Addicted to the Screen

Children and young teens stumble upon porn accidentally or through curiosity. Expastors.com states that by the time a child is 11 years old, they would have already been exposed to porn. Some children are embarrassed by what they see and never venture beyond that moment, creating a type of trauma, while others are intrigued by the sexual acts displayed before them and begin to explore the very animated, fantastical, and unrealistic world of pornography.Addiction

For individuals who watch porn, the characters and their actions are enticing but what children and adults don’t understand about pornography is that it’s not real. The milkman, pizza delivery guy, and the naughty maid aren’t real people. These characters are just that, characters. They don’t require courting, games of twenty-one questions, or dates; but in the real world, knowing intimate details about your spouses life is sexier than the skimpiest lingerie.

Porn AddictionThis is a chart taken from Reddit: link here.

Whether indulging for hours or for minutes, a long-standing relationship with pornography begins to desensitize the viewer. What starts as an occupation of your free time spans into engulfing other important hours of your life. Basic guy and girl porn no longer meets the individuals need for thrilling pleasure. Wanting raunchier and more explicit images sends porn addicts digging through dirtier and dirtier pornos until they’re able to once again get off. This is because, like any other addiction, the addicted individual needs to  increase their intake in order to continually satiate. By nature, addicts are always looking for a greater high. 

The addiction is not in that the individual watches porn, but that they can’t go without it. Askmen.com states that, “Porn addiction functions like other addictions, in that people seek out porn (like they would drugs) because they have developed a psychological craving, not because of enjoyment.” Their need to increase the vulgarity is supported by the amount of time spent watching, researching, and imitating porn. As a result, there are addicts who have an inability to connect with tangible people. Their hopes, preferences, and desires are entangled in the distorted ideals created by the porn industry.

Humans were designed for connection. Anything that causes you to live with a hunger that forces you into isolation, is something you need to give up. I want to help you regain control of your life again. Being weaned off of pornography won’t be easy, but it is necessary. We will establish healthy alternatives that are productive and reality based.   Reinforcing these healthy alternatives will give you the control to make better choices when temptation arises. Coaching will assist you in how to deal with moments of weakness, transitioning, and life post addiction.

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss

Usually clients that come to see me for weight loss are clients that have tried everything: from every fad diet, to pills, to religious gym regimes, to starving, to surgery, you name it. Here’s the good news: hypnosis can help. Using hypnosis for weight loss is not simply to target body fat, but it is used to get to the core reason as to why you are unable to lose or maintain a healthy weight.emotional eating

The goal is to be healthier, not thinner.
It’s nice to want a body like the models you’ve seen on the cover of ‘Health’ magazine but true health looks different on each individual depending on their blood type and body shape. Hypnotherapy for weight loss and weight control alters your neural pathways. This means, it edits how your subconscious perceives and reacts to food and exercise. Hypnosis for weight loss is tied in with the science of ultra-metabolism. This system affects your genes by using healthy foods to increase metabolism, and therefore, helping you burn calories.

Taking your individual lifestyle, stress level, blood type, age, and food choices into consideration, I can create a food plan just for you.

A habit we must break is ostressedur tendency to overeat when we’re feeling depressed or stressed. This is an issue because eating can be just as addictive and habitual as drug use. Dopamine and other brain chemicals that allow us to feel good are released when we eat foods high in fat and sugar. People who are feeling down in the dumps will turn to food for a quick pick-me-up. WebMD states that “once people experience pleasure associated with increased dopamine transmission in the brain’s reward pathway from eating certain foods, they quickly feel the need to eat again.” The link can be found here.

Together, we will work on four important factors that effect weight loss and maintenance.

  1. Reduce stress levels: According to Stress in America™: – American Psychological Association, “39% [of Americans] reported overeating or eating unhealthy food [due to stress].” We will work on finding other means of stress relief apart from food.
  2. Determine the psychological origins that prevent you from controlling your cravings and appetite, making good food and life choices, being consistent in exercise, and eating smaller portions. This will allow us to deal with the emotional aspect of your eating problem to break negative behavior patterns. We will institute new, positive eating habits and attitudes. This is not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. Blood type, genetics, portion control, and the amount of water you drink will be used to create and establish the new patterns that will break your addiction to carbohydrates, sugar and artificial substitutes.
  3. Help improve your self-image, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Having grounded self-love and positive motivation will keep you on the journey in pursuing your personal best.
  4. Help set up a connection between your mind and your body’s natural rhythm. Syncing your mind and body will help you understand when you’re eating for nutrition and when you’re desiring to eat because of stress.

Call me at (212) 599-3195 for a phone consultation and we can get started!

Find A Positive Obsession.

Overthinking always proves to be a nuisance for anyone, regardless of your social status or background. Obsessing over that embarrassing thing you wish you’d never said, or obsessing over that compliment you wish you’d said, or obsessing over your child’s future, or obsessing over that job position or raise you know you deserve to have – in the end we all obsess over the same things in life. Some have the luxury in having these thoughts in passing, only to forget about them when kept busy, while others need professional guidance in order to escape their vicious circular thinking.

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Obsessive thoughts can be the result of a high stress environment, traumatic occurrence or just out of sheer habit developed at a young age. These invading thoughts may be in the form of an idea, an image, or a memory. It has a mind of it’s own in that when you try to suppress them, they push back even harder to occupy the host in its entirety.

If you are dealing with obsessive thoughts and you do not seek real help, you are running the risk of facing a more serious issue further down the line. Living life at the mercy of your obsessive thoughts can cause you to lose your sense of reality, your motivation to move forward, and you risk suffering from a sever lack of focus. Having a thought replayed like a broken record player in your mine so many times will make you question the validity of yourself and your self worth. Your desire to enjoy life will decline and worse case scenario, you will no longer feel the want to continue your life.

Replacing negative thoughts with positive ones is a lot easier said than done. It takes time but to every problem, there is a solution. It IS possible to retrain our brains to focus on healthy things above soul-deteriorating thoughts. But first, the first step is to acknowledge your need in wanting for yourself, a peace of mind.

Jealousy, An All Consuming Fire.

People welcome jealousy into their lives, without intending to. They see something they really want and envy that which isn’t theirs. They acknowledge their want of it and, in positive instances, convert it into self-motivation.

tumblr_nqbkpunYAi1u7jt09o1_r1_1280On the other side of the spectrum, some see something they want and experience resentment because it isn’t theirs. Their jealousy never forms into self-motivation. In fact, it becomes an all consuming fire. Their negative thoughts grow fixated on the things they don’t have, magnifying it to something incontrollable and bigger than themselves.

This is so dangerous. It affects relationships, careers, emotional and mental health, and it can really cripple your life.

Jealousy develops when we start comparing ourselves to others. I always tell my clients that we are all on our own journey. We meet people, we invest, we make some U-turns but ultimately, no one else is living the life we individually get in this lifetime. You have to get to a place where separating fact from fantasy is possible, where set goals are met, and where jealousy propels you to be proactive. As I life coach, I am continually engaging in hearing your life story. We all are so special in our own way.

 

Sleep It Off

Ever had someone tell you to “sleep it off”?

If there’s anything I know to have helped enrich my clients lives, it’s two basic needs: water and sleep. Water cleans out your system (another post for another day – I’m always surprised to see how many clients that come in for weight loss don’t drink enough water) and sleep literally is the best medicine both physically and mentally. Don’t wait to treat yourself until after you’ve crashed and burned. What is the point of stitching up a wound when you’ve already been drained of all your blood?

CNN reported back in February that the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) called sleep deprivation a “public health epidemic.”

The article can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/18/health/great-sleep-recession/.

The article also suggests how many hours of sleep we should be getting every night:

  • Newborns (0 to 3 months) — 14 to 17 hours per day
  • Infants (4 to 11 months) — 12 to 15 hours per day
  • Toddlers (1 to 2 years old) — 11 to 14 hours per day
  • Preschoolers (3 to 5 years old) — 11 to 14 hours per day
  • School age (6 to 13 years old) — 9 to 11 hours per day
  • Teens (14 to 17 years old) — 8 to 10 hours per day
  • Younger adults (18 to 25 years old) — 7 to 9 hours per day
  • Adults (26 to 64 years old) — 7 to 9 hours per day
  • Older adults (65 and older) — 7 to 8 hours per day


Without your suggest hours of sleep, you are at a risk in a number of ways. Your performance level drops, your ability to concentrate drops and your mood and motives are all swung out of place. Drowsy driving is found to be just as risky as drunk driving. Our brains are wonderful pieces of creation but without sleep, the way we think, the way we see details, the way we retain memories, process information and make decisions ultimately dwindle. To carry such debilitations over a few missed hours of sleep a night is not worth the bigger, long term mistakes headed your way (i.e. an automobile accident, consistently arriving to work late, missing fine details (if you work in finances… this is major), missing a flight, turning small arguments into exploded fights, and the like). We’ve all experienced this at some point so can we agree that emotions are greatly heightened by lack of sleep causing anger, frustration and sadness to get blown out of proportion?

It’s a lot easier said than done because my clients come in for a gamut of issues that prevent them from getting good rest at night (money issues, relationship downfalls, raising troubled kids, losing job opportunities, insomnia, depression, addictions, PTSD, anxiety, sexual issues, fears, night terrors, you name it). Come see me and I will help you get the rest you need. Trust me, things do not seem as bad as they did after a night of quality sleep.