Welcome! And congratulations for choosing to take positive steps to make a meaningful change for yourself! Hypnotherapy is a gentle, natural process that can assist you in feeling calm, confident and in charge of your thoughts, emotions, and actions.

 

Getting Unstuck

Ever found yourself trying so hard to make a change, perhaps trying to change a habit and it seems the harder you try the more it eludes you? And as the same old behavior comes into play again you are left asking yourself, “Why do I keep doing that?”

Often times people end up blaming themselves for lack of willpower. Some may claim that an addiction has power or control over them keeping them from changing. Others believe they are somehow naturally defective in some way.

To really make a change effectively and permanently, it is important to discover the “why” behind what you do. What I have come to understand during my study and practice of hypnosis is that we do the things we do because it works for us. On some level there is a reward, a benefit to every behavior. In other words, a need is being met. If the unwanted behavior happens to be the quickest perceived way to meet the need, the mind gravitates to it as the “known”.

If you drive to work, why do you take the route that you do? Because it’s the quickest or easiest way to get to your destination, right? Well the brain reverts back to the quickest and easiest way it knows to get a need met. For example, if an individual believes that smoking a cigarette relaxes them, then during a time of stress and tension the subconscious mind recognizes the need for comfort and it searches in it’s memory database for past experiences of quick and easy relaxation. The result is: you revert to the old programmed route to get to your destination, your goal of perceived relaxation.

So you recognize that a need is trying to be met, but you also realize that the way you tried to meet the need in the past is no longer productive or healthy for you or your body. How do you overcome the old programming?

When you get an idea of why you behave a certain way and what you gain from that behavior this should uncover the basic subconscious need that the behavior is trying to meet. Once you become aware of that need you can begin to logically come up with new more positive solutions to meet that need. For instance if you find that you eat to comfort sad feelings. Consciously think about all the others things that you’ve done or experienced in that past that effectively and healthfully changed your mood and made you feel happier. Perhaps, for example, remembering the times that you took walks around your neighborhood and how good it made you feel to get outside moving your body. That reaction is obviously far healthier than stiffling emotions by feeding from the refrigerator.

So perhaps you have already tried replacing old behaviors with new ones to get the same need met and it didn’t work. This is where using hypnosis can be especially helpful.

Hypnosis techniques can help you uncover subconscious imprints that created the need in the first place. An imprint is any experience that in turn created a perception or reaction that is uncomfortable which resulted in unhealthy behaviors in an attempt to cope with the uncomfortable feelings. Through hypnosis “reframing” processes we can effectively alter or eliminate subconscious imprints. It is like updating a computer document. By changing it’s format, like changing a Word document in to a PDF, the document can no longer be opened by the old application. As a result, you can still maintain the information from the document, in this case the memory, but you no longer react to trigger(s) with the old uncomfortable feelings. With the absence of discomfort there is no need to comfort. So in the example of the smoker who smoked during times of high stress can effectively alter his/her stress reactions to specific triggers...therefore eliminating the need to comfort and relax self with cigarettes. This hypnosis imprint reframing technique is effective with a wide variety of issues (See List).

For more information on how hypnosis can help you with your specific issue call Theresa to schedule a free consultation 503-577-1817. To email click here.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Who's In Charge...Your Conscious Mind or Your Subconscious Mind? Read more...