The Metro newspaper in London blazed its front-page headlines this morning “Zombie Epidemic: Tranquilizer Abuse Among Women Soars.” Beneath the banner was an article revealing that: “Stressed-out women are turning in their millions to prescription drugs as they try to escape financial strains and the pressures of family life.”
I could not agree more. For blushing: the anti-depressants Seroxat®and Prozac®and the beta-blocker Atenolol. For acute anxiety states: Seroxat® and Prozac®. For feeling unhappy: Seroxat®, Fluoxetine (including the brand Prozac®) and Sertraline (including the brand Lustral®). Clients at my hypnotherapy practice tell me of doses of 20mg once or twice a day for cases of feeling low and up to 50mg in serious cases of depression. For insomnia: Diazepam (the generic name for the famous brand Valium®). For fear of flying and public speaking: the beta-blocker Propranolol, and Diazepam. For social phobia: Seroxat®. For blushing: Clonidine® (including specifically the brand Dixarit®). For lack of concentration and lack of focus: Ritalin®. For over-eating: Xenical®. For bingeing and over-eating: Reductil®. For smoking: Zyban®. For too much shopping: Cipramil®. (US doctors have decided that ʹshopaholismʹ exists and is an illness for which Cipramil® pills can be prescribed.) For impotence: Viagra®. Drug prescriptions prevail!
I always ask clients whether they are taking any medical advice or medication. The drugs listed above are typical examples of ones that I have been told were prescribed to clients for the stated reasons, before coming to a hypnotherapy session. A typical response is, ʺIʹm taking Seroxat for nervousness and shyness. I have been taking it for two years. I was told it could take a few weeks but with me it took three months to work. One day I noticed that I wasnʹt shy anymore. I used to be afraid all of the time ― of being nervous and of blushing. Now I do not have the physical feelings of nervousness. However, I know I would like to come off the drug and do it for myself.”
We, and women especially, are under the influence of medical ‘priests’ and their pharmaceutical pushers, always quick to spot a marketing opportunity and a new formulation. What an influence this combination has! The power of this potent force to invoke a diagnosis, suggest a label, a label spoken by one on high, and the person who has gone to their doctor ʹfeeling lowʹ with ʹshynessʹ, ʹanxietyʹ, ʹblushingʹ, ʹstammeringʹ, or an extreme partiality to chocolate is described as ʹdepressedʹ. Some clients protest, ʺIʹm not depressed, Iʹm not a depressed personʺ.
Most of the clients in my practice are bright, professional, individuals who are going through a particularly challenging time — stress at work, stress in the home, or grief, or social anxiety, or redundancy. They are quite certain it is a not a medical problem, and they themselves describe it as a purely psychological problem. Yet, the standard diagnosis from their GP is “You are suffering from depression,” followed by the offer of pills to take the depression away.
One client told me: ʺSince December, I seem to be anxious the whole time. Iʹm constantly on edge. My doctor put me on a course of anti-depressants. He said that they are beneficial for anxiety. I did actually take one, but the one I took made me spaced out. It numbed me rather than removing the anxiety.ʺ
Another: ʺApart from the sick feeling in your stomach, your thinking is reduced to a ʹzombie-like paralysisʹ that doesnʹt allow you to go out and make a living.ʺ
More often than not people under the influence of the medical fraternity succumb because the ʹsuggestionʹ is made from ʹan authorityʹ ― one with the designation Doctor, Consultant, Psychiatrist, or Psychologist. We walk away with a written declaration confirming our ʹsicknessʹ and further confirming authorisation for us to partake daily of the recognised remedy. Suddenly we are deemed depressed. We walk into the medical arena with blushing and come out depressed! What a difference ten minutes make! How the pharmaceutical shareholders must smile. How easily can some of us accept and act upon suggestion. And you thought hypnosis was dangerous! There are those who hold fast to their power and do not fall as easy prey. ʺI said, Iʹm not depressed. Iʹm not a depressed person.ʺ
These medications cost the National Health Service up to £40 or more, for a 28-day supply (not to mention the administrative overheads). As the pharmaceutical companiesʹ intention is that you continue to take prescribed medications for an extended period of time, sometimes years, the cost doesnʹt bear thinking about. Repeat prescriptions can get dished out for years without any apparent monitoring of the individual patientʹs change in circumstance. One client, looking to reduce her medication told me that she had been taking Dutonin®, an anti-depressant medication, for five years. She regularly collected a repeat prescription from her doctorʹs surgery when she went home to Ireland. On no occasion to date had any enquiry been made to monitor or re-assess her case notes.
More and more millions of pounds and tablets thrown down our throats. Not to mention the millions flushed down the loo! Often clients cash in the prescription and then decide after taking the medication for a couple of days that they do not like the side effects. ʺI canʹt feel doped up for two weeks before the pills start working. I have to go to work and function.ʺ More and more millions flushed away!
One client reported being prescribed a small handful of diazepam tablets a day in the seventies and eighties to help control his stammering. The relaxing side effects of the medication were intended to slow him down physically and mentally and thus slow down his speech. Indeed the medication worked but at what a cost! And of course when he eventually weaned himself off them the stammer was as it always had been. This may be less barbaric than the practice of earlier generations of physically trimming off part of the stammererʹs tongue. But surely we can do better than this!
It must be acknowledged that a prescription may be the most appropriate and the only answer for some serious medical conditions. Nevertheless, one ponders the wisdom of prescribing drugs when a patient seeks help for such ʹproblemsʹ as blushing, stress and anxiety. Anti-depressants and beta-blockers are an allopathic answer to what is often caused by an emotional disturbance within.
Increasingly, women and men reach the point where an ever-rising salary and status do not compensate for the lack of time that is left over after work to live a life. They realise there is a ʹseason for all thingsʹ and that ʹthe time of their livesʹ has been offered up to the corporate altar and devoured by the demands of the corporate gods. They are angry and resentful and are resolved that this pattern will not be continued into their thirties. Prozac is not the answer. Anger generally has a root. Taking Prozac to relieve anger is rather like stepping into your garden and cutting the tops off the dandelions. To all intents and purposes the dandelions are gone. But you have not accessed the emotional root. Interactive hypnotherapy enables people who are experiencing out-of-order emotions and experiences to discover what is the root of the anger ― the blushing, the panic, and the shyness. It is not unusual for a client to remark along these lines after hypnotherapy: ʺI felt like Iʹd dug up the shyness.ʺ
The gifts of hypnotherapy reveal themselves when the hypnotherapist knows intuitively how to choreograph a session to help you feel the way you choose to be ― to arrive at a positive result. Healing with hypnotherapy is a practised art and there are established techniques and procedures that work elegantly and these too can be learned. Intuition adds another ingredient, one that allows the hypnotherapist to participate fully in your dance, seamlessly and unobtrusively.
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