| effective, enhancing logical, practical strategies for empowerment, self-control, relaxation & hope |  | dr. j's head-cleaners shrink rap & shrink think for practical, powerful healing & hope |
|
Hypnosis - How Can It Help In Dealing With Encopresis?FOR PARENTS Encopresis is a situation wherein a youngster who has been and should be considered “toilet trained” has been having bowel movements somewhere other than in the toilet. These bowel movements do not seem to be isolated accidents – instead, they seem to be happening as a behavior or symptom of some sort of physical or psychological problem. Hypnosis is a process and a state of mind wherein the indivual is open to and affected by suggestions that he or she might normally be unaffected by. Mental processes like fears, attitudes and some physiological processes - mental processes that are usually considered mediated and "held" in the unconscious - that are generally unaffected by and inaccessible through typical "conscious" thought are sometimes accessible and modifiable when an individual is in a hypnotic state.  These are disjointed thoughts about hypnosis and about encopresis. Use at your own risk.
Hypnosis is an ancient healing tool that was discovered first some time before things were being written down. So, we basically know that hypnosis - under one name or another - has been used at least since written history began. Hypnosis has gone in and out of favor as a medical intervention and treatment procedure over the centuries, largely because of its somewhat baffling, unseen, unmeasurable nature. Modern studies of hypnosis are generally deemed to have begun with Anton Mesmer who believed hypnosis moved magnetic vapors around in the body and brain. This theory of magnetic vapors was quickly dismissed as simple minded imaginings but the astonishing success of hypnosis in dealing with so many maladies provoked continuing study. Sigmund Freud - a doctor, famous for his work in psychology and psychiatry - used hypnosis extensively in the initial years of his work on understanding unconscious thought processes, but he came to believe that hypnosis was too powerful to be trusted as a medical procedure. Freud believed that patients made changes too quickly and that they sometimes reacted to positive changes in unpredictable ways (e.g., one jumped from her chair and kissed him as the therapy session ended - a reaction that apparently shook him to his core). He was also uncomfortable with hypnosis because it seemed to facilitate changes that the patients gave themselves too much credit for, in his opinion, and their doctor too little (causing him a great deal of chagrin). Freud's views dampened any enthusiasm for the medical use of hypnosis until a few decades later, a young psychiatrist/psychologist named Milton Erickson extended Freud's views to very different conclusions. Erickson radically softened and modernized the techniques used to hypnotize patients, extended the understanding of what hypnosis could do, and taught it to and popularized it with, the world's medical community. Erickson demystified hypnosis, showing that it is a natural, frequently occurring state of focused attention wherein an individual’s deepest inner thinking processes can be accessed, empowered and encouraged to function with a greater degree of logic and healthiness than might be occurring at the time. Erickson demonstrated many ways in which an individual's "unconscious" thought processes function to monitor and provide postive, health-promoting services that keep the body and mind in optimal condition. He also demonstrated ways in which sometimes minor glitches in the unconsciousness can be the underlying cause of all sorts of psychological problems - AND he demonstrated how it is often the case that the simplest fostering of unconscious process through hypnosis can result in fostering a fine tuning of the unconscious's functioning and thus an astonishingly simple, quick elimination of and solution to some of the most serious and otherwise tenacious of psychological problems. "Consciousness" versus "Unconsciousness" Though it may seem to any average individual that his or her mind is filled with thoughts and imaginings 24/7, what one can be aware of in one’s own mind is possibly as little as only a few percent of the actual wealth of thinking - perceiving, conceiving, deciding, regulating, projecting, imagining, etc. - that is going on all the time. The thinking we can be aware of - the thinking that we can more or less guide or direct - is what is generally called “conscious” thinking. It is called "conscious" because we are conscious of it - aware of it. It is the thinking that seems like talking to ourselves. In addition to the thinking that we can think about thinking, there is also a great deal of thought going on in our minds that we are unaware of. This thinking that we think without thinking that we think it. It is thinking that is conscious in the sense that it occurs with an awareness of our environment, our senses and our other thoughts - but it is thinking that goes on without our "conscious" awareness of it happening. It is thinking that we call "unconscious" thinking because we engage in it without being "consciously" aware of engaging in it. It is thought that we cannot be directly aware of engaging in. We cannot direct it or guide it. A good example of one form of "unconscious" thinking - one that most people might find familiar - is that of the experience of "racking one's brain," looking for some mundane thing that has been mislaid (like a set of keys or a checkbook) until finally deciding to give up on the prospect of remembering where it might have been left. But then, an hour or so afterward, while doing something completely unrelated to the earlier search, the knowledge of the whereabouts of the thing lost just appears in the mind as a nonsequator, without fanfare or associated thinking leading up to it. The whereabouts of the thing appearing in the mind is evidence of the mind having continued to search through memory for the whereabouts of the thing lost, even though it was believed consciously that the search had been abandoned. The whereabouts of the thing appearing in the mind represents the communication from the "unconsciousness" or ""unconscious mind" to the "consciousness" or "conscious mind." This sudden awareness of the whereabouts of the lost item is evidence that one can stop consciously thinking about something and can be completely unaware of the fact that the unconscious mind is still focused on searching through memory. It is also interesting to notice that, in such a situation, one would remain unaware of the unconscious mind's search until the results appeared to the conscious mind. One can only wonder how often it is the case that seemingly random thoughts that seem to "pop" into mind are actually the consequence of unconscious thinking going on outside of awareness until some sort of conclusion is presented to the consciousness. One can also only wonder how many concerns and dilemmas are being heatedly thought about, thought through and/or thought over in the unconsciousness while consciously one thinks such things are being set aside for the time being. Being "Conscious" of the "Unconscious" Though conscious thinking is important it is to our functioning as thinking beings - especially our ability to mentally, consciously manipulate concepts represented by language - it is of greater consequence to mentally dealing with problems that are at some distance from our selves in time or space. When it comes to matters up close and personal - matters of blood, bile, fears, fevers, and fondness - decisions about what is important and what is not, what should or could be ignored and what should be given importance - it is the unconscious part of the mind that regulates things. Most of our thinking is "unconscious" thinking. Most of the most potent, persuasive thinking is unconscious. Our most basic, physical regulatory functions are controlled by unconscious thought processes. It is by unconscious thought process, for example, that we monitor moisture levels in our mouths and eyes, blood flow to various parts of the body, and breathing. The regulation of priorities in handling sensory input is handled by unconscious processes. All sensory information is taken in and via unconscious processes it is decided which sensory input is given conscious attention and which sensory input is ignored. (It is via unconscious processes that one decides whether to hear the alarm clock when it goes off or whether it should be ignored, just like it is decided that the feelings your toes feel when you put your shoes on can be ignored for the rest of the day unless you read something about the feelings in your toes.) It is through the regulatory processes and priorities of unconscious parts of the mind that a listener decides how to interpret the meanings of words as one listens to another person speaking. It is in unconscious areas of the mind that basic fears are regulated and watched for. When something happens that causes pain, humiliation or upset, it is in the unconsciousness that fears, foibles and preferences - intended to keep one safer in the future - are thereafter held. The most complex of complexities is in the fact that what we perceive and do consciously is for the most part regulated in the unconscious. Before we can consciously be aware of anything, it has to be "okayed" by the unconscious - which has the power and authority to keep anything from consciousness that it decides should be kept from consciousness. (This can seem disquieting at first - to be told that who we are and what we perceive is decided on for the most part unconsciously - but it is a fact of life.) It is in the part of a child's mind that functions unconsciously that decisions are made about ignoring the physiological cues that indicate he or she should quickly find a bathroom before an accident happens with bowel or bladder. It is in the child's unconscious mind, usually, that decisious are made about holding on to or letting go of bowel or bladder functioning, especially with regard to whether the child is in the appropriate position in the appropriate room. It is in the child's unconscious, usually, that it is decided that hiding evidence of a bowel or bladder accident is preferable to the alternative of parental confrontation. Parenting issues. In dealing with a child's challenges, parents can find themselves dealing with fears and frustrations that reside in their own unconsciousnesses. Childhood frustrations and challenges can be made much more intense when parental emotional issues come into play in negative ways. Encopresis, especially, can have a serious and significant set of complexities from a parent's own time of toilet training. The more a parent finds it difficult to remain patient and level-headed, the more likely he or she is going to be adding an emotional complexity to the mix that gives the child a sense of power of a very negative sort. It is very important for parents to be very cool headed when dealing with encopresis or other such childhood challenges. Enter hypnosis. Hypnosis, it turns out, is a means to “speak” to those unconscious parts of a person’s mind where fears, concerns and deeply seated attitudes are moderated. For reasons and in ways that we do not understand hypnosis fosters a state of mind that allows for optimizing unconsciously mediated fears, attitudes or tendencies. If a person has been through something that left a fear that inhibits their functioning – say a fear of elevators, for example – it is simply ineffective to tell that person consciously to not be afraid. You cannot simply say, “You need not be afraid of elevators,” and expect that the person will simply no longer be afraid of elevators. However, if one sufficiently focuses the person’s attention so that unconscious processes are more in play and then the person is told, “you need no longer be afraid of elevators,” he or she might find that he or she can just walk to an elevator, walk in, press a button and ride to a floor without any sense of fear at all. Similarly, if a child who has been soiling or wetting himself is told, “You can be more aware of your body sensations,” you would not really expect this to do much. We don’t have much conscious control over whether we notice body sensations. But sufficiently hypnotized, the child can be told to be more aware of sensations and – bingo – he is. Does hypnosis work that easily? Yes. Sometimes. Hypnosis has been shown to be able to quickly and easily fix pretty much everything from cancer to cankers. Every time, all the time? Unfortunately, no. Not even close. Results seem to vary on the basis of any number of things, including hypnotic technique, hypnotic style, interpersonal match between hypnotizer and hypnotizee, ability to imagine, sensitivities to certain words, genetic differences in being able to focus attention, amount of time working at trance – and possibly phases of the moon and days of the month. Results vary on so many dimensions that it is basically a matter of try and see – in the understanding that lack of success may mean just needing to try again and again. If a person has failed at achieving trance one time, it may be that they would be successful another time. IF a person has failed with one hypnotist, another might be successful. If a person has been unsuccessful trying it one afternoon, perhaps an evening would be successful. The important thing here is recognizing that it is very not nice to blame the subject (the hypnotizee, the patient, the target) for a lack of success. Hypnosis works on the basis of focusing the attention of the subject. This can be done non-verbally but the most common form of formal hypnosis is verbal. The most common form of hypnosis experienced by the most people, most of the time, is verbal and visual – in the form of movies. A good movie usually focuses attention in the same way a hypnotic induction does. This is why we, as a culture, should be monitoring the content of the movies that our children, and that we ourselves, are watching – we’re watching them hypnotized. (Even though it is true that people cannot be hypnotized to do something against their better judgment, we’ve known since the sixties that our media affects us and our children in negative ways.) With respect to an encopretic (soiling) or enuretic (wetting) child, hypnosis can help in a variety of ways. For the child challenged by encopresis, there are terrible issues of a) fragile self esteem, b) inadequate attention to internal physical cues, c) ability to hold on to things when appropriate to hold on and to let go when appropriate to let go, d) anger and/or anxiety (sometimes), and e) interpersonal problems with peers, siblings and parents. All of these issues are mediated most significantly or entirely at unconscious levels of thinking. Parenting issues. Hypnosis is also a potential aid in dealing with encopresis and other childhood challenges in that it is a very helpful aid for parents who are finding themselves very stressed by the challenges faced by their children. Hypnosis can foster a sounder sense of resiliency and hopefulness and can moderate feelings of frustration and anger. Hypnosis can foster self esteem and patience and can foster attitudes helpful to consistent, patient parenting. It can be a significant aid in dealing with the stresses and struggles of life in general. The more emotionally stable, healthy, hopeful and happy a parent is, the easier the challenges faced by his or her children are. Head-Cleaners Recommendations for Parents and Child. Of the Head-Cleaners titles, there are several that can be helpful in dealing with encopresis or enuresis. The single most appropriate recording for a child struggling with either of these challenges is Two Voices To Imagine. It can be very helpful in fostering a child's self esteem and his or her ability to control his or her bowel and bladder functioning and can seem like a fun experience that, when used at bedtime, can be very effective in fostering sleep. The transcipt of the recording can be requested by simply emailing Dr. Johnson with the request (please include the word "transcript" in the subject line). For parents, the most important of the Head-Cleaners recordings is Self To Self Partnering, which focuses on optimal functioning with respect to how one feels about one's self, one's limitations and one's frustrations. In addition, Healing Tree 2 can also be remarkably helpful in fostering a sense of hope and resiliency.
Encopresis and Hypnosis and emails Adventuring with Encopresis  |
head-cleaners visitors since Valentines Day, 2001 |