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Hypnotherapy for confidence: making positive, lasting
changes today
The following article has been kindly supplied by
Cheyne Towers
MBAThH, GQHP
www.heartmindtherapies.com
Anybody
who wants to get along in life and make positive,
appropriate decisions needs to develop a healthy degree
of self-confidence.
I say
healthy specifically because people can have an excess
of apparent confidence which tends more towards
arrogance, and more often than not masks an underlying
insecurity. However, if anybody wishes to achieve
anything meaningful, they have to have the confidence,
belief and faith in themselves to move forward.
One of
the main problems that my clients have sought help for
over the years is a lack of confidence in themselves.
This can manifest in a number of different ways which
hinder people’s enjoyment of their own life, success in
business or social life.
What
causes a lack of confidence? When we come to investigate
the causes we often find that it is past experiences
that set up certain negative mental and emotional habits
and also the physical expressions of those habits. It
may have been caused by someone’s insensitivity in a
vulnerable moment, experience of being bullied, or being
a victim of an assault: something has set up a pattern,
which perpetuates in the present tense often as a
negative, self-limiting internal dialogue. “I’m no
good…they won’t like me…I don’t deserve to…I’m too
fat…I’m too thin…I’m scared…I can’t cope…It always
happens to me…I can’t deal with it“ etc.
Whatever
this internal dialogue may be, effectively
subconsciously one is dragging into the present tense
that same negative experience that started the pattern.
This cycle however can be stopped, just like we can
change a record that is annoying for one that we prefer
to and even can enjoy listening to.
Words
have power
Words
have power, and if they are repeated over and over
again, they have an effect. So what we say to ourselves
about ourselves directly influences the experience we
have in the present.
If a
person is fed up with being plagued by a lack of self
confidence and wishes to change their experience of life
for the better, then the very first thing they need to
start to do is to become aware of and start to actively
monitor the dialogue they have with themselves, so that
they come to recognise those negative patterns of
dialogue in real time.
For
example, I recall a mother with a wonderful and loving
family and who felt good about most aspects of her life.
She recognised the love of her family and the security
of that environment, and yet deep down she felt
constantly incompetent and un-worthy. It soon became
obvious in the first session that her inner-dialogue was
formed early on when growing up with a very demanding
mother who made her believe that she’s doomed to failure
and whatever she did was never good enough. This was the
message that the client had carried on into her
adulthood, despite the assurances of her family and
friends.
Another
patient who found it difficult to walk past a newsagents
without giving into an urge to go in and buy several
chocolate bars, only to eat them all at once. Somewhere
deep down he was replaying a dialogue based on an old
negative experience which led them to believe that he
should be punished. Now, that punishment was masked by a
false feeling that by eating the chocolate he would
sooth himself. Yet after eating the bars came the
self-loathing (the punishment), and the vicious cycle
was set up.
This
really is, in my opinion, the main problem with people
who suffer from a lack of confidence: Often they feel
like a hamster stuck on a wheel, putting one foot
constantly in front of the other, going nowhere but
around in circles.
Making the change today, with greater confidence
How to
get off that hamster wheel? Simply, to break the cycle
one must stop putting one foot in front of the other.
You have to become aware of one’s self-limiting dialogue
and stop stating those things in the present that you do
not wish to have as a part of your experience any
longer. Sounds simple? With the help of hypnosis, it can
be.
We don’t
live in our past, we live now. If we are stating
something in this moment now, IT IS NOW and not our
past/future. If we were to say, “It always happens to
me…I can’t let go…I’m no good…I can’t do it”, that is
actually what will happen. Doubts are a part of our
journey, and we can be aware that: “I used to fear…”,
“In the past, I was...”, “I have felt…”. But no athlete,
who doubts his/her abilities in the present will win a
race. They have to change the record to one that says: I
CAN. I WILL.
If we
wish to have a different experience NOW, we have to
actively choose to no longer state in the present tense
those things which we have experienced in the past.
While we can’t change our past, we can live without it
weighting us down. Nothing of our past needs to hold us
back and prevent us from fully living and engaging in
life today.
How can
hypnotherapy help people to make that transition? I help
my clients to identify where they may have picked up
those negative patterns or what were the circumstances
where the unwanted inner dialogue first arose. Through
the dialogue with them they come to understand exactly
what those loops have been, and together we investigate
the experiences in their lives that may have set up
those self-limiting patterns. As a solution focused
therapy we don’t dwell on these experiences – we simply
find out what has happened and understand the impact of
it, and then move on to transform the way those events
resonate in the client today.
I use a
variety of techniques to help the client change their
perspective, including indirect suggestion and hypnotic
relaxation. The aim is that a client can begin to
realise that the way they’ve experienced things isn’t
the only way to see them; that there are better and more
beneficial ways of beginning to relate those same
experiences and that they no longer have power over them
in the present.
Take the
mother I mentioned earlier: within the space of six
sessions she was able to totally turn around to the
point where she is now confident and capable of simply
getting on with her life whilst fully appreciating the
family’s love around her. She has a great deal of good
things going on in her life and now she enjoys them
confidently.
The
person I helped with chocolate addiction can now go and
pick up a paper without coming out with a handful of
chocolate bars. The loop of self-depreciation and
punishment, masked in ‘comfort eating’, was stopped in
few sessions and I am sure the weight problem caused by
the activity has eased, supporting and encouraging a
better and more confident sense of self.
A lack
of confidence can have a very negative impact on one's
life and it can manifest itself in a whole host of ways.
For some people it’s a major factor in relation to
weight issues, work related stress or irrational fears.
Other
people who may have been violently abused, and hence may
have found it difficult, even impossible, to form loving
and committed relationships or to trust people, find
that after a course of hypnotherapy they come to the
very practical recognition and realisation that those
things which happened to them in their past no longer
have any power to dictate to them NOW how they should
think, feel or react in the present. This awareness
allows all of my clients who have overcome the lack of
confidence, to begin to form new and meaningful, loving
relationships and to enjoy a new lease of life.
Cheyne Towers MBAThH, GQHP, is a fully
qualified hypnotherapist and has served as a committee
member and journal editor for the British Association of
Therapeutical Hypnotists (BAThH).
More information about Cheyne can be
found at
http://www.heartmindtherapies.com
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