Category: Healing Checklist

Have compassion for yourself and your condition – don’t hate your disease

When you’re first diagnosed with a debilitating condition, whether chronic or life-threatening, you may well find yourself feeling anger at the disease and really hating the damper it has put on your life. It looms large in your thoughts and your life, especially at first. It’s likely that you can’t do the things you used to be able to do. You find that the required treatments or the disease itself interferes with particular plans like a special trip or your long-term goals. It’s hard not to get frustrated with the new limitations in your body and to hate the disease for interfering with your life. But do those feelings really serve you? And if they don’t, what can you do about changing them?

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Category: General

Early palliative care extends lives

On August 19, 2010 The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), one of the most prestigious medical journals in the US, published an article reporting the results of a study examining the early use of palliative care for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Here’s the link to the article: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1000678. The results were remarkable – and very gratifying to those of us who provide holistic therapies.

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Category: Healing Checklist

Let go of blame – of yourself and of others

When you are diagnosed with a serious illness you naturally want to find an explanation for why this is happening, and it is all too easy to try to find someone to blame. You may feel responsible because of something you think you did or didn’t do: maybe you feel guilty because you think your diet was unhealthy, or you didn’t get enough exercise, or you are overweight. Or perhaps you blame someone else: perhaps you blame your boss for making your job so stressful, or even your parents for giving you poor genes. Or maybe you blame God for “punishing” you. No matter what the circumstances, blame doesn’t serve you.

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Category: General

Grief and Guided Imagery

As a hypnotherapist I’m struck by how often my clients are living with unresolved grief issues that are holding them back from moving forward with their lives. All too often the bereaved person did not have the opportunity to complete their personal business with their loved one, and that feeling of incompleteness compounds grief and can prolong deep grieving. But through hypnotherapy, the grieving can find completion even after their loved one dies.

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