Submitted by Jon on Mon, 20/04/2009 – 11:51pm
While dining in a seaside cafe over the weekend I could not help hearing a conversation the cafe owner was having with a friend that stopped by on the way home. The cafe owner was talking about her husbands battle with his weight. He had been diagnosed with diabetes and had entered a state of depression, which resulted in more comfort eating than previously.
She was also overweight, but making an effort to diet, and was managing to lose a few pounds each week, but her husband was in denial. He would say that he was dieting, and then have a full English breakfast with fries and toast. Some days he would not leave his bed for dinner.
As together they owned and ran the cafe, they were constantly surrounded by junk food and often had little time to prepare healthy food for themselves. They had thought about selling, in fact the cafe owner even said that she hated working at the cafe now, but they could not afford to live without the income and would not get a good price if they sold up. She did understand the real problem though, that the problem with psychological. She all said the she thought that hypnosis could be the answer, if she could get her husband to agree.
This reminded me of the Paul Mckenna approach. He made himself famous with his hypnosis stage acts, but developed this into a method of helping people to lose weight through positive thinking. Essentially weight loss is aboutpositive thinking. Stress leads to anxiety and despair, which drains a person of motivation and the desire to fight on. If people can stay positive and believe in themselves, then they can make the changes required to lose weight and get fit. However, sometimes they need a helping hand from a professional, sometimes even loving partners cannot help them dig their way out of a downward cycle of depression and despair.
Maybe this is where hypnosis and positive thinking can help. I have never been a great believer in these methods, however I am now at a stage in my life that, which is fuelled by the current credit crunch, wherwe I can now see how easily it is to find yourself on the slippery slope to ruin, with now escape in sight.
The Catch 22 problem, where you need to be positive to climb out of your state of despair, but depression prevents you making the changes required to create a positive environment, which results in a downward spiral where every day seems worse than the previous. Often just talking helps, but men always prefer to enter their personal cave and wallow in their misery than seek advice from others. Maybe hypnosis is not the answer, but maybe it is a start, a way to get people to talk about their problems, to stop living in denial, and make the little changes that are needed to finally turn their lives around.