Changing the narrative in your mind

On Sunday, I was lucky enough to watch Robbie Williams at Sandringham, and I feel I need to share my thoughts about a speech he gave.

He shared some very honest and brave things with us. He told us that he was “over-sensitive and vulnerable” as a child and that he had an internal voice that always told him he was fat, lazy, ugly, stupid, embarrassing and much else besides.

To quieten the voice, he turned to drugs and alcohol. But the voice didn’t go away, and now he was also an addict in the bargain. He had depression, anxiety, dyslexia, body dysmorphia and a host of other issues.

He told us that he grabbed onto whatever he could in order to feel safe, and that was partly the audience who came to watch him, because “if you come out to see me, I mustn’t be that bad”. He thanked us, for keeping him safe even when we didn’t know we were doing it.

He told us how from morning to night, he was fighting demons. He told us how he’d “tried to take himself off the planet” several times.

I’ll be honest, I had tears listening to this. I felt so much of what he said. We can’t take away our pain with drugs or alcohol, we can’t run away from ourselves. Because when we sober up the issues are still there. That’s a hard thing to hear sometimes. He actually spoke to a lady in the crowd who was a recovering alcoholic and told her, “When we take away these “isms”, we are still left with the madness inside our heads.”

He labels himself as over-sensitive and I wonder who gave him that label, whether he grew up believing there was something wrong with him because he’d been described that way by someone else. Often, we carry with us through life the labels we are given in childhood. This can be damaging and limiting to us.

He makes a hugely important point and I want to emphasise it here. Sometimes we don’t know we are making others feel safe. They cling to us without us knowing, and this is why our behaviour towards fellow humans needs improvement. One wrong move and we could unknowingly make someone feel unsafe, with disastrous consequences.

If Robbie’s story sounds familiar to you, and you want to talk it through, please reach out to me. Hypnotherapy can help in so many ways, from challenging the labels we apply to ourselves, and our self-perception, to getting to the root of the issues and where they started. I can work with you to lessen the intensity of negative images and critical internal dialogue, and together we can start to reverse the old feelings and behaviours and replace them with more positive, resourceful states that better serve us.

I applaud Robbie for taking to the stage and sharing his story with so many people. Let's keep talking about mental health, and understanding that no matter how much money or luxury we might have, the one thing we cannot do is run from our own minds.

It's therefore important to make our minds work for us and serve us in a beneficial way so that limiting beliefs and negative thought patterns are replaced with a more healthy model. Through hypnotherapy, this is definitely possible.