Thursday, January 22, 2026
The Emerging Problem Of AI Psychosis; Psychology Today December 2025
AI reinforces what you already believe is true and continues in the same conversation. It does not introduce new perspectives, facts, or challenge you to think in new ways or consider new points of view.
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
The Beautiful Truth about Trust, Forgiveness and Self Respect
The Beautiful Truth about Trust, Forgiveness and Self Respect
Forgiveness is given only when it is earned. When someone has done wrong behavior toward you, you forgive them when they have truly made a sincere apology, and have made acts of contrition. Meaning they have made sincere changes in their behavior toward you going forward, indicating that they take responsibility for their actions. Otherwise they do not deserve forgiveness. And, the forgiveness given is empty, and merely an act of stuffing emotions that will resurface later.
Trust. Trust-Worthy behavior is proof that the person has really changed. Building trust takes time - more time than it takes to break it.
Trust Building:
- The trust-breaker admits they violated the truth-values that caused the breach in the trust, and owns up to the behaviors (takes responsibility for their behavior).
- The trust-breaker builds a solid track record of improved behavior over time.
Without the first step, there should be no attempt at reconciliation in the first place.
When we allow others to disregard our boundaries of behavior toward us, or do not have good boundaries for others behavior toward us, we compromise our self-respect. This impacts us in lowering our self-esteem. We are good people and others should treat us well, as we treat others well. Not speaking up when others are disrespecting our boundaries of good behavior, is allowing ourselves to be treated badly, and is an act of self-disrespect.
When others repeatedly disrespect our boundaries of good behavior, we lose trust in them.
Close relationships are built on a strong base of mutual trust built over time.
Trust is like a china plate. If you break it once, with some care and attention, you can put it back together again. But if you break it again, it splits into even more pieces and it takes far longer to piece together again. If you break it more and more times, eventually it shatters to the point where it’s impossible to restore. There are too many broken pieces and too much dust.
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Sleep
To Eat, Perchance To Sleep
When you eat, perhaps as much as what you eat, has a direct impact on sleep and wake cycles set by the brain.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202311/to-eat-perchance-to-sleep
Friday, July 7, 2023
PolyVagal Theory - Vagal Vasal Response
Polyvagal Theory - A theory to Self Calm
Flight or Freeze:
A potent mechanism that has the potential to down-regulate threat resides in the ventral portion of the brainstem, in an area known as the nucleus ambiguus, where the vagus nerve, the star player of the autonomic nervous system, originates.
Vagus means wandering, and the vagus nerve begins at the base of the brain, branches down to the heart, the lungs, and the digestive tract, with stops along the way at the larynx, the pharynx, and the diaphragm, before descending into the abdomen.
The branches of the vagus nerve enable the organs to adjust instantly to the demands of a person’s surroundings. It is the duty of the vagus nerve to orchestrate bodily responses to keep you safe or prepare your body for danger before you are even aware of it or have a chance to think about it. Most of the vagus is composed of sensory fibers that function as our surveillance system, informing the brain of the status of our visceral organs.
In our evolutionary journey to becoming social mammals, the basic reptilian structures underwent modification. In order for animals to become social, there had to be a way to turn off threat reactions—animals had to be able to cue one another that they were safe enough to come close to.
As distinct from reptiles, mammals have neuroception not only of threat but also of safety. The vegas nerve responds to cues of safety—detected by higher brain structures—which bring on enough calm to open you up to socially engage with others.
Because information flows both to and from the brain via vagal pathways, the vagus nerve can be thought of as a major mind-body highway. Through the vagus nerve, you react to signals in your environment in ways that calm, alarm, or dysregulate the body, and these states in turn create emotional experience and play out in behavior.
Polyvagal Theory. defines how the vagal pathways operate and the control they exert
over our thoughts and bodies.
Worry is a personal narrative we create in a state of threat to justify why we feel bad.
Polyvagal theory not only explains anxiety as a physiologic state of threat, it also opens a portal of intervention.
Applying specific maneuvers effecting vagal pathways, we can use the nervous system to reset the physiologic state. Independent of the threshold of reactivity that pitches a person into alarm mode.
It is possible to re-educate the nervous system with cues of safety.
Removal of the threat isn’t a bad tactic, but it is not what the nervous system demands: It needs cues of safety. Shift the mental and physical state and you change the character of experience.
The most direct way to access the neural pathway that turns off threat is through breathing -
Diaphragmatic Breathing. Our evolutionary journey endowed us with a gift—the ability to control our breathing utilizing the diaphragm muscle; this enables us to regulate our mental, emotional and physical state.
Neurophysiologically powerful, it acts on fibers of the ventral vagus nerve ferrying signals between visceral organs and the brainstem, where autonomic control of body organs originates.
Diaphragmatic Breathing—also humming and gum-chewing—stimulates the nerve fibers of the muscles of the face, head, and oral cavity and opens the social engagement system, enabling people to respond reciprocally to the invitations of others.
Gaining control of physiologic state through Diaphragmatic Breathing is why some people turn to Hypnosis, yoga and meditation.
Singing uses the same neurophysiological structures of breathing and facial muscles as the social engagement system. Playing a wind instrument gives you no choice but to use Diaphragmatic Breathing.
Many anxious people feed the physiologic state of threat, anxiety etc. by making slow inhalations and rapid exhalations, high in the chest cavity. (Not using the diaphragm.)
Diaphragmatic Breathing, Shifting physiologic state restores access to your whole self. Calming and relaxing you. Memory and higher capacities are available. You become cognitively present to solve problems. The social engagement system becomes a portal to gaining back our human heritage.
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Monday, March 13, 2023
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Quit Smoking in the New Year
Quit in 4 easy relaxing sessions with Hypnosis
Hypnosis Facts
Percentages of Successful Stop Smoking
6% Will Power Alone
10% Nicotine Replacement Therapy
24% Aversion (Negative) Therapy
29% Exercise and Breathing
30% Recordings with Hypnotic Suggestions
60% Single Session Hypnosis
92% 4 Sessions Hypnotherapy with
Grand Traverse Hypnotherapy and Counseling
Smoking cost in Michigan: Price: $8.00 plus. Tax: $2.00
$ 12.00 / average cost pack of cigarettes. 1 pack per day X 7 days per week = $ 84.00 per week.
4 weeks per month = $ 336.00 per month X 12 months = $ 4,032.00 per year.
Quit completely for Less.
(According to the National Cancer Institute, the average cost of a pack of cigarettes is $6.28, which means a pack-a-day habit sets you back $188 per month or $2,292 per year.)
Tuesday, August 3, 2021
Hypnotherapy for Sleep can help increase deep restful sleep.
Melatonin, Magnesium, Theanine, and Tryptophan bring Sleep.
The natural human circadian rhythm cycle is 24.2 hours long.
Sleep is closely connected to Anxiety, Depression and Stress.
Theanine can be found in tea.
fMRI: 2 key regions of the brain : Amygdala which directs emotional responses, in the prefrontal cortex, is responsible for emotional regulation, decisions making, and critical thinking.
Deep-sleep stage called slow-wave sleep, is linked to strong activity in the Prefrontal Cortex and lower anxiety.
Slow-wave sleep resets the a balance between the sympathetic nervous system (guardian of the fight or flight response), and the Parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).
Stress and anxiety during waking hours activate the sympathetic system. But the parasympathetic system dominates slow-wave sleep, when heart rate slows and blood pressures drops. Sleep disturbances rob our body of this soothing cycle.
Circadian rhythm is governed by the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, a group of cells in the hypothalamus that receive input from light-sensitive neurons.
The right amount of sleep varies by a person’s age, adults from 18 to 64 need seven to nine hours per night, according to the National Sleep Foundation.
It typically takes an adult between 10 to 20 minutes to fall asleep.
A night of poor sleep lowers pain tolerance the following day by 15%.
10% of Americans experience chronic insomnia, according to the CDC.
Keeping the same sleep schedule every day, creating a relaxing bedtime routine, maintaining a cool bedroom, and avoiding screen time before bed all aid sleep.
Hypnotherapy for Sleep can help increase deep restful sleep.
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Relaxation in Nature. So Important
Speaking For The Trees
Suzanne Simard is opening our eyes to what forests are capable of.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202105/speaking-the-trees#_=_
Sunday, May 9, 2021
“When you are very, very relaxed, your conscious mind is more passive, allowing your goals and thoughts to go into your unconscious mind. So when you are more relaxed and accepting we feed it positive statements.” Slabtown resident Amelia Hasenohrl is the owner of Grand Traverse Hypnotherapy and Counseling. “There is a myth that people think hypnosis is done to you. You have to participate, to follow my guidance and to relax. If you are willing to do that, you can reach a state of hypnosis.”
Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis are one and the same. They are interchangeable terms. However, Hasenohrl uses Hypnotherapy because she is Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and utilizes her counseling skills when she works with her clients to help solve their difficulties and reach their goals. “I was using this to add to my counseling practice. I drove to Detroit to get the training, it was very hands-on and intense,” Hasenohrl explains.
Hypnotherapy is an educational communication that flows from your conscious mind to your unconscious mind and allows them both to believe the same message. Hypnosis is a very quick, easy and effective counseling tool. It helps clients reach their goals faster, with less struggle. It reinforces their strengths and assists them to focus on Positive Thoughts.
Hasenohrl’s background is dealing with patients who have traumatic brain-injury and physical medical rehab. “A lot of them, after a bad car accident are afraid to drive. Some of the techniques you use for helping them desensitize to driving are systematic desensitization, cognitive behavior therapy, this kind of thing. What I noticed is clients improve faster with hypnosis.”
Hasenohrl believes it has a lot to do with remapping the experience and the way the brain fires the memory “You are refining and revisiting that memory when you are calm and relaxed. Your body can’t be calm and relaxed and upset, fearful, scared, and anxious at the same time. If you take the trauma experience and walk back through it in deep relaxation, it changes the way your mind remembers that experience and gives you more control.”
Hypnosis takes you to the same level of relaxation and focus as does deep Meditation. You are in the same brain wave length when in deep meditation as when you are in Hypnosis. Both are deeply relaxing and pleasant. Hypnotherapy utilizes this relaxation state to focus and commit your mind more deeply to your goals by means of positive suggestions. You are always in control when you are in hypnosis. Hypnosis does not change your morals, ethics, or religious beliefs, only the ideas you are wanting to change such as being a Nonsmoker, getting rid of a bad habit, finding and appreciating your strengths, letting go of unwanted pounds, feeling more confident in your abilities, etc.
It is a Healthy and relaxing experience that you are participating in for your own Self Improvement. “You don’t ever use try when you are trying to do better. You must start with a positive statement. In biking I started with ‘all hills are doable,’ instead of ‘I’m going to try to make the hills.’ Now I’m at ‘I always make these hills.’ It’s a positive statement.” Hasenohrl says your positive reinforcements of yourself are some of the strongest tools you have in your toolbox for self-improvement. “Always move forward and always focus on what’s good.”
Her early work as a Direct Care Giver and then a Manager of a Residential Facility for people recovering from TBI began her professional experience. She worked as a Case Manager both in private companies and for a major hospital, assisting people to find appropriate resources and treatment. She has had many years of experience in cognitive and physical Rehabilitation programs as a Therapist Counselor with 2 major hospitals: McLaren Regional Medical Center and Munson Medical Center, specifically in the area of cognitive and brain injury rehabilitation.
“I have the experience you need to help you understand and compensate, with strategy use, your deficit areas and function at a higher level in your life.”
When you are in Hypnosis, you feel very, very relaxed, as relaxed as when you are asleep, only you are still awake. You are always in control, and aware of your surroundings if you care to be.
Hypnosis can feel like deep meditation, daydreaming, and how you feel just before you fall asleep.
All of these states of mind are similar to what is experienced in hypnosis.We have all experienced daydreaming. When we are daydreaming, we are deeply involved in the scenery of our daydream and although we are aware of our surroundings, being in a classroom for instance, we are choosing not to attend to the classroom around us during our daydreaming experience.
What is Trance or “under” Hypnosis ?
Trance is that daydream-like state that is induced in hypnosis. It feels very pleasant, carefree and deeply restful. Being in hypnosis trance is relaxing and refreshing, like a great afternoon nap. Being “under” hypnosis, or going “under” hypnosis is the same as being “in” hypnosis or hypnotic trance state. The term “under” is not readily used now because it gives the idea that you are “under” someone else’s control. As you recall, you cannot be hypnotized unless you want to be hypnotized, so you are never “under” someone else’s control, you are as in control as you choose to be when practicing hypnosis.
Slabtown Shores - April 2018
Thursday, April 1, 2021
Michigan State University Rehabilitation Counseling Program ranked #1
U.S. News & World Report does not rank all graduate programs annually. The programs not appearing on the 2022 list and maintaining their top 20 positions are:
• No. 1 – Industrial/organizational psychology
• No. 1 – Nuclear physics
• No. 1 – Rehabilitation counseling
• No. 17 – Veterinary medicine
“Graduate education plays a vital role in producing the world’s next generation of innovators, experts, academicians and leaders,” said MSU Provost Teresa K. Woodruff, Ph.D. “MSU is especially proud of the current No. 1 rankings and the improved rankings of many academic programs across the university.”
Individual disciplinary program rankings are based strictly on peer assessments of deans and program directors.
I am proud to be a 1991 Graduate of MSU Rehabilitation Counseling Program.
Friday, August 14, 2020
Seven crucial research findings that can help people deal with COVID-19
https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/03/covid-19-research-findings
Monday, November 18, 2019
AnxietyBlog #2 The Anxiety Experience
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
CBTi - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia
Now offering: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia - CBTi
See new insights into Sleep, what’s normal sleep time, what you can do to improve sleep:
The New Science of Sleep
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Video On-Line Hypnotherapy & Counseling
