A Wellness Counselor's Perspective on CAM

 According to the text book, Wellness Counseling by Paul F Granello, (2013), more and more American are seeking alternative therapy to traditional medicine. People with chronic conditions such as insomnia, back aches, neck pain, and headaches are seeking unconventional therapy. The national Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)  has been formed as a response to the Federal Government in response to the growing trend of Americans seeking non-traditional services. NCCAM is now a part of the National Institutes of Health. NCCAM organizes and defined the world of CAM so that research can be done to explore the efficacy of these approaches. 

Conventional Medicine: a model of care that may only view the body as a "biochemical machine." Camplemtay medicine is uses together with  conventional medicine. 

Alternative medicine is used in place of conventional medicine.

Wellness Counseling may deal with the whole body, including the brain, consciousness, and entire being. Wellness Counselors are open to working with a variety of different types types of healthcare professionals. They are open to clients finding alternative, restorative, complementary treatments that might have a curative affect on their health and wellbeing.Wellness counselors are advocates for their clients and do not endorse quack cures, fallacious claims, or procedures that would endanger or potentially harm the client. Many therapists offer CAM Services as an adjunct to their counseling practice. CAM services for counselors vary from state to state and many states require licensure or board certification of CAM providers. 

Medical Model: A western model of health care called a scientific model.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine: is derived from "indigenous cultures."

Integrative Healthcare: Extensions of the combination of the traditional western medical model and CAM.

They help their clients find the motivation and tools to get to their physical, emotional, and spiritual health goals.

Those goals might include:

• Stay motivated to carry out an exercise program
• Improve relationships with better communication
• Loose weight and maintain weight loss
• Set heatlhy boundaries
• Eat better
• Stop smoking
• Release negative thoughts
• Personal & emotional growth
• Decrease stress
• Create a healthy lifestyle

 A wellness coach will help you make better general choices that fit your lifestyle.

Cathy Armstrong offers holistic life coaching sessions that are tailored to meet the need of each individual client and will incorporate strategies from within Mindfulness, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and Emotional Freedom Technique. You will look at the total you, in Mind, Body, and Sprit.  As part of the holistic coaching you will learn about creating a balanced lifestyle. We will discuss exercise for heatlh and stress relief, proper nutrition, aromatherapy, and use tools such as affirmations, guided imagery, autogenic training, visualization, and thought stopping as a way of providing additional support to your physical, mental and emotional needs. Part of your coaching sessions will be aimed to bring  personal awareness, balance, clarity, and focus,. You will learn creative tools for self-discovery and personal and professional success. Sessions are designed to help you create a  a healthier, happier, more relaxed and peacefulr,more confident you.

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a  form of intense focued deep relaxation where the "operator"  guides the client into a relaxed, suggestible state of mind  in which a hypnotic "transe is induced." The "operator" offers post-hypnotic suggestions for relief of symptoms.  A transe state is a  natural state of being that we shift back and forth between our conscious and subconscious mind frequently. It is like a daydream, or being engrossed in a good book or movie. It is a natural process that occurs every day This trance state is a state of mind that bypasses our internal critic and is a suggestable state for change. A person does not have to be a licensed mental health professional to pracitce hypnosis.
Hypnotherapy is the practice of psychotherapy with a client who is in the hypnotic altered state of consciousness by a licensed mental health professional with advanced training in the field of hypnotherapy. It is a  powerful way to access the source of distress, like depression and anxiety, and for people to reconnect with dissociated emotions and disowned parts of themselves. Hypnotherapy helps therapists and client get closer to the source of a client’s issues by opening the doorway to their subconscious mind.While hypnosis and hypnotherapy are in the same “family,” they are very different from each other. The difference is that hypnotherapy is an internationally-recognized therapy technique for treating mental and psychosomatic issues and uses hypnosis to break through to the subconscious mind to better understand the foundation of the issues a client is dealing with.Hypnosis is a  form of intense focued deep relaxation where the "operator"  guides the client into a relaxed, suggestible state of mind  in which a hypnotic "transe is induced." The "operator" offers post-hypnotic suggestions for relief of symptoms.  A transe state is a  natural state of being that we shift back and forth between our conscious and subconscious mind frequently. It is like a daydream, or being engrossed in a good book or movie. It is a natural process that occurs every day This trance state is a state of mind that bypasses our internal critic and is a suggestable state for change. A person does not have to be a licensed mental health professional to pracitce hypnosis.
Hypnotherapy is the practice of psychotherapy with a client who is in the hypnotic altered state of consciousness by a licensed mental health professional with advanced training in the field of hypnotherapy. It is a  powerful way to access the source of distress, like depression and anxiety, and for people to reconnect with dissociated emotions and disowned parts of themselves. Hypnotherapy helps therapists and client get closer to the source of a client’s issues by opening the doorway to their subconscious mind.While hypnosis and hypnotherapy are in the same “family,” they are very different from each other. The difference is that hypnotherapy is an internationally-recognized therapy technique for treating mental and psychosomatic issues and uses hypnosis to break through to the subconscious mind to better understand the foundation of the issues a client is dealing with.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy that was created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s. NLP is not covered by insurance and is not used with clients with serious mental health diagnoses. NLP is used by some hypnotherapists, professional life and career coaches, and in Corporate America.. It is used by many companies that organize seminars and workshops on management training for businesses.Corporate gurus like Tony Robbins is well known for his work in NLP.

NLP's creators claim there is a connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic) and behavioral patterns learned through experience (programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. Life coaching and hypnosis tend to work with behavior change, in my experience that traditional psychotherapy and focused more on the here and now and is very goal oriented. Many clients have often reported improvement in a single session.