Procrastination

Procrastination is a big area of work for me. My preferred strategy for this is to suggest to patients under hypnosis that they spend seventeen minutes everyday tidying their desk, making cold calls or whatever it is they have been procrastinating about. The rationale is that seventeen minutes is short enough to be tackleable but long enough to achieve something. It works very well, with or without hypnosis. I told a networking associate about this and he used it on his in-tray. He was very satisfied that by the end of the week his previously overflowing in tray was now empty; and also found that one of his suppliers had been overcharging him and he managed to recoup some money.

Alternative therapies and IVF

A recent study in Cardiff University found that women using complementary and alternative treatments (CATs) were less likely to conceive with IVF. The alternative therapies listed were things like herbal remedies, reflexology and acupuncture, hypnotherapy was not among the alternative treatments used.

The study found that women who used CAT had a 20% lower pregnancy success rate over the 12-month treatment period. Our findings do not allow us to make a direct causal link between CAT use and pregnancy rate", says Dr. Boivin. "It may be that complementary therapies diminish the effectiveness of medical interventions, as has been shown in previous research. Or it may simply be that persistent treatment failure encourages women to seek out CATs because they are more willing to try anything to get pregnant."

In my opinion, the term ‘persistent treatment failure’ says it all. And, for ‘more willing to try anything’; read 'desperate'. Desperation is a negative mental attitude that focuses on failure. While a woman may be doing everything she believes right to help her conceive she might be undermining her efforts with the negative self belief of desperation.

The research goes onto say that formal psychological support is more useful to relieve stress than alternative therapies, but women don't seek it out because of the stigma. Perhaps the women seeking help need to know this.

To read the whole article see: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/75984.php

Stress, infertility and naked molerats.

Some interesting research has recently revealed that the naked molerat, a tiny primate living in harsh desert conditions deliberately causes infertility in the females by harassing them. The stress stops them ovulating and prevents pregnancy. There is one queen who produces young and the rest of the colony are free to protect the tribe rather than engage in energy consuming reproduction. This allows the species to carve out a niche in a very hostile environment.

The females are deliberately bullied; literally pushed around to prevent them being fertile. As the molerats are also primates, the scientists have concluded that, there may be implications for humans, stress and fertility. To read the whole article; paste the URL below into your browser.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702145639.htm

Being suggestive

The most basic variety of hypnotherapy treatment is called ‘direct suggestion’.
This is the starting point of all treatment by hypnotherapy. It simply entails hypnotizing the patient – coaxing them into a state of relaxation – and then bombarding them with suggestions for the desired behaviour. Recently I had a patient who needed to do her relaxation excercises at home. I simply hypnotized her; then suggested over and over again, for half an hour or so, that she did relaxation at home and enjoyed it too. It worked very well; It usually does. It is only when the patient has some inner conflict that they need more complicated treatment. For simple habit changing direct suggestion is the simplest and most effective form of hypnotherapy.