Habit Taming
Forming habits is natural.
Whenever we do something over and over it becomes automatic.
Skills can can be seen as a chain of habits: driving is simply getting into a car, starting it, looking in the mirrors, shifting gears.
Responses can be habitual (I see your face, I smile).
Acts of self-comfort can be habits. Some people come home from work and shed their work clothes, others automatically grab a beer to de-stress
Some habits are frustrating and hard to break.
When you have a habit like nail-biting, hair-pulling, or even smoking, it can feel as though the urge to do that is controlling you.
Often you might find yourself doing the habit without even realizing it, as if you were a puppet, and someone else were pulling the strings.
When you tell yourself to stop – or even yell at yourself – it’s as though you’re talking to the puppet. That won’t get you anything but frustrated. I specialize in helping you connect with the part of you that is actually pulling the strings.
Hypnosis helps you pull your own strings.
By the time a behavior becomes automatic, it has moved from the conscious mind to the subconscious. Hypnosis is the fastest, safest, and easiest way to access that level of the inner mind.
Discover what you really want.
What we do is figure out what that part of you really wants – and then find a better way to get it.
That’s why I call what we do “taming” habits – rather than conquering them. We honor the part of you that is trying desperately to give you what you need.
Instead of slaying the dragon, we take the time to get to know it and feed it what it truly needs. You inner beast can make a powerful friend and ally.
Want to tame a specific dragon?
Voss Wellness has specific experience and training in shifting habits of thinking, feeling and acting. Our specialties include:
1) smoking (or vaping) nicotine or THC
2) trichotillomania (hair-pulling)
3) over-eating (weight release)
4) alcohol relapse prevention
What’s the difference between habit and addiction?
Well, I believe you can be addicted to a thought, so there’s not as much difference as one might think.
True physical addiction, however, means that doing without something can cause possible dangerous physical withdrawal and must be treated by licensed medical providers.
Voss Wellness provides does NOT provide supervised withdrawal for alcohol, heroin, or psychiatric medication. We can support someone who has safely tapered to a level at which stopping is without risk.
SMOKING: You CAN quit quitting for good.
Part of you wants to stop. Maybe you have, even, but then there’s that part of you that says, “The hell with it. I want a cigarette.” Or maybe you even think, “I need a cigarette.”
Here’s the thing about nicotine, though: it is not as addictive as people think. For one thing, most people don’t need more and more of nicotine over time – most people settle into a habit and can have the same number of cigarettes daily for years.
The Voss Wellness smoking-cessation program (for cigarettes, vape or marijuana) is so effective that 90% of clients free themselves completely in a single session. They do not experience cravings, withdrawal, or weight gain. The stop-smoking session uses a protocol that is so successful we support it with a service guarantee: those few who need extra help will get it, FREE. They can get a hypnosis recording or up to three additional sessions, as needed.
How is this possible?
Well, the part of you that insists on buying a pack, even though you decided to stop, is the part of you that wants something. And that part of you thinks that a cigarette is the way to get what it needs.
But guess what? Nobody truly NEEDS to suck poison into your lungs. So the habit is based on a deep misunderstanding.
What DO you need? You might need something to do with your hands, connection with people, to be cool, to give yourself a break, a reward, or even a punishment.
When your inner mind figures out what you truly want, and a better way to get it, that old habit becomes completely unnecessary. So there’s no need to struggle. The dragon you tame is not nicotine – it’s your own desire.
Prepare for freedom
You can book a free phone consultation, if you have questions.
If you’re already ready and willing to breathe free, you can book your smoking cessation appointment yourself below. Set your appointment 4-14 days ahead, to give yourself time to prepare. Setting your session sets your QUIT DATE. Use that time to make two lists: One of your reasons for quitting, and another of your triggers (the times, people, places or moods that seem to cause a craving.)
The night before – or even the hour before — your session, you’ll have your last cigarette and get rid of your smoking paraphernalia including ashtrays, lighters, cigarettes, etc.
TRICHOTILLOMANIA: Hair-pulling is its own trance.
Comfort habits that also are self-harming are no longer needed when the underlying emotions are resolved.
Sometimes the inner mind has buried those true feelings so deeply it takes a while to free them. Sometimes it happens in just a few sessions.
When it comes to playing with hair, we play it by ear.
What’s important to know is that this habit is more common than most people realize. It’s often related to anxiety and/or perfectionism, but everyone is different. And just as we do with smoking, we figure out what the part of you that feels like it NEEDS to pull really needs.
You and your family also need to know that this is not your fault. It’s a behavioral addiction, like smoking. One of the reasons hypnosis is so effective is that your conscious mind does not control the chemicals that the brain produces to make us feel good: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. This happens at a subconscious level.
That’s why thinking about the problem doesn’t fix it. (Nor does having people “catch” you doing it and nagging about it.) But changing your pattern of thinking, breathing and feeling works wonders.
(You might already realize that hypnosis is so effective with trich because most people who pull are amazingly skilled at going into trance. And are so delighted to learn how to manage those pesky emotions in their own way.)
Let’s talk about what life will be like without needing to “trich” yourself.
WEIGHT: You don’t have to wait any more for a healthy relationship with food.
Hypnotists like to talk about “weight release,” rather than “weight loss” because when we lose something, we tend to find it again. How many times has that happened to you?
But even more important is realizing that most of us whose weight at an uncomfortable level are not doing anything unhealthy on purpose. IT IS NOT A MATTER OF WILL-POWER.
Most clients who come to Voss Wellness to manage their weight have lots of experience with diet and exercise regimes. What has gotten us here is usually a combination of genetics, the food supply, our schedules, childhood or adult emotional associations with food and drink and, of course, biology. That includes our hormones and micro-biome.
I’m not a nutritionist or diet expert – our focus is on creating a healthy relationship to food and to your own body and let you regain conscious control of your habits.
Often there are a lot of emotions and memories tied up in our ideas of how we want to look and feel and what other people project or demand from us. One important step is regaining the habit of eating for fuel and satisfaction, reconnecting the appetite to the body.
Our Weight Release Program includes multiple sessions over at least a 90-day period. You will also get recordings for at-home listening to reinforce your progress. And after the initial series (of 7 sessions), you’ll get a customized recording using your own images, words and motivations to support you on the path to a healthy, active life.
Let’s see if Voss Wellness is the right fit to create your fitness!
*Note: We work with binge-eating or anorexia disorders ONLY when our work is done in close consultation with a licensed medical provider.
RELAPSE PREVENTION: Choose your next steps with care.
Voss Wellness is not a licensed addiction counseling center.
We work with people who have completed a rehab or detox program and want tools to stay free of alcohol. We also work with clients who are drinking more than they think best and want harm-reduction. Although 12-step programs are absolutely wonderful for the people they help, there are many who benefit from another approach.
Strengthening your resources and making sure you’re making choices for the right reasons can be empowering. Not everyone needs to literally “hit bottom” before changing patterns. With hypnosis, you can experience powerful scenarios of your future (the imagination and memory are closely linked in the subconscious). Then choose your own path — and avoid the abyss.
The Voss Wellness program for alcohol usually includes an introductory session, to make sure we are a good match, and then six additional sessions within 90 days. You’ll also receive recordings to help practice other ways to relieve stress and to reinforce your new habits. At the end of the program, you’ll get a custom recording based on your unique goals, images and emotions.
Learn more about Addiction Freedom with hypnosis:
Make up your own mind about the way you think, feel and behave.
Voss Wellness has special training to use hypnotherapy to work with habits and addictions. After 16+ years in practice, Stephanie’s toolbox has grown to include techniques not only from hypnosis but NLP (neurolinguistic programming), mindfulness, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping), and other mind-body methods.
Some of work is inspired by classic psychology and Gestalt therapy. We are also indebted to the work of Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, Brenée Brown, Peter Levine and Jeffrey Schwartz and his 4-step therapy for OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder).
All sessions are conducted online. The initial session is about 2 hours. Returning appointments are usually 90 minutes, but can sometimes be a little more or less, so please let us know if you have less than 2 hours set aside.
Clinical Hypnotherapist Stephanie Voss may be reached on her direct line: (866) 497-9675