I like to joke with my clients about my habit of choosing black to wear.

It’s not that I live in Melbourne, where black is a favoured colour at all, but it’s the case of the “pot calling the kettle black!”You see, I’m an expert on stress! Not only do I give presentations on how to identify it and reduce it, but being competitive, I can probably do stress better than most!

So how has stress served me? Apart from giving me a topic to talk about; when I removed a major stressor from my life – working in schools – I experienced a post stress, cardiac event earlier this year. Which of course has given me another topic related to stress to talk about!

Working through the stages of grief that so often accompanies a life changing situation, that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified, I went straight into the first stage:

• Denial – it’s not happening to me. So much into denial that I put myself into a hypnotic state and waited for the symptoms to go away, which of course they didn’t.
• Anger – I got angry with everyone; myself, family, the doctors, the nurses….. I was ready to get up off the hospital trolley and go home because NO-ONE was telling me what was happening to me, prior to the angiogram.
• Bargaining – this was a fairly brief stage,  more along the lines of how I might re-organize my lifestyle and having to come to terms with asking people to help, which was a new and difficult experience.
• Depression – debatable whether I got to this stage. I did experience anxiety as I was continuing to have symptoms and sought professional help to manage this. Unfortunately the psychologist I saw, considered that my symptoms were more mental than physical and I went back into the “angry” stage, contemplating cancelling a scheduled cardiac procedure, which subsequently showed a physical issue.
• Acceptance – I have now accepted that the events happened and through my own process, have come to the conclusion that I happen to have a condition (insert your own condition here…)that can be treated by…… you guessed it….. Hypnotherapy!

William James put forward the theory that 95% of our mind works at the unconscious or sub-conscious level taking care of biological functions as well as so much more of what we do and think. Like an iceberg, only 5% is on the surface. If this is so, then we can harness this unseen energy to change our focus.

It’s all about mindset.

So if you have just been diagnosed with a health problem, perhaps Type 2 Diabetes or a Cardiovascular issue, are you the person with the disease or do you just have symptoms of the condition?

We know that the potential of the human mind has barely been used and if this is so, then it is possible to de-hypnotise yourself from the suggestion that your future will be the same as the next person’s, without taking into account differing lifestyles.

If you are anxious about your health, or have been recently diagnosed with a health condition or experienced a series of cardiac symptoms, then a few sessions of Hypnotherapy combined with some powerful coaching techniques will help. Call to book a half hour complimentary session to discuss how you can use Hypnotherapy to successfully manage your mindset and reduce anxiety.

Club secretaries or organizations may be interested in the one hour presentation on 10 Keys to Managing your Health  as this is particularly relevant to the Baby Boomer generation.