapters, but I, every month, it was just like this, power it out and try to get a chapter written and it's all the research and I wanted everything referenced and yeah, it was fun. But I don't know that I want to do it again Like that, like that intensely.
Speaker 2:Well, you know I like to because I've written the book and I know a lot of people ask me about how to write a book. I'm like there's plenty of ways, plenty of opportunities, plenty of different ways to do it.
Speaker 3:So that's why I want to mention that. Yeah, you know, writing books is fun, but I think I think what a lot of people miss out on. Again, there's a totally different conversation for maybe an entirely different show, but writing your book is like five percent of it.
Speaker 2:The other 95 is marketing, because you forgot the no, no, it's 40, 45. And you forgot about is editing, oh, editing, yeah, yeah, editing. The editing to me was like the torture that I went through and um.
Speaker 3:And I'll give you another big piece of advice never go into a barnes and noble or library or anything, because you won't. You're writing your book. You walk in here and all of a sudden, who are these 2 000 other books in this bookstore? And that's just. You know, right, that bookstore there's. There's millions of books and it's. It's extraordinary, especially nowadays with self-publishing and and all the things you can do now ai check gtp and all that kind of stuff that's a little bit of cheating if you ask me, but oh it's super cheating, but it's also a fun way to get creative and so write, to write.
Speaker 3:If you enjoy writing. There's maybe three or four authors Stephen King, jk Rowling, anne Rice who maybe make serious money. I think a bestselling book is something like 25 000 copies. If you sell 50 000, you'll you'll get a second book written, 100 000 and you are a superstar. So when you see these, you know stephen king novels going for a million copies a week. That's, that's rare, that's point. Zero, zero, zero, one percent. Usually you know you're selling a couple thousand copies if that, and that's only if you have your own tribe and your own community that to send, send the word out to.
Speaker 2:I love Brene Brown and she wrote a few books, but she'll say to herself it's not the books that are making me rich, is those appearances afterwards. Uh well, let's get back to a little bit of hypnotherapy, because I think that's a fascinating subject. You know, one of the things that I wondered about is, with hypnotherapy, especially with people with nervousness, anxiousness, stuff like that, is this something that you recommend to those individuals? Do you think that can be helpful for that, or do you think that it's like now go do CBT or whatever the alphabet soup of the week is?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say, if you can find a trusted practitioner in your area, you know nowadays I'd learn how to take back control of your nervous system and learn how to turn off that anxiety and stress. If it's related to something, certainly there can be some healing there. You know, even if some of you, it's hard to work with people if they're schizophrenic or you know bipolar two or something like that. You really need somebody who kind of has control of their faculties. But even with bipolar 2 and schizophrenia, you can at least teach them how to relax. You know their reset their nervous systems, turn off the sympathetic nervous system, the stress response, and that that alone is extraordinarily helpful in terms of using hypnotherapy.
Speaker 3:The. The issue I find with a lot of those other things whether it's prescribed medication, something you can find over the counter, are you not just masking the situation and that's great for triage? You know, if the two options are ending life or taking an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, take the medication, my God, take the medication. Level yourself out to a point where, okay, now I feel I'm able to work on myself. There's so much possibilities because even if you've gone through a traumatic experience in your life, let's say some early childhood trauma that's quite extraordinary some sort of abuse. No, it wasn't fair and it shouldn't have happened to you and it wasn't your fault. But you are responsible for the coding in your subconscious mind. If you will, you are allowed to do something about that. And so it really is again. Again, it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. I'm sure a lot of you have heard that before, and what hypnotherapy allows you to do is by bypassing that conscious level of mind. Again, this isn't talk therapy, that's a totally different, wonderful modality that maybe should probably be using at the same time even. But by bypassing that conscious level of mind, closing your eyes, relaxing a little bit, you can access that subconscious level of mind.
Speaker 3:And sometimes it might just be as easy to ask, even if you're not sure where the anxiety is coming from, what the anger is all about, where the sadness or despair is coming from, you know where it's coming from, at least within the unconscious mind, behind that curtain, because while it may be consistent and constant, it's not all the time, I'm guessing. There are times when there is some light, there is some joy, even if it's just watching a Seinfeld rerun or something. There's part of your day just having lunch with a friend at work, even though the rest of the workday sucks. There's a part of your day or getting off work, or Friday afternoon or whatever there's a part of your day, part of your week where you're maybe not hurting, and so you know it doesn't happen all the time. There's only a certain triggers within your environment.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of triggers, but there's only a certain amount of triggers. You may not know what they are, but your subconscious mind does. That's why you keep getting triggered and these warning signals coming up, the anxiety, the anger, trying to warn you that there's danger. They're not unlike, maybe, a fire alarm in a building. Right, you know someone. Pulls that fire alarm, sirens go off, the lights go off. Pulls that fire alarm, sirens go off, the lights go off, warning everybody there's danger. You need to get to safety. We also have a warning system. That feeling state of anxiety is the brain dumping all those chemicals into your bloodstream to change the feeling state in your body to warn you that there's danger. Problem is if you just get complacent about it and it just feels like you're wearing a heavy, uncomfortable coat and you just get used to it. But you don't have to get used to.
Speaker 2:You know, you don't have to wear that coat or over sensitive to that anxiety or whatever's around you is also the opposite, but also as troublesome yeah, yeah, and so you're.
Speaker 3:You're allowed to change the coding in your subconscious mind. You're allowed Technically and this isn't to blame the victim, this isn't to say it was your fault, not to say it was fair or anything like that but technically you're the one who put it in there, even as a child, unconsciously, through a traumatic event, extraordinarily traumatic event. That coding of being hurt, of being wounded, was placed in there by you and for right reasons, right, and it was to keep you safe. And maybe the best thing as a child you could have done is keep yourself small and keep yourself hidden, because that was the best thing to do to keep you safe. Right, but not as an adult. That's not going to work anymore.
Speaker 3:But if that coding's still in there, why would anything change? You're allowed to change it. You're the one who put that in there. And when you realize if you're the one who put that in there, it becomes very empowering because well, then you can change it. You don't have to ask permission, you don't have to have somebody else tell you what your problem is and then tell you how to fix it. If you're the one who put it in there as a child, unconsciously, what can you do as an adult, fully awake, right, you know, becomes really empowering very, very strong statement and say, yeah, I can, I can heal, you're loud, you, you have the right, you have the power, you have the ability to do it. It's, I think, a lot of people get stuck. A lot of people kind of spin their wheels because they don't know what the problem is. Not your conscious mind, but your subconscious knows exactly what it is.
Speaker 2:Well, I go back to a couple of things. I just want to complete a little bit of what you're saying. Uh, if you don't mind, uh, for me I, I tell people like, well, if you get beaten every day by mom, dad, brother, sister, doesn't really matter, but you think that's normal for everyone else and your mind will take in as this is normal. And when you go outside of that, when you're 20, 21, 25, 30, whatever, like, wait a minute, that's not normal. No, oh, I can rewire my brain.
Speaker 2:Or you're talking about hypnotherapy. Obviously I like to talk about also neuroplasticity as another way to do it, but I think that what I? I think I wanted to put that in because I think people don't understand that if you're, you get used to be beaten every day, for you that's normal, because you're not going to go tell your friends, hey, did you get beaten yesterday? No, you just assume it's normal. And when you have those reaction as an adult, someone has a loud noise, someone raises their voice or what have you. These are all unconscious things that make you react. But with hypnotherapy, among other things, I think that that's what you can change, right? Yeah?
Speaker 3:Yeah, You're constantly changing your perceptions of your world. Let's go to athletes just as a general example. You may be a great athlete, maybe always winning the gold or world championships or whatever it is, but there may be that one time when I don't know example, if you're a baseball player and you're a pitcher, you pitch, you pitch for years and years and years, and then that one time the ball comes straight at you and knocks you in the head. What's that going to do to your confidence? What's going to do that fear? Are you now going to you know? Is that going to change the coding in your system so now you're throwing differently? Are you afraid to even get up on the mound, Because that probably hurt, having a hundred mile an hour ball drilled into your head?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And so is that fear going to affect your play in any way, let alone something in in business, in your relationships, and just just life as a father, as a mother, as a brother, sister you know, son, daughter. Anything can change your perception of life. Here's a great example of how we think. We're in kind of in charge of our perceptions too. This is is a wild research study that was done where some actors went into a park like Central Park or one of these big parks where people hang out on benches and read newspapers and magazines and books and things, and what they would do is these actors would go up to the people they saw that were just hanging out there and they would sit down next to them and they had a cup of coffee. They say I hate to bother you, but would you mind holding my coffee? I need to text my mom really quick. She's in the hospital. Oh yeah, I'll hold your coffee. Half the people had iced coffee, the other half people had hot coffee. The person texted on their phone and they put it back in their pocket. Thank you, grabbed the coffee and walked off.
Speaker 3:About a half an hour later, a researcher would wander by with a clipboard saying hey, excuse me, I see you're sitting here. We're doing a research study about this story on this piece of paper. It takes about two minutes to read and there's two questions we want to ask. I'll give you $20 for three minutes of your time and so sure you know most of the people would do about something like 97, 98. Of course they're the people who just held the coffee a half an hour before and they would read this story. And the two questions were about the character, traits and attributes of the main character and the people who held the iced coffee 81% described the main character as cold and aloof. 80% of the people who held the hot coffee described them as warm and engaging.
Speaker 3:So it has nothing really to do with your own perception of the world and there's a great marketing tip for it. If you're having a meeting with investors for your business or clients or some enema, hot chocolate or hot coffee or hot tea or hot cider or something, they'll feel that you are a warm person, an engaging person. Never hand them an ice drink and so. But we feel that a lot of times we are in control of our own perceptions and we're not Right. And that's just a recent research study.
Speaker 3:There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds that have been done over the last, you know, 60 years or so. And so we see that with the news, and we see that with commercials, we see that with politicians. They know how to manipulate, they know how to influence, and if we can do it as somebody a hot drink or a cold drink then what else is happening in our world? And so, when you really have to be aware of your surroundings, you know what is influencing you. What podcasts are you listening to? What music are you listening to? What news are you listening to?
Speaker 2:I've got to share a little bit before we go on, because one of my favorite things and I saw this, I didn't believe it because I saw it on the TV show and I'm like TV shows, right, it was on the TV show was why Am I Blanking? I'll figure it out as we talk, but he talked it was a lawyer who said you know, we're well read and we've observed that some people sometimes struggle with the color red. And they kept on using red at different points one day in court, and then the next day they said you know, do we receive subconscious messages? The answer is yes, because yesterday I said red five times, six times, can't remember the number. He says and look at all of you, what color are you all wearing?
Speaker 2:in some way, everyone was wearing red that's wild and I'm like that's a tv show, right, it's not true. No, there's a research that shows that. That if you say like and I can't remember all the words, but it was like, well, read, read about, and they kept on using the word red and they really tapped into the unconscious and everyone wore red and that was something as a research study that I saw um, so for me it's like reminding myself that we absorb unconscious messages, you know, and the hardest part is that I think, consciously, sometimes we can challenge them. Sometimes it's hard for us to challenge them and it's realizing that that's part of our job, whether, as you know, for me as a therapist, as you as a hypnotherapist, is that we got to challenge those unconscious thoughts that we have on a regular basis.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then it goes towards and I might not phrase this quite right but aren't we the sum total of the five people we hang out with the most, something like that. And so so who are you hanging out with? What might be family, especially if you're younger and, uh, still still living at home, but you know who? What are your friends telling you? You know? And this is especially with guys, there's that whole thing of gotta insult each other and, I don't know, make each other kind of feel bad.
Speaker 2:But no, I think that that's what you know. Maybe you know we can switch gears here. We talked a lot about this stuff, but one of the things that you know I one of my, one of my clients recently and this is something that I wanted to ask you is that I just want to get rid of stress. I always want to be happy, or something to that effect. And I had said, on a therapeutic standpoint, I'm like if you're always happy, you'll never know what happiness is. You need to know bad stuff. And then I talked about stress. I'm like we need stress. In my experience is that and again I'm going to turn to you for this question too but what I've said to him is like the day I stop having some stress in my body is the day I'm dead, and I think that stress can be helpful.
Speaker 3:But I was wondering what your thoughts were on that in terms of stress in the body and the mind, even it can be very helpful. Uh, back in the 1920s, I believe, maybe in the 1930s uh, there's two psychotherapists, I believe, or at least researchers of behavior, and they created what they call the Yerkes-Dodson law of arousal. Now, the idea being is that we need a little bit of arousal, stress just to get out of bed in the morning. It's that pressure of knowing that report is due on, you know, at the end of the morning. It's that pressure of knowing that report is due at the end of the week. It's the pressure of knowing you're going to meet with investors for your new business, maybe tomorrow to get that PowerPoint done. Who wants to sit and do a PowerPoint presentation? Who wants to write the next chapter of their book if they're not really into writing? So it's a little bit of pressure maybe from the publisher, a little bit of pressure from the meeting that's coming up, a little bit of pressure that the homework is due, that actually gets us going. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be stressed and anxious to the point of panic, but you do need that little bit of stress, a little bit of adrenaline going to get to the starting line so you can win the race.
Speaker 3:And so what they found is there's this curve in terms of performance and stress level. Performance and stress level there's a curve that, yeah, right around here, is a great place to be in terms of arousal. It gets you to the finish line. It gets you, it gets the work done. It gets you to the finish line. It gets you, it gets the work done right. But when it it peaks and goes to the other end, it's like then you got fatigue, then you got exhaustion, then you got panic, then you got stress and your, your your work, suffers, right? You're not breathing well, so less oxygen is literally less oxygen is going to your brain. The brain takes 20 of the oxygen you breathe in. If you're not breathing well because you're filled with anxiety and and panic and you're tired and you're exhausted, of course your work's going to suffer. So a little bit of stress is necessary just to again get out of bed in the morning, get the kids off to school and and uh, get to work on time doesn't mean it has to be uh drudgery. It can be fun. You can be singing your favorite songs with your kids while you're doing it all, but it does need a certain sense of again what they call arousal to, to get to the point of excelling. But once you reach that peak, now you've gone into, uh, you're breaking down and and to the point where you're burned out and you're not going to do your good work and so, yeah, stress is necessary.
Speaker 3:I don't think we're ever going to get rid of it. I don't know that you need or want to get rid of anxiety and fear. I mean, fear is that thing that keeps us from walking down the dark alley at midnight, even though it's a shortcut home. No, take to the lighted streets, keep to the crowded streets, and I may be able to take you 15 minutes to walk home a little bit longer. Don't walk down the dark alley, don't? You know?
Speaker 3:Here in the, at least down in the Southwest, down in Southern Arizona, it would not be unusual to be walking on in nature and a beautiful trail out in the desert. And it would not be unusual to be walking on in nature and a beautiful trail out in the desert and there's a rattlesnake in the trail. It's not your friend. Don't walk towards it and pet it. You see a baby bear cub out in the forest. Don't walk towards it. That fear and that anxiety is going to keep you away from that. That's the warning system, the safety protocol set up to keep us alive. Don't stand so close to the edge of the Grand Canyon. The fear is there for a reason and so I don't know that you want to get rid of it. It's just like those. I don't know if this is a real medical condition. I've seen it on, you know, pictorialized medical shows and things, but people who can't feel pain.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's a true thing actually.
Speaker 3:And so you know, of course, they're going to have more broken bones, they're going to have more burns on them because they don't know they're touching a hot pot. They don't know they're touching the hot stove. And so that's what the pain is for, that's what the stress is for. We're not distressed, but the anxiety is for. The fear is for is to keep us safe and alive and protected. So to a certain extent, you don't want to get rid of it, but on the other hand, you need to make it work for you. You need to be in control of it, not the other way around.
Speaker 3:And when you're feeling that anxiety and the stress, that's a good time to sit and think okay, what is in my environment that is causing the anxiety, the panic, the fear? And don't wait till it's a level 10. You know, catch this stuff when it's a two, three, right, right in that level of this is manageable, something's going on. Oh, it's because I got that speech tomorrow at the big meeting and I don't feel prepared. Okay, now know, you need to prepare more for that speech. Does that mean finding some people to practice with? Does that mean working more on your PowerPoint presentation? Do you need to hire somebody to help you with what you need to do, because that that's a signal that there's something not right.
Speaker 3:Don't ignore it, because then it gets to a level 10. When it gets to a level 11, then then it may be too late and you are in that breakdown area. You're in that panic and then you're not thinking rationally. So if you can catch this stuff when, when it's a two and that's a, that's right, where you you're able to ignore it too, like, ah, it's a two and I gotta get the kids from school, and but if you can catch that stuff early on, you can. It's a great learning tool. You know a lot of people, uh, the whole.
Speaker 3:You know the big one, that one of the big fears that people have is fear of public speaking, and so the most common one, isn't it?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, it's even something ridiculous, more than death or something, yeah, and so if that's still a thing and so the uh, the fear of public speaking, a big part of that is just you're not practiced enough to feel comfortable, right, I'm, you know. Listen to tony robbins talk about his early days. He was really nervous and he was not very good. Listen to any public speaker. They all started off at Toastmasters or or doing poorly at the big meeting and things, and they practiced and they practiced and they practiced and they practiced. Listen to any actor no, I was terrible when I started. Any dancer. You know any musician I think Jimmy Page. Or you know Eddie Van Halen, or whoever the great guitar players are. You think they were awesome when they took their first guitar lesson.
Speaker 2:Go listen to episode one of Finding your Way Through Therapy. You'll see I've evolved yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so, in terms of public speaking, not only can, of course, you can use hypnotherapy to help with the confidence, to allay some of those fears, some of that anxiety and that panic, especially if, let's say, back in the sixth grade, you went up to do your history report in front of class and it didn't go very well because your model fell apart and you stammered and you forgot what you're supposed to say and all the kids laughed and yeah, that's embarrassing, it's humiliating, and maybe they started mocking you by stuttering for the next couple of weeks because kids are mean. And so you've associated now that being in front of people is dangerous. So, yeah, 20, 25 years later, 30 years later, and you got to get up and do the presentation at the big meeting in front of the investors. So, yeah, you're going to be scared and nervous because your mind's screaming at you. Yeah, that's a dangerous situation. 30 years ago in the sixth grade, everybody laughed at you. So you don't want to do that again.
Speaker 3:Your mind is for you. Your subconscious, your conscious mind, your mind is for you. It may not seem like that sometimes, but it's 100% on your side. It's just trying to protect you, it's trying to keep you safe. It's for your survival, and your survival is this filing cabinet of all the hurt and pain you've been through, the humiliation, the embarrassment, the shame, the guilt it's all in that filing cabinet. You're filtering your life, all the things you see, smell, taste, touch here through your day. You're filtering it through that. If anything registers one of those files, you'll get the warning signals. They'll turn on and they'll come in the form of anxiety or anger or fear.
Speaker 3:And the big thing again with public speaking is like okay, that happened. That's something that can be dealt with with hypnotherapy. But the kind of part two of that is now you need to practice being a public speaker. If that's going to be your thing, right, do you need to go to toastmasters? You need to create your own group. Do you need to get your friends together so you can practice three, four or five times before the meeting. You know, just don't don, just don't write it the night before and hope it's going to go well.
Speaker 2:You know, while we were talking, I actually looked it up it's called congenial insensitivity to pain and I don't even, I can't even pronounce the last word. But it's how rare, is it? One out of 125 million people, whoa, so it is a real thing. It is, however, extremely rare. I mean in the US.
Speaker 3:Is it a genetic thing?
Speaker 2:or is it a brain thing? It's a disorder of the genetics Whoa Usually associated, unfortunately, with people with developmental disabilities. Wow that is crazy. Just wanted to show that because you know I'm looking at the time. We already did almost an hour.
Speaker 3:I know we're just yapping away Half an hour.
Speaker 2:I love this it's great to talk to people who are very interesting, and I like to have the dialogues around that but what I'd like you to do is to maybe tell people how maybe to reach you if you got anything that you want.
Speaker 3:But what I'd like you to do is to maybe tell people how, maybe to reach you if you got anything. Yeah, well, the the name of my practice is arizona integrative hypnotherapy, though, like I said you know, nowadays I work with people around the country and get you know technically around the world. Uh, with zoom connections and all that. Uh, it's very safe, it's very wonderful way of doing it because you don't have to drive across town on a friday afternoon to get to your appointment. Uh, works very well. And what the research says? That's interesting.
Speaker 3:A lot of sociological research about zoom one-on-one sessions whether it's talk therapy or hypnotherapy or doctor's appointment is zoom sessions work as well as in person and some studies even show works better than because of that idea that you're relaxed, you're comfortable, you feel safe in your homes. But I know that was a mouthful with Arizona integrative hypnotherapy, but I live in Flagstaff, arizona, so if you just search on Google Flagstaff hypnosis, you'll see me pop up. Another real easy way is I have a test anxiety course, ace Any Test, a-a-t, ace, any Test. So if you just go to aceanytestcom you can email me from there as well Just to get on the phone and talk with people.
Speaker 2:I'm going to put the link in the show notes so people can reach you. And yeah, for the record, I joke around with it's no longer a joke. But I have been doing Zoom, or online counseling, for about nine years now and I tell people I did it before. The kids thought it was cool, so I know it works. It doesn't work for everyone I get that too but it does definitely work.
Speaker 3:No, I get it. I understand wanting to do it in person. I enjoy doing it in person. You know I like that face-to-face, but you know it's like I had the opportunity. This is no joke. I worked with a professional basketball player the other day from Iceland. Yeah, cool, it's just like this is extraordinary, you know. Or Vienna, or I literally worked with somebody in Bulgaria at the American University there, and it's just like it's just extraordinary. You get the time zone right, man, it's amazing. Or you know people from Flagstaff. They move to wherever Austin or Miami or New York or wherever and it's like man let's keep working.
Speaker 2:The portability is there, but I got, so I really appreciate your time and I look forward to talking to you again, hopefully, yeah, you too, steve.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate it, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, that completes episode 182. I really appreciate you, Craig. Thank you so much for coming on Finding your Way Through Therapy. Episode 183 will be a review of the year. I don't always get a chance to do it, but this year we're going to do it. There's a lot of stuff. It's also a lot of stuff that I've been thinking about, and I think I'm going to start talking about a few changes I want to make.
Speaker 1:I think I've dropped some hints here and there, but I hope you come back and listen to that episode. With a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
