Category: Phobias

Further to my article Prozac, Seroxat, Effexor and Serzone, do they work?  and the follow-up NLP, Alternative Therapies against Antidepressants, the British Guardian newspaper published an article titled “Drug firms face new laws on test results“.

I heard about this article whilst listening to the BBC Radio Five Live breakfast program, just a few words as they reviewed the morning’s newspapers, and they inferred that the British Government would be bringing in new laws requiring drug companies to publish ALL research results from clinical trials.

The article did not say that. What it did say is :-

“The health minister Dawn Primarolo will tell MPs (Members of Parliament, the British Government) that new legislation will be introduced by the end of the year to ensure drugs companies pass on results of clinical trials as soon as the alarm is raised about one of their medicines.”

and that

“The minister will announce that new legislation will be introduced by the end of the year placing a greater obligation on companies to disclose results of trials.”

Note the words “a greater obligation“, they infer, that a drug company only has to inform the British Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA), when there is a problem.

This action resulted from the antidepressant Seroxat, produced by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), where GSK had identified two problems in about 1998, being :-

    1. There was a higher risk of suicidal behaviour among under 18’s using Seroxat rather than a placebo.

    2. The antidepressant drug Seroxat was ineffective in dealing with depressive illness among under 18s.

It took until 2003 until the MHRA announced that doctors should not give Seroxat to the under 18’s.

The newspaper article goes on to say that in the USA, and agreement was made by GSK to publish ALL its’ trial results, available to the public, whether negative or positive. 

How do we know, or in fact the prescribing doctors know, what these drugs are doing to us, what side-effects they are having?

                                                                 what are these drugs are doing to us?

Perhaps alternative therapies, even if they are from the placebo effect, are better for us. (see www.nlpnow.net)

And come on Radio Five Live, do not twist an article to say what you want it to.

See article It is how you interpret what your modalities give you.

Booking on the Hypno-Cognitive Behavioural Therapy®, (HCBT) course, was to help me understand and put into practice what CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) is.

To understand the therapy, I firstly needed to understand the words used to describe CBT.

    Cognitive         refers to the way a person thinks about themselves, others and the world around them.

    Behavioural     how and what a person does, affects the way they develop their thoughts and feelings.

    Therapy            helps the person to change their world, preferably for the better.

CBT is known as a “talking” therapy, and deals with the here and now, unlike some other therapies which look for the cause of the problems and difficulties, by going back into the past, and even further back into past life. CBT looks for ways to improve the state of mind, now.

CBT is said to help people with mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, phobias, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), post traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and eating disorders, and was developed out of Joseph Wolpe’s behaviour therapy in the 1950’s, combining Cognitive Therapy (CT) of Aaron Beck and Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) of Albert Ellis, and other psychotherapies treatments of that time.

By taking a situation or event, we will process this in our brains, and this will lead to us having thoughts about it, which could create emotions, give us physical feelings which will lead to some actions that we will take.

Perhaps a loved one has not telephoned as expected. This situation can be taken in many ways, and it is how the thoughts are processed that feelings and thus emotions and outcomes are generated.

Example 1

    Situation                No telephone call.

    Thoughts                Does not love me, they are out with another person.

    Emotions                Envy, jealousy, sad, upset.

    Physical Feelings    Crying, panic, feeling sick

    Action                     Argue, retaliate.

Example 2

    Situation                No telephone call.

    Thoughts                He/she is in an important meeting.

    Emotions                Proud, supportive.

    Physical Feelings    Relaxed, feeling comfortable

    Action                     Prepare a nice meal.

If we take the situation the wrong way, there could be a feedback system or looping, which will generate even more bad feelings, thus creating a vicious circle, leading perhaps to anxiety, stress, depression if not stopped.

CBT aims to break this cycle, by introducing, or in NLP terms reframing, alternative solutions that can be accepted by the client, by changing the way the situation is thought about (cognitive) and what is done about it (behavioural).

Typically a client will take the therapy for from six weeks or even six months, compared to perhaps one or two sessions with a competent NLP Practitioner.

An advantage of taking longer over the therapy (that is weeks) is that the client is monitored, but this also means the treatment is slow.

Yesterday I heard from a friend who had their fortune told, and said that there was a mention about me, they could tell by the way the fortune teller described the person. It implied I was or will be ill.

I believe in many things that cannot be proven 100% at this time could be true, or should I say, I have an open mind about ideas, thoughts, technologies, methodologies until they can be proven wrong.

Take for example Remote Viewing, Physique Spying, that the American’s undertook and practiced for many years. Before working with Joe McMoneagle, perhaps the number one remote viewer some years ago, it was just a story, a myth, but I had an open mind. Learning from him, proved to me that such a thing can be achieved. With a friend, Nickie Walker as a runner, we demonstrated for a TV program that Remote Viewing does work.

How about fortune telling?

Is it mind reading? (See the Meta Model)  It could be.

Is it seeing into the future? (See the way the brain works to follow) It could be.

Is it a confidence trick, where the reader, the fortune teller is calibrating to the sitter, reporting back any feedback that is given by noticing eye accessing cues, body movements and language patterns.? It could be.

Because of the way we as humans process information at the surface level, missing out the deep structure, by using the model of Miller that we only take 7 +/- 2 pieces of information, by knowing that to understand we go on a transderivational search into our past experiences, by knowing that we delete, distort and generalise information, by knowing that we put our cat on the mat, we only hear what we want to hear, what which suits us. We fit what is being told to us into our Map of our World or in NLP terms, The Map is not the Territory, our understanding.

We also tend to believe what others say to us. If someone say to us, “you do look sick,” the chances are that you will begin to feel ill, and if enough people tell you that, then it must be true. If someone tells you after a holiday that “you do look great”, and others say the same, then that will influence you, it must be true.

Should you listen to others, fortune tellers, soothsayers, oracles?

There was once a great leader who was at war with the world, expanding his territory, and he went to an oracle to foresee the future. Should he go to battle with the enemy or not? He was told that there would be a great battle, and there would be a great victory. So he assembled his army and attacked his neighbours.

He lost. He failed to get all the facts about the future battle, he did not ask who would win, he believed what he wanted to believe that he would be the winner.

Perhaps the fortune teller can tell us about the future as it could be. I believe that the future is in our hands. It is up to us to take that information, and use it to our advantage, make changes that will make it happen, or changes to prevent it happening.

Look below the surface level, chunk down to look at what could be true and act upon it now.