Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 2, Issue 3, (September 1, 2017) | Page 10

Food is a Reward: When a child does what is expected of him/her, very often the child gets rewarded with chocolates, chips, burgers, soft drinks, ice-cream, cakes, pizza or being taken to the child’s favourite restaurant. This association continues to run unconsciously throughout your adult life. These associations create ‘patterns’ which play out automatically without our conscious awareness. For someone wanting to lose weight, these ‘patterns’ of unhealthy eating behaviors most often lead to regret and guilt which makes us feel frustrated and we give up! Hence, reinforcing the subconscious limiting belief that losing weight is difficult. With hypnosis, these “old” associations can be re-evaluated and the subconscious mind can relearn new beneficial associations; such as food is not love and food does not love you, food is for nourishment and energy, our body thrives on real food and not on manufactured “edible” products which are not real food. BELIEFS The subconscious holds all our beliefs. Beliefs are what we believe to be true for us. Once a belief is held firmly in the subconscious mind, our outer reality will always be a match to our beliefs. Many of our limiting beliefs are unconscious and were formed in childhood. These limiting beliefs were created based upon the child’s level of understanding and not based upon logic and reasoning. If we were rejected, abandoned, physically or emotionally abused in our childhood, we form limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. We may feel unlovable, unworthy and undeserving. Our limiting beliefs work unconsciously to create uncomfortable feelings within us, such as anger, guilt, shame, sadness, fear, insecurity and self-doubt which triggers emotional eating. Emotional eating is eating not in response to physical hunger but eating to cope with the uncomfortable feelings or to suppress the feelings.