In this episode, Barbara and Laura discuss:

-How Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy Work and How it Helps
-Accidental Hypnosis
-Weight Loss Program through hypnosis

Key Takeaways:

“Hypnosis is using suggestibility to give you results that benefit you.” – Laura Temin

Connect with Laura Temin:

Website: https://www.lauratemin.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurapaganotemin/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lauratemin

Connect with Barbara Hales:

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/DrBarbaraHales
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theMedicalStrategist
Website: www.TheMedicalStrategist.com
Email:   Barbara@barbarahalesmd.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TheMedicalStrategist
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/barbarahales

Books:
Content Copy Made Easy
14 Tactics to Triple Sales
Power to the Patient: The Medical Strategist

TRANSCRIPTION (120)

Dr. Barbara Hales: Welcome to another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors.

I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Today, we are really fortunate to have Laura Temin with us.

Laura Temin is a psychotherapist, marriage and family therapist, and also the founder and Clinical Director of Professional Hypnosis Institute, the only state-authorized School of Clinical Medical and Integrative Hypnotherapy in the state of Georgia.

It’s been going on for over 23 years now. Laura has spent decades working alongside business, government, and healthcare, educating, and helping people to break habits, conquer addictions, reach personal and professional goals, release the past and find solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. Welcome to the show, Laura.

Laura Temin: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy

Dr. Barbara Hales: What I especially liked in your book that has just recently come out is that you give solutions to people who are struggling with weight, and also relationships. Both of those are really key issues for many people.

Could you tell us a little bit about your book, well, first, before we do that, tell us how you came to get into hypnosis. I’m sure a lot of people would be interested in that.

Laura Temin: I know it’s not a very common career path. Actually, I had a manufacturing business before I studied hypnosis. I always loved art, and I always loved the mind. I went into jewelry design and manufacturing. We had an excellent partner, and we had a business that we built from nothing.

My nature is more introverted rather than extroverted, but I had to go out and sell. It was completely fear-inducing for me to do that. Just because when you’re more of an introvert, you’d rather, you know, be in your own head and talk to new people all the time. That was what I did, though, for over 20 years.

My partner and I did that business, and it was fine jewelry manufacturing. The problem with it is that I had gunpoint robberies. When you have one robbery where somebody puts a gun in your face, well, that creates trauma. It creates an association with you, and it creates anxiety.  But you know, it’s your business, it’s not like you could just leave it you have to figure out how do you manage this. So you have experiences that kind of set you up. By the third time, I realized that it was the universe telling me, you know, it was time to make a change.

So that was where it began, the hypnotherapy. I thought, what do I want to do? I love jewelry. I love the design element. I mean, I studied art, it was my passion. But sometimes your passion becomes a nightmare, and you have to shift. The hard part for most of us with everything is I know I should be doing something different but how do I do it? I mean, you know that because you shifted from being a physician to helping physicians.

So every time we transition, you know, we ask ourselves, how am I going to do this? How am I going to manage this? Can I do this? Can I make a living? I spent all those years building from nothing to finally something and now I’m afraid to leave my house. They followed me from New York to Georgia. They know who I am. They know where I live. I mean I’m not safe anymore. So do you give up your business, your livelihood? Do you switch gears, what do you do? How do you do it? So I moved from New York to Georgia, and it happened again. I knew couldn’t do this anymore.

Dr. Barbara Hales: They say that there’s a time and season for everything,

Laura Temin: But everything. Absolutely. Probably a past due time and a past due season, because just like it is with relationship counseling, research shows that a person doesn’t go for help, until after like seven years of a problem in their marriage. That’s how we are as people is that we think, alright, well, I’ll just figure this out, or it’ll go away or something will magically happen. But it doesn’t magically happen.

We have to take the step. Usually, we don’t know what to do next. But things line up until I saw an ad about hypnosis. I thought I love the mind.  I’m curious about that. Let me explore that. I was hooked, and that was where it started. So I started to shift, I knew I had to do something different. I started to move into that field, and then I went back for a graduate degree as a marriage counselor and psychotherapist. Then, I opened the school after my mentor helped me overcome the trauma of the gunpoint robberies. So it’s always a progression, isn’t it?

State of Hypnosis

Dr. Barbara Hales: Absolutely. So I’m sure a lot of people are wondering, can everyone be hypnotized?

Laura Temin: Absolutely, because we’re in a state of hypnosis, especially right now. But the question you’re really asking is, people think that hypnosis is something that it isn’t. For a person who is coming for a formal hypnotherapy session, I have to determine, who is more dominant in their analyzing ability.  Are they more of a feeling person? I have to work with them based on how they learn, and how they process information. Traditionally, it’s thought that a person, not everyone can be hypnotized but the truth is that we’re all in hypnosis. It’s a natural state that we move in and out of every day. Hypnosis is really, also a state of overload. So when, in the last two years, where we’ve had COVID, and elections and politics and all the things that have been going on in our world, over the last two years, we are all overloaded.

We may not think we are but what happens is one thing piles on top of another thing on top of another thing, and our ability to analyze is maybe on overdrive. When we’re on overdrive, we become maybe more sensitive, more irritable, and more easily influenced. So if you’re hearing the news, and you’re always frightened, because we’re getting a lot of protecting yourself messages. Now you’re hyper vigilant, your whole system is on high alert, and that makes you more suggestible. Suggestible to what you’re hearing, suggestible to what you’re telling yourself, what you say. So if somebody sneezes, you have a completely different reaction than you did five years ago. So we’re all suggestible and hypnosis is using your suggestibility to give you suggestions that benefit you, that match your goals, and that’s what it is.

Getting the Way We Want

Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, I have a question for you, which also a lot of people may be wondering, and that is in the weight loss realm. People have thought about getting their ears clipped by an acupuncturist. They have a load of videos with different types of exercises that they could do. But don’t they have a medicine cabinet filled with supplements that are guaranteed to make you lose weight by popping a pill and not having to break a sweat, which as you and I know, is not really the panacea that they claim?  So how does hypnosis work for helping us get back to the way that we want?

Laura Temin: So I’m using hypnotherapy but I’m not just using hypnotherapy. In order for a person to make a change, what happens is we have this conflict. Usually, I want to lose weight and be healthy, but I don’t want to give up things that I like it’s a conflict. Most of the weight loss approaches are restrictive. You can’t eat this; you have to watch everything you do. Everything you eat. It’s not really, it’s not doable for a lot of people.

Now, there are a lot of people who will tell them just follow this diet, and they’re able to do it. They can accomplish anything, you know, their diet, any program that they do, because they have that ability, or they’re highly motivated because maybe they have a wedding coming up. Maybe they’re they have a reunion coming up, they have a vacation or something that moves the needle for them. So if we’re internally motivated to reach a goal, or if we’re externally motivated to reach a goal, but it’s short-term, well, it’ll only last for that moment, right? But some people, they’re able to maintain that conditioning. They’re very disciplined, but there’s a whole segment of the population, and I’m one of them, who we mean to accomplish this goal, we say we’re not going to have this or do that.

We mean it when we say it, but knowing what to do, and then being able to do it live in different parts of the brain, so we get off track. When someone has a chronic weight problem or a chronic anything problem, then often, we have to address brain function. We have to address knowing ourselves. We have to address maybe some past experiences that got in the way, and we have to use the subconscious mind because, you know, if it was as simple as just knowing what to do, we would not need anything else except the diet.

So the hypnotherapy works with the resistance because when you’re in a relaxed state, and you’re suggestible, then I can see things to you that you really want, that your resistance won’t catch up with you and take over. That’s kind of how it works. You know, it’s what would it be like for you, could have that food if you wanted to, but you don’t have to, no one can make you. It’s okay to have it if you want it. But you don’t have to have it. It’s that kind of mindset, that kind of choice. So you think about it.

I can have this if I want it, but I don’t have to have it. No one can make me have it. Then we’ll use the reasons that you want to do something, and we keep it in the front of your mind. Because we’re rehearsing in the mind, we’re making the new behavior and the new thought more familiar. The more familiar, a thought is, the easier it is for you to remember it. Little by little, were repeating and repeating and repeating behaviors and experiences that become easier to integrate into your life. That’s really how the hypnotherapy piece of it works.

Weight Loss Programs

Dr. Barbara Hales: Do you have any upcoming weight loss programs that people could enroll in?

Laura Temin: I actually do. I have a weight loss, willpower, and wellness made easy program that is kicking off in September and registration is open now. It also goes through October, so we have two pieces to this program.

One, for some people, they’ll be invited to do a retreat for six days in Acapulco at my mentor’s exclusive villa, where I think the truth is that if you take a person out of their environment, and you show them, they have the experience that they can eat healthy, delicious food, so they’re not depriving themselves, then they already feel like they could do it because have a week doing it. Because I’m not going to have the junk foods that we usually have at home, when we, you know when we’re off track, it builds momentum, and then I’m going to reinforce with hypnotherapy and explain about brain function to people. So that’s the front end, and that’s a bonus. Then the back end, which everyone needs and is really the most important part is weekly meetings for six months.

Now I’ve done six-week programs and the difference is, the difference between information and application. So I know what to do, versus I know how to do it, and I’m doing it. I’m integrating the knowing what to do and we’re doing it. Because what is the stuff that throws us off, it’s always emotions, right? So you have a fight with somebody, you go to the refrigerator, you’re bored, you go to the refrigerator, or the cupboard, you know, you’re stressed and you’re eating more than you want to.

Dr. Barbara Hales: So you have to counteract that.

Laura Temin: Yeah, you need a way to counteract that. Each week, we’re going to meet so that you have six months of hand holding, and gentle, loving support, because, you know, no one gets where they’re going with finger-pointing. We only get where we’ll go when we can find a passion for ourselves, and we have people who help us and lift us up along the way.

Accidental Hypnosis

Dr. Barbara Hales: That’s great. Well, for those people who are thinking, how do you market yourself since this is a marketing podcast, I want to point out that one way you market yourself is by putting out programs that reflect the messages that you would like to get out in the world. The second thing is a book that you have put out I understand it was just recently released called Accidental Hypnosis. How did that title come about?

Laura Temin: Because people are in hypnosis, and they just don’t call it that. For the last 23 years, I’ve sat with people, people who have a problem with weight people who have relationship problems, health problems, and all sorts of problems. Often what happens is due to inexperience that ties back to yesterday, if it’s a chronic problem, okay, and so, that’s what I’m noticing. I give you an example of somebody I spoke with today. It just happened that it was a weight situation and when you have an experience, maybe as a doctor, you tell your patient, you know your blood pressure is too high. Your cholesterol is too high, and you really need to get that weight down and a person wants to be able to get that weight down. Well. This one particular person I spoke to today has done so many weight loss programs that she doesn’t even want to try anymore because it creates hopelessness.

Now, I know that a reason for the program isn’t effective, and it doesn’t matter if it’s weight, or if it’s anything else. What I believe is that the reason a program isn’t effective is that it’s not addressing the way that person learns. They’re trying to fit a person in a one-size box, and it doesn’t work for everyone. So the people who can’t accomplish certain things, they just can’t accomplish it, because they’re in that box, but they don’t know it. The person teaching them doesn’t know it. So what happens, they walk away, with a feeling and interpretation. So their interpretation is, there’s something wrong with me, I can’t fill in the blank, lose weight, I can’t stay on a diet, I can’t.

Whatever it is, whatever it was, that was what I saw over and over again, is that the interpretation of an experience that we have creates a belief, and that belief is life. It goes across the board with relationships with health, with jobs, with everything, until the book was written, because I can’t see everyone, but I want them to know that you know, there are solutions and, and just because you’ve never been able to accomplish this or that, it doesn’t mean you’re stood there. It just means that your subconscious mind possibly is holding some experience or some interpretation that it’s holding you back. You could clean that up. It’s these are resolvable problems and that’s why the book was written.

A Tip for the Listeners

Dr. Barbara Hales: Another point that you have touched upon that I want to highlight is that success also comes with professionals choosing a unique proposition, a message that is unique to them and is in a niche that is not overloaded, but a message that is specialized to their profession and getting that out into the public. Can you give one helpful tip to our listeners today?

Laura Temin: I can, in what area would you like to tip?

Dr. Barbara Hales: I leave that to you, whatever tip you feel would be most helpful to the people listening to you today.

Laura Temin: All right, well, here’s what I think. There are people that you’re helping because you’re an expert in finding a niche and helping a person stand out.  And as a physician, too many physicians don’t understand how to use different modalities. So my suggestion is to open up to different modalities, things that you would not think to do, just bring it in, explore it, and talk to someone because all of your patients need you to help them find a way for them to accomplish the goals that you know that they need to reach.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, I think that’s a great tip. We have been listening today to Laura Temin. Thank you for appearing on our show today. This is another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors with your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Till next time.

Laura Temin: Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Barbara.