The fast-paced and super-connected world we live in now is taking its toll on all of us. Everyday we must navigate through a constant stream of emotionally-charged information, both from current events and the changes and challenges we face in our own lives.
Our subconscious mind stores information from emotional experiences to be used later as a reference when something similar comes up. You can think of this in the same way that we notice landmarks when visiting a new town. We store information about those landmarks so that when we travel that way again, we have a reference for what we can expect on that route, and we can navigate more easily.
Just like making a mental note of the landmarks, the subconscious mind records information about emotionally charged events, such as the situation surrounding the event, how we felt about the situation, what actions we took as a result of those feelings, and what happened after we took those actions.
When we encounter a similar situation, the subconscious mind uses that stored information to influence your emotional response and your behaviors. Often, for whatever reason, we push those emotions and feelings away, storing them in the back of our minds, packaging them up neatly, and denying they ever existed.
We feel like we are in control when we suppress our emotions like this, because we do not feel like we are in control when we are in the middle of experiencing strong emotions. This is a valuable tool in crisis situations, because we are able to remain stoic and calm when dealing with a challenging event. But it becomes harmful when we shut down our emotions without allowing ourselves to experience the emotional state at all.
Constantly suppressing emotions has a similar result as overloading a pressure cooker. The pressure builds up until it finds a way to escape, or the unit explodes. This happens because emotions are meant to be had. Our subconscious mind has the difficult job of keeping us alive, and it uses emotions as a tool for influencing our behaviors.
Emotions that we ignore are continuously vying for our attention. When it is only a few times that we have set our emotions aside, packed them neatly away and pretended they didn’t exist, they are usually pretty quiet. Even though they continue to influence your behaviors and actions, a couple of voices are easy to ignore.
When we make a habit of suppressing those emotions, they build up, become many voices, and are more difficult to ignore. You may notice that your moods become more erratic, or that you are having a difficult time focusing. You may feel tired, irritable, or that you have emotional responses that are out of proportion to what you are experiencing. You may even eventually shut down, detach, and begin to feel hollow or empty.
All of these things are happening because, just like in the example of the pressure cooker, there is too much emotional pressure built up, and your subconscious mind is finding ways to release some of that excess. We see this in people with depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
There are effective therapies that can help you release those emotions and learn to fluidly process new emotions and experiences as they occur. Hypnotherapy is one that works very well because it allows the subconscious mind to manage the stored-away emotions on its own terms, without having to re-hash every experience. Hypnosis allows you to move through negative and hidden emotional states that you may not even be consciously aware of.
We experience emotional distress in all sorts of ways, as sadness, anxiety, addictions, unproductive obsessions, unwanted compulsions, repetitive self-sabotaging behaviors, physical ailments, boredom, and as all sorts of angry, bleak, and agitated moods.
What helps relieve this distress? What helps a person to heal? There are changes that you can make and strategies you can use as you free yourself from the emotional build-up that will prevent the pressure from becoming too high in the future.
In the throes of trying to manage your everyday life, it can seem impossible to create these changes. When we use hypnosis, we are able to make these changes in our thinking and in the way we interact with our worlds easily and effortlessly at the source - directly in the subconscious mind, without the conflicting thoughts and emotions, and without having to rely on will power. These changes that you create are permanent and positive ways of taking back control of those parts of your life that felt so out of control before..
Be yourself
You must be yourself. This means asking for what you want, setting boundaries, having your own beliefs and opinions, standing up for your values, wearing the clothes you want to wear, eating the food you want to eat, saying the things you want to say, and in a hundred other ways being you and not somebody small or false.
Invent yourself
You come with attributes, capacities and proclivities and you are molded in a certain environment. But at some point you must say, “Okay, this is what is original to me and this is how I have been formed but now who do I want to be?” You reduce your emotional distress by deciding to become a person who will experience less emotional distress: a calmer person, a less critical person, a less egoistic person, a more productive person, a less self-abusive person, and so on.
Love and be loved
Part of our nature requires solitude, alone time, and a substantial rugged individualism. But this isn’t the whole story of our nature. We feel happier, warmer and better, live longer, and experience life as more meaningful if we love and let ourselves be loved. We must be individuals (see tips 1 and 2) but we must also relate. To do both, to both be ourselves and relate, requires that we acknowledge the reality of others, include others in our plans, not only speak but listen, and makes ourselves fit by eliminating our more egregious faults and by growing up.
Get a grip on your mind
Nothing causes more emotional distress than the thoughts we think. We must do a better job than we usually do of identifying the thoughts that don’t serve us, disputing them and demanding that they go away, and substituting more useful thoughts. Thinking thoughts that do not serve you is the equivalent of serving yourself up emotional distress. Only you can get a grip on your own mind; if you won’t do that work, you will live in distress.
Forget the past
We are not so completely in control of our being that we can prevent past sore points from returning. They have a way of pestering us as anxious sweats, nightmares, sudden sadness, and waves of anger or defeat. But we can nevertheless try to exorcise the past by not playing along with our human tendency to wallow there. We must tell ourselves to move on and mean it. If you have a secret attachment to misery, you will feel miserable. As best you can, imperfectly but with real energy, let go of the past and forget the past.
Flip the anxiety switch off
Rampant anxiety ruins our equilibrium, colors our mood, and makes all the already hard tasks of living that much harder. There are many anxiety management strategies you might want to try—breathing techniques, cognitive techniques, relaxation techniques, and so on—but what will make all the difference is if you can locate that “inner switch” that controls your anxious nature and, deciding that you prefer to live more calmly, flip it to the off position. With one gesture you announce that you will no longer over-dramatize, that you will no longer catastrophize, that you will no longer live a fearful life or create unnecessary anxiety for yourself.
Maybe you don't know where to start. Maybe it all sounds like too much work. If this is what you are thinking, then give me a call. Because maybe you will be surprised at how easy it will be, and won't it be amazing to see how every aspect of your personal life and career improves once you begin to allow yourself to let go?∎
Karen Gray is a Registered Nurse, a Certified Hypnotist, and the owner of Green Mountain Hypnosis in Lebanon, New Hampshire. For more information on how you can use hypnosis to change your life, you can visit www.greenmountainhypnosis.com, or contact Karen at karengray@greenmountainhypnosis.com, or call (802) 566-0464.