Some stories have to be shared, no matter how scared it makes you feel.
I’m literally shaking at the thought of posting this, firstly because I’m unsure of the reaction I’ll get and secondly because it’s so important to me to raise awareness for this disease that I have suffered from for the past 4 years.
To read the rest of Rachael’s story: follow this link…
Feel the fear and say it anyway.
This is Rachael’s story.
My daughter’s story.
Unless WordPress is very much mistaken, this is my 100th post so maybe it’s time to begin to accept that blogging has become more than just a passing fancy.
If all is indeed as it seems then on average, every time I post, twenty people make the decision to follow this blog, so by the time you get to read this one, there should be over 2000 followers. Check out the stats to see if I’m right – I know I will. After a comment like that, I have to make sure, really.
It all started off for me with a couple of long term marketing objectives in mind, prompted by the training I was undertaking and in particular, the use of looped metaphors, which as time has gone on you might find I’ve woven into the fabric of one or two posts you might have read previously. Check them out, they can be quite powerful because you lose track of what’s on the surface and hidden meanings somehow emerge without you really even thinking about them.
Given that pain management has turned up a few times in these one hundred posts, I figured it was about time I put some of the pain management techniques to a proper test and volunteer myself to myself as it were, as a guinea pig. As if on cue a great opportunity presented itself when one of my molars broke on New Year’s Eve.
We went out for a meal and the very first bite came with an unexpected crunch, as it does sometimes. So, to ensure that the rest of the evening wasn’t spoilt in any way by sensitive teeth, I quickly went through a couple of rounds of dissociation, and Escudero, as you do and duly spent the remainder of the evening eating, drinking and generally making merry.
As is always the case, my dentist couldn’t see me for three weeks, unless it was an emergency and as I was happily controlling cold and pressure sensitivity, I booked in and waited. Of course, by now, my cynical inner voice was telling me that the pain control techniques I was using were only being effective because the tooth didn’t actually hurt anyway. A bit of a Catch 22 seeing I wasn’t going to stop using them because I really didn’t want to risk proper tooth-ache either. So I carried on and periodically argued with myself about whether I was being effectively skillful or plainly self-delusional.
Anyway, off I went to dentist, practising pain relief techniques so that I could truly test them out and found myself following habit and protocol and quietly going along with the dentist’s “OK, let’s numb it up then shall we?”. I felt a bit of a fraud.
Mind you, being no stranger to fillings, I can honestly say that every single filling I have ever had, ever, has been pretty painful even with injections. There have always been those moments when I find myself groaning as drill bites harder and wishing it would all finish ten minutes ago please.
This time, I genuinely felt nothing at all. It was almost pleasant. I’ve never had that before. But then again, as Gill said afterwards, maybe this dentist is particularly good.
Obviously this left me with no option but to test it out for real. So I did.
As is appropriate with these things, I started with the easier option, stole a pin from the sewing basket, sterilised it and, yes, pushed it slowly through the back of my hand.
I have to say it was odd. Three things stick in my mind.
1. It didn’t hurt. Really. Not at all.
2. Watching the point of the pin reappear was fascinating.
3. It was surprisingly hard to pull it out again. And it didn’t bleed. Not one drop.
Now in the scheme of things, especially in the era of YouTube videos of well known people pushing skewers through their arms, this is small time stuff. But it’s my small time stuff. And when I can figure out the best way to do it, I think it might make a really good video convincer about the power of the mind. Maybe even help potential clients make up their minds about just how powerful hypnotherapy really is and perhaps help persuade them to get in touch.
On the other hand it might put them off. I’d love to know what you think.
Oh, and I took a picture of it on my phone. I didn’t post it with this as I’m not sure this is the right forum. Good call? Or would you like to see it?
Anyways, the longer this ride goes on, the more pleased I am that I made the decision to get on the Cognitive Hypnotherapy train and follow the tracks on the slightly weirder side of life.
I have no idea how far it might take me but I keep meeting fantastic people, helping a few others along the way and more and more folks seem to want to talk to me about it.
Long may it continue.
Somewhat Zen
© Tony Burkinshaw 2014
Related:
Pain relief mp3: Click Here
It is slightly surreal to find that I have been nominated TWICE for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award in the same week. Multi-thanks go out warmly to both bloomlisa and to flowersforthemoon for their nominations.
It’s only 10 months since I began this, my first ever blog, about my journey into Cognitive Hypnotherapy. It has been incredibly interesting and seems to have fascinated all of us. Thank you for joining in along the way.
The rules for accepting the Very Inspiring Blogger Award are as follows:
This is the interesting me: (maybe)
1. I am related to the last person to be beheaded in England (at Tower Hill just outside the Tower of London).
2. I once played trombone in Westminster Abbey.
3. I am also a Chartered Financial Planner (but then some of you already know).
4. I have driven through a plague of very sticky Aussie locusts.
5. I am half Australian, half English, a quarter Scottish, entirely from Yorkshire and married the half Welsh, half Scottish love of my life. I am therefore genetically confused.
6. I have pets for no other reason than I have no pets.
7. I don’t see the point of celery.
15 Deserving Bloggers
1. Ajaytao
2. anisja rossi
3. The Worlds top 10 of anything and everything
6.The Daily Post (I know it’s not quite a proper blog but very useful nonetheless)
10. clumsyfool
11. Eddie Two Hawks
Check them out. You might like them too.
It’s just a function of timing, nothing else. That said, I’m getting so wrapped up in the minutiae of everything I’ve learned that I keep finding myself cross checking my statements in case there’s more to it because the plain and obvious just feels wrong when you’re so used to peering beneath the surface.
If you’ve been keeping up, not with the Jones’s, good neighbours to have though they are by the way, although to be fair I’m using this as a metaphor for the knowledge my co-hypno-questies have been accumulating rather than the physical possessions of the aforementioned ex-Welsh family with whom as luck would have it, we are pretty much on a par, then you might find yourself recognising that old AD/K rep system mix up we discussed so fully way back in September. Check it out, it might help.
So, traditional digression duly digressed, let’s return to the topic I’ve not really started yet.
I graduate this weekend becoming a fully trained, licensed insured and practising Cognitive Hypnotherapist.
The not-another-New-Year’s-Resolution aspect of all this is that I intend to earn at least half my income this year via hypnotherapy clinics for fertility difficulties and chronic pain management. Now the AD modal operator, (misnomer but sounds good), of my thinking has picked up that a certain number amongst you know that this is not a particularly smart objective. (Specific, Measurable, etc. feel free to complete the ART of your choice). I could for instance, achieve this imprecise goal simply by matching the remainder of my income to whatever I do end up earning from these clinics and still tick the box of successful goal achievement. However, as the hitherto secondary rep system is Kinaesthetic, even though it operates at exactly the same level as my chattering AD, I really don’t care. I know what I mean and that’s enough, which in itself is an indication of just how much I’ve learned about the mind and more importantly, my own mind.
It’s just possible that as time runs its course this year I may flip, (yes I can see you smiling at the back), dominant rep systems and try out at K/AD instead of AD/K. As far as I can tell there’s little difference except in volume of tissues required and smiles generated and if you sniggered at this point, you’re obviously way too immature, it’s your own time you’re wasting. According to my 2012 guide and mentor, young Mr Silvester, he of Quest and Love Birds fame, (this is a prediction for 2013 by the way), most AD prominence is based on early experience and the decision that it’s better to talk to yourself than risk whatever the younger you might have perceived as risky at the time. Now that I know how to know better than that, I may just do that very thing, to quote John Omally from back in his Brentford days.
But there is another co-incidental timing to add to this. The bulk of my alter ego consulting in the last eighteen months has been in assisting the advising populace to achieve that regulatory goal of arriving in 2013 with QCF level 4 Diploma in hand, hence enabling them continue their aforementioned professional professionings. Despite the best efforts of ancient Mayans, 2013 duly arrived and those that achieved duly achieved and drastically reduced the immediate consulting opportunities presenting themselves in my general direction.
This is one of the twin drivers of my ending up at Quest in the first place. Not being especially prescient but fully able to read writings when they’re daubed colourfully enough on walls, I could see this one coming a mile off. I needed to find further strings for my bow and possibly even other metaphoric earnings weaponry altogether.
The other of the twins who was driving at the time was, (not naked or even a sister, which was possibly the oddest of the internet search terms which have lead readers to find this blog), I wanted to regain that lost aspect of my earlier roles and rediscover the means to help people develop in some way. I have to say that I’ve lost the urge to drive for targets any more which probably explains my less than precise objectivising earlier, so I was looking to find a way to eventually travel the therapy path I’ve been looking at over the years where the lawns look less well manicured but decidedly more replete in chlorophyll.
There will be those who see all this as serendipity, (one of those words which I never really got on with as, just like paradigm, I find it all too shifty for comfort), but I still maintain that when things just seem to come together it can always be traced back to time, effort and persistence. There’s no such thing as luck. There’s hard work and making sure that you’re always in the right place with your thumb out when opportunity comes driving by. Oh, and if it doesn’t stop, jump on board anyway and risk the bumps and bruises. As they like to say, that which doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger, (thanks to Mr West, lyric reference duly referenced), although there are times to judge just how much you want to risk your future on a random leap into the unknown and as random is something I don’t do, I usually measure my risks.
So I measured this risk. I looked before I leaped. And I leaped. This was indeed the time for action although as a further lyric reference that one really is showing its age, even though it may indeed be time to be free.
So in the end, 2013 is going to be the year when, after many long hours spent in holiday bars wondering whether there was a better way to earn a living, that I do that very thing once more and earn my living in a better way.
As I said, it’s not a resolution. It’s not an intention. There’ really is a future me out there. One that’s had that HPD for some time. One that’s helped countless clients to relieve their pains and potentially many more to find themselves pregnant, as long as that’s OK with Gill of course.
But there is something that I have to do first. I have to travel to London for one final weekend. The boxes that needed ticking have been ticked. The learnings that had to be learnt were absorbed and more to the point put into practice. All that’s left are backs to be patted, hugs to be hugged, Diplomas to be awarded and photos to be taken. And Pizza. You have to celebrate in style and we Cognitive Hypnotherapists, (newly qualified ones, at that), surely know how to eat a celebratory Pizza.
There will no doubt be tears to be shed. Not mine though, that AD/K metamorphosis is planned in for later this year. Honest.
So as my journey draws to a close, I’ll need to find a new focus for this blog, although I may just let it run along under it’s own steam and see where it takes us all. It’s time for the new journey to begin. If you’d like to join in, then stay tuned. I’ll be back, as I’ve said before.
And if you’d like to discuss your own journey, why not get in touch? As from Monday, I’m open for business.
The End.
just waiting for the Pizza
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.
There seem to be two trends in Yuletide blogging for 2012. The first is a recap of the respective blogger’s adventurous achievements during the year and the second is a variety of musings on the topic of the end of the world and the accuracy of Mayan prediction.
I’m more than happy to leave the second one to work itself out and propose to jump skilfully past it by writing this post early and scheduling it to publish at 9.30 a.m. on Saturday 22nd December 2012. If it did publish and you’re sitting here on Saturday morning reading it, then either the Mayans were wrong, you’re an alien or more likely, interpretations of the implications of the end of the Mayan Calendar sequence were quite simply way over the top and worthy of the exaggerative tendencies of modern media.
If you’re not reading this, then maybe the world did end as per. Even more likely though, you quite simply don’t know that this post is here and are happily getting on with your pre-Christmas weekend, [please be aware that other good religious/non-religious Festivals are available], blissfully unaware that there is a sentence in this post specifically written for people who will never read it. Unless the Mayans were right and all of this post was inadvertently written for multiple unseeing eyes.
In terms of achievements there have been quite a few, at least in my eyes, which are still all-seeing for the moment, although those who’ve achieved these same achievements before me probably just see them as steps on the road. For me, the journey has not long begun and there’s still a heck of a way to go.
So, where to start? I’m told that lists work well in blogs and as I’ve not used one yet, now seems as good a time as any.
In no particular order;
My Pre/Post End-of-the-World Top Ten list
Anyway, assuming that the Mayans let us get there in one piece, 2013 is looking good. Why not keep in touch and let’s see how we all get on?
Keep talking…
© Tony Burkinshaw 2012
In the end, right at the end, it’s what you did that counts. At least that’s the premise.
You set out to achieve. You plan. You intend to do. There is no try. There is only do or don’t do. If you keep track of where you’re headed, you might even arrive.
If you’re not careful, you are of course simply paving the way to the cliché of your choice.
I found a blog this week that not only wraps this concept up really neatly, it does so via a less well known and particularly favourite film of mine. It might also shed light on why those anti-globalisation protesters insist on wearing Guy Fawkes masks…
Why Intentions Don’t Matter That Much
Should I turn it down now?
© Tony Burkinshaw 2012
Is it a privilege or a curse to spend the run up to Christmas 2012 wondering whether the Mayans knew something fundamental about the sustainability of life on earth or whether they just got fed up building their equivalent of an Outlook Calendar running on into the future for ever. There’s only so much forward planing you can do after all.
To be honest, in some ways I’d deem it a privilege to be hanging around on this planet at the point it all comes to an end. It isn’t something you see every day and unless you were a dinosaur it’s probably something that nothing else has seen either, although now I come to think about it there have been several great extinctions, so perhaps it’s not that unique anyway. Not that you can be ‘that unique’. Unique is unique. This really is one of those black or white, no shades-of-grey concepts, unlike the politically expedient you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us war cry of the strong to coerce the weak into backing unjust violence but that’s outside the remit of this blog so others can pick up that particular baton and run off with it wherever they wish.
I would like to point out here that I’m not actually looking forward to the end of the world as such. That would be plain daft. I mean I’m a smidgen away from qualifying in Cognitive Hypnotherapy, full of that altogether optimistic outlook for future change and the particular future change I’m looking for is in career and lifestyle rather than a whole new set of blankness and nothing at all, unless you subscribe to some form of reincarnative spirituality. But then you’d have to take into account that your reincarnation experience might be somewhat or somewhere different to what you’d expected as, in that Mayan future, there would be no earth-world to reincarnate into. It would be a cryptozoologist’s paradise other than for the minor problem that you couldn’t reincarnate as a cryptozoologist anyway so I suppose you’d be as stuck for future ideas as the rest of us. I’ll be OK though, if of course my future me is real postulate holds any form of tangible connection to scientific reality.
There are several souls along with me on the Cognitive Hypnotherapy journey who are looking forward to our graduation in January, (Mayan calendar permitting), and we’ll all be there taking turns to stand looking happily embarrassed being photographed with HPD in hand, (note the positive hallucination of successful HPD completion), with stomachs rumbling in anticipation of the evening’s feast. If there’s any legitimate excuse for abligurition, then a new qualification and direction in life surely fits the bill although considering that we’re talking about Ask, perfectly good eatery though it may be, it possibly doesn’t truly fulfil the deeper meaning of the word. We’ll learn our final pre graduation learnings and then, post graduation, sidle off and eat and drink slightly too much and talk nonsense into the late evening.
This really brings me to the point of this post I suppose. What happens after that?
I find myself in mid ponder and goal achievement of what needs to be done if I want to take all this fascination and turn it into a serious income stream enabling me to be useful to a whole host of people I might never otherwise have helped along their way. There’s a lot to do. I’ve bought domain names. There’s a website construction process under way. Even this blog is forming a part of the overall plan as it provides a background presence out in that virtual world we all trawl through when we know we need something but might not be sure exactly what it is. Given my propensity for procrastination, I need to be careful about timing. As far as I can tell all is on course for procrastinative success albeit that Judgers would be having kittens at how much was left still to do and I guess some Perceivers would be wondering how the hell I’d managed to get so much done already but then that’s personality types for you.
This is where age progression comes into its own. What matters in life is where you want to be. Of course if you add a simple by when to the mix you step cleverly into Life or Business coaching because you then simply back track what has to be in place slightly earlier in the process timeline in order to get wherever it is you want to be by the time you want to be wherever it is. And in a true the-growth-is-in-the-journey-not-the-destination style, I’m keeping my end goal options well and truly open. This is going to be an iterative process of learning and development. I’ve acquired a basket full of useful techniques and a good working knowledge of how and when to apply them.
On top of that most of my working life has equipped me with the skills it takes to look beneath the obvious and identify the underlying patterns or issues of which the obvious is just a surface symptom. I’m leaving as much of my potential future to imaginative course correction whilst on the road to success so that I can adapt success’s definition as I uncover the what’s, whys and wherefores of this one direction futurewards, (and if anyone spotted a music reference there, I’m afraid you’re mistaken: it’s simply a media mirage).
One of the core concepts within Cognitive Hypnotherapy is that it is as short a therapy journey as is comfortable for the client’s recovery. There are many therapies which travel a longer road to success and equally many which subscribe to the underlying view that clients never really leave therapy they just evolve into a new therapeutic path. I have to say that the not quite ex Financial Services alter ego of mine can see the long term benefit in that approach but then that benefit would, from a Cognitive Hypnotherapy perspective at least, be more for the therapist than the client. And that just wouldn’t do.
So, how does Cognitive Hypnotherapy achieve this move from therapy to independence so quickly? Well, in part, this is a journey designed to take a client from relying on the therapist providing a therapeutic solution, through to holding their metaphorical hand whilst they try it on their own and finally going out into the world with a sustainable paradigm, looking for the evidence which demonstrates continual improvement. You don’t need to be fully fixed once you learn that you can fix yourself along the way and once you’ve got the hang of it, you carry on improving as you go. Why would I need to be there once you’ve learned you can do it for yourself?
So where does the end of the world fit in to all of this? Well assuming that Declan MacMannus’ lyrics don’t come true to his aim, (double reference there for those in the know), the end-of-the-world metaphor is the experience of your own ending. There’s a technique which is superbly beneficial for cementing your new learnings, a new way of viewing your world. Age progression has a magic which allows you to look at the forest not the trees, to see the route you might have taken to get where you want to be and assuming that all that detail which bogs you down everyday has all been dealt with in a way which got you to your destination. If you remember correctly, this means that you will have grown along the way. The growth is in the journey, not the destination.
If you’ve arrived at where you want to be, you must have grown the way you’d need to have grown to have arrived there at all. Unfortunately working out where this will be by looking forward into the future from the here and now involves metaphorically negotiating all the trials and tribulations as well overcoming all those little foibles which keep holding you back and which are currently preventing you from looking too far ahead in any case. By taking a leaf out of a cool sales technique my alter ego knew so well, it’s much simpler for people to imagine that they’ve already arrived and to look back at what they may have done in order to get there.
Many young single adults find it difficult to imagine when they will want to have children, if at all, and so on. But if you ask that same individual to imagine they have just retired and it’s their first Christmas family gathering after they’ve stopped work, they’ll quite happily tell you about having all their grandchildren around the Christmas table and how they’d like to have enough income in retirement to be able to spoil them rotten. The point here is they can’t have grandchildren if they didn’t have children in the first place. This overcomes the I-don’t-know-when I want children issue because you can back track the grandchildren to see that they must have a subconscious intention to have had children by the time they are in their thirties. It’s so much easier to look back at the imaginary journey to see how you got where you’d like to be than to imagine going on the journey from where you are now.
So the final gift in the Cognitive Hypnotherapy process, (other good therapies are available so I’m told), works on exactly this principle. Take a trip out to that time when all is well and, looking back on a long and fruitful life sitting in your favourite rocking chair, consider what and who was truly important, what made you proud, what you really cared about, here at the end of all things, (as that small chap said to that other small chap whilst on location in New Zealand).
I’ve recently experienced this myself with the help of another colleague, (thanks Katy), and frankly it’s brilliant. It gives a long term perspective on those things which truly matter in way that’s hard to get hold of whilst in the grip of the present. It helps you to climb one of those metaphorical trees that obscure the wood and work out whether you’re actually in the right forest at all. And it plonks a great big lighthouse way out there in the future to help guide where you’re going when times get rough and your internal compass fails.
I don’t know precisely what my business will look like in a year from now but I do know what I want it to feel like. I know what’s important. So I’m setting things up in a way which takes me out in that general direction with enough flexibility to allow for those unexpected and unanticipated changes which, slightly ambiguously, I know will happen along the way.
Whilst I’m not exactly waiting for the end of the world, I definitely have much more of an idea as to what I’d want the end of my own world to feel like, at least in the few hours and days before the final curtain falls. It’s kind of comforting to know that what I believe I’d treasure then is what I’m now aiming to gather up along the way.
And if you find yourself at one of those end of the world parties on 21/12/2012, (or 12/21/2012 for those of an over-the-pond persuasion), especially if you wake up instantly disproving the Mayan hypothesis and finding yourself in need of a lighthouse, why not come and see me.
Between us we can build the perfect rocking chair.
* Today’s post included guest words from Kirsty, Helen and Chrissie. Many thanks. If you’d like to suggest guest words for next week’s post, please feel free to comment on my Facebook Page.
New beginnings
© Tony Burkinshaw 2102
How can words possibly have that amount of power. It’s fascinated me throughout my life, through a career in Sales and Sales Management using no more than words to increase business, meet targets, earn enough to live a comfortable life, making sure that people buy the things they know they need but don’t want to think about.
Yet words and thoughts can bring as much pain and sorrow as they can happiness and contentment. I’m at a crossroads. It’s time to learn more about what words can do. I turned away from the main road last year, taking redundancy and setting a business in technical support. It fulfils in its own way but I miss the chance to develop people.
I’m now training in Cognitive Hypnotherapy. I’m captivated by what I’m learning, the skills I’m acquiring and cannot believe the effect it’s having. If this has half the potential that I can already see, then who cares about the crossroads. This could go anywhere. Why not follow me. You might be surprised.
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