Have your thoughts reached their sell by date?
It’s funny when talking to clients you start to develop metaphors for certain problems. Often with mild depression a person stops doing mundane small jobs around the house such as the washing up or putting their dirty washing in a washing basket. Things begin to mount up and they start feeling overwhelmed.
Often when looking at what one small thing they can do that week to make a tiny change, a small improvement, often the answer is to wash up. One client two week s ago had set this as her goal for last week, but instead, she had managed to sort out the garage. She felt tonnes better for this and instead of being just one degree better, she had shot up the scale, feeling confident that she was now going to sort out her children’s bedrooms, and she did. Just decluttering your environment can help declutter your mind.
But it was a client this morning that triggered more metaphoric thinking and she had spent the weekend clearing out her kitchen cupboards. She had thrown away all the out of date food, all the multiple jars of spices that she only uses at Christmas and take up room. We compared these to habits and thoughts that we carry around with us throughout our lives. Every year we want to change, we often don’t and that is because we haven’t recognised that our thoughts and thinking are the things to blame not circumstances.
I used to suffer from lots of different phobias and I believed I couldn’t do anything about them, because I did not have that information that explained what they are and I was never given instruction on how to change them. It wasn’t until I trained as a hypnotherapist that I discovered you could change the way you think about these things and so I did. I had been to a hypnotherapist before with the problem, but he didn’t explain to me what was going on, or explain to me why he was trying to get me to remember a time in my childhood which may have triggered the phobias. But it wasn’t until I trained that I found he was wrong, you don’t need to delve back into childhood to make sense of something that was happening there and then in the present. Just understand what it is and how to change it.
Sometimes just making one change in your belief system can be so positive, it can change your health and life. It’s the placebo effect. It is so powerful it can heal the body, it can reduce pain, it can change your whole perspective. Some may interpret it as divine intervention, or spiritual awakening. Others may realise that they have gained awareness, another word for mindfulness.
Sometimes we believe that people are behaving a certain way towards us because they don’t like a quality we possess, they misinterpret the emotions and actions of the other person, but it may never occur to them that the other person may be scared, or have mental health issues of their own that influences how they behave or what they look like even. Sometimes just taking a step back and seeing the person or situation in a new light can help us change our minds. Help throw out all those out of date thoughts and feelings that are no longer relevant or helpful.
so if you want to make changes, then contact me or call me on 07508 658934.
Penny Ling is a widely experienced hypnotherapist who has worked with everyone from top executives to stroke victims since 2007. She has been editor of Hypnotherapy Today Magazine and is a supervisor and mentor for members of the AfSFH and NCH.
Read Penny’s inspiring story “How I beat all my phobias”, or find out more how hypnotherapy could help your problem by downloading “How Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with life”. Feel free to send Penny a message here.
