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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (May 15, 1960)
I LEARNED TO HYPNOTIZE MYSELF (Continued) 7 UJJ FROST NEVER FORMS in our General Electric Frost-Guard Freezer!" 71 ifi 9 MODEL HA-13T Now, no defrosting ever in this new General Electric zero degree Freezer. No ice to chop. Packages never stick together. Labels are easy to read. A real Golden Value. More food at your fingertips I . . . twice as much within easy reach as in a chest freezer of comparable capacity. See and enjoy the new Frost-Guard soon. General Electric S Company, Appliance Park, Louisville 1, Kentucky. KZ? Thgrvss Is Our Most Important Ptodud GENERAL vi ELECTRIC an addiction. Her health was being shattered, and she sought Dr. Wol berg's aid. First, it was determined that a guilt complex was driving her to punish herself through ex cessive smoking. Only after psy chotherapy had cleansed her of this complex was hypnosis used to dis pel the lingering habit of chain smoking. It took almost two dozen ses sions to train Mrs. D. to relax and precondition her for self-hypnosis. The doctor discovered that, to reach the proper state, she re sponded more readily to a "floating downward" sensation. Each morning after breakfast, she lay down, closed her eyes, and visualized herself starting down from the top of a 20-step escalator. She would count each imaginary step and, before reaching the bot tom, would fall into a trance that "was-I -awake-or-was-I-asleep?" state we all are familiar with. Now she was susceptible to the key phrases with which the physician under direct hypnosis had pre conditioned her. These were: "Chain-smoking is hurting me. I find it is more and more distasteful. I am not going to smoke so heav ily." She was conditioned to repeat this a number of times and then "wake up." Eventually, this idea took root in Mrs. D.'s mind and freed her of her addiction. Similar techniques have been used successfully with many ailments. The key conditioning phrases are different, of course. For example, in the case of blinding migraine headaches, Margaret M.'s key words were: "I must shut off the valves that stem the excessive flow of blood to the head, and the blood will flow freely and normally, and then I will wake up." Because her head would burst into excruciating pain at unpre dictable times, Margaret was trained from the beginning to bring herself into a hypnotic state by sitting at a desk. Thus, when she felt a head ache coming on, she'd be able to sit in her office, put her head in her hands, and appear to be resting quietly for a few minutes. In alleviating intractable cancer pain, it has been found that, in ad dition to using key phrases, meth ods which bring the hands into use Hypnotism may end agony of sleepless nights for many insomnia sufferers. are most effective. The patient is conditioned to believe that as he strokes the affected area his mind gradually will numb itself to the signal of pain it receives from the affected tissue. Basically, how does hypnotism work such wonders? "You must realize," Dr. Wolberg explains, "the mind is like a sponge. Without your being aware of it, it is always soaking up impressions and suggestions, both good and bad that's how habits are unwittingly formed." When in this highly susceptible state under hypnosis, the doctor feeds the mind a positive sugges tion which replaces the negative ones that have taken over. He says "You can!" to the smoker who says "I can't!" and eventually the per son is no longer victimized by the "bad" suggestion. How long it will take a person to accept "good" suggestions depends on himself and his problem. One week after I first success fully practiced self -hypnosis, I was able to make myself return to sleep minutes after awakening. And one month later, having broken the pattern of staying awake, I no longer awakened at night at all! It's three months since I was intro duced to Dr. Wolberg and self-hypnosis, and I haven't yet reverted to the nerve-wracking habit that gripped me for three years. I personally can testify to the marvelous relief this age-old, yet only recently accepted, medical tool provides. I can only hope it will offer the same help to many others. Family Weekly. May 15, I960
