A fun party, better not go there. Enjoying delicious chocolate? Leave it in the store anyway. A funny movie that makes you laugh heartily? Bad idea. Petting a dog because it's so cute? Let the animal walk on quietly anyway.
If you think you are not allowed to enjoy yourself, then something is wrong and you are not helping yourself. Not being allowed to enjoy yourself is not logical, of course, but sometimes you can still have this illogical feeling. To get rid of this feeling, it is helpful to examine in yourself where this feeling comes from and why you should actually enjoy yourself.
Enjoyment is a state in which you feel good and happy, due to doing or experiencing something that makes you feel that way[1]. Therefore, if you are not allowed by yourself to enjoy yourself, you may not experience or do things you like.
That's not at all convenient.
After all, for your survival it is important to enjoy. Sex before children. Enjoying food so that you eat enough. Enjoying sociability, so that you belong and have a good social safety net. It is all necessary to stay alive and to live a good life.
Enjoyment can even be good for your personal development. For example, when you enjoy gaining new knowledge. Or when you find that you are successfully going through a change in your life, it causes your reward pathways in your brain to turn on, and that feels like enjoyment, too.
So enjoyment is pretty good for you.
Consequences of not being allowed to enjoy
In the process, you are actually doing something to yourself if you are not allowed to enjoy yourself. Enjoyment is part of life and good for your well-being. If you prohibit yourself from enjoying, it is bad for your well-being. It can even increase anxiety and stress, and if it goes on long enough, it can even cause depression.
Then when you fall into such depression, it can cause you to be unable to enjoy yourself[2].
If you are not allowed to enjoy, you are also not open to opportunities to enjoy and do not anticipate that you will enjoy something. That anticipation to enjoy something is important to have behaviors to achieve your goals[3].
For example, if you are allowed to enjoy success, you will do more to achieve it than if you are not allowed to enjoy it. Beliefs that you are not allowed to enjoy therefore also reduce motivation in daily life, because what are you doing it all for if you are not allowed to enjoy anyway?
In the process, not being allowed to enjoy yourself can also cause you to withdraw from social life because you are not allowed to enjoy a fun birthday party after all.
This is very unfortunate, because shared experiences can actually allow you to enjoy yourself again after losing something or experiencing trauma[4].
So being allowed to enjoy yourself again is the first step to getting back to doing something with your life that makes you happy. Instead of thinking about what makes you happy, because if you can't, you might as well not think about it.
What is interesting, however, is that guilt can actually enhance enjoyment[5]. So when you do that once you do something that is not "allowed," it feels extra good.
Ever been hooked?
Doing something too much that has been addictive is not helpful. Therefore, people with a history of addiction may think it's better if they don't indulge, because indulging has had terrible consequences for an addict.
For example, you may have once enjoyed alcohol, sweets, or drugs so much that it had bad consequences. To then not have them, you may have decided not to enjoy them anymore.
Enjoyment then suddenly has two sides. On the one hand, it is good for your well-being, but if you use it incorrectly, it can lead to addiction (source 1). That addiction can then unfortunately lead to beliefs in the future that it is better not to enjoy. However, remember then that there is much more in life to enjoy than what you have been addicted to.
For example, make a list of things you enjoy that are not hazardous to your health if you are regularly happy about them.
Not being able to enjoy
Sometimes there are circumstances that make it difficult for you to enjoy yourself. If you have low self-esteem , it is difficult for some people to enjoy everyday things. The more optimism and self-confidence you have, the more you can enjoy[6].
Hypnosis to be enjoyed
Hypnotherapy can be one of the first steps in giving yourself permission to enjoy yourself again. There may be several reasons why you are not allowed to enjoy yourself, such as:
- Wrong beliefs
- A trauma
- Grieving
- An addiction history
All of these causes can be given a place with hypnosis, allowing you to actually enjoy yourself again.
Changing wrong beliefs
In your youth, you often determine how life works and how you are supposed to function in it. In that, you can also acquire wrong beliefs, such as the belief that enjoyment is wrong and that you shouldn't do it.
Of course, that's not at all helpful for having a fun life.
Fortunately, with hypnosis you can change these types of beliefs. With regression , for example, you can go back to the first time you felt you shouldn't enjoy yourself. Then a therapist can help fix that belief[7] to the belief that you are allowed to enjoy yourself and that it is even normal.
This can already be incredibly liberating, after which you may actually enjoy being with your family and friends, enjoy a movie, enjoy delicious food and enjoy sex.
Processing a trauma
Sometimes trauma can also prevent you from enjoying yourself. If enjoyment somehow occurred just before the trauma, your brain may have inadvertently made the connection that if you enjoy something something something very bad is going to happen afterward.
Rationally, you may know it's not the case, but if you're suffering greatly from trauma, your body can trigger a total fear response after a moment of pleasure, or when you think you're going to enjoy something.
Not at all convenient.
Fortunately, hypnotherapy also helps with trauma processing. There are ways to look at trauma in a different way, for example, which allows you to disconnect the emotions from the event.
It helps with the trauma itself, as well as related problems such as insomnia, improving your coping skills and increasing your sense of "I-can-do"[8].
Grief Counseling
When you are in grief , you have lost your mate, and that can make it difficult to enjoy yourself again. Enjoying the company of someone else can feel like you are betraying the person who died, but of course that is not the case.
Still, it can be hard to enjoy yourself when you are still grieving.
Hypnotherapy can help people with that grieving process, this helps to cope in a healthy way and make daily activities easier. In doing so, it also helps to accept the loss of your loved one[9].
In the process, hypnosis can speed up the grieving process, allowing you to move on with life faster[10].
An addiction history
Once addicted always addicted can be a reason why you find it difficult to have fun, because what if you then become addicted to that fun? Beliefs about the right you have to have fun, to enjoy yourself, can then be addressed with hypnosis.
These include regression, or just the understanding that not all pleasure has to be bad. For example, a walk in nature is also something to enjoy, fishing is also something to enjoy and that is not something that is bad for you.
That insight alone can do a lot for you.
Being allowed to enjoy yourself again through hypnosis
So not being allowed to enjoy yourself is not a helpful belief at all, but fortunately, hypnosis can help you get rid of the idea of not being allowed to enjoy yourself in many ways.
In particular, this is done by transforming the belief that you should not do something into that you should enjoy something.
By investigating the cause, you can already do a lot to eliminate the feeling of not being allowed. That cause can be different for everyone, sometimes it is a belief from childhood or it can be an event that occurred later in your life.
Either way, hypnosis can certainly help.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and what you can do with it? Then come to the free online master class.
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