In two minds: effective steps to your success

I know Hypnotherapy can work – I became a hypnotherapist because it helped me overcome a huge fear of my own. However, there is no magic wand; improving ourselves takes time and effort, but there are steps that make this journey easier, more engaging and empowering to ensure you reach your goals. 

I find working on the conscious mind along with the subconscious mind makes all the difference. It offers you a sense of control and of being involved in the whole process. It allows rewiring of the conscious mind to support rewiring the subconscious changes and vice versa.

Team work

Imagine the mind in two parts: the conscious and subconscious. Now imagine making changes to one, but not the other. Now consider the difference when you make changes to both. When you have both the conscious and subconscious mind working together to support those changes, the outcome is far more solid. You can help to change your thoughts, feelings and behaviours more effectively using both minds.

Imagine a thought that's not helpful to you, then imagine a little light blinks on in your mind. Now imagine feeding that unhelpful thought with another equally unhelpful thought. Another light blinks on, and a pathway between the two is forged in your brain. This then spirals and embeds deeper and deeper until it becomes the automatic response. That's a neural pathway. When we talk of rewiring the brain, we are creating more helpful neural pathways. 

Creating automatic responses

That's where hypnotherapy comes in. Whilst you can help to change these pathways by changing these unhelpful thoughts, that takes time, effort and commitment. But when you team this conscious effort with hypnotherapy, the results can be quicker, easier and almost become automatic. New pathways take time to build, but once your subconscious mind becomes engaged in supporting those changes, that's when it can be easier to achieve those goals.

Yes, we will always have unhelpful thoughts; we're wired to be vigilant to any dangers. But so many of our thoughts are based on unrealistic and illogical fears. But with hypnotherapy and some conscious practice, we stop feeding those unhelpful thoughts and create more logical, realistic outcomes. Then that little light that switched on at the start? Well, that then has nowhere to go.

Cue the power of hypnotherapy. Deeply rooted subconscious habits and beliefs can be resistant to change. So when you experience an almost automatic change in your responses begin to occur, it reinforces the belief that you really can change. That motivates you to keep working on those thoughts consciously and feel back in control and empowered. 

We can change

We now know so much more about the neuroplasticity of the brain, which means we know that we can change. But experiencing it firsthand is the convincing factor hypnotherapy can provide.

When we then team that experience with CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) or NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), it motivates you further. This is about the language of your thoughts, which in turn affects your feelings and behaviours. You believe you can do it, and that, as we are all aware, is the drive that creates the desired outcome.

Picture this

So let's put this into practice with an example using an area of particular interest to me: anxiety. 

Anxiety is created with future-based thinking, usually about the unknown. Your negativity bias immediately kicks in to warn you of unknown dangers ahead. The "What if something bad happens?!". There's that first light switching on in your brain. This is normal; we all do it, but it's how we now manage that thought that creates the change we desire.

A person who struggles with anxiety will feed this unhelpful thought with another unhelpful thought (another light goes on, forming a pathway between the two thoughts). You can see where this leads with thoughts spiralling out of control, causing anxiety and, in some cases, panic attacks.

Now, imagine the same initial thought of "What if something bad happens?". That light goes on as before, only this time you stop, breathe and challenge that thought gently with more helpful and logical thoughts, such as "What if something bad doesn't happen?". What if you have an amazing time/get a great response/experience something new and exciting? And so on. There is now nothing feeding that initial light, so no pathway is being created. That light goes out, and instead, a new pathway is forged around interest, curiosity or excitement.

The language of our thoughts

The above example can be applied to any unhelpful thoughts. This is the focus of CBT –recognise and label the thoughts, e.g. catastrophising, fortune-telling and so on. That distracts the mind from feeding the thought further.

The next step is to consider a more logical thought and notice how that feels and how that then affects your behaviour. Change the thought, change the feeling. That then changes how you respond. You no longer avoid a situation and reinforce any fears and anxieties around it. Instead, you experience the situation, and most of the time, those initial distorted thoughts are proven wrong.

The more you challenge the unhelpful thoughts and experience the unknown, the more you prove to yourself that there is nothing to fear. Because you've experienced it firsthand, you've proven it to yourself.

Subconscious support

It all sounds so easy! But the reality is it takes time and persistence to rewire all that old wiring. You can easily slip back into old, unhelpful thoughts, particularly when they've been embedded over the years.

That's where the beauty of hypnotherapy comes in. Hypnotherapy provides support in changing those thoughts. Conscious effort is still required, but the process can be easier and quicker once the subconscious is on board, almost automatically starting to overwrite those old, unhelpful ways of thinking.

But it goes way beyond that. Under hypnosis, you can find courage, motivation and a deeper understanding of yourself and how to let go of past learnings and old thought processes.

You can see yourself coping in situations that would previously have created unhelpful thoughts and anxiety. You see yourself calm and in control, even confident. Then it gets better still. You can even imagine yourself directly in that situation and experience it calmly and safely from the comfort of the hypnotherapist's chair. And all that time, your brain is listening, watching, learning. It soaks it all in like memory on a computer, and so begins the process of embedding these learnings on a deeper level.

So now you can go into a previously anxious scenario with the conscious tools that give you control whilst your subconscious provides reinforcements of courage, calm, confidence and understanding. It's a perfect and effective combination.

Many people fear not being in control, but a good hypnotherapist will ensure you always feel in control and that you feel empowered and motivated. Those who engage in the process, those who do their homework and are proactive, tend to reach success much more quickly than those who are passive. But you can only change if you want to, that's how powerful you are.