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A woman in her late thirties came to me for a therapy session. She said she wanted ‘to be a successful businesswoman with a thriving business’ but something was holding her back. She had quit her job a year before to start her own business but now she was procrastinating.
During our interview she said she’d been very productive and successful at her previous job of fifteen years as a project manager but now she is struggling to do it on her own. She’s lacking clarity and focus, she’s not as productive, she’s doubting herself and struggles to market her business.
There could be many reasons why this was happening and an infinite number of advice to offer.
I’m curious and usually ask my clients what they think is the reason behind the problem, just to see how different it is from the actual cause.
She said that maybe she’s expecting the results too fast, that these things take time. That she worked her way up at her last job.
This is the conscious mind reasoning and rationalizing why the situation might be what it is. It’s no good to dwell on this for too long.
Side note: Many therapists spend a lot of time discussing all the possible reasons of the problem not knowing that this will only instill the problem further.
I knew we would be asking her subconscious mind and get to the real cause very soon.
We discussed in detail what she wanted and then we were ready to start.
We had the session over the internet and I guided her into a relaxing state of hypnosis so we’d have access to her subconscious mind.
Once she was in a deep trance I regressed her to visit the cause and the reason behind her success-avoiding behavior.
We worked through multiple scenes and I’ll give you a very brief description without going into much detail.
In one scene she was at school and was picked on for being a good student and felt disconnected from other kids.
In another her mom didn’t understand her ambition and made resentful remarks after she’d moved to a good neighborhood and put her down for having a cleaner to clean her house.
As we were discussing the link between the scenes from the past and the current situation, she made some great connections. She said something along the lines of: ‘when you have ambitions and want success you get picked on’.
This is good enough but I decided to go deeper and talked about the dynamic of the child-parent relationship and asked a few guiding questions.
It was quite obvious that her subconscious mind had at an early age made associations between success and loss of love/connection.
And every person needs to feel loved and connected. It is one of the fundamental human needs. In fact, those who deny the need for connection with other people have had to build great coping mechanisms to deal with the loss of it.
I saw her mind was busy trying to make sense of all of it. So I gave her some time. It didn’t take long.
Then it happened.
She burst into tears.
These were the most healing tears. She had come to a realization.
Moments like this make my decision to become a therapist worthwhile. Not that my intention is to make clients cry but often they do and it’s very liberating for them.
Tears of release and understanding.
Like my teacher Marisa Peer likes to say: Understanding is power.
The belief she had formed was:
“I must not become too successful or I can’t connect and I won’t be loved.”
The moment she made the understanding, the healing had already begun.
You’ve probably heard Tony Robbins say that change happens in a moment. This was the moment for her.
It can be shocking to realize that your own parent doesn’t want you to succeed and withdraws love if you attempt to. Most parents, of course, want what’s best for their children and they try to protect us. Often the conflict is simply a matter of defining what ‘best’ means.
The rest of the session we then spent healing the relationship between her and her mom and eliminating the old limiting belief and installing a new empowering one in its place.
I’m omitting details to keep the story from dragging too long. Just so you know the actual session was 2.5 hours and involved a number of therapeutic techniques.
The results?
Her body language shifted immediately (after being guided back to her full awareness). She looked more confident and self-assured, in a kind way. She was also very grateful and simply beaming with energy. The next day she reported having had a real breakthrough from the session and a fresh perspective. Three days after, she texted me that she’d never been so productive working at her business and for the first time she felt excited to market her business.
What happened?
First, notice that I didn’t start by giving her marketing advice or new business strategies, nor did I tell her to change her habits.
I didn’t tell her to exercise more or to change her diet. I didn’t ask her to get more sleep or to wake up at 4 AM so she’d have more time to get shit done. I didn’t tell her to hire a business coach. I didn’t tell her to find an accountability partner.
While strategies are absolutely crucial for success, they come second, not first.
If beliefs are holding you back, the best strategies will only get you so far. Just like the best pick-up line won’t work if the person delivering it doesn’t feel worthy (or lacks the confidence to even deliver the line), the best business strategies won’t work unless backed by empowering beliefs.
Knowledge – knowing what and how to do something – by itself is only potential power. For knowledge to become power it must be backed up with action. And action stems from beliefs.
Most people don’t lack strategies, they lack belief.
The person who says he’d like to be an entrepreneur but claims he doesn’t know how, must not know how to use Google. Obviously, this person’s inaction is simply an excuse, and behind it is a block: a fear, an invisible script, or a belief that it isn’t available for him.
Taken away the block, suddenly the resources appear. Reframe the limiting belief, and the person starts googling ‘how to start a business’.
The truth about limiting beliefs
A good thing about limiting beliefs is that most of them are fiction, not facts. And once you witness how you created a certain belief, you have the power to un-create it.
Note that not every ‘limiting belief’ is fiction. Gravity, for example, is very real and simply denying gravity won’t make it disappear, even though it might limit your explorations to space.
However, beliefs like I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’ll never find love, I don’t deserve love, happiness isn’t available to me etc are not facts and cannot be proved by scientist or some external authority. The only person who has the authority to prove these beliefs right or wrong is YOU.
Our behavior stems from the beliefs we hold. So if you believe you’re stupid, you won’t look for a job that implies intelligence. If you feel unattractive, you won’t go out to attract a partner. If you believe that succeed leads to loneliness, you’ll avoid success.
How to discover your limiting beliefs?
I wish there was a list somewhere with all my limiting beliefs, so I could simply start working on turning them around.
The reality is that there is no such list, at least not as a downloadable PDF document.
The answers are inside you, in your subconscious.
Why hypnosis
Through hypnosis we can access the subconscious mind.
One way to look at hypnosis is as a gateway to the subconscious. It’s a key that unlocks the door to a place where answers are to be found.
Hypnosis is very useful for uncovering the root cause of issues. It’s great for retrieving information from a person’s memories. The subconscious mind remembers and knows the connections between an issue and events in your past. And through the use of hypnosis we can access this valuable information.
Secondly, hypnosis opens a door for new information to be installed. This is crucial for installing new beliefs.