48 Diary Of a HypnOtist
Dealing with: “Everything is going wrong!”
I was recently seeing a client who had just begun
to feel as though everything in the world was going
wrong for her. She said she was feeling stressed out,
overwhelmed, like she was strapped to a deflating
balloon, flying all over the place, directionless and a
victim of forces outside her control. All that was left
for her, she felt, was the inevitable big crash when
the balloon ran out of air.
“Wow!” I thought to myself, she must have some
huge things going on her life right now to make her
feel this helpless. Then as we started to talk, each
thing in itself seemed small, something that many
of us are lucky enough to almost be able to ignore,
annoying but no more than a mild irritant. This poor
lady had so many of them, they were building up,
and up, and all those irritants were starting to rub
her raw.
The Perceived Stress Scale or PSS as it is known, is
a widely used system to measure how people see
their own stress. It is used to measure how resilient
people are, how able to cope with the ‘slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune’ as Shakespeare
might have said. People who score highly might
have difficulty letting go of stress, it builds up and
makes everything else that much harder.
People who have a high PSS also often have
associated problems like less resistance
to disease, depression, difficulty quitting
smoking or controlling blood sugar levels
in the case of diabetics. In our modern fast
paced, and often high anxiety lifestyle a high
PSS score is common and, once it starts to
escalate, it can get worse and worse very
quickly if we don’t have enough time to
regain our equilibrium between stressful
events, just as a snowball gets bigger and
bigger as it rolls downhill.
One of the things I love about hypnotism
is that it gives people a chance to reset.
Hypnosis is a table clearer. All the things you
have on your plate get reset. For some of
the people that I see this is the first time in
days, weeks or months that they have been
able to relax, unwind and get their breath
back again. Hypnosis is a deeply relaxing
experience and, even ignoring the therapy
itself, can give people a chance to reset their
systems and get ready for a new day. When
you add the suggestions that we have worked
on, it can be a total life changer, giving people
the resilience to carry on without letting
those small annoyances build up again.
One of the analogies that I most like to use is
to imagine that your mindscape is like a big
open plain. Over time some of us have had
a bad patch of weather and all the trees and
plant-life has withered up or died back. Now
imagine that a storm is rumbling overhead,
the rains pummelling our mindscape, carrying
all the topsoil away. But now, imagine if,
instead, we take a while to nurture that life
in our mindscape. The plants grow back,
stronger than ever, wildlife returns to find
shelter and, the next time a storm rolls
overhead, the rains just water that mindscape
and help it to grow even stronger.
That is the emotional resilience that can be
helped through hypnosis, and a large part of
why I do what I do, something I have seen
happen again and again with clients in my
practice. People arriving anxious and jittery
and leaving, ready to take on the world, as if
they have just seen sunshine and tasted fresh
air for the first time in years.
Give Chris a call today to take control and change your life.
Owing to client privacy and confidentiality, the client’s name/s in these articles are changed.