The Three Rules of Sobriety
Part Four
Foundations Hypnosis Seattle ~ Bellevue

We began this series by looking at traditional chemical dependency treatment vs. non-traditional treatment, in this final installment we are going to look at how to use the 3 Rules of Sobriety to take an active role in the creation of your own recovery, in other words we are going to look at How you are not powerless over your drug and alcohol use.
When a client first comes to see me for an issue with drug or alcohol addiction, they are usually tired and depressed, having dealt with the consequences of their addiction on a daily basis. They are also sure that accepting the idea of powerlessness over their addiction is not how they are going to find a way out of the mess.
As you recall from the first three parts of this series, we introduced three very simple ideas or rules:
1) The Rule of Attention: What you put your attention on increases in your life.
2) The Rule of Detachment: You are not your thoughts; you are not your body, you the power behind the thoughts and feelings, you are the creator and director of your life.
3) The Rule of Deliberate Creation: Recognizing that you are in charge of your reactions, and you are attracting into your life what you truly focus on, then the best course of action would be to deliberate direct and create your life instead of just letting things happening without your conscious input or control
What you focus on is what you experience in your life. When you decide that you want to stop a behavior, such as drinking, or drug use, or smoking cigarettes, what is it that you focus on? Do you focus on the behavior that you want to rid yourself of, or do you focus on the behaviors that you want to experience?
To help you understand this better I want you to try this experiment: I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and then not think about the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor. (pause) O. K. now being very honest, how many of you immediate created an image of the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, and / or how many of you struggled to not create an image of the Statue of Liberty in the Harbor?
You see what we put our attention on, is what comes up in our minds, and what comes up in our minds is what we tend to attract or create in our lives.
When I have a client who says “but I did not create these problems in my life.” I have to agree. I am sure that they did not deliberately create, or attract these issues into their lives, but I am sure that without conscious awareness they kept setting up situations and events in their lives that would allow them to experience exactly what their thoughts were focused on.
The idea is that if you want to experience a life free of Drugs, Alcohol, or Obsessive Compulsive Behavior, then you need to figure out what it is that you do want to experience in life. What are the situations that you want to experience? Do you want to experience good relationships, good jobs, abundance, joy, and happiness? With the help of Foundations Hypnosis Seattle ~ Bellevue, you can look at, and identify those behaviors that you don’t want to have in your life, detach from the feelings associated with those behaviors, and then start deliberately creating those things that you do want.
The first step in this journey is: ADMIT WE ARE POWERLESS OVER EVENTS AND OTHER PEOPLE, BUT WE HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER OUR OWN REACTIONS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THOSE EVENTS AND OTHER PEOPLE. WE ARE YOU IN COMPLETE CONTROL OF OUR CHOICES, AND BY UTILIZING THE IMMENSE POWER OF OUR MINDS; WE CAN CREATE THE LIFE THAT WE DESIRE.
Take that first step and regain control of your life. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

The End

The Three Rules of Sobriety
Part Three
Foundations Hypnosis Seattle ~ Bellevue

So far in this series we have looked at traditional chemical dependency treatment vs. non-traditional treatment, in this case the non – traditional treatment involves the use of the three Rules of Sobriety, which are:
1) The Rule of Attention: What you put your attention on increases in your life.
2) The Rule of Detachment.
3) The Rule of Deliberate Creation.
(See Part One for further details of these rules.)
In part two of this series we looked at the basis of how the Rule of Attention / Attraction works. In this third part of the series we will look at Rule #2 The Rule of Detachment.
When a client first comes to see me, one of the ideas that I inject into their mind is that they aren’t their thoughts, they aren’t their body. They’re the consciousness behind these things. The best way to explain this is to think about a car. If you get in to the driver’s seat of a car, turn on the ignition, put the car into gear, release the brake, and then get out of the car, what would happen? The car would start aimlessly moving until it hits something or goes off the road, crashes, etc. This is much the same situation with you. Our brain is like the engine to the car, and our body is chaise of the car. With our thoughts the brain directs the activity of the body. It moves the body in various directions, but unless you, the driver of the car, i.e. the consciousness behind the thoughts, are actually directing the thoughts, our body will quickly bump into and / or crash into daily events and activities that may cause serious issues.
Now think of urges / cravings as simply thoughts, thoughts that will guide our bodies / cars into serious accidents and crashes unless you take control of those thoughts and begin directing your life.
How can you do this? The first task is to learn to detach from your thoughts. Oh I don’t mean to ignore your thoughts, thoughts are important, and very powerful things. With thoughts you can do things like solve difficult problems, or sometimes easy problems, and perform various tasks throughout your day. Without your thoughts you would simply not be able to function in this world, BUT, it is important that you learn that you don’t have to give into every thought that you have. When you have a thought that says, “It sure would feel good to have just one drink” or “I have had such a stressful week, it sure would be nice to go out and just have a little coke, crank, crack, ecstasy, GHB, etc., so I can finally relax and enjoy myself”.
What you need to be able to do is to figure out how to deal with whatever was causing your week to be so stressful in the first place, and then figure out a more appropriate response. The response should be one that does not rely upon your addiction or compulsion of choice.
This ability can be learned through the power of self hypnosis / meditation. Foundations teaches these skills along with using Clinical Hypnosis to clean up old memories, old agreements, and help you develop new images, new agreements that will allow you to move from a life of addictive behavior to a life of easy and strong recovery.
How can this be done, and what will that be like? Are you interested in a program that can change your life dramatically for the better? Be sure and come back to read part three of this series.
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End Part Three

The Three Rules of Sobriety
Part Two
Foundations Hypnosis Seattle ~ Bellevue

In part one of this series we looked at an overview of traditional Chemical Dependency treatment, and how it uses a lot of 12 step methodology to treat the issue of addiction. We also briefly looked at the Three Rules of Sobriety, and how they can be used as a more effective basis for treatment of Obsessive, Compulsive, and Addiction issues.
Those Three Rules are:
1) The Rule of Attention: What you put your attention on increases in your life.
2) The Rule of Detachment.
3) The Rule of Deliberate Creation.
(See Part One for further details of these rules.)
The First Rule is the Rule of Attention, What you put your attention on increases in your life. By now many of you have heard, seen, or read, The Secret, the story of the Law of Attraction. Simply put, the idea is that everything that exists is made of energy, you, the clothes you wear, the air you breathe, the chair that you sit in, everything, including the thoughts that we think.
Energy vibrates, and so everything that exists has a vibrational pattern or frequency. Think about that, it has been proving that everything that exists has a vibrational pattern or frequency. The air you breathe, the earth you stand on, the objects you hold in your hand, your body, everything vibrates. That includes your thoughts. Your thoughts are actually electro chemical bits of information, and they have their own vibrational frequency.
There is one law of physics that cannot be broken, vibrations attract vibrations. Like a magnet, our thoughts, and our feelings, attract corresponding vibrational patterns that will support the attracting pattern. In other words if you are vibrating in a negative pattern, i.e. low self worth, low self esteem, you will continue to attract events, and people into your life that will support that vibrational pattern.
Now here is the rub, if you focus all of your attention on your drug of choice, “I don’t want to use drugs, or I don’t want to drink alcohol”, then what you are actually doing is creating the feeling of dread and imagery of using drugs, and alcohol. The feelings created by the thoughts are so powerful in their vibrational attraction, that they will consistently give you the same events and people in your life that will ALLOW you to continue the same behavior over and over again.
If you use drugs to create a feeling of relief, numbness, or pleasure, then you need to figure out other events and ideas that will give you that feeling of pleasure, or relief from your stresses, and learn how to create those types of images in your mind.
It has been discovered that we have thousands and thousands of random thoughts each day, and to even try to think about controlling every thought could scare you enough to go right out and escape the thought by grabbing your drug of choice.
Instead, you must begin to think not so much in terms of thoughts, but in terms of the feelings created by those thoughts. With the power of Hypnosis, you can start cleaning up old images, old thoughts, that consistently lead you back to the same behavior over and over again. Utilizing a powerful technique called Emotional Release Therapy, you can detach from the feelings attached to particular memories, and start building new images, new thoughts that will attract and manifest your new life of Recovery.
How can all this be possible? Well tune into Part Three to learn more.
End Part Two

The Three Rules of Sobriety
Part One
Foundations Hypnosis Seattle ~ Bellevue

A typical call to Foundations may involve a client who is searching for answers to their addiction issues that do not include the use of a 12 step group, and traditional therapy.
Years ago when I was first starting out as a chemical dependency counselor, I was trained in the idea that the only way to treat addiction was through the Minnesota Model, which was based on traditional 12 step jargon.
Back in those days most people who entered into the field of chemical dependency did so because they had gone through their own recovery process, and were bound and determined to help other addicts by getting certified as a chemical dependency counselor, (which back then took about 8 months), and then burnt out after a couple of years of trying to make people quit using these same rules and steps.
Times have changed. When I work with a client who is experiencing chemical dependency issues, I approach it from a view point deemed the three rules of sobriety by one of my clients. These three rules are as follows:
1) The Rule of Attention: What you put your attention on increases in your life.
2) The Rule of Detachment: You are not your thoughts, you are not your body, you are something much, much, more. An urge or a craving is simply a thought that creates an image that creates a feeling. When you learn to detach from your thoughts, you can learn to take control of your reactions, and thus become and an active participant in creating a life free of alcohol and / or drugs.
3) The Rule of Deliberate Creation: Utilizing the power of the brain through hypnosis, you can begin to clean up old images and programs, and create new images, new programs that produce feelings of high self worth, high self esteem, and that will allow you to manifest and experience the type of life that you truly want.
It sounds too good to be true, there has to be some sort of catch, or there has to be more to it than that. Yet hundreds of men and women have gotten themselves off of various drugs, including Crystal Methamphetamine, and Alcohol, and have been able to completely change their lives around.
Just listen to what one client had to say about the Foundations method:
* “I strongly recommend D.L. to anyone looking to seriously face their challenges/fears. He has an amazing ability to zero in on an issue and not waste time talking about all the trivial stuff. During the toughest period of my life, D.L. was one person who I knew believed in my ability to overcome the greatest challenges. Rather than allow me to focus on the problem, he helped me see things in a new light and discover a completely new way of living. Today, I enjoy my life and have a hopefulness and confidence I could never have imagined. I believe that D.L. was the spark that helped fuel my new life.”
Now how is this possible given all of the claims and the warnings put out by 12 step groups and traditional chemical dependency treatment agencies? How can just three simple rules bring about such life changing outcomes?
The first thing to realize is that when you use 12 step methodologies, it does work, for many people, and it is a good first step into sobriety. The second thing to realize is that it does not work for many people, and as a first step it leaves a lot to be desired.
I can’t tell you how many times over the years of my work as a CDP, that I have sat with friends and former clients, who were absolutely positive that despite the fact that they had not used in several years, that they were doomed to relapse on their 12 step birthday.
Twelve steppers are taught that they have to keep coming back for the rest of their lives; the only way to escape the lure of their addiction is to replace that lure with the lure of 12 step meetings.
I also can’t tell you how many times over the last several years that I have had friends and clients who have come to me, and admitted that they feel depressed, they find themselves tied to their meetings in the same way that they are tied to their drug usage. Their question is, “Is this all that there is?”.
I have good news for you, this is not all that there is. There is another road to take, one that may or may not include 12 support groups, but it does include support, it does include you working on your issues, and finally ridding yourself of the need to escape from your issues by using outside influences such as obsessive compulsive behaviors, drugs, or alcohol, or years of talk therapy.
The three rules of sobriety can, and have lead people to a clean and sober life style. It has and can help people regain their self worth, and self esteem, and it has taught people that they are not powerless over their own actions.

End Part One