Being happy single is all well and good, but you'd also like to be part of a happy couple. In that case, you usually dive into the world of dating. Whether you date online or a friend pairs you up for a fun date doesn't matter. A date can always feel a little weird. You may clam up when the perfect partner suddenly sits in front of you or act just a little different than you are because of the excitement. Hypnosis can help you make your dating life as relaxed and laid-back as possible.
What do you need for a good date?
For a fun date, it's helpful to be relaxed and able to be yourself. To be yourself during a date, you need the following:
- Self Confidence
- Self-Esteem
- Relaxation
- Calm
These are actually 2 separate things. The first two issues are about your feelings about yourself and whether you are good enough. If this is sufficiently present it prevents you from acting out or pretending to be different than you are. As a result, you won't accidentally get the wrong partner who will snap at you the moment you finally relax enough to be yourself.
Overcoming date anxiety
You may not have total anxiety where you have a panic attack, but almost everyone has insecurities why a date feels just a little uncomfortable. Where that little anxiety lies then is the problem that needs to be overcome to make your date as relaxed as possible.
The level of your anxiety about dating can be due to many factors. Research shows that people with few friends of the opposite sex and who have bad times with their best friend suffer more from dating anxiety than people who have more friends of the opposite sex and have a better relationship with their best friend[1].
The same study also named that if you have never been in a courtship before or have had worse relationships behind you this increases your fear of dating.
So your anxiety may be derived from past relationships or how your friendships are with your friends. Perhaps your friends are negative about dating and this then makes you anxious.
Hypnosis can help you identify that cause of anxiety in multiple ways. Usually it is in the beliefs you have about how the world works and how you function in it. In the case of dating, it involves your beliefs about how the opposite sex works, how you can have or build a relationship with the opposite sex and how dating works.
This can be found out, for example, with regression. With regression, you first determine the uncomfortable feeling of dating and when you last had it. Then you go back to the very first moment when you had this[2]. This is often a moment in elementary school. Next, do something with that moment that allows you to think about your fear or that unpleasant feeling in a different way. This may even make the feeling disappear completely in a similar situation in the future. Because you have modified the situation with the regression[3].
Then you also have another way to overcome the fear of dating. This can be by naming your fear and then confronting yourself with it.
For example, you create a top 10 list of your dating fears, such as:
- Starting the conversation on a dating site.
- Not having nice clothes for the date.
- Having nothing to say.
- Having the perfect partner opposite you.
- Rejected.
- Don't like the activity the other person chose.
- A date with a very annoying person.
- Getting food between your teeth during the date.
- Sweating too much during the date.
- (One of your own but not listed here)
You then use hypnosis to overcome these fears. For example, you can watch the program first dates with conversations that go horribly to reduce your fear of such a conversation.
You can also visualize the situations during a guided visualization. During that visualization, you will then experience anxiety. You then learn how to deal with that anxiety during the visualization from the hypnosis expert. How to stay calm despite the nerves and then how to use that calmness to steal the show with the clothes you have in your closet. How to steal the show and make the other person talk in a nice way when you yourself have nothing to say.
You also put the list of fears in a top-10 form. You then start by overcoming your smallest fear and continue until you can overcome your biggest fear.
Boosting self-confidence
For dating to go well, it is important to have enough self-confidence to be yourself. Strengthening self-confidence can be done with hypnotic suggestions and with visualizations[4].
This may include suggestions such as:
"Everything you remember makes you feel good about yourself, your safety, and your confidence," he says.
You also have a suggestion with a tree in it, such as:
"You are better than the tree. Think about it, you are better than the tree. You can move, be careful and make choices. You can love and be loved. You can do many things that the tree cannot. You feel your strength and what you can do. You can think about all that you are."
Therefore, when you are brought into a positive state during hypnosis, the following suggestion can be linked to it:
"In this comfortable state, you feel more powerful and capable with what you are doing. You feel more energized. Every moment you are happier, stronger and more inclined to improve and heal. Every moment you have more willpower, effect, joy and health. Day by day you become more interested and motivated to have better focus and efficiency in a particular area."
These kinds of suggestions can boost your self-confidence, and it can ensure that at times when you're having a hard time you can recall this positive feeling. So too during your date.
Improve self-esteem
To ensure you find a partner with whom you can build a fine relationship while dating, it is important to have enough self-esteem to go for someone who is really good for you, rather than someone you think is good enough.
Indeed, good enough is linked to the belief of what you believe you deserve. That doesn't have to be a good person.
Someone who is good for you, on the contrary, supports you in your personal goals and is there for you. Someone who is good enough may have a job, but if they do not support you otherwise, that is not the recipe for a long happy relationship.
For example, to improve your self-esteem, you can repeat the following suggestions. After your hypnosis expert recites them to you while you are in hypnosis.
"I deserve a partner who supports me."
"I also support my partner."
"I am good enough the way I am."
"I don't have to go out of my way."
"I get to relax."
These are just examples. Depending on your beliefs, your hypnosis expert may give you other suggestions.
Hypnosis for relaxation
If you have built enough self-confidence and self-esteem, this may be enough for relaxation during the date. Otherwise, hypnosis techniques also help you consciously relax.
For example, by paying attention to your breathing and consciously relaxing your muscles, you are already doing a lot to reduce tension due to insecurity or other dating stress.
With the visualizations for overcoming dating anxiety, you can already do a lot to visualize relaxing as well so that you actually do this during a date. This will make you act more like yourself and make everything less forced.
Keeping calm during a date
You can also visualize keeping your composure during the date. For example, with how you will handle it if your date goes absolutely terrible. Another way is to keep your mind in the here and now. By not worrying about previous dates or future situations with this person you listen better and can be a better conversationalist.
Doing this with mindfulness. The moment you notice yourself becoming less calm you focus your attention on the here and now. You feel what you are doing. You listen to your date. You smell the scents around you. Anything to bring your attention back into the here and now.
A post-hypnotic suggestion can ensure that during the date, at times when things get awkward, you do this as an automatic which keeps you calmer.
Hypnosis thus helps during dating by helping you with your confidence, self-esteem, relaxation and calmness. This allows you to be completely yourself which allows you to find someone who really suits you (especially if they are also themselves).
Want to know exactly how hypnosis works? Then come to a hypnosis playshop or enroll in Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15374410701662097
[2] https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jfkihlstrom/PDFs/2010s/2018/Kihlstrom_HypnosisApplications_ERM_2018.pdf
[3] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780203789384/chapters/10.4324/9780203789384-23
[4] http://www.sleepandhypnosis.org/ing/Pdf/a4560706842847baade1ceff1b3543e8.pdf
