Hello everyone! A pleasure to speak to all of you today. I've been taking note of some questions and concerns and wanted to offer some advice and perspective. Many know that hypnotherapy is used to help people lose weight, but less know that we also work helping people overcome various eating disorders from food anxiety to outright phobias and fears.

Let me first discuss the most important thing: how and why does hypnotherapy work for how we eat, one way or another. The answer is that everything in life is a sum of association. Whether having issues with the act of eating, overeating, undereating, etc... it exists because your subconscious mind made connections and considers this reaction or behavior to be helpful. Let me stress, these associations that lead to these reactions and behaviors are viewed as self-preservation on a level; they are viewed as such because of a subconscious connection, logical or not. Hypnotherapy is a modality that addresses those associations and, at least in my work, teaches how and why they exist.

For those living with food anxieties, I ask you if this exists as a fear or a phobia? The difference is that one exists without logical cause (a phobia) and one exists from experience (a fear) and resurfaces. The second is very common when recovering from a prolonged illness; indeed, my first experience helping with this fear was my own mother after a nearly fatal illness subsided. The way each of these is addressed is different; what helps resolve a fear can actually enhance a phobia and vice versa.

Many EDs are uniquely personal, though still a product of those 'helpful' subconscious associations. Many people have lived with these issues for a very long time; creating a new normal is sometimes an issue. The challenge of creating a healthy relationship from an unhealthy one now exists and can be daunting. While the reason for its presence is unique to each of us, the solution is relatively universal. Our associations and opinions around the concept of a food or food in general need to be examined and new associations created based upon where you are right now.

All of these concepts, issues and solutions exist with the help of your Reticular Activating System, a physical part of your brain that I teach as the lens of your reality. It is your attentional filter, and it determines not only what you see in day-to-day life, but how you see it. This can include more than just feelings, but physical reactions and responses to, say, food. Any aspect of it as well... smell, taste, feel and more. It's a very powerful thing and understanding what it is and how it impacts your life is very, very helpful in creating any type of change.

Hypnotherapy isn't swinging pocket watches and clucking chickens. Speaking for myself, I have a post graduate degree in Clinical Hypnotherapy and helping people understand the reality of my profession is important to me and why I write these. Hope, options and concepts exist out there that we may not have ever considered; I'm here to help you consider one of them!