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head-cleaners testimonials Encopresis & Hypnosis 
Encopresis can be a frustrating problem with potential for a lot of psychological and physical complications for your child. It can also result in a lot of discord between, and embarrassing moments for, parents, grandparents and siblings. Seven (or eight or ten or six) is a very young age to find one's self expected to pay attention to internal cues, to work on self-control and personal responsibility, and to turn embarrassment and parental pressure into insight and motivation. Most kids have very few self-monitoring, self-control and/or coping skills appropriate for issues like this. The best coping strategy they can come up with is simple avoidance. Most kids deal with encopresis by becoming very resistant to talking or even thinking about the problem -- which, of course, makes the problem worse. If a kid can handle a problem, great -- but if he or she can't, that's what parents are for. Parents of an encopretic child may think their child seems to be too old for her parents to be worrying about toilet training, but this is a problem that won't be solved by relying on a child to fix it. Parents should expect to need to do most of the work -- and by work, I don't mean complaining, blaming, confronting and lecturing. In fact, complaining, blaming, lecturing and confronting (and yelling, screaming, ranting) are more likely to make the problem worse than better. Some of the hardest work, in fact, is NOT complaining, blaming, etc., though you may feel like you're ready to scream at times. Of course, things might work themselves out in the course of time by just ignoring them -- like an encopretic child does -- but in general life works best when parents take responsibility for solving the problems faced by their children if their children can't. When adolescence arrives, self-monitoring and self-control will become easier and embarrassment will become a more powerful motivator. However, by then, even if the encopresis stops, your child may have all sorts of bowel and other associated physical problems -- and a variety of screwy psychological, social and behavioral problems that may complicate and significantly compromise her education, her socializing and her ability to make good decisions and protect herself from the dangers of the world. Bite the bullet and find some expert help. I strongly recommend you ask around and find yourself a good child psychologist or a pediatrician that has expertise in working with encopretic kids. Even if you've had your child to a pediatrician and/or bowel specialist and no physical problem is diagnosed, and even if the doctors you've gone to haven't had any suggestions for you, there should be some professional help available somewhere near you that can help. Ask around for recommendations -- check with friends, other parents, teachers, principals, pediatricians, psychologists or mental health facilities. When you find a professional to work with, you can expect to be working out both a helpful diet (promotive of soft stools versus constipation) and a reasonable schedule for your child to be spending some time in the bathroom sitting on the toilet (-- whether she thinks she needs to or not). You can also expect to get help in working out a reward program with rewards that are practical to implement and effective. The diet, bathrooming schedule and rewards should be worked out in concert with an experienced professional because you need individualized, expert guidance (i.e., with regard to issues of how frequent and how long is reasonable versus possibly harmful to be sitting on the toilet, and with regard to rewards and reward schedules that can be motivating and not anxiety-provoking or frustrating). Diet, bathrooming schedules and rewards will need to be closely supervised by parents. This takes time and a lot of organizing of schedules. Parents have to invest the time and energy or it won't work. Encopretic kids get pretty good at hiding and avoiding things and can't be expected to supervise themselves or be honest in reporting their toiletting behaviors. The professsional (child psychologist or pediatrician) can also help you decide whether it might be helpful to have some counseling for your child and/or for you, and will have all sorts of tricks from trials and errors over the years that will make this all more likely to be effective, tolerable and even enjoyable (as compared to embarrassing, frustrating and irritating). As far as any help from tools like hypnosis tapes goes, it's good to try everything you can, but hypnosis tapes by themselves should not be relied on to do much for encopresis. However, once you get things organized with regard to the diet, the toiletting schedule and the rewards program -- and if you child accepts the need to fix this problem -- a hypnosis tape that focuses on having better self control (e.g., "Two Voices to Imagine" in my selection) can help calm anxiousness and frustration, increase hopefulness, add a sense of fun and magic, make self-monitoring more fun and generally increase the likelihood of success. Finally, recognize that once you get a handle on all this you'll want to feel like it's all behind you, but it won't be. First of all, understand that kids like and need attention. If you decide that once the problem seems licked you can kick back and not spend so much time on dealing with your child, think again. It's very important to spend at least an equivalent amount of time and energy on kids when things are going well as you do when things are problematic. Otherwise, someplace in your child's mind, consciously or unconsciously, she will get the idea that she gets better attention when she has a problem than when she doesn't. Second, once it seems that you get this problem under control, you need to expect it to return at any time that life becomes very stressful for her -- at least through the childhood years. Old habits come back when stress is high -- though I would expect that by age 15 the average teenager will probably be out of the woods as far as a recurrance of encopresis goes -- unless there are serious traumas or other cause for intense psychological upheaval. If and when the encopresis does recur, the sooner you notice it's return, the quicker you can get on top of the problem and the less of a problem it will be to deal with. For more information about dealing with bad habits in children, see kidly issues - helping kids. For more information about finding a psychologist to help, see finding a therapist. I would like to help my encopretic child. Could you please send me the transcript of the hypnosis tape that you have that might help. The two voices to imagine recording (see testimonial) is a very non-directive hypnosis tape that works best if 1) the listener has the vocabulary to easily listen, 2) the listener wants to have better control and 3) the listener expects to find and then finds the presentation interesting and fun. Encopresis is a tough problem because, though it often begins with psychological or physical factors, once the soiling is occurring with any frequency the problem becomes pretty entrenched in the child's body and mind. The initial contributing problem(s) can be completely dealt with and still the soiling problem can continue on the strength of its own self-reinforcing characteristics. As more incidents of soiling occur, the child feels more and more like a hopeless, defective failure and is more and more uncomfortable thinking about the problem. He or she becomes less and less aware of physical feelings because of the combination of not wanting to think about hopeless issues and the physical effects of chronically over-packed bowels (which makes avoiding soiling more difficult) and more and more avoidant of being yelled at (so soiled clothes disappear rather than being cleaned). The more frustrated everybody gets (parents and kids), the less practical everybody gets. At a minimum, you should make sure you consult a pediatrician to see if there is something going on that needs medicine or other medical attention. If, after reading the transcript, you think you'd like to give it a try, then go for it -- or perhaps look into other such helps. Such efforts will work best in the context of a concerted effort to 1) lighten up the level of anger and frustration being expressed or suggested, 2) make sure medical possibilities are identified and dealt with, 3) make sure the toilet is as comfortable an area as possible (e.g., have some comic books, make sure there is sufficient leg support for short legs -- feet should be able to be comfortably on the floor or able to be comfortably supported by a little step in front of the toilet) and 4) reassure everybody that this is one of those problems in life that anyone might get into -- like nail biting -- that goes beyond voluntary control and except in cases of severe brain damage or extreme bodily damage nobody ever stays encopretic for ever. Be aware that the longer you have the problem, the more difficult it is to deal with and the more you need specialized, professional help. If you haven't looked into consulting a child psychologist, I'd suggest you do so. It may cost you a couple of hundred dollars but it may save you a couple of thousand dollars and save you countless hours of stress. There is an article on my site about finding a therapist if you have concerns about the cost or how to go about finding one. Also, since parental frustration levels can be counter-productive, you might also consider the value of having someone knowledgeable to vent to and problem solve with. Or, if you also want to try a tape, healing tree 2 is focused on accepting and dealing with life's tough spots with a sense of hope and resiliency; relax...relax... focuses on learning to relax while still staying alert; and performance 2 is focused on reducing nagging worries or angry thoughts. This all answers many more questions than you asked but if it raised further questions, feel free to ask. Good luck. Dr. Johnson My son, age 5, has encopresis and has associated anger and frustration. I want to help him deal better with his anger and frustrations. He is internalizes and I have a difficult time getting him to talk. Do you think your tapes will help, and if so will you send me the transcripts. Age 5 is probably too young for hypnosis tapes -- at least any I know of. It would pretty much need to be a hypnosis tape made for 4-6 year olds. Age 5 is also probably a bit young to describe him as internalizing, too. Though he may be internalizing feelings to some small extent, at that age a child isn't able to describe much of his inner experience. His thinking and reasoning and strong emotions come out in anger and frustration without much inside except a very bad feeling that isn't connected to any words. What works best is to establish an atmosphere where nobody has to be angry and soiling is dealt with as just a temporary inconvenience -- not a major frustration -- and try to do as well as you can in guessing what the problem(s) may be and addressing them. The best thing is to work with either a pediatrician or a child psychologist who can speak with you at length about how you handle your child's soiling, other negative behaviors and emotions and who can give you some ideas on how you can set up the toilet area and get your son functioning better. I have an article on the site about finding a therapist and I have some tapes (healing tree 2, relax...relax..., performance 2) that might help you with temper and frustration. If you are angry and frustrated, it will be hard not to make him feel badly and it will give him a tool to use against you when he's angry. On good days his self-esteem will be hurt and on bad days he'll be using soiling like a hammer to hurt you so he can share his bad day with you. (Which would be him "externalizing." So you should probably be careful what you wish for.)
If you're alone in all this, all the more reason to reach out for some help. If there's a dad-figure in the picture, you need to get him to be "strategic" in what emotions and frustrations are displayed and conveyed, too. And you need to keep each other calm and hopeful. (Easier said than done, I know.) I hope this helps. Good luck. Dr. Johnson |
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