otherapist who uses hypnosis and hypnotherapy, I must admit that it sometimes feels as if I have two quite different, seperate individuals in the chair at the same time The two certainly are related and they seem to know quite a bit about each other. They seem to have passed through some very similar experiences. But they simply don’t seem to communicate well with each other. One person is entirely rational and logical; they analyze and compare, measure and debate. Whenever I talk with these people I make quite sure that I use the language of logic. The other person in the chair is remarkably different. They care nothing for logic. They make absolutely no demand that things be rational. They feel and they function on an emotional, rather than a cerebral level. I make quite certain that I use the language of imagination when I speak with these people. Of course, I don’t actually have two different people in my therapy chair, but it can certainly feel as if I do. That first person, analytical and logical, is simply the conscious mind, while the other feeling person is the subconscious mind. Both are useful, indeed essential parts of the self, yet their nature is quite different. And often they can be at odds with each other. In order to better understand this it is useful to understand something of the way in which our minds work. You see, the conscious mind is that part of us that reasons. It is basically who we think we are. It is the home of will power and of conscious decision making. However, it is the subconscious mind that is the part of us which experiences emotions. It is basically who we feel we are. It is the repository of our habits and our beliefs. We also have a third part, and that is the unconscious mind. This is the part of us that is responsible for the smooth running of all those processes that we simply take for granted – our breathing and heart beat, the regulation of our body temperature, the functioning of our autonomic nervous system. It’s what keeps things going when we sleep and when we are awake, without our ever really having to think about it or give it instructions. When clients visit me, it’s most often because they have been having real problems with the way they have been feeling. Usually, they’ve done everthing they could possibly think of in order to feel better. They have tried to deny the problem, use will-power in an attempt to make it go away. They have tried to think it away; to conquer it with logic, telling themselves to ‘stop being silly’. Yet nothing has worked. This seldom surprises me. In any battle between feelings and logic, the feelings will almost always win. We might fully understand that something is ‘silly’, but understanding that something is silly and letting it go are two very different things. This is simply because the true power of the human mind does not really lie in the conscious logical part, but in the subconscious feeling part. Usually the subconscious mind is working in a certain way because of an experience or series of experiences that happened in the past. The actual experience itself is in fact far less important than what the mind did with that experience; how it was processed and perceived – or misperceived. Based on past perception – often the perception of the child – a belief was born and this belief became firmly implanted in the subconscious mind, working as a piece of software might work in some powerful bio-computer. And if that perception was faulty, then it produced a belief that grew stronger and stronger, until it began generating and driving uncomfortable feelings such as fear, anxiety, apprehension, worry, depression and low self-esteem. The difficulty is that no matter how hard we try, no amount of will power is able to diffuse and get rid of it. The good news is that with hypnosis and hypno psychotherapy, we can reach into the subconscious part of the mind, talking to it in its own language. Because the subconscious mind forgets nothing, we can uncover the source of the difficult feelings – the misperception and the faulty belief – and we can realign it and re-educate it, thereby neutralising its power to disturb. Moreover, because hypnosis works hand in glove with the autonomous nervous system, we can even help it to work optimally, speeding up healing, bolstering the immune system, and even managing pain. If you sometimes feel as if there are two parts of you, and that they are at odds with each other then in many ways you are right. Knowing this, you are in an excellent position to help both parts function in the very best of ways. Through expertly delivered hypnosis and hypnotherapy – or through regular self-hypnosis – you can once more feel whole and at one with yourself and your world.
A leading British hypno-psychotherapist, with practices in London and Birmingham, UK, Peter Field is a Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Health. For more of his absorbing health articles, hypnosis & hypnotherapy help and other useful information, please visit his website: Peterfield Hypnotherapy UK
