Is Fear Stopping You From Making That Appointment?
You Can RELAX and Take Care of Your Health
WHY FEAR PHYSICIANS AND DENTISTS?
Countless people allow major and even life-threatening damage to occur in their bodies, simply because of unreasonable fears of visits to physicians or dentists. Such fears come from false convictions that these visits will involve pain. Some people carry the potentially deadly fear that a visit will produce bad news, living under the false conception that ?what you don?t know, won?t hurt you.?
It is not possible even to estimate the number of people who have died simply because, while they knew something was wrong, they did not want the knowledge confirmed by a physician. Many of even the most serious disorders can be halted or even reversed by early discovery, recognition and treatment.
Hypnotism is the method of choice for achieving the attitude changes necessary to accomplish the reduction or elimination of debilitating fears. Removing the fears around seeking medical attention can affect positive outcomes with timely interventions, alleviating unwarranted apprehensions, speeding up recovery, and reduction in medical expenses ? as well as minimizing family inconvenience and time away from work, which lessen any interruption of income. Not to mention reclaiming a sense of inner peace and the ability to resume enjoying life again!
WHAT WILL THE PHYSICIAN SAY?
Hypnotism is applicable in so many fields of medicine that entire volumes have been written on the subject. One of its most important functions is in modifying attitudes ? to the point where a reluctant sufferer will seek medical consultation. Another is the reduction or elimination of pre-surgery anxieties. Patients scheduled for surgery, whether for ingrown toenails or cancer removal, come under great stress. Hypnosis is highly effective for managing stress. Hypnosis further can be a major factor in pain control and expediting recovery.
Every physician and most members of the general public are aware of cases where survival has been ascribed simply to a powerful ?will to live.? Development and utilization of the ?will to live? is basically a form of self-hypnosis. Likewise, many cases are on record in which the lack of the ?will to live? has been designated the cause of a death which physicians deemed should not have occurred.
A TRIP TO THE DENTIST OFFICE
Fear of dental appointments seems virtually innate, although in fact it is a learned feeling. Children have heard tales of unendurable pain suffered (and exaggerated) by other children. Stories and cartoons have featured dental offices as chambers of horrors. Some parents have even threatened children with dental visits as punishment ? ?If you don?t brush your teeth, you?ll have to go to the dentist!?
Dentists seem always to get a bum rap. Yet nobody seems to focus on the fact that the greatest expense, and the greatest pain (if any occurs at all), usually results from not going to a dentist. Preventive dentistry exists ? and for those who practice it, the benefits are immeasurable. But many people, children and adults, simply don?t buy the concept. They see only the mentally visualized ?chamber of horrors.? Fears of dentists are among the relatively common fears seen by psychotherapists and psychiatrists as well as by professional hypnotists.
Increasing numbers of dentists are using hypnosis for pain control either in conjunction with or, in some cases, in place of local anesthesia. Dental extractions and oral surgery under such hypnotic conditions are becoming more utilized, with benefits to dentist and patient alike. Many dentists are also using personal training and skills in hypnosis to help patients feel at ease and become more relaxed before any dental work begins, and to provide post-hypnotic suggestions which can make the healing process quick and comfortable, as well as have future visits be free from fear ? even pleasantly anticipated!
These procedures, however, are possible only with the patients who, fearful or not, come to the dental office. For those whose fears are such that they never approach the door, hypnotism offers the prospect of removing or reducing these apprehensions and prejudices, achieving relaxation and positive mental attitudes, and understanding the benefits of dental care and forgo the risks of avoiding it. Hypnosis can motivate the client to follow through on their appointments.
ELIMINATE FEAR OF NEEDLES
HYPNOSIS: MANY MEDICAL BENEFITS
The amazing capabilities of hypnosis to enhance relaxation, heighten expectation of success and recovery, eliminate negative thinking, control emotions and generate imagery are applicable in virtually all medical situations. In psychiatric cases, the power of the mind to uncover causes of problems, attitudes or conditions is utilized through hypnosis.
Troubling events, whether related to wars, pandemics, accidents, crimes or other causes, can become partially assimilated experiences which haunt victims in forms of anxieties, nightmares and involuntary memories. Following World War II, hypnosis was found highly effective in treating cases of battle fatigue and post-traumatic stress problems.
Hypnosis, as a controlled, voluntary and usually comfortable form of dissociation, allows patients to re-experience troubling events through a process called revivification, which involves hypnotic regression. Such re-experience enables the victim of post-traumatic stress to achieve a catharsis accompanied by new understanding and relief. Hypnosis has proven highly effective in emergency room medicine, and also specifically in burn therapy where suggestions can be given to reduce fluid and electrolyte loss, increase comfort, reduce pain and expedite healing.
While hypnotism is not usually the treatment of choice in many severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or major depression, it has been used for virtually anything else, from the bedwetting episodes of childhood, to the control of pain in surgery and the arthritis of the elderly, from fears and maladjustments, from habit control, to obstetrics and gynecology, from allergy management, to reduction of blood pressure and bleeding control. In dealing with medical and dental apprehensions, hypnotism provides one of its broadest areas of service.
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