Sleep Paralysis

I've blogged a few times recently about dreams/nightmares and what they mean, but sleep paralysis is something that affects us in our sleep that is quite different altogether. For anyone who has experienced sleep paralysis it can be quite unnerving, and having episodes of it myself in my later teenage years I certainly built up an interest in the subject. Wired.com describe a sleep paralysis episode like this:

'You wake up, but you can’t move a muscle. Lying in bed, you’re totally conscious, and you realize that strange things are happening. There’s a crushing weight on your chest that’s humanoid. And it’s evil. You've awakened into the dream world'

Penn State Live Official News Source has an excellent article on the subject, which the following paragraphs are taken from:

Less than 8% of the general population experience sleep paralysis, but it is more frequent in two groups - students and psychiatric patients - according to a new study by psychologists at Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania.

Sleep paralysis is defined as "a discrete period of time during which voluntary muscle movement is inhibited, yet ocular and respiratory movements are intact" the researchers state in the current issue of Sleep Medicine Reviews. Hallucinations may also be present in these transitions to or from sleep.

Alien abductions and incubi and succubi, as well as other demons that attack while people are asleep, are implicated as different cultural interpretations of sleep paralysis. The Salem witch trials are now thought possibly to involve the townspeople experiencing sleep paralysis. And in the 19th-century novel Moby Dick, the main character Ishmael experiences an episode of sleep paralysis in the form of a malevolent presence in the room.

Brian A. Sharpless, clinical assistant professor of psychology and assistant director of the psychological clinic at Penn State, noted that some people who experience these episodes may regularly try to avoid going to sleep because of the unpleasant sensations they experience. But other people enjoy the sensations they feel during sleep paralysis.

"I realized that there were no real sleep paralysis prevalence rates available that were based on large and diverse samples," Sharpless said. "So I combined data from my previous study with 34 other studies in order to determine how common it was in different groups."

He looked at a total of 35 published studies from the past 50 years to find lifetime sleep paralysis rates. These studies surveyed a total of 36,533 people. Overall he found that about one-fifth of these people experienced an episode at least once. Frequency of sleep paralysis ranged from once in a lifetime to every night.

When looking at specific groups, 28% of students reported experiencing sleep paralysis, while nearly 32% of psychiatric patients reported experiencing at least one episode. People with panic disorder were even more likely to experience sleep paralysis, and almost 35% of those surveyed reported experiencing these episodes. Sleep paralysis also appears to be more common in non-Caucasians.

"Sleep paralysis should be assessed more regularly and uniformly in order to determine its impact on individual functioning and better articulate its relation to other psychiatric and medical conditions," said Sharpless. He looked at a broad range of samples, and papers were included from many different countries.

People experience three basic types of hallucinations during sleep paralysis - the presence of an intruder, pressure on the chest sometimes accompanied by physical and/or sexual assault experiences and levitation or out-of-body experiences.

Wired Science documents another researcher in Sleep Paralysis, David McCarty from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center’s Sleep Medicine Program. He says the good news is that sleep paralysis experience is pretty standard but rarely persists or causes serious life damage. 

“It’s very common, way more common than people realize, but usually it doesn't recur,” he said. “It’s not frequent enough to make people come in and ask the doctor for help.”

How To Quit Smoking With Hypnosis

Along with losing weight, quitting smoking is probably the biggest business for hypnotherapists because it is something so many people wish to do. But just why are there so many people out there who want to stop smoking but struggle to do so?

Everyone knows the long term damage smoking causes, there is evidence of it even on cigarette packets themselves nowadays. Cigarettes are a cocktail of more than 7000 chemicals that cause high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer of the mouth, throat, lungs, circulation problems to name but a few of main dangers (to both smokers and the people they smoke around), and in combination with causing poor oral hygiene these factors would surely put most people off, wouldn’t they?  (If you want to know more reasons to stop smoking click here) (Or here) (Or here)  

The cost is also frightening, in the UK cigarettes cost something in the region of 7 GBP (approx. 10 USD), so if a single pack are smoked daily you’re looking at around 50 GBP per week (75 USD), 2600 GBP per year (3900 USD) - and if someone did manage to survive 50 years of smoking your looking at a bill of 130,000 GBP (195,000 US) for the pleasure! And that's if prices stay at their current level which on current form they won't with taxes rising everywhere, not to mention the excess drinks that are bought to combine the smoke with as well as the time and cost of dashing out for cigarettes on a regular basis. Read more on the price of cigarettes.  I'm sure the average persons finances could do without such a burden to bear.  The smoking ban that has taken effect in many places around the world has also left smokers suffering often outside in the cold, huddled in groups together by doorways facing exclusion from numerous public places, because of the known effects that can be transferred lethally to others. To any non-smoker there seems little going for smoking… yet why do so many people continue with it despite wanting to stop?

True addiction is not to be underestimated. I’ve heard many people argue that they could stop eating something like cheese despite being addicted to it, so why couldn’t a smoker? Cheese for one thing does not have the addictive chemicals in it that cigarettes do. Physically the body craves the nicotine content it has become accustomed to over time. The mind also craves the relaxing sensation smoking brings, with many smokers claiming it is the only thing that allows them to ‘de-stress’. Despite the ‘anti-smoking ban’ smokers still see smoking as a very social pastime, and the ‘Let’s go for a smoke’ mentality bonds them together in a kind of exclusive club.

So where does hypnotherapy fit in? Hypnosis has been proved a successful method to help people quit smoking because it tackles at least a large segment of the problem at its root. Nicotine gum/patches may well prevent the body from craving the nicotine, but what about the habitual processes and the de-stressing factors that have little to do with the nicotine? Hypnotherapy tackles those very issues.

To understand hypnotherapy a basic knowledge of the two parts of the mind must be taken into consideration. On one side you have the conscious aspect of mind, the reasoning, critical ‘voice inside the head’ that is the voice of our thoughts and our decision maker. On the other side is the subconscious mind, the aspect we are not aware of but regulates all parts of ourselves we are not actively thinking about e.g. our breathing, regulation of hormones. The subconscious is also the seat of our emotions and our habitual behaviour, behaviour that has become so embedded we no longer think about it. Smoking addiction would fall into this category. Smokers light up a cigarette so frequently they no longer think about it and therefore we know this pattern of behaviour is controlled by the subconscious mind. Read more about the background of hypnosis and the subconscious here. 

The conscious mind of the smoker understands all the reasons stated above telling them they should not smoke. The conscious mind even agrees they should stop and actively attempts to stop smoking. But this decision has not transferred into the deeper subconscious that is still programmed to want cigarettes. The subconscious will send urges and cravings to the conscious mind continually for however long it takes until a cigarette is reached for, be it days, weeks, months or even years. The subconscious will always overcome the conscious in the end.

What hypnotherapy does is break the old unwanted thought patterns. Under hypnosis the conscious mind is bypassed leaving the subconscious open to manipulation as though it can be talked to directly. In this state the subconscious can be reprogrammed to behave in a different way, and so the hypnotherapist might reinforce the knowledge that smoking has so many drawbacks, giving smoking a negative association in the subconscious, while offering healthy new ways to de-stress and enjoy quiet moments. Using simple self-hypnosis/meditativemethods the individual can learn relaxation techniques that do not require smoking. They can also learn how to get rid of the urges that come to them so frequently without the need of a cigarette using visualisation and breathing techniques. After all, smoking is itself often a process of deep breathing and inner thoughts, so what better way to replace it than a like for like method?

Another key method in a hypnosis stop smoking program is to change the physical habits of smoking. Breaking the engrained habits even in small ways can help shift and eradicate the habits in the long term. For instance, if a smoker is used to a cigarette after lunch sitting in their favourite chair, smoking Marlboro reds with their right hand – that should be one of the first things altered. Change the brand to something different like Camel, smoke with the left hand and do not smoke after lunch or in your favourite chair – try a new less comfortable place at a different time. Of course going cold turkey is one way forward, but many find it easy to taper off and if you do so while breaking your old habits for many it is easier to give up for good in the long run.

Quitting smoking is not easy, and for a true addict will power alone is not always enough. Using hypnotic method hand in hand with strong will power makes stopping a lot easier, but it is very important to stress that the will power must be there and there must be a strong desire to quit smoking in the first place for hypnotherapy to work. Hypnosis can’t alter your opinion, so if people are urging you to stop and you don’t really want to, hypnosis just won't work for you. But if you do want to stop and are having trouble doing so under your own steam then hypnotherapy can certainly be a fantastic tool to quit permanently.

If you have a strong desire to be a non-smoker why not send me an email and let me know about it?

Top 10 'Crazy' Mental Disorders

After yesterdays blog post looking at the Stockholm Syndrome it got me wondering what the top 10 strangest mental disorders out there were considered to be. I found a few lists on the web but after some consideration I decided on this one, taken from the article at http://www.toptenz.net/ By Alexandria V. Resnica, which takes its information from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (the bible of mental disorders). Read the full article.


10. Type One Bipolar Disorder
What It Is

Bipolar disorder makes an individual switch between two main moods: mania (emotions like happiness and anger) and depression (emotions like sadness and guilt).  Unlike the media interpretation, Bipolar disorder’s mood swings actually take a long time.  Each swing lasts about a week on average, with a few days’ transition in between.  Bipolar has been known to cause psychosis in some patients, but for the most part it manifests in irrational actions, heightened emotions, and lack of sleep during mania; and tiredness, aches, and lethargy during depression.  Patients often have very little self control and are at the mercy of their moods.

How It Fits

2.6% of the adult population is bipolar.  The disorder is genetic, and is generally easy to treat with medications.  In some cases therapy isn’t needed.  The biggest risk is unmedicated patients, who are often a harm to themselves (unmedicated bipolar disorder has a 25% suicide rate) and sometimes to those around them.


9. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

What It Is

OCD is another widely known disorder, but few understand it.  Firstly, OCD isn’t an obsession with cleanliness.  It can manifest in being clean, but that’s only one aspect.  Obsessive-Compulsive patients are often plagued with recurring thoughts, worries, and fears that can only be relieved by repeating tasks (cleaning, touching surfaces, making noises, etc.)  Obsessive-Compulsive individuals can realize their fears are unreasonable, but the anxiety will keep mounting unless they relieve them by their repetitive tasks.

How It Fits

1% of adults have OCD.  Psychiatrists haven’t figured out the cause of OCD yet, some think it may be caused by environments, others by chemicals in the brain.  The treatment varies per patient, but is generally manageable through psychotherapy and certain medications.  OCD patients are not really dangerous to others, but their lives can be difficult and their behaviors may seem odd.


8. Factitious Disorder

What It Is

Factitious Disorder is an obsession with being sick.  Unlike hypochondria, in which patients actually think they are ill, individuals with Factitious Disorder intentionally make themselves sick or play sick for attention.  They often tell elaborate stories about medical complications, visit hospitals, tamper with their medications, and inflict harm upon themselves for attention.
How It Fits
Factitious Disorder is rare in adults, and occurs in less than .5% of the population.  The disorder stems from past trauma.  There is no cure or treatment for the disorder, though therapy can be effective in limiting the behavior.  Most individuals with the disorder are not receptive to treatment. (Linked to this would be Munchausen Syndrome where sometimes people will make their own children sick in order to receive sympathy).


7. Schizoaffective Disorder
What It Is
Schizoaffective Disorder is a bizarre combination of severe Bipolar Disorder and mild Schizophrenia.  Patients will have manic and depressive mood swings, and, as a third swing, will lose touch with reality.  Most often, Schizoaffective patients will experience low emotional responses in the third, psychotic phase.  They can become delusional, and sometimes may hallucinate.  The psychotic swing is mild in comparison to most psychotic disorders, however, and can often go unnoticed, leading to a misdiagnosis of severe Type One Bipolar.
How It Fits
.5% of Americans have Schizoaffective Disorder.  Psychiatrists believe the disorder is genetic and chemical.  The disorder is relatively easy to treat with combinations of medicines.  Most people with the disorder can function normally in society as long as they are medicated.  Like Bipolar Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder has a very high suicide rate when untreated.


6. Depersonalization Disorder
What It Is
Depersonalization Disorder gives individuals a sense that they are not in their body.  Individuals will feel like they aren’t their physical self, or that their life is some sort of movie or dream.  They struggle to form connections with people because they don’t feel as if anything is real.  They have the ability to logically know they are ill, but cannot shake the feeling of detachment.
How It Fits
Depersonalization is also very rare, effecting less than .5% of the population.  It is caused by traumatic events.  The reason depersonalization is so “crazy” is because treatment appears to have little effect. Some people will feel detached from reality for the rest of their life after a traumatic event.


5. Trichotillomania
What It Is
Possibly one of the most physically disruptive disorders, Trichotillomania is an obsession with pulling out hair.  Individuals with this disorder will constantly pull out body hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes.   Patients get overwhelming urges to pull at their hair, only reaching relief when they’ve done it.  Individuals will go to great lengths to hide their bald spots, but for some the disorder becomes too bad to cover up.
How It Fits
Trichotillomania is also very rare.  No one knows what causes it, but it is possible to overcome through therapy.  Some cases benefit from medication.  People who have the disorder may be feared because of their appearance, and it’s not uncommon for them to be featured on daytime talk shows.


4. Specific Phobia
What It Is
Most people think a phobia is just an unease or mild fear of an object; actually, a phobia is an unmanageable terror of everyday things.  There are many subcategories and specific names for different Phobias, but they all fall under the same disorder.  Phobic individuals will go to extreme lengths to avoid their unreasonable fears.  They can experience physical symptoms such as racing pulses and strained breathing if exposed to their fear.
How It Fits
Phobias are incredibly common, effecting 8.7% of people.  They are caused by traumatic childhood events- most of the time patients can’t remember the event.  The most common techniques for treating phobias are exposure therapy (in which the patient must confront their fear slowly and with the guidance of a psychiatric professional) and hypnotherapy (which helps patients to remember the cause of the fear).  Patients are able to recover, and even untreated patients may blend in to normal society.


3. Antisocial Behaviour Disorder
What It Is
Amongst the most basic, common, but dangerous disorders, antisocial disorder is also known as sociopathy and psychopathy.  Individuals with this disorder either have no empathy, leading to no morals, or no emotion at all.  The ones who have emotion, but no empathy, are extremely dangerous.  They make excellent liars, are often charismatic, and feel no remorse for any harm they cause anyone.  Their brains simply can’t make the connections to evoke empathy.  Because of this, they can do terrible things without a care.  As you might imagine, most Antisocial patients become involved in crime.  A majority of serial killers have been diagnosed with this disorder.   Some individuals, especially the emotionless ones, are able to fit in to society without causing any harm, but can never relate to people on the same level normal individuals can.
How It Fits
1% of Americans have Antisocial Personality Disorder, but only 50% are treated.  A majority of people with the disorder end up involved in crime (or politics!).  There is no cure for the disorder, and the only treatment for it is to teach the patients to act normal, although they’ll still never be able to grasp ethics or even emotion.


2. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
What It Is
DID, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder, is a very severe disorder caused by severe trauma.  An individual with this disorder will split his/her personality into two or three different identities (sometimes many more - 17 personalities has even been recorded) and cycle between them.  A 50 year old man may think he’s a 6 year old girl, and spend his time playing with dolls and wearing dresses.  This disorder has also had a lot of media coverage but is very misunderstood.  Persons with this disorder may switch identities at any point, sometimes staying an identity for years, sometimes for hours. (The film Sybil was based on this disorder).
How It Fits
This disorder is also very rare.  It can only be found in about .1% of Americans.  There are no medications to fix the disorder, but hypnotherapy can be useful in merging the identities.  Patients cannot live in normal society unless they have gone through extensive therapy and their identities have been merged.  Otherwise, they live in psychiatric institutions or they are constantly cared for by family and friends.


1. Schizophrenia
What It Is
Schizophrenia, in short, is a loss of reality.  Symptoms include inappropriate (or few) emotions, paranoia, obsession with media, false beliefs about the body, beliefs of being famous or powerful, auditory and visual hallucinations, and catatonia (a completely unaware and unresponsive state).  Unmedicated schizophrenics can’t tell what is in their head and what is real, leading them to act strangely.  There are different levels in the loss of reality, some are able to function normally for short periods of time.
How It Fits
For such a severe disorder, a giant 1% of Americans have it.  This means that for every 100 people, one is schizophrenic.  Schizophrenia is very genetic, and is often treatable with medication.  Most medicated Schizophrenics are able to function completely normally, as long as they take medication every day.  The disorder will never go away and skipping just one day of medication can jeopardize the patient’s sanity.  The crime rates of schizophrenics are actually not as high as other disorders, but the individuals are much more troubled and much farther from reality (although this could well be different for schizophrenics who abuse drugs/alcohol which reportedly makes their condition worsen severely).


So what do you think of this list? Is there something not included that should be in there?

Hostages and Captors: The Stockholm Syndrome

Between August 23^rd and 28^th 1973 four Kreditbanken employees were held hostage by bank robbers in Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm, Sweden. Read more. Despite their ordeal the hostages came away from the experience not with feelings of anger towards their captors, but the exact opposite. Each refused to testify and even raised money for the robbers' legal defence, some reports suggest that one hostage even got engaged to one of the jailed captors! During the 6 days the hostages built up a strong emotional attachment to their captors, and one theory to explain this is  the 'Stockholm Syndrome' the term name given to such a phenomenon by criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot.

The Stockholm syndrome (also known as 'Helsinki syndrome') is not a one off case and has several famous examples, most notable perhaps the case of Patty Hearst who was kidnapped and tortured by the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) only to later join them and actively take part in future robberies.  The sydrome also applies to battered wives, child abuse victims, victims of religious cults, prisoner of war cases and indeed any case where someone is trapped by an oppressor. Other famous cases of the syndrome include; Jayce Lee Dugard, Shawn Hornbeck, Natascha Kampusch and Mary McElroy. The 'Lima Syndrome' on the other hand is the opposite to Stockholm where abductors feel heightened sympathy for their hostages, although to me this would seem far more rational - after all the captors are the one's causing the problem and so should sympathise with their hostages' pain.


So what causes this syndrome to form? It could be assumed that in a similar situation people would feel hatred, anger or fear in relation to their captors, so how can the opposite be true even to a percentage? The FBI Hostage Barricade Database System shows that 27% of hostages show signs of the Stockholm syndrome, that's not far from 1 in 3 cases.


Research and theory indicates that one trigger for the syndrome's effect is emotional intensity. In a condition where we feel trapped and scared for our lives the emotional charge is exceptionally high, in effect altering the way our brains work. The excess state of emotion could be what causes people to attach at a greater speed and depth than in any normal circumstances, like strangers in a near death experience becoming drawn together very closely. Focus is heightened in such circumstances, and in the case of an abduction the focus would shift almost entirely onto the captor; their behaviour and thoughts becoming of the highest importance which can easily be misrepresented by the over stimulated brain as a relationship akin to something positive.


In a Stockholm situation the captors have complete power and control over their hostages, every aspect of the hostage's life is in the hands of the captor, from allowing them to live to allowing food, water and resources. Acts of kindness in this situation can become magnified, and like a young child or a pet, this dependency alone can lead to affection forming rapidly no matter what kind of negative behaviour is being displayed alongside it. School bullies rely on this control of power to terrorise not only their immediate victims, but the onlookers who watch their actions often find themselves idolising the bully because of this link between fear and power and is a large reason why bullying is rarely reported, much in the same way a wife will continually make excuses for her abusive husband.


In a hostage situation the hostages are stuck with the captor for days on end in these circumstances and must engage in coping strategies based around attempting to keep the captor content and in doing so keeping themselves alive. Over time this can lead to an obsession with the hostage's identity and wishes, and in combination with the reasons discussed above, a certain sympathy and affinity can soon form with the captor, often described as 'brainwash' or 'mind control' in the media.


Taking captives is seemingly a natural human trait, of which violence, murder and rape are all characteristics, especially with women and children as the victims. This must have happened in human history too, likely on a much larger scale. This tells us that humans have evolved under these conditions and so the coping strategy to stay alive and adapt fully into the captors world would perhaps make some kind of sense in explaining the the frequency of the Stockholm syndrome and how it could possibly affect any one of us.

What Do Blind People See When They Dream?

Written By: Vicki Santillano From the Website: http://www.divinecaroline.com/

I've heard people ask questions like, “Do blind people dream?” The simple answer is yes, of course they do. Most land mammals - including our pets - can dream, so why should a lack of sight affect someone’s ability to do the same? The way blind people dream is quite unique, but dream they do, just as frequently as anyone else. On the other hand, “Do blind people see in their dreams?” has a much more complex answer. 

When the Sightless See

In 1999, researchers at the University of Hartford set out to determine what, if anything, the blind can see while dreaming. They analyzed 372 dreams of fifteen blind individuals and found that the age of sight loss affected the visual quality of the subjects’ dreams. The study determined that people who go blind at age five or younger tend not to have visual dreams, whereas if blindness occurs at about age seven or older, chances are the blind will see some images. When people go blind between ages five and seven, their potential for dream sight could go either way. 

It all depends on how long a person experiences the world with sight, as opposed to without. Someone who goes blind later in life could experience visually intense dreams for years afterward; however, the more time that person spends without sight, the less frequent such visual dreams become. And people who are congenitally blind (born that way) or lose the ability to see at a very young age have completely nonvisual dreams from the beginning. 

It’s similar to the black-and-white dream phenomenon some older individuals experience. A 2008 study at the University of Dundee in the UK found that people who grew up when television was first invented sometimes have dreams in black-and-white, while those who have experienced only color television usually have colorful dreams.

Other Senses Take the Stage

Research has shown that blind people demonstrate very little to no rapid eye movement (REM) during the REM phase of sleep - the deep-sleep stage in which we have vivid dreams and the most brain activity during the night. As time progresses, the movements stop altogether. But that doesn’t mean that dreams aren’t happening - the eyes just aren’t involved in them. 

People with sight tend to have highly visual dreams with some auditory qualities. Very rarely are any other senses, such as taste or smell, part of the process. But the opposite is true for blind people. Studies like the aforementioned University of Hartford one suggest that their dreams activate the other senses - touch, taste, smell, and hearing—to an intense degree. Since our brains draw on real-life experiences to shape dreams, it makes sense that blind people dream the way they experience their environment. Because they rely on nonvisual cues to make their way through the world, the same heightened sensations come into play in their nighttime worlds, too. 

Regardless of how we see, almost all of our dreams have a narrative quality. Most of the ones we remember also have some sort of troubling aspect to them, which is why they stick out in our minds. What we’re worried about in our daily lives often becomes the subject of these types of dreams, usually via symbols that require interpretation. So it seems logical that blind people tend to dream more about issues related to traveling and transportation, since getting around safely and efficiently is one of their greatest obstacles. In the University of Hartford study, 60 and 61 percent of the male and female participants, respectively, had dreams revolving around such problems. Among the sighted people surveyed, only 31 percent of men and 28 percent of women had similarly themed dreams. 

We may never fully understand the way blind people dream, since they experience life in a totally different way than those of us with sight do. But we do know that their dreams can be just as vivid and intense as ours, perhaps even more so because they utilize four senses instead of one or two. Still, I wonder how one goes about applying dream-interpretation techniques to these types of dreams, since such analysis usually relies on visual symbols. The analyst would have to use other clues as a way to find the dreams’ hidden meanings, but what would those clues be and what would they imply? Who knows - more research on blind dreaming could bring about a whole new way of looking at dreams.

For more on dreams and dreaming visit:

http://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-are-dreamsand-what-do-they-mean.html

http://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.com/2011/12/meaning-of-dreams.html