Gambling and other Compulsive Behaviors

Gambling
When your gambling is out of control, it can affect all aspects of your life in a negative way. Compulsive gambling is an impulse control disorder and the term compulsive gambling is used to describe the actions of a person whose gambling is having destructive consequences. While it is a difficult compulsion to live with, it is certainly one that can be helped through hypnotherapy.

Compulsive gambling is a serious habit. It can lead you to risk your financial security, your personal relationships, and anything else that you value. Very often compulsive gamblers are people who are easily bored and are always looking for action and excitement. It’s not surprising that gambling is such an attractive activity to this person.
You may define symptoms of compulsive gambling as follows:

• Preoccupation with gambling
• Hiding gambling
• Chasing losses (gambling even more to try and recoup what was lost)
• Lying to family and friends about the extent of gambling
• Unable to stop gambling even if it means risking job, relationships or other opportunities
• Committing fraud, theft or using other illegal means to get money to gamble.
• In extreme cases. Financial disaster, legal troubles, loss of family and employment

For some, a gambling habit may start out as an occasional entertainment activity, but quickly turns into a compulsion that is difficult to control. For others, it represents obsessive thoughts and emotions that are associated or attached to actions of negative gambling behavior. “People with impulse-control disorders usually feel a sense of emotional arousal or excitement before engaging in the behavior, followed by pleasure and gratification, and then guilt or remorse.”***

If you are looking for help, hypnotherapy can effectively treat this compulsion.
Hypnosis will control your habit to gamble and thus you begin your road to recovery.

***Compulsive Gambling/ Mayo Clinic January 20, 2009

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) takes many different forms. The common factor is a pattern of thought that causes you to repeat something over and over again.

OCD ranges from repeatedly checking that the faucets are turned off, the doors and windows are locked or there is ‘nothing under the bed’, to someone who washes their hands over and over until they are raw and bleeding because they are afraid of germs.

There is also an OCD category of ‘obsessive thoughts’, where a person cannot seem to get the ‘bad’ thoughts out of their mind. Some people worry constantly about danger, both real and imagined. Then there are those who obsessively engage in some physical activity, such as picking at their face, pulling their hair or biting their nails.

Your thoughts create feelings which lead to the behavior that creates so many problems in your life. It feels as if you’re out of control and your mind is not doing what you tell it to do; in fact, you’re right. When OCD is in control, there is an automatic and unconscious response to events.
If you want to make it stop you have to change the automatic response to something more constructive. Regardless of how OCD appears in your life, hypnotherapy can help change the pattern of thoughts that lead to the out of control behavior.