End of year updates and news

My blog postings have been a bit spradic this year and partly to make up for that I thought I'd have an end of splurge on news stories that tweaked my interest recently. Then I'll move into Old Moore's Almanack territory and attempt to do some predictions for 2011; without the aid of planetary charts!

Smokers to be given free Nicotine patches
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1341706/Smokers-given-free-nicotine-patches-NHS.html
As reported in the Daily Mail and elsewhere, the UK Department of Health is to spend £250 Million on smoker "Quit Kits" which will include a week's supply of Nicotine patches. The idea of this approach being to help would be quitters through the first few days of not smoking.

I'm not convinced this will be money well spent though; around 20% of the population still smoke, some two thirds are said to want to stop. (The numbers always seem to be rather vague with few sources cited.)

However what I see is young people, especially girls, still starting to smoke (from 13 years upwards judging by my town) as a way of defining their adultness. Ask a 13 year old or a 16 year old what they think their life will be like when they are 30 and you may as well as them what the moon is like. They have no idea and no sense of the potential damage that smoking does to one's health. So they won't stop until film makers and TV program makers stop portraying smoking as 'cool' by association with the stars of the day. That is bigger and much more difficult challenge than handing out nicotine patches.

The challenge with older long established smokers is to deal with the habitual and conditioned responses that smokers have. Hypnotherapy is great for that.

When hypnotherapy CPD goes bad.
A former hypnotherapy student of mine called just before Christmas to wish me the best for the season. As we chatted about her year, she talked about a "Continuing Professional Development" (CPD) course she had attended on rapid inductions in a clinical setting.

Normally these events are fairly mellow with a nice spirit of friendly co-operation and active learning (the attendees pay for the course after all). But on this course it seems that the trainer and his assistants were more interested in getting applause for how good they were than ensuring that the training was effective.

Some of the techniques used involving rapid movements of the head/neck could, according to this lady have been dangerous. (She had to refuse a personal demonstration by an assistant due to previous damage to her own neck/spine. However the trainers did not point out the simple yet obvious conclusion that for some clients this method would be completely wrong and potentially dangerous. That ought to be a cause for some concern.

Congruence?
I know it is sometimes said that when a therapist has dealt with all their own issues they will no longer work with others but there has to be a sense of congruence to be a successful therapist.

If you are a fat lady or gent offering weight loss sessions then perhaps you should start with yourself first?

This idea of being congruent or in alignment with some core values is often used in Neuro Linguistic Programming but surely it applies just as much for hypnotherapy?

It seems that some the 'therapists' attending the training session previously spoken about were not aware that without that congruence positive change was unlikely to happen.