Keeping New Year's Resolutions with Hypnosis
by Barry Wolfson
Many folks choose the new year as a time to make a new start. Most of us make New Year’s resolutions, yet almost none of us keep them. Although we are usually very sincere, the problem is that we try to tough it out alone, using sheer willpower. However, many of the resolutions involve long-term habits and are difficult to change without help. Hypnosis can be an effective tool to help us actualize our resolutions. Most commonly used for smoking cessation or weight loss, hypnosis can also be used for other forms of behavior modification including creating positive and healthy changes. Hypnotherapists can facilitate behavioral changes concerning self-esteem, stress reduction, fears and phobias, public speaking, panic attacks, study habits, sports improvement, insomnia, confidence building, migraines and a wide variety of other conditions.One of the reasons that resolutions don’t always work is that although January 1 connotes a new beginning, simply picking an arbitrary date is not usually enough to make it happen immediately. Just like when we learned to ride a bicycle, making change takes practice and more practice, and there may be several falls over the course of time before we master it.
Hypnosis helps where many methodologies cannot because it creates an alpha state of mind, which is a dreamlike state similar to what can occur in yoga and meditation. A hypnotherapist uses his or her voice to put a client into a very relaxed state. With the client in that state, the hypnotherapist is able to plant positive suggestions for change. Not everyone succeeds after one session, but many do. Often, clients need to try several sessions before the change becomes permanent. Cigarette and nicotine addiction and poor lifelong eating patterns weren’t created in a day, and sometimes need multiple attempts to be reversed.
The new year is a wonderful time to set goals for change, and hypnosis can be a tool to help bring about real and lasting change.
Barry Wolfson is director of The Hypnosis Counseling Center, which provides group counseling for smoking cessation and weight loss throughout NJ and PA. Call him at 908-996-3311 or visit HypnosisNJ.com. January 2014.
