Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 4 Issue - 4, 1 October 2019 | Page 7

I see many clients who want to stop their unhealthy behaviours, and I
explain that the behaviour is there because of an unresolved feeling
inside of them, which they don’t like to feel. Without changing the feeling,
the need for distraction will come back in another form and create
another unhealthy habit. For example, a smoker who smokes due to
feeling overwhelmed at work, how is he/she going to cope with the
stresses at work if he stops smoking? Sooner or later, he/she turns to
another form of distraction e.g. unhealthy food, for comfort and pleasure.
Ironically, these unhealthy coping mechanisms, are trying to keep us
“safe” from feeling our uncomfortable feelings. We continue to find ways
to run away from them. If instead of running away, we looked at our
painful feelings, as indicator lights requiring immediate attention, we will
be led to the real cause of our pain. The cause is the underlying,
unconscious limiting beliefs, we hold within us. Working with the “effect”
without going to the “cause” is only a temporary solution. These
distractions do nothing to resolve our negative feelings, instead by
avoiding our negative feelings, the feelings just get stronger. How many
times have you felt guilt, regret and anger after spending hours on social
media or online games, when that time could have been used more
productively? Now, in addition to feeling overwhelmed by the workload,
we have added more negative feelings such as guilt, regret and anger to
that. The cycle will keep repeating until we get to the root cause, which
are the unconscious limiting beliefs. Our negative feelings are the
“bridge” that bring us back to these unconscious beliefs.
Can you imagine, what would have happened, if I had noticed the red
alert signal on the dashboard and just ignored it or worse still just