Wellness Institute Blog

Depression is often a reaction to a distressing or traumatic event. The people and situations who are associated with the traumatic event in our lives are referred to as traumatic triggers. 

An example is someone reporting, “I never was depressed before my father (mother, child, spouse, best friend) died.”  After a loved one passes on, the individual often has to deal with their belongings including their home, or now has to take on their responsibilities. Any of these can become traumatic triggers. If the person or family member who has lost the loved one does not have time to fully grieve the loss, and to process unfinished feelings about the person, depression may set in almost immediately. Other traumatic triggers include losing a job, divorce, or financial reversals such as bankruptcy or home foreclosure.

Does an unhappy childhood necessarily mean that you must suffer for the rest of your life?  Some people such as Oprah Winfrey and others have taken their difficult beginnings and used them as stepping stones to success. Others seem to just continue to be pulled down by shame, fear and depression as their lives catapult into one disappointment after another. Many folks with abusive childhoods end up either in the criminal justice system, the mental health system, or the welfare line. What is the difference and how can I, as a therapist, change the unhealthy patterns into stepping stones to success for myself and my clients?

Knitted sweaters often consist of repeated patterns throughout. The more intricate the pattern, the more difficult and time consuming it is to do the knitting. It requires a great deal of concentration, co-ordination and determination to complete. We can choose to just purchase a machine-made sweater from a store or we can develop the skills to knit the most beautiful one-of-a-kind sweaters that really suit our own individual needs.

Doctors and scientists from all over the world are proving the effectiveness of hypnosis for fertility and other reproductive challenges. Many fertility experts see the transfer of an embryo to a woman’s uterus as a key event that determines whether IVF will succeed. Stress during embryo transfer can reduce the success rate, and many women experience stress from fear that the treatment will fail, or that the transfer will be painful. Hypnosis can be instrumental in relieving such stress.

Resistance is exhausting; however, millions of people struggle with their own resistance on a daily basis. How do we create internal resistance? If we can think of this like a pulley, which has immense power to lift things, it is easier to understand. It is the tugging, the pulling from opposite ends that actually creates the power to lift a heavy object. However, it also takes a lot of energy in order to lift or move an object. When this pulling and tugging is going on internally, it is exhausting!

Dani Dudek had fingers so sore, it was difficult to open a car door, and pain in her elbow so intense, straightening her arm made her feel like she had broken something -- at age 22. In 2009, senior point guard Dudek was one of the most prolific women's basketball players in NCAA history, only the second woman to top 1,000 points, 800 rebounds and 600 assists. She has learned to handle the pain through using self-hypnosis.

At The Wellness Institute, we have worked with thousands of people with suicidal ideation. Often these clients are just labeled depressed by family doctors and sent on their way with the latest anti-depressant. Traditional therapists may spend hours upon insurance-billable hours using CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), attempting to cognitively teach the client to “manage” their symptoms of depression. Too often this is what we call “band-aid therapy,” like putting a band-aid on a survivor of a major car crash.