In our modern age, it seems impossible at times to not be anxious and depressed. In the last thirty years, I’ve seen the rates of affected people only increase. With all our daily distractions and temptations, along with the stress of keeping up in an increasingly difficult world, we begin to defend ourselves in the easiest ways we know how: worry and defeat. We think we have more to lose, we fear our ability to accomplish things, and therefore we cultivate a mentality of “no,” a vocabulary of “can’t,” and a motto of “woe is me.” It’s not productive. It’s not smart living. You wouldn’t waste money, you wouldn’t waste time, so why waste your happiness and health? It’s only when we put happiness and health on a pedestal that we begin to feel the stress and burden of achieving it. We should cherish our happiness and health of course, but the higher up we put it, the harder we reach. What I like to help my patients realize is that the life you want is right in front of you. It’s just self-imposed mechanisms – ones that aren’t helping you – that have made that life appear a lot more distant than it actually is.

For each person, the reasons, and unnecessary hindrances that result from these reasons, are different. It might be an abusive parent, a terrible thing someone said to you, countless amounts of rejection, cheating, etc. I always spend the necessary time assessing the person in front of me by listening to him or her. Once the depression and anxiety are clear to me, we work to change the brain. In place of a pill, I introduce to you new thoughts. You’ll be a new person in no time.

Another replacement for pain is alcohol. As you can see on the “Alcohol” page of the website, there are four types of drinkers. The two seriously worth addressing are the contact and linear alcoholics; the former drinks uncontrollably at their third drink, while the latter cannot control their drinking from the get-go. With the contact drinkers, I teach a thinking pattern of moderation. This way when they finish the second drink, they find the desire to stop as opposed to continue to obliteration. With linear drinkers, sobriety is really the only option, so we work together to remap the brain chemically through hypnosis to allow sobriety. I had a CEO of a fledgling company who was busy convincing investors that his company was on the rebound. The stress of coming across as confident to the investors, salvaging a weak company, laying off hard-working employees, and the deteriorating personal relationships led quickly to alcohol abuse. If his brain was a musician, the musician had stopped practicing his instrument. He needed to relearn. I suggested to him the possibility of impressed investors, grateful friends and family, and a city that needed and adored the product his company offered. Note by note, his brain relearned the old tune it would play when it came up with the idea to start the business, or how it felt during the moment he first met his wife. Before you knew it, he was ordering seltzers and ginger ale, and what do you know, his company finished the year in the green. You have the necessary strength to purify that body, ground those relationships, and attain the inner happiness that has seemed only attainable through alcohol.

More next week!