Hypnotherapy Information Exchange

Wake up! We are all living in a trance, or multiple situation-​​specific trances, all of our lives. Many of these trances aren’t bene­ficial in our lives. They hold us back, keep us stuck in little worlds of our own creation. Yes, you are living your life in a trance. How can I make this statement?

Easy. We are born into this world with a per­sonality, yes, but without beliefs. A belief is “the psy­cho­logical state in which an indi­vidual holds a pro­position or premise to be true,” or “Mental acceptance of a claim as truth; Something believed,” (defin­itions from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Belief). The psy­cho­logical state in which mental acceptance happens is the state of trance, or hypnosis. In trance or hypnosis, the critical factor of the mind is bypassed, or pushed aside, so that the information or message units presented to the mind are accepted. During the childhood years, the critical factor of the mind is undeveloped and therefore a great majority of your beliefs are formed during childhood. The values and behaviors that you see around you, or are told about by parents, siblings, teachers and peers are accepted much more easily and rapidly. The mind abhors a vacuum, and as the young mind encounters new situ­ations, it requires a belief to be in place in order to know how to function within that situation, so it quickly accepts the dominant belief in its environment.

So, your beliefs were formed in trance, and because they anchor your thoughts and emo­tional states to that time when they were formed, you operate in a level of trance every time you function within that belief, or set of beliefs.

An example is a person who grows up in a household where money is tight. All around her, she is receiving messages of lack, of how dif­ficult money is to obtain, how important it is to choose security over risk, of how inherently dan­gerous the world is because of how dif­ficult it is to accu­mulate wealth. When that child becomes an adult, she may desire to be wealthy, but every time she con­siders taking an action to bring more wealth into her life, actions that often involve risk, her beliefs about money will come into effect, taking her back into the trance state that was in effect when those beliefs were formed, and she will find herself having all manner of troublesome feelings such as self doubt, depression, remorse about decisions involving risk, and she will con­sistently sabotage her desired success by not fol­lowing through with actions to create wealth, pulling up short, con­tinually returning to her comfort zone which says that security, even a security with a small amount of money, is preferable to taking risk. The beliefs in play may be stated as, “risk is bad,” “it’s better to be secure,” “money is hard to come by.”

Contrast this person to someone who is raised in an affluent family, and grows up familiar with entre­pren­eur­ialism in an envir­onment com­fortable with risk. She may grow up accu­mu­lating beliefs such as “every risk you take brings you more success,” “when things don’t work out as planned, you learn something valuable that gets you even further,” and “there is always more than enough money.” This woman will feel com­pletely secure in leveraging her money and taking risks, fully expecting that every experience will bring more benefit and wealth into her life.

These two women could even be twins raised in dif­ferent families, because while some elements of tem­perament are her­itable, beliefs are not. Beliefs are a result of your envir­onment. And both of these women are behaving in accordance with their beliefs, therefore they are both operating in trance. The problem is not beliefs, the problem is not the trance that they were formed in and anchored to. The problem is that we don’t get the chance to opt-​​in. We don’t get to choose and select the beliefs that will help us to live up to our potential and have the most amazing lives we can.

And while trances and beliefs (often called self-​​limiting beliefs) about money and abundance are much dis­cussed, beliefs can be bene­ficial or det­ri­mental in any area of your life, from your ability to learn, to your ability to form and keep good rela­tionships, or to be fit and healthy, and on and on.

Is there an area in your life where your actual results are falling short of what you’d like to see? If so, then that is probably an area where you are carrying limiting beliefs, e.g., operating in a trance, that is not effective or bene­ficial to you. The way out of this situation is the same way that you got in. The mechanism that formed these beliefs is what you should use to create new beliefs to replace them, and that mechanism is hypnosis. Your actions will always be con­gruent with your beliefs, so use hypnosis to create beliefs that will enable you to have the life you have.

The method I suggest for this is a system, which starts by choosing an area of your life to improve, a specific goal. Then you enter the process by focusing on the success you already have in your life, which increases your self esteem and con­fidence to reach further. Then, address the specific fears you have that have blocked you from taking action toward your goals, and increase your motivation to reach those goals. After accom­plishing these steps, your sub­con­scious mind will be more ready to release the old, self limiting beliefs. You can’t just do that first, you have to lay the groundwork, the foundation, that makes releasing and replacing the old belief desirable to your sub­con­scious. The final steps are to choose new beliefs that support your goals and to use holo­graphic visu­al­ization to create the context for the new beliefs–basically recreating the process that created the released beliefs, but this time you select your beliefs.

Fol­lowing these steps is a process, and should be done over a period of time that feels right, but not so slowly that homeo­static res­istance has a chance to un-​​do any gains. I suggest a system of mental repro­gramming over the course of a month to six weeks as ideal for most. As with any change, this system relies on a com­bination of con­scious action paired with sub­con­scious messages, and rein­forcement through repe­tition over time, for its success.

This article was ori­ginally pub­lished on www.HypnotherapyClinic.info by Con­sultant Clinical Hyp­no­therapist & Pys­cho­therapist Noel Bradford –

As a pro­fes­sional therapist Noel help people with everything that you would expect including giving up smoking, con­trolling their weight, dealing with fears and phobias. However his services go far beyond this and encompass things that affect everyone at some time in their life, such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, stress, and low self esteem.

He  also has detailed spe­cialist training in several areas including but not limitted to Irrittable Bowel Syndrome and Pyscho­sexual matters that affect men such as Errectile Dys­function and Pre­mature Ejac­u­lation as well as those affecting women such as Hyper Desire Disorder, Vaginisums, and Dys­pareunia.

Ori­ginally posted 2010-​​02-​​23 14:05:00.