Caregiver Stress Relief Through Hypnosis, Part 3 with Faith Marshall

The following Answers for Elders podcast features author, innovator, Alzheimers and Dementia Family Coach Faith Marshall.

And welcome back every one to Answers for Elders Radio, and we are here with Faith Marshall, talking about easing stress with family caregivers, and how can you utilize a tool of hypnosis to help you improve your life and improve your sanity as you’re, taking care of a loved one and Faith? Welcome back, it’s been a wonderful, enlightening, first half of our segments, our first two segments about you know this process. I think that’s just this is important, so tell us a little bit about if somebody want is interested in hypnosis and they reach out and they contact you. What happens from that point?

Well, the first thing we do is just is have a chat about what what’s going on with the individual, and we all have multiple things that affect us throughout a day and through that conversation will will isolate what would be most helpful to start with, and as we mentioned in the other segments, some of it self talk some of it. They would feel better about themselves if they just made the time to drink more water. Throughout the day it can be an individual choice. It can be an emotional it can be. I want to stop smoking, which is very common with hypnosis, so it’s really individualized to the person. But what I, what I find is a common denominator with care. Giver Specifically, is the burn out and the fatigue and the exhaustion, so my good to would be de-stress.

So if somebody calls- and they talk about that and say I’d like to do it and I sign up for a session what happens in a session?

Well, you just melt into the chair and I enjoy it.

But what does that mean?

If, if someone has, if you’ve done meditation and many of us have heard meditations, the session will start with a calming relaxing muscle, relaxation, there’s different techniques to kind of get you to check out just gently and it’s a relationship with the hypnotist and it’s being comfortable with that hypnotist so that you can feel relaxed. And so the first few minutes of that session are just all about the relaxing and the breathing and the de-stressing by you know inhaling and exhaling and just a slow relaxation and then previous to the session. We’ve talked about what we want to work on and what suggestions we would like the subconscious to help us with and then that part of the session is private to the individual, but they’ll walk away with the recording. So they can listen to it when they go to sleep at night or just they just need to. You know, take a quick break and then it s the a session can last about twenty to thirty minutes, depending on what we’re working on, and the beautiful thing is. Is that when, when we do this countdown to come back undred to three four five on five open your eyes wide open feeling, you know relaxed and refreshed ready for the day full of energy and they’re, just like wow? That was amazing. I’ve never felt that relaxed. Before is what I’ve heard and- and that was just this beautiful calm that and- and you can tell by the look on their face- that they’ve truly enjoyed the experience and they feel better and that’s what it’s all about absolutely absolutely and I’m certain I mean I can only imagine one of the things that I think is really powerful about. This process is really taking the time to determine what you want your life to look like an other words to take a moment just a way I mean how many times do we get an opportunity to sit, set back and and just kind of take an inventory of? Where am I and Yeah my you know? Where am I needing help? What areas you know? What am I saying to myself not to get to a certain point, but also you know. How am I beating myself up because my mom and I have an issue and she’s you know. Even though they’ve got advanced dementia, they still know how to push your buttons truss me right, so, even probably more so, because all the filters are gone but that the idea is obviously is taking that time with somebody. That knows how to ask the right questions to pull that out of ourselves, I think, is so valuable in itself. I think that one of the things that we forget about that we have choices about where we end up in the world where our life is not on auto pilot. We don’t have a predetermined destiny and it’s like each and every one of us could, you know, can make a decision to do something better at any given moment- and you know you know so often my my husband will say to me: Well, they don’t have a choice and I always look at him and I, because of people always have choices. Don’t ever tell me that somebody doesn’t have a choice because they do. We all have choices in our lives and those choices. Are you know what determine who we become and what we live to be, and I think one of the things that that hypnosis could do for so many of us. We have all these we’re making choices every single day. We don’t realize the kind of choices that we’re making internally within ourselves, but to have that ability to recognize what those are. I mean, how are you finding that that changes people’s lives? Well, that rolls into more of my coat the coaching ass aspect. Okay of my practice, and I I encourage people to listen to your body when you’re making a choice, because if you really settle into it, you know, if you get that rock gut feeling that you’re your you just said Yes to something you wish you wouldn’t have said Yes to, and you get that feeling, and you start in that journey in resentment in resentment and then and then you step aside and you think about your other choice. Yeah it could be. It could be a job as an example, and I encourage people to step to the left, focus on what that choice is and feel. Where do you feel what, in your body, do you feel joy? Do you feel tension and then step back to center step to right and ask the other question? The choice can be a relationship could be what to order for dinner you’re not going to get. You know that right significant of a of a reaction with dinner, but it’s an example that your bodies will tell you and you’re listening to your heart, you’re, listening to your the beat of your soul as to what what resonates with me in this choice, and you look back to all the choices we’ve made in our lives and and where we’ve wound up, and you can kind of go back through this trickle and see see when you know you might have taken a detour here, but you still got back to where you were meant to be and where you resonate and, and so many so many caregivers do feel like they didn’t, have a choice. Well, and I think too, when I think about the statistics of caregivers job loss. So many of us I know for me, my whole identity was wrapped around my executive career, my my career, which completely went sideways when I lost my job when I was a caregiver, because I was a digital media right, digital media, they would rather hire. I was fifty five years old and no no. I was fifty two when I lost my job and but fifty two you’re looking at somebody that you know in digital media they’d rather hire the thirty year old. That is, that is going to work for half of what you were making because you’ve built your career up through these years. So people aren’t going to hire you unless you’re willing to take a huge pay cut, and you know it really so re entry into the workforce was an option, Oh and and so when you look at that now, all of a sudden I had to I had to create a new identity. Now, luckily, I had the tools within myself to say: I’m I had this vision within myself, the symbol I saw myself as the Phoenix rising from the ashes. Okay, I had lost everything I lost. My House, I lost my you know my my job, my I felt like my identity, I had the responsibility to take care of my mother. I had the cash in my four or one K, because I had to live on something I mean so here we are right. I had to start from Ground Zero and I was in my early s. It was really powerful, but you know what I wouldn’t trade it that experience for anything in the world and I kept envisioning the Phoenix rising I went. I am not going to let this break me, because I knew that I had the tools to get myself through it. I almost didn’t- and yet I have another friend that I’ve just been talking to just recently she’s been going through a similar job transition where she doesn’t understand. Having had the career for like twenty years at the same company and all of a sudden, a new manager comes in, and she’s marginalized and now put on paid leave right and it’s like she didn’t do anything wrong. But it’s it’s the fact of all the self talk that we do to ourselves, because in were not enough. Yeah you’re setting examples for what so many caregivers go through and then the phoenix rising. So you were looking, you were doing. Your positive affirmation was that journey right and and what we, how our day evolves, is a lot about what’s going on in our head and how we’re what our perception is to people can go through the exact same experience and one of them can be really pissed off and grumpy and the other one still smiling was just his is off the other one more but yeah it’s it’s it’s our mindset, my set is huge and you went through that experience. Thinking that there is, there is a rainbow. There is a light at the end of this and looking forward to it, and that’s so important, and it’s sad that so many people can’t find that rainbow m. When you, when you dwell when we dwell on all the things that are going wrong m, then that’s kind of where you’re at energetically it’s hard to it’s hard to see the rainbow, because your energy is just just it’s an yeah either spend or it’s all over the place when you’re feeling like you’re, you know, concerned so faith. How do we reach you? You can reach me at Awakenings, hypnosis and Cochino and there’s many opportunities for you there. I just encourage you to connect with me and I would love to share a hypnosis recording a beach recording with you. That’s just one of my favorites.

Well, we’re excited I’m going to actually download it because I think it’ll be good for everybody out there. So anyway, Faith will be right back for part for of this amazing powerful hour, talking about rebranding yourself, reawakening to the new things and guess what to living a more stress fit free life if you’re a caregiver.