Your mother is suffering from paranoid symptoms. Is she managing her daily tasks and routine? How is her behaviour with others, with you? Sometimes a person could have an area of thought that is paranoid and be quite functional otherwise. Then it can be possible to help her increase her awareness of the distortion of the thought process. Maybe recognizing some of the roots of the distortion in the past and in the present through regression and hypnotherapy or NLP can be helpful. Through these processes past hurts and angers could be resolved and any present frustration can be explored and handled. Energy cleansing methods can also be useful as sometimes there are energy imbalances or foreign energies disturbing a person’s thinking and functioning. If it is not possible to engage her in any talk or healing work then consulting a psychiatrist for medication and counseling will be helpful.

We feel so scared when our child says she sees a ghost that we don’t want to hear about it and we are just telling our child to forget about it and not imagine any nonsense. It is not necessary to tell the child that ghosts are good or bad. However whether she is really seeing a ghost or imagining it, one could first begin by simply listening to your child and asking your child about the ghost she sees. You can ask her where she heard the word ghost. There are stories that are about ghosts and she may have heard such a story from other children. Rather than assume anything stay calm and ask and try to understand what she is experiencing and how she thinks this way. You can draw a picture of the ghost following her descriptions and confirming whether you got it right. Ask her whether the ghost speaks to her and how she feels about when is seeing the ghost. Does it seem scary or is it friendly? Does it have a name, is it a boy or a girl? How old is it? How often has she seen it and is it saying anything to her? What time does she see it at usually? Basically have a conversation about the ghost. With small children use their dolls or some toy objects to represent herself and the ghost and ask her to place them in front of you – how they are positioned – facing each other or far away etc. You can be with her when she says she can see it and help her have a conversation with the ghost too. In a way you are almost conversing with the ghost through her. After some of this conversation, you can help her tell the ghost its life is over and it can go to the heavens look upwards and there will be people who loved it who will come to meet it and look after it, rather than be lost here on the earth. Often even strange subjects like this that a child talks about can simply be listened to carefully and problem solved. Your child can know that she is stronger than the ghost and can call you or say a prayer if she feels scared and she will be safe. You can contact a regression and hypno-therapist who can assist in the process of helping you and the child to feel free of the ghost’s presence. When children see ghosts or any other imaginary creatures, this can be their fantasy or they could be experiencing something real from the invisible part of this world. When people die their souls do leave the physical body and ascend to the ‘soul planes of existence’. However when someone is confused or distressed at time of death they may remain earthbound and in a sense lost with the ‘unfinished’ issues that they are not able to let go. That is when sometimes people may feel the presence or ‘see’ a ghost. It is possible to help the earthbound spirit to let go and be released and help a person feel free of the presence. This can be just a child’s fantasy through stories she has heard. However in any case talking through, listening and then guiding your child will help the child feel protected & safe.

Firstly take heart, all successful people have a string of failures that they have gone through. The fact that you speak of many attempts shows you are on the right track of persisting as success lies with persistence. Seems like there would be a pattern to your efforts for success and the failure you experience. Observing oneself can enable one to recognize the pattern of self defeating sequences of behaviours or the combination of behaviours of ours that happens. We generalize all failures and sometimes it may be helpful to see how each time they may be improving though not enough to succeed. So your learning from each failure can keep refining your abilities towards success and towards handling different type of situations. Learning is often strengthened through awareness of one’s behaviours in terms of sequence – “where at which point do I need to do what differently?” Failure is generally not so much the bad luck as our response to the bad luck – people who don’t experience the success they see in others are those who get more affected with their bad luck moments and do not respond to the moment with a ‘stop think act’ manner and with a flexibility to do what is more workable. Instead they get too stuck with being determined in the same fixed rut of behaviours and aspirations or they lose the momentum, get put off, slack off and their efforts are inconsistent. Generally two things can help to keep up the momentum of efforts and stay motivated and thereby gain our success – to stop oneself from concluding that one is not good, or one is unlucky and instead maintain the attitude that failure is a stepping stone, it is only giving me more information towards success and to ask oneself “What do I want happening here now and what is possible towards that?” It can be useful to learn therapeutic tools to distress at such times and heal oneself of the loss one feels when things don’t go well. Thus at moments of failure you do not lose precious time in feeling sorry for yourself you are able to soothe yourself with the therapeutic tools and then get onto doing the next thing possible with more of the learning you have acquired. Sometimes it is important to stop focusing on the pursuit of success and think more that one is generating experiences for oneself and gaining in understanding and the mastery of one’s field. Keep more focused on ‘what have I learnt here and how can I apply this next.’ In this manner we are surprised by the success we can experience.

A person can be helped best when they could seek the therapy for themselves. Mostly people may associate taking psychological help with not being competent. This way of thinking stops us from taking help. You can be more persuasive with him when you suggest along these lines - that help can be taken as we are experiencing stress or are feeling disturbed or unhappy or we can take help because we may be our situation is stressful. Also counseling can be in fact thought of not as taking help but as having an undisturbed time and space for self exploration with a person who is not connected with the family and who will maintain some neutrality. Since you said he does not go to a psychiatrist it seems he may be self medicating. He can be urged to go to a psychiatrist for this dosage and to know about medication effects etc. Often a doctor who is treating him for the diabetes can also be the one to advice therapy for the blood pressure and diabetes as these are recognized as having definite co-relation to stress. So in general people suffering from these illnesses can be advised to learn de stressing tools and relaxation tools from yoga, breathing exercises, psychological tools and meditations. These tools can help him both for the ‘high’ time and the ‘low’ time. This person can also be influenced by having some other friend share their own experience of therapy and how it helped. You seem to be finding the time when he is high and out of control most difficult. It is possible to talk to him at a later time after a high moment and check if he recognizes the risks to himself and others of not listening. Whether he recognizes the risk or not you can show some firmness in saying you do not feel it is fair and do not like it and your relationship can survive only if he can at least recognize how difficult it becomes. Then you can plan with him what could help him for you to do or say at ‘high’ time to make him slow down or listen. This kind of planning and agreement can help for the next time he is out of control. Be sure to share how good that felt if he listens in his next ‘high’ episode after the episode. Nov 6 queries

Hi Krishnaveni, to answer your question, people go into different levels of depth in hypnosis. Some go very deep, others go to lighter levels, and most people go to a medium level of depth. At any level a person would not share what he is not willing to share. A person feels deeply relaxed and very aware. Even after he goes into sub conscious state he can choose not to share something if he does not want to. The person will be able to choose for both matters whether he would want to tell some truth or not that the hypnotist may ask about and whether he will follow an instruction of the hypnotist to do something physically or not. Actually why worry only about hypnosis, watching out for people’s trustworthiness is an ongoing process whilst interacting with people. People need to be aware and alert whom they trust or manage their own impulsiveness in choosing to share something. This way you do not open up to a person who would mis-use what you said in any way. One can get the truth out of someone at conscious mind levels itself. With good rapport and questioning skills a person can get people to open up and confide very consciously. A trickster creates this confidence and then misuses the information. So it is the same concern for conscious mind thinking and for hypnosis that you have to exercise your judgment and choose people alertly and carefully before you open up and control your own impulsivity so you open up in a discrete manner around sensitive issues. Thus you need the same alertness whilst choosing a hypno-therapist that you have when choosing a friend or business partner, it is no different.