Using Hypnotherapy for Anxiety and Stress (88)

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Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of my Unhealthy Podcast, where we openly admit that we are not exactly poster children for optimal living, but trying to do a little bit better, one conversation at a time. Today, we're going to be looking under the hood of why smart, capable people keep repeating the same unhealthy habits, whether it's stress eating, overworking, avoiding tough stuff, or just living in a constant state of anxiety. My guest today is Craig Merriweather.

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He is a certified clinical hypnotherapist, medical hypnosis specialist and mindset coach and founder of the Arizona Integrative Hypnotherapy in Flagstaff, Arizona. Craig, welcome to the show. I am Marvin.

How are you? I'm looking forward to our conversation. I appreciate you having me on your show. Well, thank you for joining.

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And I'm looking forward to this as well. And as my listeners know, I usually will do a pre-interview chat with my guests. And of course, you and I did that.

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And so I know a lot of people, I don't know what the title of this is going to be yet, but some people will look at the title of hypnotherapy and think, OK, what's Marv doing now? And I figure that's probably as good a place to start as any, because we talked about the fact that, you know, some people, yes, understand it. A lot of people don't. And we always get this perception of what we see in Hollywood or Vegas or some sort of thing where hypnosis is a trick.

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However, I do know that people that go through hypnotherapy and solve some of those issues, they swear by it. So I guess I wanted to start right there. And let's talk about what hypnotherapy really is and what it really isn't.

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Yeah, the hypnotherapy is an extraordinary way of tapping into the power of your own subconscious mind. Now, hypnotherapy isn't one thing. It's kind of an umbrella term for a lot of different techniques and tools.

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Again, mainly to access the healing power of your own subconscious mind. We know the subconscious mind can create that healing through the placebo effect. Any medical research or scientific research that's going to get published in any sort of journal needs to have that control group, especially, let's say, the pharmaceutical research.

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They're doing research on high blood pressure medication. Well, they know people will heal themselves through mind alone. They'll trick themselves, so to speak, into healing themselves and the medication will have nothing to do with it.

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So they need to account for that in their research. So, you know, half the group that's part of this research study on high blood pressure medication will get a sugar pill because they know part of that group will heal themselves. And they need to see the percentage because as they bring people into this research, they're handing out pamphlets.

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They're discussing it in the research office. They're maybe reading some things on the website and even on the Internet. And so they're influencing people as they're bringing them into this research and discussing it.

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So they need to know how that influences people. So they have the control group. They're getting the sugar pill.

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Let's say 30% of the people get better on the sugar pill. They've healed themselves. Well, let's say 40% get better with the medication.

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They have to subtract 30% because maybe they've influenced those people as well to heal through mind and the medication had nothing to do with it. Well, only 10% then really got better with the medication. And, you know, that's good enough.

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They'll put it on the market at 80 bucks a pill. But nobody really looks at, yeah, but more people actually got better through using their own mind, through the healing potential of their own mind and body and brain. And so what therapeutic hypnosis does is use techniques to help access that healing power of the body and healing power of the mind.

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Now, a lot of this work is focused on things like habits. Most famously, maybe probably quit smoking and things like that. Maybe releasing emotional hurt and pain, even if it's unknown, maybe just people are feeling anxious or overwhelmed or angry or resentful.

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They're struggling and they're not even sure why. Well, the subconscious mind knows why. It takes a lot for the brain to create the chemistry to move into the fight or flight stress response or to feel that anxiety or that anger.

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So the subconscious mind knows why that's happening. And what these techniques help you do is release and let go of that hurt and pain. This isn't mind control.

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It's not brainwashing. It's unfortunate the perception people get of hypnosis and hypnotherapy through movies and TV shows. It's really unfortunate because I think it keeps a lot of people away from these techniques.

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But the state of hypnosis, again, it's nothing magical or mystical. It's literally just brainwave state, literally how fast your brain is processing information. And it's that daydreamy state when your mind kind of drifts off.

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You're in a boring meeting at work. Maybe you remember back in high school and I don't know, high school math class, your mind drifts off. Oh, the weekend's coming up.

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And sure thing about hanging out with your friends and all that. You're no longer in the present moment. I was good at math, so that wasn't the right class.

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Well, whatever other class, you know what I mean. But I hear what you're saying. And it seems to be that it's not far off from what a lot of other people do when they talk about, you know, the power of the mind is what can do a lot of things and talk about, you know, meditation, manifestation.

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You know, we've grown up or at least I grew up in a time where people said, listen, if you just believe you can do and other people are like, you know what, the body can heal itself if you just let it do it and put your mind to it. So it doesn't sound like we're that far off in degrees, does it? Right. And like again, this term hypnotherapy is a big, big umbrella term for a lot of different techniques.

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And one of them may be guided visualization. So somebody visualizes their future life of the health, of the wealth, of the relationships, of just feeling good. That's a form of therapeutic hypnosis, closing your eyes and, you know, visualizing the future.

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Guided visualization, whether it's a recording or just doing it on your own, is a form of hypnotherapy. So sort of that thing of, you know, all screwdrivers are tools, but not all tools are screwdrivers. Well, you can say all guided visualization, whether you're, you know, somebody's doing it with you, guiding you through it, it's a recording, you're doing it on your own, all guided visualization is hypnotherapy, but not all hypnotherapy is guided visualization.

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And so, yeah, there's a lot of overlap in the kind of positive thinking world. I think there's a lot more to it than just thinking positive thoughts, especially if somebody's gone through some hurt and pain and some trauma, whether remembered or it's kind of unknown and behind that veil of the subconscious mind. Right.

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That could be blocking people from moving forward or just patterns of and beliefs that they grew up with in terms of, you know, the kind of famous one is money is the root of all evil. So you, you know, kind of create walls and blocks around, you know, moving past a certain income. Right, right.

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That's a belief that was, that you allowed, maybe unconsciously, you know, mean to say this is anybody's fault or that they did it on purpose, especially if people have gone through trauma as a child, but that these patterns and these thoughts, these files, so to speak, of hurt and pain that may be stored in the filing cabinet within the subconscious mind, well, you're in charge of the filing cabinet and you can change those files anytime you want. Okay. So let's take a step back and talk about how you got to this.

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Was this something where you had an event in your life that, you know, hypnotherapy helped you, or is this something that kind of followed you along your, your journey? Uh, kind of, kind of both. Okay. I struggled mightily with depression and anxiety as, as a teenager.

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I mean, this is the 1980s, so there's no internet to do any research on. There's no Prozac that didn't come out until the late 1990s along with the internet. And so is, you know, back in the 1980s and earlier, really all you had was whatever book you might be able to find at the library, the bookstore, or, um, you know, whatever talk therapist, maybe you'd find in the yellow pages.

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So you let your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages. So it was something I just struggled with and just, you know, assume this is the way life is going to be. Maybe this is the way everybody felt.

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And it was really in the 1990s with the kind of, the second coming of the personal development movement, Tony Robbins becoming really popular and Oprah becoming really popular. And as Prozac and these other SSRI drugs started coming out and the internet started coming out, there's forums and, and groups you could join to have discussions about this stuff. It actually became safer to talk about depression and the anxiety you're dealing with.

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So a lot of new information was available because of the research that had been going on. The discussion was out there. And one of the things people kept mentioning in terms of creating change in your life was hypnotherapy, like in books and blog posts and articles and discussion groups and things.

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And so eventually I just, I had been mentioned so many times as a great set of tools to help create transformation in life and change in life that I found somebody who could help me with that. And I did some deep healing work using hypnotherapy and it, you know, kind of moved me into, you know, wanting to speak more about it. Like, you know, I, I struggle with depression and anxiety and I, you know, created more control in my life by using hypnotherapy.

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So I started speaking about it and talking about it and, and wrote a book called Depression 180. And it was just kind of the slow drip, really, from dealing with my own hurt and pain to, you know, going out there and, and talking about it and writing about it to, oh, now here's this great training program I can take to help other people with this as well. Kind of a slow drip over many decades.

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It just wasn't like a lightning bolt and now I'm a hypnotherapist. Kind of a long, long road to getting to talk to you today. All right.

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So I want to do a quick sidebar because you, you brought up the name Tony Robbins and we all know him as, you know, this motivational speaker, but I understand that he got his original start in a form of hypnotherapy. Where he was helping people not just be motivated but change their behavior and habits and stuff. I forget what that was called.

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Do you know that? Neurolinguistic program. Okay. So.

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So in the early 1970s, there's two university professors at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Richard Bandler and John Grinder. One, I forget who's who, but one was a mathematician. The other was a linguist.

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And they'd have long discussions about this, that, and the other thing. And one of the things they liked to talk about was the language of healing. Because at that point, one of the more famous therapists in the world was Dr. Milton Erickson.

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And Erickson was famous for being able to use language to talk to people's subconscious mind using various forms of, you know, hypnotherapy. Whether the person was awake at, you know, wide awake at a party or in more of a traditional relaxed state with their eyes closed. He was able to have people achieve great healing just by talking to them, talking with them.

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And so, and there was other people as well. And Grinder and Bandler was very fascinated. They wondered if you could codify this way of healing through speech, tone, rhythm, spacing, volume.

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And they set about listening to Milton Erickson's recordings of him working with people, studying his speech patterns and his language, the words he used, the rhythm in which he used it, as well as other people. And they started creating this kind of algorithm of how to achieve change and transformation in people using language. So they called it neuro-linguistic programming.

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By the time they'd kind of spent years and years focusing on this. But it's a very academic kind of process they were talking about and was written for the academic world. What Tony Robbins did in the early 1980s and how he got his start was bringing that to the kind of masses and to the common wisdom of the world.

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And so he started off going on morning shows, you know, like Good Morning Houston or, you know, Good Morning Chicago or something like this. One of the morning shows or radio shows and things. And they would bring in somebody who's had an extraordinary phobia of snakes or spiders or something.

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And through talking with this person, doing the neuro-linguistic programming techniques that he learned about from Bandler and Grinder, he would change this person's beliefs and patterns of thinking around snakes or spiders or whatever the thing was. And then they'd have the zoo person, you know, come out with a bunch of boa constrictors and snakes. And then this person's draped in snakes and things at the end of the show.

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And it's very exciting and wonderful. And that's how he got his start. Then he kind of built it up into kind of a bigger thing.

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He was basically one of the early adopters of neuro-linguistic programming in LP to create change in life and just brought it to a wider audience. Okay. All right.

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So now let me take that because you've talked about a couple of things about, you know, not all hypnotherapy is guided. And then if we take that neuro-linguistic programming, did I say that right? How close is that to a lot of the things that we are being presented with when it comes to listening to certain books or things at night as we sleep or falling asleep to those apps like Calm, Headspace or things like that? Because to me, that kind of all feels like it's in the same ballpark. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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And, you know, be very aware. The news knows this. There's various people on social media that know how to use these techniques to influence you into certain behaviors and certain thinking patterns.

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Certainly, politicians know how to do it. Advertisers know. I was going to say commercials.

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Yeah, because this work is 60 years old. And it was also found out back in 1969 that watching TV puts you in the alpha brainwave state. And that's the state of hypnosis.

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The biology, basically, of hypnosis is quieting down the mind. So you move out of that conscious awareness of the present moment. So let's say you're at a media network or you're back in a certain class in high school or college and you're paying attention.

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You know, let's say you're in school. It's going to be on the test. You're writing the notes, but it's boring.

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And you just kind of start fading down. You start staring out the windows. Teachers still talking.

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Kids still asking questions and all that. But you're unaware of it. You have moved out of this present reality.

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You've altered your state of consciousness by daydreaming about how fun the weekend is going to be with your friends. Well, that's moving into hypnosis. You did it to yourself or that experience of driving home.

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And you start thinking about, you know, I got this big report due on Friday at work, or I got people coming over on the weekend. I got to get the house together. And all of a sudden, you're in your driveway or your garage or your parking spot or something.

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Well, you've altered your state of consciousness. Yeah, the subconscious mind took over driving. You know how to drive home.

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If you've lived there several years, you've done it probably a thousand times. 365 days a year. Yeah, probably done a thousand times.

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So you know how to drive home like you know how to tie your shoes or ride a bicycle and walk down the street and all that. So your mind altered its conscious state. You moved into the alpha brainwave state.

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And literally, that's just how fast your brain is processing information. So what they found out in 1969 through some research is that watching TV puts you in that very suggestible alpha brainwave state, a daydreaming state, that altered state of consciousness. And that wasn't published in a medical journal or scientific journal.

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That was published in the Journal of Advertising and Marketing. And so they've known for some 55, 60 years that not only does television put you in the alpha brainwave state, but with the research of Bandler and Grinder, that language patterns and phrasing and tone and the way you say something can influence people as well. So it's sort of that thing of a tool, like a hammer.

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Hammer can build a great, extraordinary cathedral, but it can also tear it down. And so it's not that neuro-linguistic programming is bad or that these techniques of hypnotherapy or techniques of surgery are bad. It's just if you use it with malicious intent, it's going to influence people maybe in a negative way.

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Okay. So now that we've kind of got a little bit of better understanding, let's talk about some practical things. Because I know that a lot of times it comes down to, we talk about stopping bad habits.

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I want to quit smoking or stop drinking, and we use that. But what are some other things that we can use, or a better way to ask that question, but what are all the types of things that can be done with hypnotherapy? Oh, one of the main ways I work with people, and I work with people around, you mentioned Flagstaff, Arizona. That's where I live, but I do most of my sessions over Zoom.

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Unlike how we're recording this, I know it's just audio. But we're sitting across from each other on a video screen. And this isn't surgery.

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This isn't a massage. I am facilitating and guiding somebody's experience to heal themselves, tap into the power of their own subconscious mind. And whether they've been holding on to some hurt or pain or trauma, there's that famous book, The Body Keeps the Score.

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You may actually hold that somewhere in your body, where you feel it and that heaviness. Well, it's time to release and let it go. Maybe that hurt and pain happened a month ago, maybe six months ago, maybe 50 years ago.

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You're allowed to release and let it go. You're the one who put it in there. It's not to say it was your fault or should have happened.

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It's really not going to blame a child for going through abuse or trauma. But what becomes empowering is when you realize, oh, yeah, I put that file in that filing cabinet. That means you can take it out.

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And so if somebody's dealing with some, you know, a feeling state of anxiety or anger or resentment or hurt or pain or embarrassment or humiliation, then maybe they don't even know why. And that's affecting maybe speaking in public or their social life or their relationships with their family. You can change those patterns.

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You can create healing around that. Now, somebody may just, not may, just, but it may not be a deep healing work they need to achieve. They may just want confidence in speaking at the conference next month.

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You're confident in a great many things. It may not be about speaking in front of the public, but you're confident that you can tie your shoes. You're confident that you can walk down the street.

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You're confident that you can ride a bicycle, these kinds of things. Well, so you're confident in a great many things. You know how that feels in your body.

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And so you can use these experiences to start linking them to other things. And so it really works with any sort of patterns or behaviors. If somebody has some ruminating thoughts or self-talk or catastrophizing they may be doing.

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If they're self-sabotaging themselves when they get towards success or they feel they have put a ceiling on health or income or something else. They're nervous about going back to school because they're older in life, but they really wanted to get their master's. But now they're nervous about going back to school because everybody's young at school and they're having some doubts about that.

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Well, you're allowed to change those if you want. And so it's really about what you want to work on. I don't fix anybody and hypnotherapy in of itself doesn't fix anybody.

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I don't analyze people or diagnose people. And I certainly don't prescribe for people. We're going to work on what you want to work on.

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And even if it's just a feeling state, like I've worked with many, many people, but when they put on their intake form, they may just put anxiety. That's what we work on because that person knows what that means. They know even on a conscious level, but they understand what that's referring to.

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So we work on anxiety. So it's really about the change you want to see in your life. And that's what we focus on.

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All right. You made an emphatic point in there that this is stuff that people want to do. So the fact that you don't fix things.

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So I have to imagine that if somebody goes into this with the wrong mindset and, you know, they really, you know, don't want to change or they really don't want to stop that bad habit. There's no hypnotherapy that's going to fix that or change that for them, right? Right. You can't make anybody do anything they don't want to do.

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And so it's sort of like that kind of the funny little thing. He was such a great salesman. He could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo kind of thing.

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It's like, well, you know, somebody doesn't need a bunch of ice because they live in the snow. It's like they're not going to buy any ice. And so you can't make people do anything they don't want to do.

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That's why smoking cessation, helping people quit smoking is not 100% guarantee. They don't want to quit smoking. They're not quitting smoking.

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Maybe their wife or their husband set up the appointment because they're tired of it. Tired of the cost and the health implications and that are going to come becoming the smell of it all. And the person's like, well, I really like smoking.

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I'm just going to tell them I tried everything, including hypnotherapy, and I'll just smoke in the garage. Literally somebody I worked with, they paid me money to not quit smoking just so they could tell their wife that they tried everything and I'll just smoke in the garage because he didn't want to quit. And I can't make people quit because I could do that.

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I would tell people to go rob a bank and give me all the money. But I can't hypnotize my way into the United Nations and create world peace. Because there's a certain aspect of the world where they don't want to do that.

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Otherwise, they'd erect statues to me and I'd be the guy that created world peace and ended war and they'd make my birthday an international holiday. I'd be that guy. But people who don't want to change won't change.

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Are there... Make them by using these techniques. Yeah, but are there people that you've run into that maybe they do want to change, but for some reason there's a block or they can't? Yeah, everybody. Everybody that comes to hypnotherapy, that's generally what's happening.

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They've tried everything. They've gone to... We're usually the bottom of the list. Hypnotherapy is usually not the top of the list of somebody.

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I'm feeling awful and got these issues in life that hurt and cause me pain and trauma. And they often don't start with hypnotherapy. That's usually the last on the list when they've tried everything else and they're so desperate that they'll even try hypnotherapy.

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So, yeah. And these blocks may be unconscious. They may be unknown to the conscious mind.

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And so that's where these techniques come in where you can access... You know, by quieting down that conscious level, by moving into that alpha brainwave state, sometimes it's just as easy to ask, why are you creating... You know, talk to that part of mind that is creating the block and ask, why are you creating the block? And more likely than not, they'll tell you why. Right. Maybe through protection or safety or fear or some other way.

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And then I think use that information to undo those patterns. So let's say somebody is not yet at the point of, you know, yeah, I'm not ready to try that, but I might want to do something in terms of medication and stuff. Are there things that people can do kind of on their own? You know, a couple of exercises or things to, you know, kind of try to get themselves started? Oh, sure.

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There's a lot of different recordings and guided visualization exercises on YouTube and maybe probably Spotify and other SoundCloud in different places. And, you know, one aspect of this work is that the mind can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. That's most noticeable when somebody is having a nightmare in the middle of the night.

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It doesn't matter how crazy the nightmare is. You know, cheeseburgers chasing down the street, throwing coconuts at your head. It's dumb.

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It's not going to happen, but it'll change your physiology. It'll turn on the stress response because your mind thinks you're under attack. Well, you can use, you know, that aspect of mind.

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Now that's good, not as bad, you know, right or wrong. It's just that this is an aspect of mind. It can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined.

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So imagine yourself standing under a waterfall of blue healing energy that washes away the stress and the anxiety and then have it wash on the inside as well and push all that stress and anxiety out your fingertips and out the bottom of your feet. You can imagine that now. I'm not saying visualize it.

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You can't visualize it. That may be an aspect of it, but maybe you're sensing it in a different way. And so imagine, feel that this stress is just being washed away like a dirty bathtub water down the drain.

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That's, that's hypnotherapy and use your imagination. Now, is there such a thing as a waterfall of blue healing energy that washes away stress and anxiety? No, but you can imagine that just as there's not a cheeseburger that's going to chase you down the street and throw coconut tissue at you. And yet that literally changed your physiology.

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You imagine you're, you're quiet, quiet and calm and peaceful in a Buddhist monastery on the moon. Now I'm going to pretty much guarantee you there isn't a Buddhist monastery on the moon, but you can imagine how quiet and peaceful that would be. Yeah.

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Or something else, you know, and that, and that's part of that. Again, that's one of the tools in the toolbox of hypnotherapy that you can use. And there's certainly lots of, again, lots of techniques and recordings and that people have done probably hundreds of thousands at this point in the life of the internet.

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And you know, it's, it's one of those things where with a little time and patience, you can find the right recordings or people to work with. And again, you know, the internet is so amazing. We can, you can work with anybody, anywhere, anytime.

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You know, and that's what's so amazing about this. You don't necessarily have to do it in person anymore. Right.

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Now, is there a, let's say a minimum thing that needs to be done? Cause I, I have to imagine that it's not as instant as one time I'm cured. You know it's kind of like recovery where it's one day at a time. You've got to keep doing this time and time again.

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Is there like a minimum that has to be done, you know, five times a day, once a week? I mean, generally when I'm working with somebody, we'll do a session once a week for maybe two or three times, maybe four times. And, but it's really not a one size fits all. There's what, 8 billion of us on the world, in the world.

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And even if somebody may be saying, oh, you're dealing with anxiety. I may work with 10 people this week. And all you all write one word on your intake form anxiety, but each one of those persons experiencing it differently.

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They're reacting to the world differently. They may show up as something very familiar to all of them as anxiety, but they're experiencing it differently. So there's not a one size fits all, nor is there, oh, you're dealing with anxiety.

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Well, that's a five session process. Oh, you're dealing with smoking. That's a three session process.

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Oh, you're dealing with fear of flying. Fear of flying is a good one. I help somebody in one session deal with fear of flying.

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I help somebody else in six sessions. Why one session? It's the same thing, fear of flying. But just due to how they have programmed themselves, the beliefs they have around it.

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You know, so there's, again, not one size fits all. And just like you might say in talk therapy, well, I've been dealing with a lot of anxiety. How many talk therapy sessions is this going to take for me to totally reset my nervous system? Now, in terms of healing, I think in the work I've done, in the time I've been doing it, I think healing happens in an instant.

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Just as trauma or hurt or pain can be installed in an instant through horrible words or abuse or something like that. Why couldn't you uninstall it in an instant? Now, there may be some steps leading up to being able to release and let it go. But I think when it's time for that person to create the healing, that can happen pretty quickly.

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Now, what you practice, you get better at. So to a certain extent, what you say, yeah, there's a certain aspect of work on the emotional, mental, spiritual, physical side of life that requires reinforcement. You know, you just don't get to go to work, work out with a personal trainer once and go to the gym twice, and now you're in shape for 50 years.

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And you get to eat pizza and drink soda all day long. We know that's not true. You know, I have to work out every week, multiple times a week, maybe three, four, more times a week.

(32:21 - 32:35)

You're working out, watching what you eat, watching what you drink for the entirety of your life. Well, what about your mental health and your emotional health and your spiritual health? Dalai Lama still meditates every day. Yo-Yo Ma is one of the greatest cello players of all time, still practices the cello every day.

(32:36 - 32:58)

You know, and so there's a certain aspect of mastering something. And what if you want to master peace of mind and body? You know, would there not be some practice to that as well? Because what you practice, you get better at with the challenges of life. You know, any martial artist, once they get their black belt in Taekwondo, you don't stop practicing Taekwondo.

(32:59 - 33:24)

You're back in the dojo the next day after the big party and ceremony, getting your black belt, you're back in the dojo practicing. You know, and so even with this work, you're, you know, whatever it is you want, if you're looking for peace or calm or happiness or joy or confidence, there's a certain practice. Now, the healing around that, the removing of the blocks and the self-sabotage and the hurt and the pain.

(33:25 - 33:40)

Yeah, that may be able to be finite and we're going to do two or three sessions around that. But in terms of now practicing, building up that peace and the joy, yeah, you may want to work on that a few times a week, you know, make it stronger. All right, Craig, I know you've got to go.

(33:40 - 34:20)

So I want to make sure we close out here without, you know, interrupting you in the middle of the thing. I've got one question I do want to ask, and it's more about what is something that you wish more people would understand about their own subconscious mind and how it helps to, you know, drive our unhealthy patterns? Sure, you know, I think a big part of it, just like I was just talking about, you know, it's what you practice, you get better at. And we know this from, you know, learning martial arts or learning an instrument, playing the piano or the violin or the guitar or something, learning dance, learning to walk as a kid, learning to ride a bicycle.

(34:20 - 35:09)

But what if you're practicing anxiety or anger or resentment? Are you not wiring that into your brain, into your body and resetting your nervous system to be in this protective mode of the fight or flight stress response? So a lot of this work is just identifying what it is you want, and it may be to let go of that hurt and pain, or maybe to create joy and happiness in life or something like that, is understanding what it is you want, being aware of that, and then, you know, finding somebody that you're comfortable working with to help, you know, create that healing that you're looking for. Because you're the one that's going to be doing the healing. You know, a hypnotherapist is there to facilitate and guide and to lifeguard, if you will, this situation.

(35:09 - 35:35)

But you're the one doing the healing work because it's your subconscious mind, and you know what the problem is. Even if it's on an unconscious level and you can’t consciously explain what the problem is, your subconscious mind is fully aware of what's happening and why this is going on. And so, you know, allow your subconscious mind to create the healing, like it can heal the cut on a finger and the scrape on the knee and digest your food and beat your heart and take a one day old baby to that of an adult.

(35:36 - 35:46)

Yeah, it can do this too. All right. You mentioned earlier that, you know, hypnotherapies, you know, kind of the last run on the ladder, everything.

(35:47 - 36:19)

If we were to just be sitting around, you know, having a drink, what would probably be the one thing you would, I guess, rant about when it came to the health and wellness space? Why are you at the bottom of the run and how do you help people get there faster? It's unfortunate. It's just the movies and TV shows and those entertainment shows. And again, this work isn't about mind control or brainwashing, even the entertainment shows, like the shows, the hypnotist shows in Las Vegas or comedy clubs.

(36:19 - 36:30)

Everybody that gets up on a stage volunteered to be up there. You can't get an introvert, you know, in the back of the room, slinking down in their chair, hiding in the shadows. They don't want to go up there.

(36:31 - 36:46)

And who are they going to pick? They're going to pick the extrovert, the exhibitionist who's jumping up and down and saying, pick me and pick me because they want to be part of the show. They want to be star of the show. And so everybody gets up on that stage to do silly things, wants to be up on stage doing silly things.

(36:47 - 37:03)

You know, and the videos somebody may see of somebody just doing street hypnosis and walking up to somebody and say, sleep. It's like, you know, I don't dare anybody to do this because I know what's going to happen. But just imagine walking up to a stranger on the street, pointing your fingers at them or something and just saying, sleep.

(37:03 - 37:16)

You're going to get punched in the face and that person is going to run away out of fear. It's not the way it works. And it's unfortunate because there's a lot of people kind of preying on the old misconceptions of it that it's mind control and it's not.

(37:16 - 37:40)

It's a way to use a state of mind, the alpha brainwave state that you move into multiple times a day. So it's even a natural process and just kind of taking advantage of that. Just like being bored back in school or meeting at work, being bored watching a TV show and using that to access your subconscious mind and asking what healing needs to happen here.

(37:43 - 38:05)

All right. Well, Craig, like I said, I know you got to go here. I just want to make sure folks we're going to have his information in the show notes linked to his website, ArizonaIntegrativeHypnotherapy.com. And if you're looking at things with anxiety, fear, worry, self-sabotage, you want to break bad habits, stop smoking, got some sleep issues.

(38:06 - 38:16)

This is a place to go. Don't make it your last stop. And maybe Craig can help you out there and a free 30-minute call will get you started.

(38:17 - 38:36)

So Craig, thank you very much. Yeah, happy to talk to anybody. If you want to email or just get on the phone or a Zoom call, I work with people around the country, around the world, you know, going through a big rebranding because, you know, I used to just work with people in Flagstaff and Phoenix, but now that this Zoom technology has come out, I've been working with people around the United States.

(38:36 - 38:41)

So if we can figure out the time zones, we can get together and work. All right. Sounds great.

(38:42 - 38:55)

Again, thank you very much. So folks, thank you to Craig Merriweather for breaking down what's really going on. And again, if you want to give him a try, the link to his website will be in the show notes.

(38:57 - 39:06)

And maybe, basically, he can help you fix some of the unhealthy choices. So that's going to do it for us, folks. We'll be back with more here on the Unhealthy Podcast.

(39:07 - 39:10)

We'll see you soon. And until next time, Holla!