The Sadness of Secondary Gain

Posted on April 18, 2017 by rick_ranum

I recently had a client with secondary gain. Secondary gain is defined as: “any advantage, as increased attention, disability benefits, or release from unpleasant responsibilities, obtained as a result of having an illness”.

A man goes to his doctor because he has a chicken attached to his head. This is a problem, having a chicken attached to his head. The doctor examines him and asks him to come back the next week. When he returns the doctor says he can remove the attached chicken. The man pauses and thinks for a minute and replies he doesn’t want the chicken removed. The doctor is astonished and asks “why?” The man replies, because I like the eggs.

My client has a difficult problem with migraines. When I mentioned wouldn’t it be nice to be free of the migraines and return to work instead of subsisting on disability, the reply was that that might mean going back to school to catch up to the current technology in the former job. Rather they would prefer to be well enough to engage in the volunteer work they enjoyed but not well enough to be off of the disability.

I bring this up because many of us have enough “benefits” from our problems to want those problems to continue rather than face the change or uncertainty of returning to full mental or physical health.

As a side note: Migraines affect an estimated 38 million Americans. They can strike both young and old, but a majority of sufferers are women, and/or between the ages of 35 and 55.

Worldwide, as many as 1 billion people are affected, making migraine the third most prevalent illness in the world.

Jealousy and Envy

Posted on January 12, 2017 by rick_ranum

There is a woman, Teal Swan, and she has a wealth of knowledge she shares. This video is has a point of view about jealousy and envy that is really interesting.

I summarize her view this way: Envy is the emotion we experience when we have an extreme desire for something someone has that you don’t think you can have and believing you are not worthy of it. Jealousy is the emotion we feel when we are afraid of losing something of great value to us. So, on occurs when we want to keep what we have and the other occurs when we want to get what we don’t have. In both cases we are in fear. This is a form of lack.
“Don’t set your mind on things you don’t possess…but count the blessings you actually possess and think how much you would desire them if they weren’t already yours.”
Marcus Aurelius

Jealousy and envy exist when we are in lack and see ourselves as separate from all others. If, in fact, we are all one, then anything anyone else has or gains is already part of us. Its the ego concerned with a threat.

Jealousy a precious thing your going to lose.
Envy, what precious thing do you not have and want?

What do you believe you lack? Make a list of how many ways you do have that thing in your life. Or, think of a person who has significantly less than you do in your area of lack and imagine how that person would feel looking at your life.

Jealousy and envy are very powerful in that they tell us precisely what we want and what we need.

In relationships jealousy often arises because of a third party threat and we do what we can to eliminate the threat to our connection with someone. We feel unincluded. Better to use the feeling to deepen our connection with our partner and ourselves.

Jealousy happens to all of us at sometime. Soothe yourself by accepting it is okay to feel the way you feel. Now look at your beliefs, feeling this way means there is a painful part in you connected to this feeling. Emotions are connected to your thoughts. Thoughts create emotions.

Childhood Trance Learning & the relativity of Time

Posted on November 19, 2015 by rick_ranum

You know how it is, you get so busy, and busy can lead to stress and then to activities to release stress that themselves can be stressful. It is not always easy creating time to gift yourself with the fulfillment of a passion, time to help others, and, balancing life with laughter, joy, exercise and inner reflection.

Can you imagine living in inner peace. Can you imagine living in inner peace for five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, sixty minutes or more? Most of us have been in this mysterious place. It probably occurred most often when we were children.

Being a child before the age of six or seven is to live in the brainwave state of trance. A state of trance awash in the meanings coming to us through intuitive feeling, sensing, and knowing. We float around in a theta brainwave state, like experiencing a lucid dream. No wonder we are so “programmed” by our complete surroundings in those early years. One of the few simple ways of re-experiencing this state of mind is through hypnosis. We go to an altered state without falling asleep or being unaware.

A client this week estimated our hypnosis session lasted ten minutes. It was over an hour. There are places we can go in consciousness that change the flow of time.

Is that why time seems so different now that we are adults? I often hear people talk about how mystifying time is, at times. Many say it seems compressed, faster, or indescribably different.. People have so many responsibilities and sometimes living in the moment may not seem like a good use of time.

As a child, before classifying something with a “name”, we just experience it. A rose is just a beautiful thing to be understood through four senses (delicate petals, thorny stem, alluring scent and brilliant color). Adults see the flower classified minimally as a rose, or in detail, as a Autumn Damask / Quatre Saisons variety. We are the many who sometimes address our attention to the negative. We see the rose and before we allow ourselves to embrace and experience it, we turn our attention to the weeds growing around it. Can you imagine weeding a garden as you embrace and experience the garden?