Do you need to be de-hypnotised?
If you have not already invested a fair bit of energy into your personal growth and development – and more often than not, even if you have – you most likely need to be de-hypnotised. You may never have though of it in those terms, but really it is part of a normal childhood that you become hypnotised by your parents, the education system, and the rest of society around you.
Correspondingly, part of what it means to grow up, then, is to break the hypnosis and become free to operate from your own values, needs and wants. But, unfortunately for a very big number of people – and you may be one of them without having realised it (until now?) – they remain in a state of hypnosis even after they have grown up, and they never realise that this is the case. They suffer the consequences of living in a state of hypnosis, but they don’t realise that this is the cause of their suffering.
How you become hypnotised
What am I talking about here? Am I saying that someone sat you down and performed an hypnotic induction on you when you were a child, and then never took you out of the hypnotic state afterward? No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that along the way, from infant to adolescent and beyond, there are influences upon you that are so powerful that they literally program you to think, believe and behave in very specific ways. Your ideas of yourself and the world you live in, and the relationship between the two, become reflections of these influences, more so than reflections of what is really true and right for you, as who you really are.
From the very beginning your parents, as all parents do, did their best to keep you safe in any which way they could think of. They tried their best to program your mind the way they wanted your mind to work – for your own good. For example, when my son was a toddler, I intentionally imprinted on his mind that he must not run out into the street to get his ball, but come and ask me to get it for him. I would not leave it to his toddler ability to judge the situation as safe or unsafe. I simply wanted to program him to behave in the safest possible way. Without thinking.
Now, that is an example of deliberate programming. And it may interest you to know that with children, most of the time, no particular hypnotic induction is required for putting them into hypnosis. Children live in a state of hypnotic trance, pretty much all the time. How else can they be so engrossed in pushing a toy truck up and down the floor? In their hypnotic state they are not a child pushing a toy around, they are a truck driver performing an important and complicated task. For this is what makes hypnosis so powerful; in a profound hypnotic state anything that you imagine can appear so real that you believe it is really happening. Therefore, with young children in particular, you have to be very careful with what you say to them, because it may have the effect of an hypnotic command that affects them for life.
Not all of the programming that we are exposed to is as overt and deliberate as in the example above though. A lot of it is just the effect of continually being fed thoughts and beliefs, that are presented to you as if they are absolute truths. Everything from basic table manners, to ideas about which is the “rightest” religion, and everything in between. We become infused with these cultural viewpoints and they become a filter through which we perceive everything that we observe. Including ourselves. And there is where the real problem begins.
Why it is important to be de-hypnotised
Largely based on what people say to you, your view of yourself is programmed into your mind. You absorb beliefs about yourself, such as what you are like as a person, what your talents are, what you are able to do (or not), what you like and value, how you are expected to behave in various situations, etc. Not all of these ideas are personal and specific to you. Many of them are beliefs that apply to you simply because of where you live in the world. Yet, some of them ARE specifically about you. And yet they are not true. They are just the personal component of a hazy hypnotic state, a dreamlike state full of ideas that are not actually yours, where you are striving for happiness and contentment in directions where you will never find it.
There is fundamentally only one single path to happiness, and that is to fully and completely be who/what you really and truly are. To discard all the external influences that have been thrust upon you over years of hypnotic programming, to identify what is right for you, and to live by that. If it doesn’t feel like your life, the way it is unfolding, is taking you in the direction of happiness and contentment, then I bet you that you are not living your own truth but someone else’s. If the shoe doesn’t feel right on your foot, then it simply does not fit your foot, regardless of how nice the shop assistant says it looks on you!
When your beliefs about yourself are limiting you from doing and being what you, at the core of yourself, know is right for you, and you instead try to do and be something very different than your true self, you are prone to feeling like a failure and be under the spell of the “something is wrong with me” idea. When the piccolo flute tries to make the note that is supposed to be played by the tuba, it simply doesn’t sound right, and it never will. Neither will the piccolo ever feel the satisfaction it would feel if it played the notes it is designed to play.
What it means to be de-hypnotised
To be de-hypnotised means to discard all the ideas that have been, intentionally or inadvertently, programmed into your mind. To question every “truth”, to scrutinise its validity, and keep it only if it really fits with who YOU are and what is right for YOU. Some of that work you can do on your own, some of it you will need some help with – none of us can see our own blind spots! Counsellors also get counselling, therapists also get therapy, coaches also get coaching. At least if they are experienced and insightful enough to recognise that they can’t pull themselves up by their own boot straps.
To be de-hypnotised means to be free to be as you are, and to do what is meaningful for you to do. To be free from the tyranny of “I should” and live instead by “I want to”. It means being authentic in all your connections, rather than pretending to be what you are not. It means knowing that you are okay as you are, and that you nevertheless will continue growing further in the never-ending evolvement of the particular individual that you are.
So, to be de-hypnotised means that your personal development pursuits, as well as all your other pursuits, no longer start from “something is wrong with me that needs to be fixed”, but instead start from “I’m okay AND I want to explore more ways of being me in the world”.
My work with clients
The work I do with my clients is really all about this. To help them be de-hypnotised. To help them be free from faulty beliefs about who they are, how they are supposed to be, and what they are supposed to do with/in their lives. To help them identify what is truly the right path for them to take through life, based not on the hypnosis from childhood and other similar influences, but on what and who they truly, genuinely are.
When they first make contact with me, few of my clients recognise already that the problem they want help with overcoming is an unsolvable problem, as long as it is seen through the lens of their hypnosis. They may have struggled for years – with or without “professional help” – and yet still find themselves pretty much in the same old spot as where they started. Fundamentally what is missing is a different view of the whole problem dynamic. A view where they can see themselves as who they actually are, not as who they have been hypnotised to believe they are or should be. And there is nothing more satisfying as a coach/therapist than seeing a client open their eyes to a fresh view of themselves and of the world they live in, where they are no longer held back by the limitations of an old program that had gone stuck too long in their mind.
Are you free from the “something is wrong and needs fixing” idea about yourself? Are you free to be you, your authentic self, in every aspect of your life? Does your life feel meaningful as it is, or is it possible that your purpose is obscured by old beliefs that have been programmed into your mind in such a way that you believe them to be the truth of what is possible for you? If so, you should consider the possibility that you do need to be de-hypnotised!
If you want to have a private conversation about how this all may apply to you and your life, don’t delay, contact me today!
