Lies and damn lies

Beyond approximately the age of nine years, we begin to become more focused on our external world and entrenched in the logical conscious component of our brain. The price we pay, too often, is that we lose trust in our intuitive and imaginative unconscious self, despite the fact we remain reliant on this for acts such as breathing, pulse, metabolism, response to threats etc. This loss largely goes unnoticed and is deemed to be the process of becoming an adult.

Thereafter, every time we talk about our problem or issue, we need to fully or partially lie to ourselves in order to maintain the problem or issue. An example is when a person makes the comment “I’m not good enough.” The comment is not only made but fully believed by the individual. It is only when you confront a person with their successes in other areas of their lives i.e. personal, business or sport, that they begin to challenge their own assertions of what is factually correct.

The source of these “incorrect facts,” were learnt during the very early years of a person’s life, when their experience, feelings and decision making, were internalised and went unchallenged. An example is a child observing an act of violence as a child, feeling anxious and wrongly concluding that it is his/her fault because of a lack objective input, explanation and clarification. The experience is then fully or partially forgotten but the learning regarding where blame lies remains and persists and becoming reactivated often as an adult when exposed to a similar “trigger event.”

A critical part of therapy is to challenge these lies. A failure to do so means that the foundations of the therapeutic relationship is based on the lies perpetrated by the individual seeking help. Hypnotherapy allows the individual to reappraise the memory by reuniting the past event with the feelings experienced at the time. Then various techniques can effectively be deployed to gain resolution which proceeds to transformation.