There are many places to learn in Mumbai – the Life Positive magazine itself carries many advertisements. There is the California Hypnosis Institute of India (CHII).

To protect yourself from over-reacting in your relationships, cultivate your self esteem and self confidence. Treat praise and criticism with a pinch of salt. Take feedback by connecting to your own views, evaluating whether you agree with what is said or not. Believe in your own assessments of yourself so you are not swayed by what others say. To remain centered when people praise or criticize you, think of the criticisms and praise in terms of behaviours to keep or improve, instead of qualities to keep or improve. This makes us less egoistic and more watchful and grounded. Build up your resilience to handle rejection, negative comments and ‘no’ s from people when they do not agree to do what you want them to do. We need to understand a person’s ‘no’ without taking it personally. Taking it personally happens when you feel you are the target of what is being said. You conclude in a generalized way that if someone said ‘no’ that means you were never valued by that person or that they don’t love you or that they are taking advantage of you.

Love means also accepting differences and letting others have space. Train yourself to think of these ‘no’ s or negativities as differences. See that people can be ‘doing wrong for you’ and still be valuing you. See that when they say behave in a way you don’t like, either they may have changed their thinking or lifestyle along the way. The relationship they had with you before was valuable to them in a genuine way before and now things may have changed for them. If you think they are taking advantage of you, do less for them too as this is their map – there is difference here of how intense a relationship they want and you want. If you keep doing more for them they may not necessarily want to do more for you. They may believe more in independence and each does their own thing. Of course if you keep doing too much others can take you for granted and use your services because they think you have the time and energy. So instead of trying to control them to become as big givers as you are, you need to tone down how much you give so you are less controlling.

When you become hypersensitive you sound insecure and clingy. Others know that with you they cannot get their time alone or their privacies. They find it difficult to have to keep explaining things to you. So instead of all this they begin to avoid you. When you are generous to people being a bit inconsistent, it helps you to be more accepting and less fault finding with them. You give others a benefit of doubt and know they are in their own preoccupations and it is not that they are rejecting you. You respect the closeness or distance a person wants without taking personal implications. This way, people feel relaxed around you and keep up the relationship.

Treat love in a lighter way – not with too many ‘must and should do’ for yourself and others to prove the love. Love is balancing our attention to ourself and to others. It is more useful to think of things as ‘preferable’. See love from the larger picture not from each and every action this can help you to feel lighter.

My E-mail id is ameeta_shah@hotmail.com. You can consult on this.

Receiving medical diagnosis that is negative makes us feel helpless and hopeless. It is the way that it affects us that can be the more worrisome part. It makes us lose our morale, the very thing that can help us cope and reach a better place.

You can as a family consider ways and means of being less affected by these challenges and looking for what is possible to do to bring relief for him and the family – care taking arrangements, division of financial and care taking responsibility between family members. In spite of his fits it is possible for him to get education and vocational skills training in a job that can be suitable to the handicaps he faces and this is what you can search for now. I do not know if he has normal IQ. If he does then a lot more is possible. He may need to study and work in supportive environments where people know his problem and what care he needs at the time of the fits.

Most of all when we get such difficult news it shocks us. I can see from our mail you are in this place of “It can’t be!” When we face loss we do go through the grief reactions of anger, fear and depression, finally moving to creating a bargain in our minds for the loss. Finally we come to a place of accepting “This is how it is.” and “No one is at fault, it happens sometimes.” We are then ready to invest our energies on something else than trying to wish this did not happen.

Meditation and placing suggestions through hypnosis can be used in conjunction with allopathic treatment to create healing. Our energy system can thus be harnessed to bring healing in our bodies where it is needed.

EFT alone is not the answer. It balances the energies and offers healing possibilities. Every medicinal system is useful in its own way. Integrated approaches work well. You get the allopathic help and your energies being balanced the healing happens faster. So both you and your wife could consult an orthopaedic medical practitioner and would get much relief from it. You may also need to take nutritional supplements like calcium and vitamin B as per your doctor’s recommendation. You probably over did the yoga as many people do. It is necessary to always pace it and increase a little at a time. Often a very enthusiastic physical trainer or teacher can make you overdo. Be aware yourself and do it gradually and not forcefully. The physical work and precautions have to be done along with EFT. You can sometimes consult a therapist only 2 or 3 times and ask for a home program due to financial constraints. Some therapists may be ready to ease their consultations fees when you request and open bout your needs and are ready to commit to working on yourself. Consult the EFT website of Dr Gary Craig the pioneer of EFT and you could learn more on how to use it better.