A while back I helped Janoe, she has a little son with severe epileptic seizures and worries a lot about it. I looked with her at how she can deal with this situation. Because he is four and has dozens of seizures daily
Ideally, of course, I want him to stop having seizures.
How come he has epilepsy? Is there a traumatic experience?
Her problem with it is that it is obviously annoying and it impacts the whole family. She is also very concerned about his well-being and whether he can survive this in the long run.
The EEG revealed that her baby has Doose's syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy in which all forms of seizures can occur, but as a positive twist that he can grow out of it.
How it can be done is unknown, but it can be done.
How long that will last they haven't said anything about.
But so there is an opportunity and hypnosis then really is something like if it doesn't help, it doesn't hurt.
What is interesting is that if something changes in the mother, something may also change in Luca. After all, you are still in the attachment period.
Treating the mother can sometimes have a great effect on the young person, we see that with allergies, hay fever and asthma. I don't know if it is like that with epilepsy, but there is a chance so we are going to try it.
And if it doesn't help, it doesn't hurt.
He often has seizures in the morning and if this is very early he can continue to sleep and then go to school in the morning. That can keep Janoe awake as she thinks about how best to help her little son. Wake him up already or not, given how that affects him having seizures.
She then lies super tense in bed and next to him.
She is afraid of the seizures, especially the severe ones. Then he screams for his mother. That startles her, because then he is afraid of something, but she does not know what is happening.
It's terrifying because of the sound of him being so scared and her not knowing what it is and whether you can fix it, because you don't know what it is. This feels terrible, helpless.
Grief and pain.
History with Luca
Since this is still the attachment period, let's take a quick look at what the attachment is like so far.
How did the pregnancy go? That one went well and she wanted to get pregnant too. No crazy things happened. Previously, on the contrary, but now nothing.
Imagine it's because of you ... a very crazy idea, but then you can explore whether there is something about you that triggers it. Maybe something from your childhood or a pattern of what you still do.
She has no idea about that.
If you know attachment went fine. Pregnancy, childbirth and the period after, it's fine. If not, a hypnotherapist can help you.
Recognizing tension from another stage of life
What you do has a lot of impact on your child, especially until the age of seven. If you have tension or anxiety, your child can often feel it.
By taking that path, you also give your child the good example of relaxing. He will then feel that relaxation as well.
You can see if you recognize the feeling you have with your child from another stage of life.
Janoe recognized the powerless feeling and the pain and sorrow from her life. During the period after her father died of esophageal cancer, she felt the same way.
Her son's middle name is also the same as her father's.
You can then perform an exercise that removes the feeling of tension from that earlier stage of life.
At Janoe, she received the following suggestions from me:
Imagine your father is feeling absolutely fine right now. He feels great. He is no longer bothered by that cancer and now feels absolutely wonderful.
Imagine your father saying that to you.
Imagine, then, that things are only getting better for your father. It's never been better even.
Then you don't have to cry out in sorrow. Then you just think that's wonderful for that man.
There are cultures that believe this and they set you on fire, let you drift and celebrate.
That pain is inevitable, of course, but we do it ourselves and this has to do with what you believe. If you believe that person is pain-free and in the light, then you can also be happy during such a funeral.
We don't ultimately know what happens next, but that's why you can choose what you believe about it.
I used to be very afraid of death until my grandfather died. Then I got thoughts with his voice. That he was very well off and had a house. Then I didn't think it was scary anymore.
So does such a positive thought solve the lack?
It may be a fantasy that you then have conversations with them in your mind, but then you also miss them less or not at all.
That makes you feel better. Of course you do miss someone at first, because they are gone. I cried too, of course, but after that you can think he is there in another form.
That way, that person can also do more for you than they did back then.
Sometimes you just don't see what that help is wrapped up in. Or you don't realize you're getting help.
That help may include suddenly feeling calm, someone stopping by, you reading this blog, a stranger saying you look nice today at the store.
It can consist of many things you don't expect. You can say God's ways are unfathomable or the ways of that deceased person.
This, in turn, brings a sense of confidence and a feeling of being right.
A father wants his children to be happy. You want your child to be healthy and happy.
So as a respect to the departed, you too can have a top life.
You then show your father that you are doing well. You then know he sees it.
After all, if you feel like your father is still around for a while, you might as well use him to be more confident in the future.
You can feel the confidence by asking your father to protect your son, for example.
"Dad, will you protect my son?"
If you have this confidence then, at least that stress is already gone.
Relax for greater confidence in the future
Thoughts have a lot of impact on how you feel. Janoe's "problem" was that she was very planner-like. She planned ahead in her mind for months or years and then also the problems Luca would run into.
Solutions were planned in advance as well as problems, because otherwise you can't plan solutions.
And that's very difficult, because all those thoughts cause anxiety and make you feel uncomfortable as a parent.
Luca also has no use for his mother having it bad. He already has problems. All you can do then as a mother is to be calm and stay calm.
There are only two times. Now and not-now. Not-now is too abstract. Anything can happen in not-now.
You can think of anything and plan for anything, but it still never comes out the way you plan.
And the moment something happens you find a way to deal with it.
The rest of the time you don't have to think about that. That's wasted energy of the moment. This pulls happiness out of the moment, because instead of enjoying the now, you are engaged in a not-now future that is not fixed at all.
That's easy to say, and especially if you're good at planning. Then you want to plan ahead for problems to see if you can solve them, but of course that doesn't work.
With mindfulness, you can practice being more in the now and more confident about the future.
Giving your child self-esteem regardless of their health
Now that she can think with confidence and love, and she thinks of her infant son, she feels love with a little pain. That pain is often fear, because love is not pain.
She is afraid that he will fall and then die and if he lives that he will not or cannot be happy.
Only epilepsy and the idea of a false start in life has nothing to do with whether he can be happy.
This is something he must do himself, and as a mother, you can set a good example especially by being happy yourself.
But then imagine that he has self-esteem and can make a joke out of epilepsy. That he tells the class, "Yes, sometimes I fall, but there's nothing wrong. That's epilepsy."
Then that's just it.
The more normal you are about it yourself, the more normal he will find it too.
It's often about self-esteem. There are people with something in their face and they don't care. Who think, "Yeah, I'm just like that and it's okay for someone else to deal with that."
So you can accept how it is and then you can work on self-esteem for that guy.
"You are very special, because who else has this?"
For kids, that's fun. It makes him feel like it belongs to him, he accepts it and then he feels it makes him special instead of weak.
You have a lot of influence over how he feels.
While double-checking, it emerged that she indeed now felt he could be perfectly happy. He is happy now, so why shouldn't he be in the future?
She felt much calmer.
Also listen to the session:
How do you figure out what to say to someone who has anxiety about her child? That's something you learn during the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands training.
Super helpful if you want to help people.
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