Counseling

About Hypnosis

In our world filled with anxiety, pressure and stress we tend to have negative ruminating thoughts. The negative thoughts and emotions drive us to make poor choices personally and professionally and to create obsessions or habits that create an illusion of control within our environment.

It is our mission at Happy Brain to help people retrain the brain to have an inner guide that is positive and goal oriented. One method we use is hypnosis. Hypnosis allows you to align your subconscious mind with your conscious goals and intentions and create change, rewriting the inner critic or false beliefs, more quickly. With hypnosis you are never out of control, rather, it is a very relaxing process, using an ability that you are born with, that guides your subconscious mind in the positive direction that you are looking to go. The material used to train your brain is tailored to you with you and our hypnotherapist, Kelly Locker.

Hypnosis is used for many specific purposes. We commonly help people to stop smoking, improve eating habits, reduce pain and improve the quality of what you do. For instance, many of us tend to create false beliefs that we have a need or something to happen before we can perform optimally. Hypnosis helps rewrite this false notion to give the person the power. For this reason, athletes and professionals frequent the use of hypnosis to retrain the brain and to create better habits.

It is our mission to help as many people as possible and for that reason our hypnosis is at a reasonable cost without a reduction in quality. Please contact us to schedule your session.

 

About Guided Meditation

Fear is a common, negative emotion in our society. Fear holds us back and is isolating. Trauma creates fear. Fear is not something we are born with unless our mother was exposed to trauma during her pregnancy. Traumas can be known to us and severe, such as emotional, physical or sexual abuse, or can be more benign, such as a boss who makes us feel like we cannot “get it right” or a parent who is critical or a friend who is jealous and competitive with you.

Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” We believe you are whether you think or not. It is our belief that thought requires consciousness and consciousness does not require thought. Meditation is a wonderful practice to explore your consciousness. Meditation allows us to increase self-awareness and to be in the moment. The process of meditation allows the analytical left brain to rest. This allows for a reduction in the activity of problem solving. Overly problem solving gives a scary look to our environment that there are issues all around us." Please change to: "When we overuse the tool to solve problems we create a frightening look to our world and see issues at every turn.

We find that many people want to meditate but have a difficult time doing it. It’s difficult to switch gears mentally. Meditation is also a safe space to create tailored improvements for our mental and emotional health. We believe guided meditations help by providing material that allows us to reach specific goals. Our products page offers free and reasonably priced meditations you can listen to again and again in a quiet place. Guided meditations do not require much time but do require being alone or together in a quiet, preferably dimly-lit place and to have a single focus on the meditative topic.

About Affirmations

One of the best methods to retrain our brain to speak to us in a positive, kind and respectful way is through guided affirmations. We cannot sustainably be kind to others if we do not afford ourselves that same respect. Our brain stores words or clusters of words over time from memories that are coupled with emotion. For instance, if your mother says, “I am so very proud of your good grades and effort at school.” We feel happy, a primary emotion, and an inner pride. The subsequent habit brain message that is stored is “I am a good person. I do good things.” If our mother is critical and says, “You never do what I ask!” our body feels sick, dread, and our primary emotions are sad, embarrassment and fear we will mess up again. The habit brain messages that we store from this criticism are, “You never get it right. You are a bad person. You are not good enough. I am not lovable.” The examples above are using mothers because meaning is created by the person with whom we spend most of our meaningful time as a child, usually our mothers. This person who guides us through childhood can start our path in a powerful, positive direction or can, even unintentionally, set a course for us that is fearing the next step and internally critical.

Our brains continually talk to us. The messages are either positive or negative, rarely neutral or objective, without training. Our goal at Happy Brain is to rewrite negative self-talk with positive affirmations. We offer free daily affirmations on our black board. These are best read out loud but are also effective read in silence. It is also beneficial to use your name when repeating positive messages. This is a technique to alert the brain there is something the brain needs to notice and remember. For instance, “Sarah. I believe in my ability if I put forth effort to accomplish the task. Sarah. I am awesome.”

We offer affirmations that you can listen to as you drive, in bed, before meetings and the like. They are designed to create positive inner language and assertive behaviors. Some of the affirmations are free. Others are a minimal price and, once purchased, are always available on your phone or computer to hear. Once you notice yourself saying them internally, give yourself a pat on the shoulder because the words are now part of your inner language.

RECOMMENDED CLINICIANS:

ACUPUNCTURE

Yong Kang Clinic
528 Woodleaf Court
Kirkwood, MO, 63122

CHILD PSYCHIATRIST
Michael Shanker, MD, or Daniel Reising, MD
Clayton Behavioral
9890 Clayton Road
St Louis MO 63124
314-725-1515
ADULT PSYCHIATRIST

Dale Anderson, M.D.
6365 Clayton Road
St. Louis, MO 63117
314-645-1567

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS

Dan Levin, Ph.D.
8515 Delmar Blvd Suite 220
St Louis MO 63124
314-567-1044

Lisa Emmenegger, MD
7750 Clayton Rd, Suite 204
St Louis MO 63117
314-852-2438

Dan Weinstein, Psy.D., LLC
7730 Carondelet Ave, Suite 307
Clayton, MO 63105
314-721-7201

ADULT READING TO AID WITH POSITIVE THINKING

Cultivating Lasting Happiness, Terry Fralick

and

Self-Compassion, The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Dr Kristin Neff

FAMILY READING TO ASSIST WITH PARENTING SKILLS

No Drama Discipline, Dan Siegel

and

The Parenting Handbook, Don Dinkmeyer

SCHEDULE APPOINTMENT:

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