If you would like to meet for a complimentary consultation before beginning to work together simply email me at info@jillarnoldrcc.com to arrange a time to meet or phone me at (604) 727-6608 to discuss your situation and arrange a convenient time to get together. I am in my office every M-F morning and late afternoon and evening Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Category: Blog Posts
The process of change-what is the reality?
In todays world of instant gratification everyone wants what they want now! We want a faster computer or instant messaging, the instant a light turns green we want the driver ahead of us to MOVE NOW or the horn blasts. Is this idea of instant gratification constantly setting us up for disappointment?
Just look at how many new gym memberships are sold after January 1st, the gym is packed but go back 4, 6 or 8 weeks later and notice that the majority of new members have stopped coming. They often had unrealistic expectations and allowed their disappointment to derail their plan for change.
All change takes time. It is estimated that it can take up to 16 weeks for a new habit or pattern to be formed, many people are not accustomed to having the patience required to see that change become a reality. If someone tells you that any change is instantaneous or is complete after one session of anything it is probably wise to be wary.
The reality of therapeutic change that I hear time and time again from clients is that the uncomfortable feeling or pattern becomes further and further away, less intense and lasts for shorter amounts of time. When new challenges arise as they always will in life they feel calmer, more thoughtful and more prepared to deal with them.
Therapeutic change is a partnership between yourself and your therapist. The therapist is there to evaluate the situation, figure out what is going on, explain it to you and determine a course of action. Your part is to bring your determination, persistence and patience to the process and to collaborate in the experience of creating new patterns of going through your life. As part of the process it is important for you to ask questions, be involved in the process and give feedback. In every new session I always want to know if things feel better, worse or the same. This feedback allows me to redirect, tweak or continue along the same path.
Having realistic expectations allows you to enter the therapeutic experience prepared to have the positive outcome that you deserve. Often when beginning a path for change you start to feel better which encourages you engage in the process of change with determination and patience.
Fear of Public Speaking
Is fear of public speaking holding you back from excelling in school, your career or feeling confident in life?
Do you begin to feel your heart pound, get butterflies in your stomach or want to flee just thinking about speaking in front of others? This common fear is related to social anxiety that often but not always is rooted in an experience, situation or event that was embarrassing or uncomfortable. Once a connection is made subconsciously between and experience and a negative uncomfortable feeling, your subconscious mind which wants to protect you, often feels obligated to remind you of this.
You might tell yourself with your conscious thinking mind that you are capable, you know your material and you WANT to speak in public, however, your subconscious mind chooses to remind you with those uncomfortable feelings that it might not be a safe thing to do.
Hypnotherapy used to release and re-pattern the initial event and subsequent feelings, Counselling/Therapy to increase self confidence/self esteem and Mental Rehearsal to prepare comfortably for Public Speaking, are wonderful ways to finally make this different for yourself.
In fact Hypnotherapy and Counselling are two of the main treatments Dr Andrew Weil, a leading expert in Integrative Therapy suggests for Fear of Public Speaking and Social Anxiety.
Stress-What is it really and how does it work?
We have all heard about the negative effects of stress and how in today’s world we are under so much more of it but what is it really?
Imagine it this way-we experience an event (real or imaginary) and then in an instant we perceive that event. The event itself is called a stressor. Our perception of that stressor sends an automatic message to our mind and our body.
If we perceive the event as positive we experience what is called eustress or positive stress. We may feel energized or excited by it. It might give us energy to perform well in things like a competition, gig, speech, academic requirement or job interview.
We might even enjoy how it feels.
If we experience the event as negative we experience distress. This negative stressor might cause us to feel alarmed, anxious, panicked, tense, depressed or unhappy. We may feel butterflies in our stomach, or a tightening in our chest, tense muscles in our neck, back or shoulders. We might clench or grind our teeth, have a hard time concentrating or thinking or get a headache.
The moment we perceive a stressor as distress, our mind and body that are connected go through a series of chemical changes that are both short and long term acting. Over time and repetition this distress might impact our mind and body negatively. Diseases such as diabetes, digestive disorders, autoimmune diseases, a decreased immune system, migraine headaches, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases and high cholesterol are a few negative symptoms of chronic stress.
A partial list of emotional symptoms can include; insomnia, emotional eating, anxiety (social anxiety, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder) depression, anger and resentment, a short attention span, difficulty maintaining relationships and difficulty coping with work.
Understanding that these symptoms are treatable is the first step towards change. Counselling and Hypnotherapy in combination can release the built up negative emotional pressure that results from chronic stress and allow you to find a calm, safe place from which to re engineer the areas in your life creating the distress. Counselling and hypnotherapy can allow you to balance out your life so that it is enjoyable, positive and fulfilling.
Living Now!
The New Year is always a time for people to reflect on the past year and make resolutions for the year to come. Often the goals we set involve changing behaviours and habits we have lived with for a long time. It takes time to replace old habits with new ones and in the moment we often feel energized to jump into to “our new way” and then many people become discouraged when habits are not immediately different.
I encourage everyone to focus on the present right now and begin to embrace changing one small thing at a time,enjoying the process of now rather looking towards the future.
Today find one small thing you are comfortable with and wanting to do differently, whether it’s moving your body just for today! Putting healthy nutritious food into your body just for today! Notice how empowering it feels to allow yourself to make that change. Notice how good it feels to be able to do that for yourself. Your confidence and self esteem increases with every little moment of change you choose to allow yourself to make and tomorrow is another day to do the same!
Now smile and enjoy it!
How to Choose a Counsellor or Counselling Practice
Choosing the right Counsellor is an essential element in your process of change. Your relationship with your counsellor provides you with the right energy, knowledge, support and encouragement to face issues or patterns in your life that are no longer working for you and to steer/guide you in a more useful positive direction.
The Counsellor that you choose not only needs to have the education and knowledge base to understand the key ingredients you are experiencing and provide realistic solutions, they also need to connect with you in a way that feels safe and comfortable.
Just as a hair stylist, dentist, hygienist, physiotherapist may or may not be the right fit, so is true with your Counsellor/Therapist.
Speaking by email or on the phone is often the first connection, do you like the message you are receiving or the energy from that person. During the first session is the energy/environment comfortable for you. Does it seem that they not only understand where you are coming from but able to formulate a plan to move you forward.
Is their personality pleasant or enjoyable to you? Do you feel confident that they know what they are talking about?
Finding the right Counselling Practice/Counsellor may take time yet it will be time that will be well worth it. It is so important to me that the relationship feels right that I offer a free 20 minute consultation.
Can You Lose Weight With Hypnosis?
Yes, Hypnosis Is the Answer! Weight Loss Is Jill’s Specialty
I probably deal with weight loss and emotional eating sessions more than any other issue, and it seems that most of my clients are coming in by referral. Clients are coming in and saying “Do to me what you did to my Mom! (or Dad, Brother, etc.)?
The reason most people fail at weight loss is that the approach that they use is just too simplistic. Dieting alone will end in failure for most people. How you eat and how it affects your body weight depends on many factors. For example:
|
|
Programs that do not take a number of these factors into consideration are going to have only limited success. Limited in either the amount of weight you lose or how long you can keep it off.
Hypnosis or hypnotherapy (done right) affects subconscious factors such as family training, mood/emotions, habits and exercise level. Diet programs alone are unable to do this. Even diet programs that include exercise programs are not going to work for most people in the long run.
Most people who come to me have tried diets and have failed. They have tried exercise programs too, and have also failed. This is both good and bad. It’s bad because clients will come to me feeling frustrated because of past failures. The good news is that I do not have to educate my clients on how they should eat and exercise to lose weight. All I has to do is remove the subconscious programming that is getting in the way of their success.
Using hypnotherapy, specifically the 5-PATH system, I can remove the old programming that is causing you to eat out of habit, emotions, family training and increase your level of exercise. I will do this through the use of hypnotherapy and teaching you self-hypnosis so that you can continue to reinforce continued success for the rest of your life, or work on almost anything you want to work on in the future (i.e., self-esteem, confidence, motivation, stress management, etc.).
In addition to doing hypnosis I will also do some education. Part of the program involves teaching clients about the secret language of feelings. Yes, that is right, feelings have a secret language. It is because clients often don’t understand how to respond to feelings that they get in trouble. Rather than responding to feelings in a satisfying way (thus reducing or eliminating the distress of emotional problems) they wind up eating and then feeling even worse! Education also helps you understand the important role that healthy nutrition and moving your body in a way that is comfortable for you impacts your mood, confidence and energy.
Your mind and body are connected, when you allow one to be in balance the other will follow.
Allow me to help you once and for all feel the success that you have been missing and learn to enjoy this one body of yours.
Family Systems Theory
Family Systems therapy helps individuals, families, communities, and organizations solve major life problems through understanding and improving human relationships. This theory is based on the knowledge that couples, families and their individual members function as an entwined emotional group that influence and are influenced by each another’s behaviours and choices. Counsellors/Therapists know that the relationship between the parts of a system – that is, the individuals within the family – can alter the whole system in sometimes predictable or patterned – and sometimes unknown – ways.
Family Systems therapy/counselling can bring positive change in challenging relationship patterns causing martial conflict, loss of self, anxiety projected onto children, impaired work performance, poor health, and feelings of emotional isolation. Therapists/counsellors work to improve relationships in intact, single-parent, step-parent, and other nuclear family configurations.
Looking at how the emotional system works in the family that shaped you helps me understand how you were conditioned to respond to stress or pressures within your Family system and extended social networks. During therapy/counselling, I will help you explore your emotional system, become aware of the automatic techniques you use to deal with stress, and recognize the resources and patterns adopted from your family system.
I can then suggest effective options for solving problems that have the best long-term outcome for you, your partner and your family
By knowing yourself and recognizing the influence of the deep connections you have to family and society, you can predict patterns, become less judgmental, more sensitive, while still remaining connected.
Hypnosis
Hypnotherapy : Does it Really Work?
Pretend for a moment, that your mind is like your lawn out in front of your home. Even some of the best cared for yards, if you look close enough, are going to have a couple of weeds! Weeds are interesting because they are so persistent. You see, most of the yard is made up of good green grass, shrubs, and flowers (the good things about yourself).
The grass has good roots, but the weed’s roots go much deeper. That is why if you try to remove a weed by cutting it off, or pulling it up, and you don’t get all of its root, it is most likely to just come back, and sometimes there are more weeds (symptoms or problems) than when you started.
Taking this example a little further, you could look at the weed and divide it up into three distinct areas: first there is the area where the roots are, the soil, that is equivalent to the subconscious mind; the second area, where the grass is, is equivalent to the conscious mind, the part that is easy to see; and finally, there is the part that sticks up into the air for yourself and everyone else to see, the weed, the part of ourselves that we don’t like.
The part we don’t like might be a bad habit like biting your finger nails, or something more serious like smoking, a phobia, or even some diseases like ulcers.
Some treatments just deal with the behavior or the outward symptom, and that would be like mowing off the weed, it is likely that it will return. In the short term you might feel better, like going on a diet, losing the weight, and then the weight returns, because the real cause of the excess weight was never eliminated! Then you feel frustrated, and may even gain more weight (more weeds!).
Hypnotherapy done properly will remove the problem at the root, by helping the client to see or experience the situation, thought or idea, that started the problem differently. If the root is removed, then the problem ceases to exist!
Hypnosis can help you with the following and more:
- Stop Smoking
- Weight Loss
- Anxiety
- Remove Fears
- Drug Abuse
- Motivation
- Public Speaking
- Anger Issues
- Concentration
- Test Anxiety
- Improve Sports
- Sexual Issues
- Stress
- Remove Habits
- Shyness
- Relationships
- Alcohol Abuse
- Childbirth
- Stage Fright
- Pain Management
- Procrastination
- Self-Esteem
- Self-Confidence
- Improve Mood
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy for Rapid Therapeutic Change
Eliminate Addiction, Irrational Fears, Improve Mood, Increase Motivation, Increase Athletic Performance, Reduce the Affects of Abuse and More. Rapidly Begin To Feel Better and Become More Successful in Life. Hypnosis used as a therapeutic modality often greatly increases the rate of healing through insight, by quickly removing psychological or emotional barriers to your success.
Hypnosis allows access to your subconscious (where long term memory, habits and emotions exist) where the material that needs to be uncovered may lie. Using hypnosis, insight and healing may be accomplished often rapidly because in hypnosis your mind is much more calm creating a mental environment where the vital memories and insights become more available for therapeutic work. Hypnosis helps you to break through the barrier of conscious to the subconscious.
I work with you in helping you make the kinds of changes you want, in a confidential and respectful way
Hypnotherapy is a form of brief therapy. Results are usually experienced from the first or second session. Therapy is usually completed after only three to four sessions, but may run as many as five or six for complex problems, though this is unusual.