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.

Hap·py /ˈhapē/ Adjective 1. 
Feeling Or Showing Pleasure Or Contentment.

Unhappy people are easy to recognize. They share a common lack of identity, path, and/or aspirations. I’m not talking about “the late bloomer”. We all have that neighbor with a 26-year-old son who’s been trying to “find” himself since graduating college.

Unhappy people are unhappy because they aren’t trying to find themselves. They actually believe it when their mammal brains, the brain we’re born with, tell them that they are meant and designed for unhappiness.

imagesSome people are unhappy because of a bio-chemical imbalance. Somewhere down the line, they’ve compromised themselves, or they’ve entered a structure (relationship, contractual agreement, or professional position) that has forced them to live a life that’s contrary to their inner self. These people could potentially suffer from mild, chronic, or acute unhappiness. Chronic unhappiness potentially directs its host to a life of avoidance by means of addiction while acute unhappiness forces its host into a world of depression.

But, unhappiness is not hopelessness.

Action must be taken to help pinpoint the root of unhappiness in your life. Figuring it out is half the battle. Could it be that you’re still holding on to a past hurt? Failing at the life plan someone else has made for you? or listening to the negativity of your mammal brain? Believing that you can move from where you are to where you want to be is vital. With my help, I can help identify what’s preventing you from moving forward in your rich and meaningful life.

Experience–dependent neuroplasticity, the part of our brain that learns from our experiences, forms our personality when in the beta and gamma state. This means we can also reorganize, and, as a result, change our personalities. So long as what’s being changed is philosophically and truly embraced an entire person can be turned around. The goal is not to get you to be someone else, but to get you to your very unique self.

Self-Medication Turned Self-Mutalation.

Addiction isn’t a pretty word. It’s, unfortunately, so often visually associated with junkies and emotionally tied to rebellion. Compassion is a helping hand never fully extended because, let’s be honest, assumptions keep us hesitant to fully committing ourselves to helping those who can’t help themselves.

In early years of development, our frontal lobes aren’t fully formed. This means all we know is adopted from the environment surrounding us. If those who influence us have unhealthy ways of coping, we might also. tumblr_static_filename_640_v2Addiction, contrary to what is thought, can be a learnt behavior. In a family where words are kept behind glasses of Bourbon, there’s a chance drinking could occupy the space reserved for conversation. Drugs are used for coping with the stress of family, work, identity, and everyday life. Addictions are a physical manifestation of an inner mewing. For many addicts, the use of drugs was a form of self-medication, but mutated into self-mutilation.

Some addictions aren’t even drug based. There can be addictions to sex, love, compulsions, and gossip. Imagine the inability to keep a secret. Addictions are more psychologically than neurologically rooted. Meaning they’re more mind than brain based. Compulsions are usually neurological. I have had tremendous success integrating Life Coaching and Hypnotherapy through neuroplasticity, but it’s important to identify the underlining irritations. So many problems can be solved and resolved with hypnosis.

Stop Believing What Your Suicidal Thoughts Say About You.

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When I consider the 40,000+ Americans who commit suicide every year I’m truly overwhelmed. I can’t help but to wonder what was and wasn’t said to these 40,000+ lives. I need to know why these these 40,000+ individuals couldn’t see what waited for them just beyond their despondency. I know it’s easy to judge what’s misunderstood. It’s even easier to bypass what isn’t exactly happening to you, but for those suffering from depression, bipolar disorder, past hurts, heartaches, embarrassment and anger, their feelings are very real.

In my 35 years of life coaching I have seen many clients who were, or are, suicidal. I know the look of defeat. I have seen suicidal clients attempt to disguise their symptoms. I have also seen people in total denial of the war waging within them. I’ve been told by many clients that there is an insidious guilt agitating them for not being happier, and a heavy shame for believing they deserve to be happy. I ask whether or not they were ever told that it’s okay to be sad. I tell them it’s fine if the world weighs too heavy on their hearts, it’s common to want to sleep the day away, and it’s acceptable to cry during moments where you need to be strong. There will be days or even weeks full of melancholy. It’s completely normal to have those moments, but you shouldn’t have to stay there long.

A key trigger that I’ve noticed in all suicidal individuals is hopelessness bigger than the size of Manhattan. This despair infiltrates their thinking, speaking, and all around living. In my experience, their hopelessness is a seed of rejection, failure, disappointment, or addiction that was fed by not speaking up, by not telling someone that this seed existed. Some clients have a white knuckle grip on secrets that would kill them if left unspoken. I want to tell you there is absolutely nothing you can say that will make me judge you. Trying to preserve what’s decaying is far worse than allowing it to rot. Sometimes the only way to put ourselves back together is to let ourselves fall apart. That’s when we begin to see where things really belong, and what never belonged at all.

There is power in speaking. Opening up about the things that are tormenting us keeps our demons at bay. It keeps them from spreading lies about who we are and what we’re worth. I’m familiar enough with my clients to identify when something they’re believing about themselves isn’t true. I help navigate them toward their personal truth, and wait patiently for them to see themselves as worthy of love, forgiveness, a second chance, grace, acceptance, kindness, and abundant life.

I got into this kind of work because I knew the quickest way to help people was to change how they think through Clinical Hypnosis. Today I want you to see yourself as worthy of living a complete life, because you are.

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Does Your Direction Need Redirecting?

I recently had a conversation with a friend who voiced his opinion on women in the work place. He believed that women working a 9 to 5 was the down fall of today’s family. Listening to this philosophy major generalize the entire female gender intrigued me because I have so many successful business women with successful family’s as clients. I needed to know where he was he drawing his conclusions from. He believed all women who worked a full time job jeopardized the integrity of her family, they risked building bonds with other men, they relinquished ever fully knowing their children, and when they had, because they would, an affair, it would be a violent domino effect demolishing their family. This, he said, causes a kind of generational curse where anger, adultery, and lust is embedded in ones genealogy. Casually, he discussed how offensive it was for a woman to be the head of the house. According to him, a woman’s place is behind a man, not at the side of him. I explained that phrases like, “be a man,” or “act like a woman,” were relative.

SexistNevertheless, we decide what these words mean to us, and how we will apply them in our lives. My good friend, needing to complete his thought, used his relationship with his mother to prove reversing gender roles was a crime. He had, and unfortunately still has, a calloused association with his mother. Like many clients I see, he projects the bitterness he has towards his mother on all women. It does not help that he is besieged by men who share the same ideals, allowing a plethora of harmful emotions to fester. This is a new kind of domino effect. Each emotion pushes against him like eager hands ready to destroy. His turmoil goes unseen because of pride, anger, or fear; and the help he desperately needs goes unreceived.

I have seen this projection many times in friends, clients, and strangers. But, I understand his firm stance. He unknowingly only thinks with the limbic part of his brain. This is the part of our brain where emotions and motives are stored. Pulling from this pool alone allows him to empathize, but not reason. He’s not using his frontal lobe; the part of our brain that rationalizes. Living in a a place of emotion alone can be dangerous. We need to have the ability to assess what is reality and whether or not our personal feelings are distorting that truth. Hypnosis is a great way to discover why we feel what we feel.