Denise Billen-Mejia 0:07
Welcome to Two Hypnotherapists Talking with me, Denise Billen-Mejia in Delaware, USA.
Martin Furber 0:13
And me Martin Furber in Preston UK.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:16
This weekly podcast is for anyone and everyone who would like to know more about fascinating subject of hypnosis and the benefits that it offers.
Martin Furber 0:24
I'm a clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist,
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:27
I'm a retired medical doctor and consulting hypnotist.
Martin Furber 0:31
We are two hypnotherapists talking.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:33
So let's get on with the episode.
Martin Furber 0:36
Okay, let's get on with the show indeed. And, Denise, please introduce our guest for this week.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:42
This is my new friend Ann Socolofsky. Is that how you pronounce your name? Great, okay, Ann is a physician as well. And she is in the Midwest in Kansas, sometimes and sometimes in South Dakota. And she's an interesting physician, a lot of doctors have heard of hypnosis, some don't have any particular view on it. But she actually came across it when she was a child. And so she agreed to come and talk to us about her experience on the other side of hypnosis as a patient or client. Thank you so much for joining us Ann.
Ann Socolofsky 1:18
Yes, I'm glad to be here.
Denise Billen-Mejia 1:20
So what would you like to chat about? What do you remember? When was the first time you were hypnotised? Or did you watch other people being hypnotised and then you found out about it?
Ann Socolofsky 1:29
Well, very interesting. It was when I was about eight years old, that's my general estimate. My mom wanted to go to a self hypnosis class. But she didn't want to go by herself. And so she wanted me to go along, and, you know, I was a kid that was always curious about all kinds of things. And so I said, Sure. And so they trained us. In those days, one of the things, the simplest things they did is with the pendulum, where you hold a ball on the end of a string or at the end of the chain, and then they would ask questions, and it would go in certain directions to answer the questions. And then they would walk you through different questions. And that was sort of an exercise to get you into the mindset before they went ahead with more training and hypnosis. And so they did, what today might be considered basic visualisation, and putting yourself into sort of a hypnotic state to make you more susceptible to the visualisations. So we learned to do that. And then the other thing was my mom needed to have some surgery. I don't remember what the surgery was, but she went to the hypnotist to attend a class, and had him give her the idea that she was going to go through the surgery extremely well, and there would be no problems. And that's exactly what happened. And so after that, whenever her or my grandmother needed to have any kind of medical procedures done, or dental procedures done, they would go to the hypnotist beforehand, and they would get the hypnosis station to show that everything was going to go well, and that they would have a good outcome. And it was amazing. They recovered really fast, and they never had any complications. And that sort of taught me to use hypnosis myself.
Denise Billen-Mejia 3:41
Do you practice self hypnosis?
Ann Socolofsky 3:44
I do visualisations which I consider sort of self hypnosis. You know, when I was a kid, I discovered if I did the sort of trance-training, hypnosis-training, right before I went to sleep at night, and visualise what I wanted to have happen, that things would go in that direction. And I used that all through medical school, when I was studying, and I've used it when I've been dealing with other problems and things. It's been very helpful.
Denise Billen-Mejia 4:24
So have you ever used it with patients?
Ann Socolofsky 4:31
Um, not specifically saying that I'm doing hypnosis. But I have worked with patients that are open to the idea of mindset, and have walked them through various things that they could do. One example was someone who was dealing with someone who was really obnoxious at their workplace and was causing them a lot of trouble. And one of the techniques I had learned was to imagine a bubble around yourself protecting you, so nothing harmful could get through. And so I was telling them how to do that, and they came back to me and they said, as soon as I started picturing the bubble, the person just, and I hadn't, they hadn't said anything, that person that was bothering him just said, Well, if you're going to be that way, there's nothing I can do to deal with you, and left. And so they came back and said, Wow, that was amazing, now I just do that, and they always leave me alone. I thought that was pretty cool.
Denise Billen-Mejia 5:43
What else can you tell us about your childhood? Were you born in Kansas?
Ann Socolofsky 5:49
Yeah, I was born in Kansas. And I'll say one of the things that was good about it was that my family was very open to things like hypnosis, and alternative ways of looking at the world, alternative medicine. And I mean, in those days here in the United States, there's a big divide between MDs, medical doctors, and ODS, or DEOs osteopathic doctors. And we went to an osteopathic doctor, who would do the manipulation, you know, like the neck and the back and stuff. And so those doctors weren't well tolerated by the general medical establishment for a long time. So, you know, from the time I was growing up, we had sort of alternative medicine.
Denise Billen-Mejia 6:49
I really hate that term. It's not alternative if it works, it's complimentary.
Ann Socolofsky 6:55
Or integrative, which, you know, I started doing it in the days it was still alternative, so that has stuck with me. When I went to medical school and actually ended up being a liability, because, well, one of the things was that when I did my training, I started out wanting to be a veterinarian. And I did the pre veterinarian training, which has a lot of training on nutrition. So when I went to medical school, I had all of these alternative therapies, integrative medicine, therapies, in my mind, from my upbringing, and I had all this nutrition that I learned from my pre vet. And so I didn't fit in very well, with a traditional medical training, because I would look at things and I would wonder, you know, why are you doing this? Or why aren't you doing that? And those were things that people didn't particularly like, and but I think, you know, like, not looking at the nutrition behind an illness, or not looking at the mindset behind an illness. And I remember, in one case, when I was doing a cardiology rotation, we had a woman was having really bad chest pain, and they couldn't find a cause other than cardiology testing was fine. And I pointed out that her chest pain started exactly one year, from when she saw her mother collapse and die from a heart attack. And I said, you know, don't you think this anniversary of this death would be a cause for her to be having all this chest pain, and maybe we should look at some ways to see if that's what's going on and help her deal with it. The cardiologist got quite mad at me and said, you know, we don't deal with that kind of stuff. We deal with the real world and what's going on with it.
Denise Billen-Mejia 9:08
Right.
Ann Socolofsky 9:10
And, you know, that's a case where I think using, possibly something like hypnosis or using some kind of integrative medicine therapies would have been very beneficial for her.
Denise Billen-Mejia 9:23
I suppose that she was sort of a delayed Broken heart syndrome. I can never remember....
Ann Socolofsky 9:30
Yeah. I think the anniversary of what happened, brought it up for her. And so in my training, it was frustrating. I went to a medical school that was very strongly against any kind of Integrative Medicine at the time I went there. And so I was always kind of the the outsider to some degree because of that.
Martin Furber 9:58
I'm getting the impression Ann, you were about 30 years ahead of your time when you were in med school.
Ann Socolofsky 10:05
You know, here in Kansas, things are very conservative, and that's still very true. And so there was a lot of interesting stuff going on in the east and west coast in the United States. But people in Kansas, I had one doctor say we don't do that kind of voodoo medicine. So that kind of stuff was not very well looked at by the medical people,
Denise Billen-Mejia 10:32
Even though psychiatrists are well accepted as medical professionals, like most people. So you would think that the effect of the mind upon body, would have been at least nodded at.
Ann Socolofsky 10:46
The psychiatrists whereI went to medical school, did not do any kind of psychotherapy, they would send people to psychologists. They were strictly there for providing medication.
Denise Billen-Mejia 11:00
Yeah.
Ann Socolofsky 11:00
And so that's what they focused on, is what medicines they could use for psychological concerns. One of the interesting things I did was when I was in medical school, we did have the opportunity to take electives. And I met an anthropologist, she was a wonderful woman, and so I did medical anthropology. And my medical anthropology was to go investigate other healing systems in the area. And so as part of that, I went to one of the people who eventually produced one of the first books on the keto diet, I went to a spiritualist event where they were doing the spiritualist like the old fashioned seance type people, where they were doing spiritual healing of people, and a variety of different things like that, and then wrote it all up as medical anthropology. And it got accepted as credit while I was a medical student. And that was pretty fun, I got it. I investigated float tanks. I don't know, if you...
Denise Billen-Mejia 12:23
I have been in a float tank. They're very good.
Martin Furber 12:27
Very calming.
Ann Socolofsky 12:29
Yes, I loved that, and you know, and then when I did the float tank, I could get them to play. They had videos that they would, they would play up on the screen. And so I could do sort of self hypnosis in the float tank, you'd be really relaxed, and then whatever was on the screen, you would really respond to, and that really got me through medical school, I had a year long membership in the float tank, where I could go in up to three times a week. And you know...
Denise Billen-Mejia 13:03
Great when you're sleep deprived,
Ann Socolofsky 13:04
Oh, yeah. But I don't know any place around here that has float tanks anymore. It's kind of lost favour. I thought it was a very beneficial thing. And it really ties into doing hypnosis, if you get the place like when I went to that had, they had a screen inside the tank, where you could get pictures, but then they also had audio recordings of different things. So if there was something you wanted to focus on, like healing, or, I never did it, but I saw they had one on how to improve your golf game! And it was amazing the variety of topics they had, that you could either listen to, or they would do a little bit of visual thing inside the tank. You know how they did that. But it was a very good experience, and that went into my medical anthropology project whilst doing that as well. So sometimes even in the worst system, there are ways to get around these things.
Denise Billen-Mejia 14:14
Do you feel this is limited now?
Ann Socolofsky 14:19
I don't think as much. But recently, I've been doing telemedicine, and which is seeing patients by video and sometimes by phone. And our company, is, the company I've worked with has always been very rigid as far as what they allow us to tell patients. And if it's not on the official medical guidelines, then
Denise Billen-Mejia 14:47
So, it's probably the attorney's version of what you should be doing.
Ann Socolofsky 14:51
You know, that I often will just go ahead and tell patients other alternatives. You know, I usually say do you want, you know, any alternatives to this? And some of the people will say, No, just give me medicine. And some say yes, let's try something else. And I will then say, you know, this is what I would do if I were you. And I have recommended hypnotherapy to people, as well as other types of therapy.
Denise Billen-Mejia 15:21
Well, what kinds of issues have you recommended people for?
Ann Socolofsky 15:24
Panic attacks is a big one. Because there's a lot of people who have panic attacks. And sometimes, situational things where they're trying to deal with someone, and they're feeling depressed, or they're feeling just a low level anxiety in their life. And sometimes with some problems that show up like stomach upsets, or headaches, that may have a impact on their life, that there's other things going on. And so sometimes I've recommended, well try this. I also recommend some things sometimes like acupuncture and nutritional things.
Denise Billen-Mejia 16:13
Acupuncture is getting a lot more mainstream now, It used to be woo-woo.
Ann Socolofsky 16:19
Yeah, I learned acupuncture, and when I tried to do it in the state of Kansas, it was considered not appropriate to do. And now it's very common here. When I was doing it was thirty years ago, and at that time, it was still considered kind of outside the mainstream. Yeah, that's been pretty accepted. I'll tell you one way, hypnotherapy doesn't work. If you want to hear my failed experiment,
Denise Billen-Mejia 16:55
Please, let's be completely honest and transparent about things.
Ann Socolofsky 17:00
So when I was a kid, when I was, this was probably I was in my early teens, I thought, well, if I can do this self-hypnosis and visualise things, and have these good outcomes, then let's see what else I can do. And at that time, I had a tooth that had a filling in it, and I said, I'm gonna grow a new tooth. So I started visualising a whole, intact tooth instead of the tooth with the fillings. And I would do that every night. I did that for months. And then the tooth broke, and I had to have a cap put on it on it.
Denise Billen-Mejia 17:50
A new whole tooth!
Ann Socolofsky 17:53
I didn't watch how that came about. But it taught me one of the things that taught me that I've always considered a rule for self hypnosis and visualisations is that the universe will manifest it in the easiest ways that fit with the physical laws of the world, that it's not going to be miraculous, you know, something totally different in this world, that it's gonna happen. It'll come about, but it'll come about some way that fits with the natural mechanisms. That's a good lesson for me never sad that I didn't grow a tooth.
Martin Furber 18:38
So you got a whole tooth just not quite in the way you imagined it
Ann Socolofsky 18:42
It was exactly what I was visualising.
Denise Billen-Mejia 18:47
So do you think? Do you think that Kansas is still less likely to investigate things like that? Or if the east and west coast are still the ones that are driving the things?
Ann Socolofsky 19:01
Yeah, you know, I see people here in Kansas, I've seen physicians and medical people who've been open to integrative medicine. And there is there's much more here than there used to be. But I still see practitioners who say, this just is not a welcoming environment, and they leave to go east or west. And so, I have seen people feel kind of isolated, and doing integrative medicine, but it has grown a lot. We've had some support groups for Integrative Medicine. And we had one group that met pretty regularly until Covid hit here, and then we weren't able to continue our meetings, but it included mostly people who did things like Reiki and you know, different, procedures.
Denise Billen-Mejia 20:04
There's even a specialty board now for lifestyle medicine and for culinary medicine. It's not quite at the board level yet, but it's getting there.
Martin Furber 20:12
Yeah, we have a really unusual situation in this country, we have the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, who recommend hypnotherapy in many things like IBS, for example, but then we have the National Health Service that won't pay for it.
Ann Socolofsky 20:30
Wow. Yeah.
Denise Billen-Mejia 20:33
Yeah, hypnosis is the number one, the first thing they're supposed to offer for IBS these days, but they're not prepared to pay for it.
Ann Socolofsky 20:40
Good, yeah, that would be a good idea, really. I think, I don't know about any clinical trials on that?
Denise Billen-Mejia 20:50
There's quite a few, I'll send you some. The Duke University have a whole protocol, a 12 week protocol.
Ann Socolofsky 21:02
Oh, okay.
Denise Billen-Mejia 21:05
So, you always knew you wanted to be a doctor, but you thought you were going to be a doctor for animals first. Did you have lots of animals when you're growing up.
Ann Socolofsky 21:15
Yeah, we did, dogs and cats, and my youngest sister won a pony. She went to the fair for her birthday, and they were giving away a pony, if you entered a raffle. Sheasked Dad, if I win the pony, can I keep it? And he said, Oh, of course, because he didn't think she would win. When they called and said she'd won it, my dad was in total shock. But we lived on several acres of land, and so my sister built, she herself built a little stall for the pony, and she fed that pony and raised it. So we had quite a variety of different kinds of animals that we had. And I wanted to be a veterinarian I, I was really in tune with a lot of animals. And then when I went to school, here in the United States, becoming a veterinarian is much harder than become a physician. They, the classes require a much higher grade point average. Yeah, yeah.
Denise Billen-Mejia 22:31
And, a lot more anatomy, there's a different anatomy for all sorts of things.
Ann Socolofsky 22:37
Yeah, that was kind of fun. I really liked the comparative anatomy. And I thought that was beneficial. And then it was just, I knew I didn't quite have the high enough grades to get into veterinary school. And I also got some practical lab experience with large animals like cattle, and horses. And I was like, you know, being in knee deep in cattle manure was not so appealing.
Denise Billen-Mejia 23:16
I've never met you in real life, but you're not particularly tall.
Ann Socolofsky 23:20
No, I'm about 5'6, then, you know, getting covered with cow manure was like, I had to burn my clothes, I had to throw them away. And well I thought, well, I'll go through a lot of clothes if I go through this fad. And so for a while, I worked in a lab, and it was a very interesting lab, because I had an office in the lab. And the other half of my lab was cows. It was cows that were being used to test drugs for dairy cattle to help prevent them from bloating. And so I shared my space with a couple of cows. That was kind of fun. And but it was kind of like, what am I going to do with my life. And then I had a medical visit. And I was complaining about the doctor. And I said, you know, he really didn't address my problem. And my friend said, if you think you're so smart, why aren't you a doctor? And I was like, Oh, I can go to medical school. I never thought of that. And so I had to take a couple of classes to meet the qualifications. And I did that and I applied and I got accepted right away. And so that was a whole change in career.
Denise Billen-Mejia 24:44
Yes, you're a vet, that's just for one animal. That's okay.
Ann Socolofsky 24:49
That's what's the companions say? Yeah, yeah.
Martin Furber 24:52
So I'm going back to when you were in med school, and what were the ratio of males to females studying to be Doctors?
Ann Socolofsky 25:03
Probably a fourth were female.
Denise Billen-Mejia 25:05
Yeah, it was about that for me.
Ann Socolofsky 25:08
Now the same medical school, it's a little bit more than half.
Denise Billen-Mejia 25:13
Yeah, there's been a big change, although still in the administrative and the highly paid ones tend still to skew masculine. Some of that is the mommy track, as they call it. Part of it, but most of it is just prejudice, and unintentional. But I think most people, it's unconscious bias. What made you go into family practice? Was there a particular...
Ann Socolofsky 25:39
Well, I started out in psychiatry, I did a year of psychiatric training. And my impression of psychiatry at that time, I had a very limited experience as a medical student in psychiatry. But I had more of an impression there would be some things like psychotherapy and some things like that. But the school that I went to was very much focused on what medications to use, and even doing electroconvulsive therapy UCT. And I didn't feel comfortable with all of that. And so after a year of doing that, I took time off, I was pregnant at the time, I took time off to have my children. And then when I went back, I decided I'd prefer to do family medicine, it still allowed a lot of that interaction with patients, which was nice. And the other thing is, I get bored easily. And I like to investigate a lot of different things. And the nice thing about family medicine is that you are exposed to a variety of things. And so I dealt with, you know, in a typical day, I might see someone who's dealing with Alzheimer's, and someone who's brought in their newborn baby to be examined. And, you know, someone who has a stomachache or a cold, it may just be a variety of things all through the day. And I really liked that. That's one of the things I like about it.
Denise Billen-Mejia 27:19
One of the advantages, I think, is that you can be the doctor for the whole family. So the way that that family dynamic affects illness can be really, really useful to you if you have that background.
Martin Furber 27:31
Can you believe we've more than fill an episode up?
Denise Billen-Mejia 27:36
Is there anything you would like to tell us about other than what we have said so far?
Ann Socolofsky 27:43
Keep an open mind and talk with patients and see what they're open to?
Denise Billen-Mejia 27:51
Right? Are you seeing clients for coaching at the moment? Or is that something? So you must you must give us your information for that. So it can be in the show notes. So anybody, particularly people who are listening from Kansas, but anywhere in the world if you could have an internet connection, right.
Ann Socolofsky 28:08
Right. And so right now I advise they go to my email, which is [email protected]. I'll put that in the show notes in the heading put coaching, or you know, something like that, so I know that it's not spam. And I am working on getting my website up, but that's probably going to be about a month down the road before I'll have that up and working. And meanwhile, I am doing a limited amount of coaching. And most of the time when people contact me I'll do, unless they have some really major specific concerns, I'll just do an initial consult to figure out where they're at and what things will be the most beneficial for helping him.
Denise Billen-Mejia 29:04
I hope to have you back in a few months. So you can tell us how it's going.
Martin Furber 29:07
Yeah, absolutely, Ann, it's been a real pleasure. It's lovely to meet another doctor who says 'Have an open mind'.
Denise Billen-Mejia 29:25
We hope you've enjoyed listening. Please remember, this podcast is designed to give you an insight into therapeutic hypnosis. That is for educational purposes only. So remember, consult with your own healthcare professional if you think something you've heard may apply to you or a loved one.
Martin Furber 29:41
If you found this episode useful, you can apply for free continuing professional development or CME credits. Using the link provided in the show notes. Feel free to contact either of us through the links in the show notes. Join us again next week.
