#36. Laimei Yeung: Hypnotize Me
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com. If you've been enjoying this podcast, go ahead, rate, comment, and subscribe. Now, our guest today is a certified hypnotherapist. That's right, therapy through hypnosis.

And as it pertains to her, we're talking specifically about RTT hypnotherapy, which stands for rapid transformation therapy. And clearly, if you've been following the show, you know this is something we'd be very curious about.

Now, our guest, she specializes in helping people with anxiety, phobia, confidence, addiction, eating disorders, and improving mindset. She has been featured on several different publications. We got to explore the practice of hypnotherapy and hypnosis itself.

We talked about consciousness and how the way we think and behave is all basically linked to events in our childhood that have enormous influence on the way we act and think today. And the crazy thing is she talks about how all these past events and memories are forming our decisions,

fears, insecurities are all stored in our subconscious. So it's there, but we don't even remember them. And that's where the hypnosis comes into play. It's all about relaxing the nervous system so that we can get to these lost memories and deal with them. Otherwise, they pretty much affect you forever. During this episode, Howie shares more with us on his ongoing battle with anxiety and panic attacks. And I talk about my issues with binge eating.

it was a fun conversation we got to expand our idea of therapy and its possibilities so without further ado please welcome laimei yun

All right. That's how we sync the cameras and the audio. Great. Amazing. Some technical stuff. Technical jargon. I'm impressed, guys, with your tech stuff. Thank you. Thank you, Laina. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I'm going to join you afterwards. Cheers. No problem. No pressure. No pressure. You drink your tea. We'll drink our whiskey. No pressure at all. Thanks a lot, guys. Wow. That is very nice.

You know, sometimes you can just buy based off the bottle design alone, I guess. Yeah, this is very nice. So we're drinking today the Benromach Classic Spaceside Single Malt Scotch Whiskey. Yeah, 15 years. It's very nice, actually. So it's not a simple whiskey. There's some complexity there.

Yeah, but I feel like it's complex, but it's smooth. It goes down very smoothly. Yeah, it's like a beginner's complex. I think so. Right. Would you say that? I think so. It's definitely light though. It's definitely not a heavy drink. Anyway, Limei. Interesting. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for coming here. Thanks, guys. Thank you for inviting me. So let me ask you. So just tell us, what is hypnotherapy all about?

So hypnotherapy is a little bit magical, right? Most of the time, a lot of people are even afraid, right? Wow, she's going to do some hypnotherapy with me, you know? There's some stigma attached to the word hypnosis, right? Like I think for a lot of people who don't really know, you think hypnotize and you think of like movies and you think of that movie Get Out, right? Where like she's tapping her tea glass and, you know, sends the kid into like this limbo stage and gets taken advantage of.

So I think there's a lot of stigma attached

So like, let's clear everything up here. - Yeah, so that's the difference, right? That's a good question that you start with because you have stage hypnotherapy, stage hypnosis, and you have hypnotherapy, right? Stage hypnosis is entertainment, right? You wanna get people engaged. And what they're really doing on the stage is real, right? What I do with people is I help them to improve themselves, right? I help them to deal with childhood trauma,

to feel better in their own body. So that's why we regress them, right? So hypnotherapy, we work on the mind. We work on the subconscious mind. Because a lot of our beliefs, patterns, convictions, it's all stored in our unconscious mind, right? And these are the patterns, beliefs that we absorbed from our caregivers, parents, siblings, teachers between two and 10 years old.

So you might have a belief like I'm not good enough or I'm always lazy or I really have this fear of failure all the time. So to really deal with these things, these self-limiting beliefs, you know, who are blocking you, they're keeping you stuck, you really need to go back to the subconscious. You need to go back where these beliefs are stored.

And hypnotherapy brings you back, right? It's a regression who brings you back in a deep relaxation. You're not asleep. You're completely in control. You know, it's like you go to very deep meditation. I regress people. We find out what's the real cause of their self-limiting belief.

And when they see in fact, what's the cause, right? Then we can shift it. So then I use techniques of NLP and everything to shift these self-limiting beliefs. - So what does it mean to regress somebody though? Because like regression, you know, when you say that, people tend to think you're going backwards. - Yeah. - But is that what it is? - So regression, I bring you back to your childhood. - Really? - Right, so with hypnotic techniques that we have,

And it's not dangerous at all, right? As you go to a really deep level, your nervous system is asleep, right? So your conscious mind isn't keeping you awake, right? So I count and I bring you back to a scene, which for example, you adapted this fear of failure,

So I just bring you back to a scene between two and 10 years old. You might even go back to the uterus. Some people go back when they were in their belly of the mom. - So how do you, like is the person fully conscious during this whole process?

So the person is awake, right? The person is not asleep. So they would remember everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they need to remember everything, right? They need to be aware of everything. That's very important because we shift awareness, right? That's where the magic happens because if you understand something, then you can solve it. So can you kind of take us through, like, how does it actually work?

If I were to sit, like, you know, be a client of yours or a patient of yours in one of your sessions, like how does it actually work? - The hypnotherapy session itself? - Yeah. - So first of all, I need to have an intake, right? I need to talk with a person and I need to feel if I can help this person because even each hypnotherapist has its own specialization, right? I work on anxiety, fears, confidence, challenges.

If me and the person were a fit, you know, we feel that we can do this together because it's a journey together. There's trust, you know, that person needs to trust me, right? I'm going to go back into their past, into their childhood. So if we establish this relationship of trust, the person comes to my studio or we do it online and I bring them

like with counting techniques, I bring them to a very deep relaxation and then I regress them. I regress them to three scenes. - So I'm curious, so when you say you regress them, so if I'm the patient, I'm getting regressed, does that mean there are, I mean, I enter memories that I have stored in my subconscious that I may not even realize I have, that kind of stuff?

So you can go back to a scene which you're completely aware of, and you can go back to scenes which you blocked out. People discover things that they don't know anymore. The thing is, it's not really about the scene. So I can regress you to 1000 scenes, right? I need to regress you to the emotion you had at that point, to the feeling you had at that point.

because we need to shift the emotion. So whenever I regress people, they see like, okay, that probably that fear of failure, that was my mom's. My mom really felt like a failure. So me as a child, I absorbed this. When you become aware of this, right? We kind of cheat the mind. We change the scene. - Like you're hacking the mind in a way. - We cheat the mind, because the mind doesn't know what's real or wrong.

Does it make sense? So if you had the belief when you're eight, like I'm not enough, I'm not enough, I'm not enough. Now when you're 40, it's not serving you anymore because you're blocked, you're procrastinating all the time. You don't know what to do in your job or in your personal relationships. It's not serving you anymore. So when you go back, you see, oh yeah, no, that was me when I was eight. Yeah, no, now I'm 40, right? So we changed the scene. So how do you help people

your clients change the scene? Like how does the therapy side of it all kick in? You know, because let's say you regress somebody and you know, they're going through a scene or a memory stored in their subconscious, you know, how do they learn from that? How do they grow from that? Like, how do they realize, oh, that's, that's what it was, you know, like, how did they go through that kind of epiphany?

Because, yeah, we have techniques to do that. There's no one straight answer, right? We request them, we ask them, what's the link? So the client has the answers. I don't know the answers, right? So for example,

I worked with, let's call him Jake, right? Let me give you an example. I worked with Jake who has an amazing fear, like a tremendous fear of procrastination. You know, he's studying his master's, he has a great job, but again, you know, he's stuck all the time, he's anxious, he's depressed and everything. So he comes in for a session.

Right? So I tell him, let's first work on the anxiety because he's worrying constantly. His mind doesn't stop from worrying and he's beating himself up all the time. Right? So I tell him, okay, let's first work on the anxiety because for me, I understand that that's dominating. Right? So I bring him in deep relaxation. I regress him to the childhood scenes and

And he goes back to his one scene where his narcissistic dad was, you know, who really never took care of him. Then another scene with his aunt who took care of him, you know, his mom and dad weren't really there. So the mom, the aunt, sorry, took care of him. And then another scene where the mom was abandoning him.

Right. So seeing these three scenes with him worrying all the time, he saw that as an eight year old, a nine year old, a 12 year old, he was already worrying all the time because his life was so unstable. The people who needed to love him, like his parents, they weren't there. His aunt, she really loved him. So luckily he had that support of the aunt, right? But the aunt also put a lot of pressure on him.

on my client, right, when he was small, because she also felt like a failure. So you see how these dynamics work? Yeah, so when he saw like, yeah, in fact, yeah, of course I was worried, you know, my whole household was a mess. There was not any stability. But then with my experience, I help him to see like he was worrying because as an eight year old, he was already looking for a solution, right? A solution that the adults didn't have.

So with letting him see these small things, he's like, oh yeah, so if at eight I already was looking for solutions, then now I can solve my things. Because now my life is pretty good compared to my childhood. You see, so in this way we shifted. - So during the session, you're constantly talking and are they responding to you verbally? Is it just an open dialogue?

- Yeah, I keep them awake because otherwise you're gonna fall asleep. - So you guys are just having a conversation. - Not like we're talking here, you know, I need to do this, I need to do techniques or I need to touch the head or I need to touch the arm. - Okay, so how do you actually put someone

I mean, that doesn't sound right. I was gonna say put someone under, but that's not really, I don't think that's accurate in terms of what you do, right? Like how do you hypnotize somebody? Or how do you start the hypnosis therapy? Like what are the actual techniques? - So let me show you, it's very, very easy, okay? So for anyone who's listening, they can just follow us, okay? Hypnosis is all about the positioning of the eyes.

Okay, so when you look up you push your eyeballs up. Well, you can even do it with me Yeah, push your eyeballs up and look at an imaginary line on the ceiling But really push them up as if you're looking into your own eyebrows, right? I'm getting dizzy by doing it. Yeah, that's very good. That's normal Yeah, we need that. So breathe in breathe out Breathe in once more pushing your eyeballs up breathe out one last time breathe in

keep your eyeballs up keep them up keep them up the blinking in your eyes it means you're going under hypnosis and you close your eyelids down you feel at this point you're relaxing right you have this rapid eye movement who makes you go into relaxation hey guys i hypnotize you here no when you said that rapid eye movement i was i was really having that yeah yeah yeah so with this it starts you know with this it starts and then i have other techniques you know like we walk

from a staircase or we go into a garden and you follow my voice. - How long does it usually take? It's different with everyone. When some people are more easily hypnotized, some people are less likely to be hypnotized. Is that true? - Yeah, people who are very much in control.

- They call it suggestibility, right? Some people are more suggestible, some people are less so, right? - Yeah, really good. No, like 99% of people are suggestible. I never had anyone I couldn't hypnotize. The only problem is when people are very in control, they're control freaks.

They're afraid. They don't want to let go. So if I notice that, I learn themself. I teach themself hypnosis. I send them home. Like, do this every day for seven days. Then come back. And then it works. You know, I don't... I'm not just saying this. And I don't know if it's just the whiskey. But I do feel like a little bit different right now. I feel like a little tingly. I do feel more relaxed. I don't know...

Like maybe it's all bullshit because like we haven't like really done anything. But I don't know. I'm feeling maybe it's placebo, right? But I feel like a little bit weird. Is he supposed to feel something right now? That's the better question, right? I feel like there's like this – I'm looking through the world and kind of like –

It's like a little bit, it's a little bit like. He's very easy to go under. I'm like super suggestible. She didn't even start speaking, you're already out. I'm just saying how I feel, but it could be a lot of different things or it could just be a complete placebo effect, right? It could all be bullshit. I don't know. Well, what do you think from your perspective? Yeah, good question, right? The placebo effect, in fact, is the doctor who lives inside of you, right? That's the placebo effect. But just rolling your eyeballs up

Just doing that and really concentrate because you said I'm getting dizzy. This is really, you're focusing, right? And then you let yourself go. Of course your body relaxes, right? And my voice, I'm not using a pure hypnotic voice. I cannot do that. - So you have to change your voice when you're doing this? - Yeah. - Like how do you change your voice? What do you change it to? - We count.

Like one, two, three, four. But do you change the tone of your voice? I change it. More calming and stuff like that, right? Probably. Is it like a lower pitch voice or something? Yeah. So imagine you're walking on a beach and you're feeling the sand under your toes and you feel the sun warming your skin. I can listen to that all day. He's going out again. I just stared off. I just stared off. I literally just stared off.

You got a good voice. - You're a great subject. You're a great, yeah. - You don't have to do anything. If he was your patient, you just sit there and he's just out. He just starts spitting some history. - Well, I'm glad that we're clearing up, that you cleared up a little thing for me. And I'm not sure if anyone caught this in the beginning, but

I was talking about the stigma of hypnosis. And you were talking about, well, there's one branch of it that's called stage hypnosis, which is purely really for entertainment. So I've seen that. I've seen that at some...

like a kid's bar mitzvah, or a trade show, or some sort of birthday party, or some sort of event. It's like a magician going up on stage and they're hypnotizing a crowd full of people, or a few people sitting there and they make them do silly things. And I think that's what most people tend, that's the image that most people tend to gravitate towards too, when you say something like this,

But that's like a whole different thing, right? So I'm really glad we're clearing that up in terms of like the actual therapy side. And in addition to that, because I knew you were coming on the show, so I did some light research before you came. And, you know, before I started looking it up, you know, I had it in my mind that kind of hypnotherapy was just kind of like this really holistic alternative medicine. It was a little bit like woo-woo in there and

But then I started reading and there's actually been a lot of legitimate scientific research to back it up, back up the science of it. And I saw professors and researchers from Stanford, Harvard Medical School, some like really legit people talking about how they were doing controlled experiments with hypnosis versus other forms of therapy.

And that the results they got through hypnosis were significantly better in terms of changing things. One particular study I'll refer to was one about weight loss. And they saw that the group that went under hypnosis, and this was Harvard Medical School, that went under hypnosis lost significantly more weight than the other controlled group.

So there's been a lot of documented research by really credible and legitimate scientists in this field. So, you know, what's your view on that? And how do you approach hypnotherapy for yourself? Are you more science-based in your approach? Or is it just something that you've learned through your own experience? Like, how do you approach it?

So I came to study hypnotherapy because I had a burnout I think six years ago after working like 16 hours a day I was completely burned out right I tried to I first went to nutrition school which kind of helped me help me like 30 40 percent but you know I wasn't how I used to be you know and if you're someone who

works like 14, 16 hours a day, you know, you're not really happy if you can only work like four to five hours a day. That's not satisfying. So I stumbled on Marisa Peer. So she's amazing. So her hypnotherapy is called rapid transformational therapy.

So it's hypnotherapy with NLP, cognitive behavior therapy, and psychotherapy. So it's hypnotherapy, but with a lot of cognitive skills, right? So I just tried it out just for myself. I wasn't someone who's interested in this. So you were a patient first? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did it and I was blown away because my health, I think it improved like 80%. How so?

Just because, you know, the basis of hypnosis is it brings you in such a deep relaxation that your nervous system balances.

And, you know, whatever trauma you had, and we all had trauma, you know, is it the criticizing teacher? Is it abuse from I don't know who in your childhood? Whatever happened can be really traumatic, right? All the trauma is stored in your body, right? You have a famous scientist. His name is Bessel van der Kolk. And he says the body keeps the score.

So you know your body is like a history of your past, right? So if you start to work with hypnotherapy, your body relaxes in this deep, deep mode and it really restores your nervous system.

Because what happens, you know, if trauma accumulates, accumulates, accumulates, and we get more stress and more anxiety and more fear, we're like constantly in fight and flight. Right? So we constantly have like cortisol going on, you know, it's like racing in our body, right? We have these hormones everywhere, stress is really high. You know, it's like there's a line in front of us like 24 on 24. But it's not true, the line is not there. But a lot of people are experiencing this.

So your body is constantly in high alert, right? So what do you do then with your body constantly in high alert? Because I'm glad that you said that there's a lot of scientific proof, you know, that hypnotherapy really helps. If you look at a lot of studies, I think Harvard Medical School released a study that 85% of all illnesses, you know, all chronic illnesses, it's stress-related, right?

It's all related with stress. So you don't need to work on the symptoms, you need to work on the stress, right? And that's what hypnotherapy does. It brings you to such a deep relaxation, not only during the session, right? Because after the session, I make audios for my clients, which they need to listen to every day before they sleep, and we reprogram the mind.

We reset the mind. I have a question. So, I mean, I've said this on the show before. I battle with anxiety. He has legitimate anxiety attacks. Like I get anxiety attacks. Panic attacks. Yeah, panic attacks. And I definitely face it often. Okay. But one thing that I've been doing now is using an app called Calm.

and just doing some, you know, just going through the, it's in a program every day, you know, it's like 15, 20 minutes a day. And I just sit there, go into a meditative state and just calm myself a little bit because I have like a high heartbeat because of anxiety, you know, for like, even, even when I'm in under control, it'll come. So,

i'm trying to use that to kind of calm me down a little bit now is that because you're just saying your body needs to get into this calm state and stuff like that is that something that's like a form of hypnotherapy if if i if i'm going to relate meditation to that is that does that work or no i don't know the app myself okay you know if you are able to go to a really deep meditative state um

- Kind of you would have the same results, but I don't know how deep you can go. To really meditate is difficult. - Hard, yeah. - It's very, very difficult. So just staying there for five minutes, that's not meditating. So it's kind of different. I don't know the app. I'm really interested in knowing more about the app. But if you're dealing with anxiety attacks, with anxiety, with phobias,

you need to go back to the subconscious and figure out why you have that. Yeah, I think you're making a point because, for example, with meditation, I think it's just in general, it'll calm me down and just kind of like keep it chill, but it's not a solution. It's just sort of like, you know, like a temporary band-aid, you know, just for that moment.

You know what I mean? Like if I'm getting hit, like I'll just sit down and just like listening to this thing, calm myself down a little bit and then I'm good, you know? It depends which kind of meditation, you know? Because sometimes even in meditation, they do regression, right? So meditation and hypnosis...

our audios are quite related. - There's overlap there, right? Sometimes. - Yeah, yeah. I used to do these courses with this guru, a meditation guru in India from the older school of meditation. He used to come here to Shanghai. He's amazing. He's a guy of 75 and he looks like 50 because he meditates all his life. Really amazing guy. And when you go to his meditation classes, it's like three or four days.

That was amazing. - Wow. - That's mind blowing. But these are real gurus, you know, they really teach you how to do meditation. Meditation, of course it helps, right? Mindfulness, all these techniques help. From my point of view, if you don't understand why you're having that, how can you change it? - Yeah, yeah. - You know, it's like my tea is getting cold. Yeah, of course I can add some hot water and I can keep on adding or I can just drink it, right?

Or you can put some whiskey in there too. It's true. You didn't pass me the whiskey yet. Just say the word. I'm joking. No. But does that make sense? No, it totally makes sense. It totally makes sense because the little that I know, I've done a little reading about hypnotherapy myself in the past and also when hearing you were coming on the show.

But I know that there's a lot of different forms of hypnotherapy. And basically it's to target different types of problems that need to be solved. But also, I mean, hypnotherapy in general is a form of meditation where it's, I mean, just a bit deeper. Like it's more like a sharper attack as opposed to in general meditation,

I guess general meditation is just more about relaxation. It's very different. I'm there to guide you. But yours is more specific. We go to the subconscious. If you're dealing with anxiety or depression, really debilitating things. I've suffered from anxiety more than 20 years. Oh, you had it? Yeah, I had. And I thought it was normal. And it's gone away? Yeah, of course. Wow.

Yeah, I do it every day. That's my job. I really work with people on anxiety because it was so debilitating for me. I might have to talk to you. I invite you. Well, so that's one thing I think I really want to understand because your own story, I think, would be one of the clearest kind of...

and pictures to kind of realize like, what is this all about? Like, are you willing to share, like when you said before you, like the, you were talking about like how you got into this in the first place and you were a patient before that. So how, how did it really change you?

the hypnotherapy yeah uh first of all it changed my health it started with my health but what did you see improve like specifically so my energy levels uh my energy like i told you i could work like four to five hours a day now i can even work 12. i'm not working 12 but i could do 12 hours a day and you attribute that solely to the hypnotherapy because i did my own trauma work

It's not only about doing the work. You know what happened was I didn't get a burnout because I was working so much. I got a burnout because we were working in the restaurant at that time. I was managing the restaurants with my husband and we had quite a big team, you know, and people in the restaurant business, you know, they're hard to deal with, you know.

So not the clients, I mean, they're lovely, they're amazing. But the personnel here, it's tough. The turnover, it's constantly, you know, plus working 16 hours, the cultural differences. So I really needed to stand up, you know,

I'm a really kind person. I used to be even kinder, like always helping people. I would rather do it myself than asking them. But of course, as a boss, that doesn't work. So that was my mistake. I did everything myself. - And that just burned you out?

- Yeah, because I didn't have the voice to speak, you know, and that's related to my past. I never had a voice. I always used to be invisible, right? So it was tough for me to stand out. I could do it, but it was tough, you know? Sometimes I remember, I remember this, that sometimes I just went to the bar and I took a vodka, I drank it straight on, because vodka makes you awake, you know, before my shift.

because I needed to wake up, you know? I was so tired, I was so drained, you know? And then slowly on, yeah, it just led to a complete burnout, right? And it wasn't only the nutrition. I really needed to look at like, why couldn't I stand up for myself? Because, you know, I was the co-owner, right? I could do it. They would have listened to me if I would have had the power to say so, to be empowered, but I didn't have that.

So that's what hypnotherapy really did for me. - Was there anything else besides the improved energy that you felt? - The anxiety, the anxiety went away. - So the anxiety just went away? - The anxiety went away. - Like the problems were still there, but you just had less anxiety about it? - I learned skills.

you know anxiety is always there I just want to share that with you anxiety is not your enemy you know anxiety is you need to be friended because whenever you're standing on a balcony you're gonna feel anxiety it's incorporated in your body you know it's it's a body mechanism it wants to help you you

Because it wants to help you from not falling down from that balcony. So you need to befriend, you want to befriend anxiety with certain skills. You feel the anxiety. What is it trying to tell you? What do you need at this point? And then you can shift it. Anxiety will always be there, but you need to manage it. So this is what I learned. - So what are these skills that you're referring to? - For me it's resilience.

And resilience is the capacity to bounce back from difficult situations, right? Whenever you speak up, using your voice, putting boundaries with certain people, changing your own inner critic,

because our own inner voice, especially for people who have anxiety, is so bad. - And low confidence. I mean, that voice affects all of that. - Yeah, it beats you up. We would never talk to a friend like this, how we speak to ourself.

And it's really, this is what hypnotherapy does. It works on fear of rejection, fear of criticism, fear of not being good enough. Most of the people who are dealing with depression and even anxiety, a lot of them have this underlying belief, I'm not good enough. Because their teacher told me I could never do this, or my dad told me, oh, you're not worth anything. So we have this underlying pattern, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough.

So this anxiety, it stays with us. - Yeah, we talk about fear of failure a lot on this show. I think that's a big problem in a lot of people, including myself. But am I accurate to say that, because you were talking about these skills, was it through hypnotherapy you had some very profound realizations and epiphanies that led to you

knowing to work on these skills. It's not like the hypnotherapy gave you these skills directly, but it made you realize certain things about yourself that you were like, okay, well, I need to accumulate these skills and work on them. Was that kind of how it works? - No, hypnotherapy gives you the skills. - Directly. - Because the modality that I use, we use skills. So I really believe like, I love therapy,

which is all good, it's good to look in that luggage, sort everything out, fold it again, close the luggage, leave the past where it is because anyway you cannot change it. But if you don't have a voice, you need to do something to gain that voice. If you're afraid of failure, you probably need to work on your confidence and on your empowerment, taking decisions, managing yourself.

So I teach that to my clients. We teach that with hypnotherapy. - So during the sessions and over a course of several sessions and if the patient is willing to work on themselves, because I would have to assume that a big part of it is, I mean, because you're only in there with them for the two hours or however long the session is, but a lot of it must be when they go home and when they're on their own, they have to continue to work at it, right? - Yeah, yeah. - So it's over a course of this whole thing, you come out from it with,

these new skills. But I think that's where it is. It's like, what's the definition of skills, right? Like, they're not just gonna all of a sudden learn how to play the piano, right? But it's more realizations about yourself and things you need to do, right?

Yeah, it's more about working on your talents, working on your core gifts. Core gifts is something very, very interesting. You know, I developed my program. I brought a book. You guys are from the US. He's a very famous psychotherapist, Ken Page.

- So the book is called "Deeper Dating"? - Yeah, it's "Deeper Dating", but it's to date yourself. - "How to Drop the Games of Seduction and Discover the Power of Intimacy" by Ken Page. - Yeah, Ken Page is quite famous. He even went on the Oprah show. So I studied with him, I mentored with him.

And I didn't do it to find a date. Some people they do it to find your ultimate date, right? But I was looking for myself, right? I was looking like, who am I? Who are my core gifts? What are my values? And through his work,

And through hypnotherapy, I really realized who I was eventually. Because if you want to be self-confident, if you want to be really self-confident and self-empowered, you need to find out who you are. - Yeah, I think you're hitting on something that's really important because I feel like there's a lot of people out there that have no idea who the hell they are, right? - Of course not. - And they're just going and living through life

you know, living a certain way that they think they're supposed to live or think that they're supposed to be, how they act, you know, how they think they're supposed to act. But, you know, it's almost like living a facade, you know? So I think what you're hitting on is pretty important. It's like having a self-discovery. Whether or not it's trauma-related or not, right? Yeah.

Like again, we're a therapist, right? Even if people say, I don't really have trauma. Trauma can be really small or it can be huge, right? Everyone has something, right? Everyone has something where he can work on.

For the person, it's okay, it's not really important. He doesn't wanna grow out of this. He doesn't really wanna bloom in his life. That's also okay. But for other people like dealing with fear of failure or people who are listening to other people because we're so conditioned all the time. We're so used to telling, people telling us what to do. - How to feel, how to act, how to feel.

how to like we're in the matrix like we're plugged into the matrix like this is like it's like the world we accept yeah yeah yeah that's that that's how the world is right luckily i don't know if the percentage is just right they say like 20 of people are really able you know to deal with to grow in their self-awareness to really develop their own self-growth so not everybody can

So curious, you know, with the patients you've had so far, have you had any like real extreme cases?

Where it's been really... Okay, so like someone that's been really gone through some really heavy trauma and it has deeply affected them. I think Justin knows why I'm asking this. It's like... And it's like... I would say 50-50. It's really hard to get them out or help them. Hard to get them out? Like how to get them out of their trauma. Like the...

- Yeah, okay, I'm hearing you. - What's, what's-- - A serious case. - Yeah, I think what you're asking is like, what is the extent of hypnotherapy's effectiveness in terms of like dealing with severe cases? - I don't work with like schizophrenic people. I don't work with people who are suicidal. I could, but I wish to not to. So I send them to psychiatrists. I focus on anxiety, fears, phobias,

So most of them have heavy trauma. Most of them have that, yeah. - Are these things always directly connected to something in your past? Because like, you know, you always talk about regression and going back to the scenes, whether it's in your childhood or whenever, is it always linked to, it can't, can it just be something that just happened to you recently and it's not connected to the past, like to your past?

You can have PTSD, right? You've heard from post-traumatic stress disorder. I rather call it post-traumatic stress reaction disorder. You know, it doesn't sound that good. It's a reaction. This can be something that happened yesterday, right? I don't know your girlfriend who betrayed you big time. It just happened yesterday. But though also this can really be linked to your past.

Yeah. Do you have anything that pops off the top of your head, Justin, that you feel like... No, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to do?

- No, but I completely-- - 'Cause you're so suggestible, right? - I might still be hypnotized right now. - It's getting cured for right now. - Like I wake up and this whole podcast didn't even happen. It was just all my, I'm joking. No, but I completely believe that there are several different states of consciousness, right? Like we experience different levels of consciousness

in in everything we do i feel like you know we but we might not notice it a lot right and some of it can be natural but you know some of it can be induced i totally believe that there are several different states of consciousness so like what's what's your view on that like how do you like how would you how do you view consciousness as a whole is it something that's always fluctuating in a limbo and there's no like real form to it or do you do you see it as more of like a

Do you see that there's any kind of structure there? In our conscious mind? Yeah. You mean, so you have the conscious mind and you have the subconscious mind, right? Like I said, the subconscious mind is where all your memories are stored, right? The conscious mind is here to just keep you going every day, you know? Everything is fine. You keep on going, you keep on going. If something clicks back to your memories, you're going to go to your subconscious mind. So all beliefs, all patterns, right?

The subconscious mind is incredibly powerful. The conscious mind is here to keep you planning, it's your logical thinking. Yeah, the things you need to deal with normal life, right?

But whatever is stored in the subconscious, this is who you really are. Have you read the book, The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt? No. No? What's that about? He talks about that a lot. Basically, the book's about that. And he talks about the elephant and the rider. So think of yourself as like you're riding an elephant, right? And the person that's riding the elephant, that's really the conscious mind.

But the elephant itself, which is significantly larger and really in control of where the passenger goes, like the passenger on the elephant thinks they're in control, right? Because they're trying to direct the elephant. But it's really the elephant that's in control of where you're actually going. And it's much bigger. And he calls that like the subconscious mind. And that really dictates

almost everything we do. But we always feel like, oh, we're in control. We feel like, oh, I'm in control of my own decisions, right? - Because we don't wanna be out of control. - Exactly, we tell ourselves that, right? But much of it is coded and dictated by our subconscious. And we just don't even realize that that code is running. - Of course, because our subconscious, our heart is beating for us without doing anything. We're breathing without doing anything.

you know, the nervous system, you know, it's just there. It's the same with the subconscious mind. It's there. You know, you can't really manipulate it. By hypnotherapy, we go back and we cheat the mind. And by cheating the mind, it's like, oh, okay. If she thinks it's like that, okay. At the end, you know, by repeating, repeating, repeating, because the mind learns with repetition. You know, if you constantly hear something,

Like, I'm enough, I'm enough, I'm confident, I feel confident, I feel good in my skin. If you constantly hear this while you're in a deep relaxation, your mind accepts it. Because it's the mind... It's like rewiring. We've rewired the brain. So hypnotherapy has a lot to do with neuroscience.

We don't have a lot to do with psychology. We work on the brain, right? We work on the mind. - Is that where a lot of NLP practice comes in? - Neuro linguistics, yeah. Yeah, so we also use NLP, yeah.

- The mind works like this. - What's NLP? What is that? - Neuro-linguistic programming. So these are techniques. - Okay, they're techniques. - Yeah, so we as hypnotherapists, we often use these techniques. Not always, but they're really, really good techniques to use. So I was saying,

Where was I? Now you hypnotized me. We sure did. You're talking about a lot of it is the neurons, right? The neural reactions. The neuroscience. The real neuroscience. Neural wiring. Look, there are three rules of the mind, right? The first is the mind does whatever you want it to do.

So you need to be really specific and tell your mind, I want this, I want this, I want this, which is extremely difficult for people. - Yeah, I was about to say that's a big one. The mind does what you want it to do. - Yeah, but it's about training. No, but it's about training. Because I know it is very tough. Whenever clients come back, come in my office, and I ask them, if I have a magic wand and I grant you one wish, what do you want?

What do you want the outcome to be? That's how we do hypnotherapy, right? And they look at me like, I don't know what I want. It's tough, it's tough. But at the end, it comes. It's something we need to reflect on. Of course, we don't know what we want because we're so conditioned, you know? And our mind also, it's easier for us to say, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this, you know? But we cannot go in the negative.

Because the mind doesn't understand negative, right? It's like, don't look at that pink elephant. Don't look at that pink elephant. You know, you're only going to look at... Stare at that pink elephant. Right, right. The mind doesn't understand that. So that's the first rule of the mind, you know? Tell your mind what you want.

Like for you, like dealing with anxiety, like I want to be in control of my emotions. I want to be confident, you know, saying what you want. That's really, really key. The second is your mind is always going to put you towards pleasure.

and away from pain. So for example, you mentioned something about weight, weight control. We're hardwired for sugar. We are hardwired for sugar, because that's the prehistorics. Our body just wants sugar. Some people want more sugar.

Because in your mind, sugar brings you happy memories. A lot of us, we have like, oh, these cookies I ate with grandma or whatever. She took me to the cinema. I could eat these candies. So a lot of people have these happy memories with candies. So in hypnotherapy, we need to switch that.

We need to make them indifferent. We cannot make them to hate it, right? Because you cannot hate something. The opposite of love is being indifferent, right? So we make them indifferent to sugar, right? And from the moment you're indifferent to sugar, then you don't really need it anymore, right? So that's the second rule. The third rule is the mind wants what's familiar. You know, if it's familiar for you to have panic attacks, it's familiar. The mind's going to get that, right?

It's familiar. It's something that it's used to. You need to make that unfamiliar. And you need to make it familiar to be in control of your emotions. How do you make something that's already familiar unfamiliar, though?

- Just stop doing it, right? I mean, that's easier said than done. - Yeah, no, yeah. It's not a conscious work, right? You need to go to the subconscious. You need to reprogram the mind. - So typically on average, how many sessions or over what kind of span of time do you find that people are actually making significant progress?

- So it depends on the issue, right? If you have phobia, it just takes like two sessions. - Really, that quick? - A session is like two hours, two hours and a half. And after seven days, I call them because I check in with them, right? And also during that they don't see me, I'm available, right? Like you said, most of the work happens with them, right? And I also tell people I do 60%, but you do 40.

Okay, so I have a list for them what they need to do. Whenever it doesn't work, they just send me a text or they send me an email, right? They know I'm there. Just that support, just that buffer, the fact that I'm there, it really does a lot for people. So with phobias, I do two sessions. Even I work with kids on anxiety, like bed wetting, these things, I would do like two sessions, maximum three, because kids are highly suggestible.

- Do you get a lot of kids? - Sometimes, yeah. What I do is, and I really love that, when I get kids, I also work on one of the parents. Because last time I had a kid with emotional eating,

And often these patterns, we learn this. So I asked the mom, who's the emotional leader at home? And she said, yeah, the dad. Of course. So I asked one of the parents to come for at least one session. Because if you change the child, but it goes back to the same environment at home, I don't know what's going to change. So just...

for that parent to be more aware, you know, also what the work the child is doing. This is really, really transformational. Other issues like anxiety, I work on eight sessions.

like the first four pure on anxiety afterwards anxiety is gone so it's not gone it's you manage it right after four you really really manage it you change your inner critic in your in your head you deal with fear of failure you you know you can stand up more for yourself you're more in charge of your emotions

a lot of irrational anxiety, because anxiety is always there. But you also have an irrational part, which is too much, which is giving you the panic attack. It's too much, you know, this you eradicate, we eradicate that, we eliminate that, right? That's the first part. If they're okay,

And they're like, okay, you know, I just want to see now, I want to do this a little bit on my own. Then they stop after four sessions. Preferably, they come and see me for four more sessions because I teach them skills, right? Like I told you, you need some skills. Like now with the coronavirus, who could imagine that? So with people with anxiety and fear, this is huge, right? Oh my God.

So you need skills to navigate that. - So have you been treating anyone during this time? - Yeah, of course. - And are they having anxiety over the coronavirus itself or just maybe what it's doing with where they're like work or business? - I think anxiety over everything, right? It's uncertainty. - Yeah, the uncertainty, right? - It's uncertainty. What I've been really doing and I've given a lot of online group sessions even for free.

Because I really wanted to work on anxiety awareness. You know, so many people are unaware they have anxiety. They just think, oh, it's my fault. I know I'm not confident. Oh, my mom has low self-esteem. So I really wanted to take this time, like from January onwards,

to really make people aware, you know, if you're having trouble, reach out, not even to me, reach out to someone else. I just, this is very particular to where we live now, but do you find that in China?

like general awareness to anxiety or like confidence or like depression is just low. Like it's almost like irrelevant. Or it's like their default operating mode. Or something like that. Have you thought about that or have you experienced that at all? I think a lot of Chinese have anxiety. Yeah. But to say that they're more than in the West,

- Of course, yeah, mental health, it's quite new here. - Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get at. - If you look at psychologists, psychiatrists, I talked with a colleague, another hypnotherapist in Beijing, she's Chinese, and she said, "Yeah, we don't have any psychiatrist here." Because I heard it's very, very difficult to get these licenses here in China. So yeah, there is not a lot of

- Yeah, mental support. - Do you think it's just because it's culturally, it's more taboo to talk about here? Like, what do you think it is? Why do you think it is the way it is? - Why is there less mental help? - Yeah. - Because I think in the West, we're more individualistic.

I think here as they're more like with their own family, they have their own tribe. It's not only like I'm gonna go here, like I'm talking about local people. It's not like I'm gonna go to the psychologist, because you need to work on the whole family here.

Where in the West, I have a problem, I go to my psychologist. Maybe I take my husband with me. So in China, it's very difficult. It's very, very different. But one way, I wanna share this with you because it's quite interesting. So I had this client, he's an expat and he's married to a Chinese woman and he lives with the in-laws, which often happens. He has two kids.

He doesn't really, you know, he can't deal with his in-laws. You know, they're always there. They're always, you know, and he wants to be free, right? He's from the West. He wants to be free, of course, right? But he came in, you know, because he had an addiction. He had huge anxiety. So he started to work, right? So I brought him back to his childhood where he saw...

that he came from a family who was a kind of broken up family, right? The parents were alcoholics, didn't really care about him. He was very different than the siblings too, couldn't really relate to them. So he grew up really, really alone, right? Now he's here in China with this family, with his family and these in-laws who really want to be a family, right?

So I told him, isn't that interesting? Because he, as a child, he really longed for love. He longed for connection, but he never had it.

At the end, he created it, but it's not familiar for him. He couldn't adapt in it, right? After we did the hypnotherapy, he's like, okay, oh yeah, in fact, yeah, they want to connect with me. You know, the fact that he really worked on this, he connected better with his wife. So at the end, the wife said, okay, yeah, maybe we should go and live apart, you know, away from the in-laws.

So it's quite interesting, you know, if you start to work on something, it has, you know, consequences, you know, it has like this, this effect on the whole family afterwards, right? But coming again to your question, why is it different here? Yeah, you'll need to work with the whole family, right?

- There are Chinese hypnotherapists, huh? There are Chinese therapists. - I'm sure there are. But it's just, I think, the idea of openly talking and seeking help for mental illness is, it just seems like more of a taboo subject here. But I mean, it's been taboo for a long time, even in the West. And it's only very recently that it's become really,

more acceptable, you know? But for a long time, even then, it was just very, anywhere, it was very taboo. - Completely, yeah. And I'm wondering, isn't it like resilience related? I think Asians are very, very resilient, right? I think sometimes in the West, whatever happens, it's easy to fall down for us, you know? I think Asians, they're much more resilient. And then dealing with these things like depression, anxiety,

if you say I need to be strong, I need to be strong, you don't wanna admit, right? You don't wanna admit. And especially it's not a very emotional, it's not a very emotional society, neither. - Well, I think that's what it is because like when you say resilience, I don't know if I agree with that. I don't know if I agree with Chinese people are more resilient. I think everyone is resilient, but I think for the culture here,

it's just more of a normal thing to kind of, you know, Chinese like 刺苦, right? It's like just more of a thing to like accept pain and accept adversity. And, you know, that's just a part of life because I mean, you know, China historically is coming from a very different place in recent history than in the Western world. So I think that there's still like a lingering effect in terms of like, you know,

is being able to accept a lower quality of life in general. But in the West, it's not. And like you say, people are much more individualistic over there. So there's less tolerance, I think, for accepting any sort of deterioration in their quality of life. You know? I think it's like more of a mentality thing. I also think it's like a priority system. Where it's like...

you know, is it a priority if you feel like you have low self-esteem or low confidence or anxiety, is it a priority to fix that? Or is it a priority to go out and make money and pay the bills? And you know what I mean? Like different mindset, different mindset. It's the same thing like in America where you have, um, you know, a group of people, let's say the, the ultra liberals that are, you know, about equal rights and all that stuff. Um,

And then you have a certain set of people that are like, dude, that's so far away from my priority right now. Like, I don't care about that. You know what I mean? I care about my job tomorrow. Do I still have a job? You know what I mean? So I think it's just, it's a priority system as well. And I think in general here, yes, the economy has been growing and people are, you know, there's, there's, there's a big change happening in society, but you still have an overwhelming amount of people that probably won't prioritize mental health.

Yeah. And which is everywhere, I think. I know probably here in China, like you say, you corrected me well. Yeah, probably it wasn't resilience, the word I needed to use was shiku. That people, they're tough, you know, they can toughen up here, right? In comparison to the West. But I lived in Italy for a while, and that's the West, you know, that's Europe. Even there, mental health is not...

Not a lot of people go to psychologists. For me as a hypnotherapist, it was almost impossible to work there to get a license. It's very, very controlled. They don't want that. And it's quite interesting because my husband is Italian, so Italian and Chinese culture is very, very alike. - Oh, really? - Really? Like how so?

The family is very important. Food is very important. Culture, no, no, very alike. - The meals are very important, right? - When I left China after 13 years, I moved to Rome like a year and a half and I arrived there and I was like, oh my God, again, I'm in China, but they're all Italian.

No, it was incredible. It was incredible. It was really, really incredible. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I think even in Italy, you know, it's not that available. And again, you know, not every it's this is not for everyone. Right. This is a mindset thing. Right. But though I've been having a lot of conversations with young Chinese women and they're looking for their voice.

you know something what's what's coming up more and more like in in talking also with clients and everything they're really looking for their voice and they're they're you know they're struggling with the old china and the new china you know yeah this morning i had a conversation with a chinese girl and she said you know i come from this uh poor uh village in guangdong she's very smart you know she had her business she's making money and everything but then the dad uh passed away

And the dad apparently left the assets to the son or something, so not to her. So now that's a big thing, right? And she's like, "Yeah, but I don't have the voice to go in there. You know, how can I manage that?" Right? So I think there is a shift there though.

I think there's definitely a shift for women here. I mean, obviously I'm speaking as a man, but from what I see, I think women in China are just becoming a lot more independent, right? In recent times, financially independent, emotionally independent, right?

- But still more so in the first tier cities though. - Yeah, of course, of course. But that independence is gonna bring a whole nother new set of problems and anxiety and fears and just that they didn't necessarily maybe have to deal with before. - Yeah, there's so much anxiety going on, right? And just making people more aware that they don't need to suffer.

Of course, again, everyone has anxiety. If you can manage it yourself, you have good friends to talk with, you're not alone, that can really help. How do you really define? This is a question for both of you because, Howie, obviously you're very familiar with anxiety. Me, I feel like I don't really understand anxiety. I feel like maybe I have anxiety. Who knows? I probably do. But I don't feel like I understand really what it is

to have anxiety. Like, what does that really mean? Is it just being nervous? Is it just like, what is that? - Let me paint a picture for her because-- - Like, what's the difference between anxiety and fear? - In one of the previous episodes, I was talking about my anxiety and what I go through. And it was like I was speaking in alien language to Justin. He was like, "Wait, what? "I don't get it. "Wait, what? "You can't sleep?"

"Wait, wait, what does that mean?" - But that always happens when we talk to people who do not have anxiety. They're like, "Oh, why don't you sleep?" - I'm just like so jealous of him. I'm like, I'm so jealous that you don't know what this is. - Sometimes I can't sleep either. I get a little bit insomnia here and there, but I don't attribute that to anxiety for me, right? Like, so I don't, like, what does it mean to be, to have anxiety? Like, what does that mean? - Anxiety is like constant worrying. You're constantly worried what's gonna happen in the future.

You know, you're afraid people criticizing you. You're constantly, all your energy is sucked into that.

Right? That's anxiety. Like not sleeping well, not eating well, or overeating. These are consequences out of that. Right? But your mind is racing. So you can only really say you have anxiety if it's really affecting your life. Right? Because like I worry too. You know, I worry about the future. Do you have a physical reaction? Yeah. Everyone has anxiety. Right? Do you have a physical reaction?

- I guess not. Maybe, I don't know, maybe my overeating can be attributed to anxiety or maybe I just like to eat. Who knows? - That's a red flag. Whoever says I love to eat, that's a red flag. - No, because I do love to eat. I'm a big overeater. And there's a lot to dig into there. We don't have to dig into it now. But I have my bouts with gluttony and binge eating.

especially in the past it's better now but it's um in the past um i'm i am very because you mentioned this before i am very much an emotional eater and so that's what the crazy thing is i might not even need your help because i know exactly the scene a moment a memory an experience in my life

that made me an emotional leader. Like I am, I know exactly what happened. Okay. You want to share that? Well, it's not a very interesting story, but, um, so growing up, uh, growing up in New Jersey when I was a kid and this was probably in a middle school actually. And, uh, so my parents, you know, my father was away a lot, so he was never really around the house to begin with. But, um, so it was really my mom there. And, um,

There was one summer where they both left. I think they went to Taiwan or somewhere. I forget exactly where they were, but they left for the entire summer. So I'm in middle school and basically I have the house all to myself for almost two months. Or like maybe like a month. How old were you? No, no, no. I was completely alone. How old were you? In middle school. Like 12?

probably a little older probably a little older 12 13 middle school okay so maybe maybe freshman how old are you when you're a freshman high school 14 so maybe a freshman in high school okay so i'm in my early months alone early teens early teens home alone very early teens yeah um but you know that's that's how my family was like like we were like very um

that's just how we were. And it wasn't like they were abandoning me. I was so excited to be alone. I'm a young kid. I have the house for the first time all to myself for a whole summer and summer break, so all your friends are out. You can do everything, get on parties. Anyway, so I was really excited. And then, so over the course of a few weeks, it starts getting lonely. And I remember

after kind of like the initial excitement of having like being alone for the whole summer having a household myself kind of faded a little bit i didn't i didn't really have any like much interaction and i was a little bit lonely and you know it was getting a little boring and i was kind of wishing my parents would be back already and um so one thing i i started doing that

not only just took up a lot of, just made the time fly by a lot quicker, but something like I truly enjoy doing, enjoy doing was, so I would grab the keys to my parents' car. I didn't have a license yet, so I was too young to drive.

You guys all do that in the US. So I would grab the keys to my parents' car and I would drive, drive down to the, there was a, I don't know if you're familiar with a family restaurant called TGIF Fridays. So there's a family restaurant called Fridays. It's a big chain in the States. And I would drive down to my local Fridays and I would walk in and I would order a ton of food, right? And takeout because I didn't want to eat in the restaurant alone.

And I would get it and I would bring it back, drive back to my house and sit in front of the TV and just gorge myself on all this delicious Friday's food. So we're talking about. It's really unhealthy. Really unhealthy. It's like fried, it's like mozzarella steaks, buffalo wings, cheeseburgers, things like that, right? And I made a routine of that. So I did that.

almost every day as like a routine. - That's crazy. - Like that was the one thing I looked forward to when I woke up was to like, oh, when I get hungry, I'm gonna grab the keys and I enjoyed the drive too. I'd blast the music and I was like, you know, a little kid, I'm driving for the first, I didn't even have my license. So like it felt like, it felt like freedom, right? And I would go in and I felt like I was an adult walking in and ordering food and taking it back and eating it and I loved the food.

So I made a routine of that and back then the consequences were very small in terms of eating because I was young, my metabolism was racing. I can eat all that junk food and still just be fine. I was a thin kid.

But my emotional attachment to that period of my life, I feel is probably still really strong because I still have the urge to do the same thing again. And I love to eat alone. I don't like to eat with anybody else. - That's true. - Yeah, I don't like to eat with people.

- I like to eat alone. I prefer to eat alone. - And you gorge when you eat alone. - And I gorge when I eat alone. - So you never eat with other people? - No, no, no, I eat with people all the time because I'm an adult and I'm a functioning human being in society. - Yeah, but what do you mean that I don't eat? - But I prefer to eat alone if I had the choice. - Because when you eat alone? - 'Cause when I eat alone, I can just eat whatever the hell I want. - You can eat alone. - Exactly. - Just like when you were 14. - And my favorite restaurant to this day is still Friday's.

Yeah, memories. Yeah. So I have a very deep emotional connection to that. You do? Mm-hmm.

And it's like hardwired into my brain. Like every time I even see a Friday's logo, I start salivating. - Whenever we go on vacation, like together to like Taiwan or anywhere and there's a Friday's, that's the, I mean, he wants to go to Friday's. - I have to go. - It's like, Jesus, Justin, why are we going to Friday's? - Like screw the local food. I need to, wherever I am, you know, like I'm eating Fridays and I see it. - But that makes sense, right? Because Friday saved you. You were alone in the beginning.

- Cool, in the beginning it was nice, but then you were alone, you were still a kid, right? So Fridays became your best friend. - Yeah, it really did. - Yeah, of course, and you brought it home. - It really did. - Oh, of course, yeah. - And every time I walk into Fridays, like all the flair and like the badges the waiters would wear and the design inside and music, like that still resonates with me today. Like I just, there's something about it though, it's like, it just turns me on emotionally. - Humanized TGI Fridays.

- But isn't it causing you problems, that emotional eating? - Yes, that's why I am overweight to this day, yeah. - No, but any other problems than overweight? - Maybe social problems. Maybe social problems because I prefer to eat alone and I get very, like Howie knows this, I get very picky about what we eat and if we're not eating what I wanna eat sometimes, I get cranky. I sound like such an asshole right now.

No, but that's how it goes. Again, you know, your mind brings you to pleasure. If you associate that kind of food, like the Friday's food or whatever food, your favorite food, yeah, of course. Like I cannot eat for a long time. I can fast for a day or two days without a problem. But whenever I do decide to eat, like it's got to be legit. It's got to be right. You know what I mean? And there's...

So, I don't know, I still have this issue with eating today that I'm fighting, you know? - And do you have that in other aspects of your life? That things need to be legit?

- I guess, but I don't think any more so than the next person. I think it's really when it comes to eating, that's where I see the biggest differences between myself and the people around me. That's when I feel the most isolated because I am very aware and self-conscious about my own eating habits and

And I see no one else share those kind of like those same things. And so I feel like an alien. I'm like, how are you not like that? What are the same things? I don't know. That obsession with eating a certain type of food and the amount of food. There's only one other friend that I know of in the whole world.

that shares similar, that thing to me, that's my friend James. - But it's not the same level, it's different. - I don't know. I think James James is pretty crazy too. - He is, but it's different. - I think every emotional eater is a little bit different, but there are so many emotional eaters out there. - Do you deal with that a lot? - Before I was specialized in emotional eating. - Really? - Before.

before that, yeah, because I am a nutritionist, you know, and I had bulimia when I was young. - Oh, wow. - So I know what eating disorders is, you know? So I went to help a lot of emotional eating people, eaters, but it's really deep.

- It is very deep. - It's very deep. - It's tougher than anxiety. - Maybe. - With him, the anxiety is like that's, you know, over you. No, no, no, really, emotional eating is tough. - Because it plays on a core, fundamental, biological need is to eat, right? - No, it doesn't have anything to do with the food. The relationship you have with food is a mirror of the relationship you have with yourself.

what does that mean though like what advice short of short of coming to one of your sessions which i very well might book but like what advice can you give me for an emotional eater yeah based off of what i just told you about myself so if you have a magic wand if i have a magic wand here what do you want first tell me what you want when it comes to like eating or just anything what do you want i want to i want to

be able to be completely fine and satisfied with eating less food and healthy food. Like I want that to be like completely satisfying to me. Like I see people, right? Like that can eat like healthy food and like eat like a bird, like just eat a little bit. And they're completely satisfied after the meal. They're like, oh, they're like patting their stomach. Like that was a heavy meal, right? I'm like, what the fuck? Like you didn't even eat.

So like I want to be that. I want that to be completely fine for me. But it's not. Can I ask you something before I answer your question? Did you feel different as a child? Did you feel different from other children? Wow. Yeah, I did very much so.

why why is that relevant uh because i'm hearing i'm hearing you when you're saying like no one else has eaten like me not to that level you know or you have some people who just can eat a bit and they're okay yeah like i feel ashamed about my eating you know i mean that's why i prefer to eat alone i think so the the four uh the four major problems right is i'm not enough i'm not lovable

I can't connect or I feel different. - Really, do we have to go there though? Like I'm not lovable? - No, no, no, no. - I don't feel, I don't know if I feel like that. - You're one of four, right? - Okay. - So these are the four things, right? You're number four. You felt different as a child. - Oh yeah, yeah. - And as a child, because again, this is subconscious. We cannot solve this. - But doesn't every child feel different when they're growing up? I mean, isn't that just part of like-- - To some extent, you know, to some extent. Some feel different, but they don't have a lot of problems with that.

You know, if you felt really, really different as a child, I think I see it as it's very, very interesting. You know, whenever I work with emotional eaters, and I also did with my own journey on emotional eating, we're people we love to connect, right?

We love to connect. We need connection in our life. But sometimes, I don't know, I'm not talking for you, I just talk about me and my clients, right? Because often we see that there was not enough connection in the childhood, right? And we still keep on having these beliefs, you know, it's difficult for me to connect. I'm different than everyone else. I'm different. But you need to eradicate these beliefs, right?

because it's not true. When you eradicate these things like shame, you said shame about eating, shame that everyone is eating normal and only you are eating like this. I'm a nutritionist. I have two restaurants.

A lot of people have these problems of emotional eating. So many people. It starts with small things. Eradicate the beliefs that keep you stuck and develop that connection.

So is that part of also dealing with people? Because one thing I read is hypnotherapy is very effective in dealing with addiction. Yeah. So is there, I mean, obviously there's a level of addiction there as well, right? What do you mean a level of addiction? Well, addiction to food or addiction to that, like that feeling I get when I do eat, like,

It's an addiction, right? Yeah, it's food addiction. Yeah, yeah. I deal with alcohol addiction, smoking addiction, food addiction. Smoking is a little bit different because that works on the brain with the dopamine and everything. But even with the food, it has the reward system. I don't know. It produces dopamine. So you say Fridays, right? Our minds...

Works with two things, you know the words we say and the images we see that's our reality for you Fridays. That's amazing. I

So your brain, your brain is-- - I don't need to take ecstasy, I just have to go to a Friday's, that's my ecstasy. - Yeah, so that's that, you're so easy to hypnotize, right? You're so suggestible for that. - No, but I mean for sure with Justin sharing this, I mean as a friend and having shared many meals with him, you definitely have this relationship with food that is different than what I have or-- - Yeah.

And it's interesting because I know that you've had this struggle and I know you've had this problem that you want to face or you have been trying to face, right? So it is interesting to hear that. Have I ever shared that story with you?

Now that you said it, I've heard you say the snippets of it because I remember you told me the first relationship you had with TGI Fridays. But I didn't realize that it was a whole month of that. I just remember you said, oh, my parents went away and I took the cars. It was a whole ritual. I didn't know it was an everyday thing. But he definitely goes into this mode where when he's eating, it's like...

he changes, like literally physically changes. It's interesting because I think it is a deep rooted thing. I think it's interesting for you. I think it would be interesting for you to talk it out. - It's an addiction. And your body is used to that. - Of all the things, whether it's anxiety, phobias, food addiction, what do you find the toughest to work on? - Food addiction. - Really? It is. Well, what do you find is the most common in your practice?

- The people, the issue they come with the most, you mean? - Yeah. - Yeah, anxiety. - Yeah. So would that be like, you know, Eric likes to say this, but like public enemy number one, in terms of like what you see are the threats today.

to mental health is anxiety, you feel? - Anxiety and fear, right? There's so much anxiety and fear out there, even now, right? We're recovering a bit, right, in China? Like people are back to work, but there's still so much fear.

- That's interesting because one of our previous guests, the psychologist David Amersleiter, he said the same thing. He was like, the most common thing he's seeing now is also anxiety. - Yeah, but again, a lot of addiction is anxiety driven. I have a lot of people-- - So it's all connected. - Well, anything to smooth out that feeling of anxiety, right? Any type of pleasure to kind of

weigh that down a little bit. 'Cause I'm the same way, when I have an attack, the first thing I'm looking for is what can I do to make myself feel happy? - Yeah, you wanna numb, huh? - To numb that. - Yeah, you wanna numb, maybe the same with you, you know? One does it with the alcohol, the other one does it with food, you have people doing it with sex, you have people with sex addiction too. You know, it happens with everything, right, yeah. - So Lime, for anyone listening, like what,

what would you suggest like how how does someone um decide how should someone come to the conclusion that they want to try hypnotherapy so people who come to me they want solutions you know they're they're limited in their life they're not living the life they want their self-esteem is low they want to get ahead in their career they want to have better relationships

well would you would you suggest that they try is there anything that you would suggest they try first before trying hypnotherapy or is that something they should always consider another modality you mean yeah or other forms of treatment i mean like it depends you know again i first do an intake like a free intake of 60 minutes with people to see if if the modality fits them if it's it's not that they need to fit the modality if this is something that can work for them if it can work that they work with me

know we do this journey together and then we do it regardless of the modality you know like you you talked about david the psychologist psychotherapy is also amazing you know i have people with food uh addiction who go to an art therapist or to a psychotherapist you know it's it's it's a different modality so it just comes down to preference

People need, like for psychotherapy, for hypnotherapy, some people are really open to it. People who come to me, they're like, yeah, let's do it. I don't care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

- Mike Tyson, you know Mike Tyson the boxer, right? He stated publicly once that he was going under hypnosis as part of his training. - Okay. - As far as boxing training. - Athletes. - Yeah, like regularly. I think there are a few athletes that do that as part of like a visualization technique.

something to kind of any edge they can get on like actual athletic performance like they're even using this as a method so I mean I think there's something there for sure no athletes it's very very yeah that's very powerful yeah they need mental coaches it's all here

- The body can cope with that. - Yeah, like what you said, it's like, just how open are you to it? And the only way to really know is like, if it really works, just like your own story and how you got started, it's like, you just, like, if you decide to do it, you know, you really learn through just trying it in your own experience. I don't think anyone can really tell you, you know, like, you know, they can list off maybe the benefits they had for them. But like you say, there are a lot of different forms and there are a lot of different types of treatment you can go through other than hypnotherapy, but,

- For those that have tried it and the things that I've read, some people walk away with it with really significant progress and improvements, whether it's anxiety or even addiction that I read about, weight loss, things like this. And then you read about athletes doing it. - The success rate is very high. And we work.

we work in a minimum of sessions, you know? Clients never stay with me for a year or two years, you know? I might refer them to a psychologist afterwards. I might refer them to another therapist, you know, afterwards. But like with PTSD, it takes one session, one or two just to take the trauma out, you know? Some other modalities cannot do this. I don't know any other modalities who can take away trauma that

I remember Mastin Kipp, I'm in a group coaching with Mastin Kipp. I don't know if you know him. He's an amazing, he's a trauma-informed coach from the US, right? And he also... No, in the US. Okay, in the US. Yeah, he's quite famous. I think he started with Tony Robbins. He's really interesting. And he said hypnotherapy is so, so powerful. But again, it...

It also, I don't want to brag, right? But it depends on your therapist too. It depends on the modality. - I'm sure. Well, that's with any sort of therapy, right? - Yeah, right, yeah. But hypnotherapy, you have a lot, you have a whole spectrum of hypnotherapy, right? The thing that I do is rapid transformational therapy with the techniques inside, it's very powerful. Very, very powerful. - How do your clients find out about you?

- So I work a lot with doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists. - So a lot of referrals and recommendations? - I have a lot of referrals, yeah. I do a lot of marketing because I come from marketing. I worked 12 years in marketing before and business development. So I do a lot of marketing, I write blogs, so I post a lot on social. - So if I didn't have this podcast and you weren't here, how would I have looked you up? - Yeah, how can the guests also find you? - Oh, on Instagram, yeah. They can find me on Instagram. - What's your Instagram? - Limey, Limey Yung.

Yeah, my Facebook, my website, www.laimeiyung.com. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, Limei, that was, you know, I didn't anticipate for it to...

get so like personal but um are you feeling okay guys yeah i'm feeling great i always have this effect with people you know they just open and snap and you guys are like oh we just uh we're about to start the podcast yeah i'm like welcome anyway thank you elime thank you it was wonderful talking to you thank you so much guys it was great great talk i really loved it thank you for doing this and uh let's do it again sometime in the future yeah great welcome all right well cheers cheers

All right, folks. That was Limey. I'm Justin. And I'm Howie. All right, guys. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.