Many people think of hypnosis and hypnotherapy purely to break habits such as cigarette smoking, or to help them control appetite as in weight reduction or to overcome fingernail biting. It is very useful on all these applications, but I have always been much more interested in changing the underlying fixed ideas that have been acquired, especially in childhood. These ideas become fixed and control behavior in specific areas of a person’s expression and life style, often throughout a lifetime.
Our behavior is simply the expression of energy and the form and manner of our expression of energy in specific situations is determined by the underlying fixed ideas. Most of our behavior is appropriate and is defined by our culture, our environmental shaping, our family upbringing, our parent’s sense of ethics and morals, acquired values and religious beliefs. The problem occurs when people are regularly expressing various forms of behavior that are counter-productive, frustrating and often self-sabotaging. These are the ideas that need to be changed because once those fixed ideas are changed, the behavior is transformed.
our reality is defined by our perception of ourselves, the world around us and our relationship to it. Once that perception is altered, our behavior is altered.
The wonderful part about this is that our reality is defined by our perception of ourselves, the world around us and our relationship to it. Once that perception is altered, our behavior is altered and our interaction with others is altered. Most importantly, we can discover more of ourselves and be more of what we are capable of being. I want my clients to discover their inner powers that they have neglected to develop and in most cases never realized that they have.
Most fixed ideas are acquired in childhood. Sometimes it is telling a child, “you are just like your uncle Charlie, he has always been very defiant, never wanted to follow the rules”. They hear it over and over and soon they begin to identify with this aspect of Uncle Charlie’s behavior.
Where grandmother and mother have both suffered from back ailments, a female child may be told, “Back pain runs in our family. All the women in our family suffer from back pains after bearing children”. Since the child is female, when they become a woman and have children, it is very likely that they going to develop the same back pains.
Some children are told in anger, that “they are ugly, they’re stupid, they will never amount to anything”.
These repeated statements become attributions, because they are attributed as character traits of the child, rather then defining behavior. When it is phrased, “That is a stupid thing you have just done”, it is not attributed to be being part of the person but says “it is your behavior”. Behavior is always subject to change but a supposed character trait that has been accepted by the subconscious mind of the child can last a lifetime.
In this “scientific” age, we are inclined to accept the diagnosis of people who have licenses and are defined as experts.
In this “scientific” age, we are inclined to accept the diagnosis of people who have licenses and are defined as experts. The physician gives a diagnosis and the patient accepts it, because the physician has said, “this is what is wrong with you”. Diagnostic testing and symptoms can be correlated to show that the diagnosis is very specific.
In psychotherapy, the diagnosis is rarely specific, because there are so many symptoms that are part of various complexes of mental, emotional issues. So much terminology or jargon is used in the psychiatric profession that when a psychiatrist says to a person, “you are suffering from_xyz__ ” and–gives them a diagnosis, it becomes a specific label. Often, the first thing the person wants to know is, “what does that mean?”
They may go to the library and search out a book and read lengthy academic definitions. Because the expert has defined it, now they have to live up to it because they have been told that is what is wrong with them. Further, those labels give the person an alibi and a reason to continue their same behaviors. “This is the way I am, that is my label”.
I teach never put labels on anyone. They describe their behavior and how they’re expressing it in ways that are unsatisfying to them. The hypnotherapist is there to help them find the ways and the energy to change their behavior to become more fulfilling, more rewarding and more satisfying to them.