Not being able to get to your feelings: Hypnosis helps

Do you feel like you are starting to become a numb robot? Not being able to get to your feelings is incredibly annoying, because feelings (even bad feelings) let you know that you are really alive. So how can you suddenly become unfeeling, where does not being able to get to your feelings come from and how do you make yourself feel again? Find out in this blog article.

Dissociation

Being unable to connect with your feelings is a sign of dissociation[1]. In this state, you’ve essentially lost the connection with yourself. There are many different types of dissociation. Some people even do things while in this state and can’t remember them later.

Being unable to connect with your feelings is therefore a relatively mild form of dissociation. The frustrating thing is that you may feel disconnected from yourself and even from your own history or life story. You feel as though someone other than yourself is living your life.

The connection between your brain and your body can feel very poor to you. Your body does what you want, but feeling emotions in your body is no longer there.

An incredibly unpleasant experience, you may feel, or at least that this is not what you want.

What is interesting is that with hypnotherapy you also use dissociation, but precisely to focus on your internal. The connection with your body and your feelings is restored, but you are no longer focused on the outside world. You are aware of the outside world, but under hypnosis it is less important.

Cause of your feeling shut down or not feeling

You may suffer from losing connection with yourself when you experience something traumatic. To protect yourself, your subconscious can then put the connection with your feelings on pause for a while. This can happen during a super traumatic event or just after (source 1).

If this happens during or right after trauma, it is often a precursor to developing post traumatic stress disorder.

In some cases, people who suffer from bi-polar disorder may also suffer from dissociation, or Not being able to reach your feelings.

Problems may already arise in childhood that prevent you from being able to access your feelings properly later on, such as:

1. Death of one of your parents.
2. Divorce and consequent loss of one of your parents.
3. Moving out which takes you out of your familiar surroundings.
4. Bad relationship with your parents.

Often, not getting to your feelings can then arise when you don't come to another solution to handle this type of situation. Then not feeling is unconsciously a choice not to feel the unresolvable pain (source 1).

Even neurologically, dissociation caused by post-traumatic stress disorder can be explained by changes in the brain. The neural pathways needed to process your emotions are, as it were, disrupted (source 1).

Stress and beliefs

Sometimes, being unable to connect with your feelings can also have a somewhat simpler cause. In our society, negative emotions are often pushed aside, as if you’re not allowed to feel them[2]. If you hold certain beliefs about this and are currently going through a period with many negative feelings, those beliefs can prevent you from connecting with your emotions.

Once you’ve moved past that stressful period, you’ll often find it easier to reconnect with your feelings. You can also consciously use self-hypnosis, meditation, and even yoga to feel more connected to your body and your emotions—even when you’re under stress.

Beliefs about masculinity can also cause you to lose touch with your feelings as a man and even become depressed. Oddly enough, using social media can make this worse[3]. Looking less often on social media may then be a solution.

Alexithymia

You may also suffer from alexithymia, a condition in which you have difficulty recognizing, understanding and expressing emotions. You feel them, but you just don't know it very well[4]. You are then also often not well connected mentally with your body.

Hypnosis to feel your emotions again

So there are multiple possible causes for not being able to feel your emotions properly, and that ensures that there are multiple solutions as well.

Research shows that hypnotherapy helps people suffering from alexithymia to better recognize and understand their emotions[5]. The ability to feel emotions is then restored through the use of visualizations. In the “feeling reversal” technique, for example, people are given suggestions to assign colors and shapes to their feelings.

These types of suggestions can also help people become more aware of their emotions and feel better as a result.

For men, this can be especially important, as alexithymia can cause erectile dysfunction[6].

Is not being able to reach your feelings more linked to dissociation? Then hypnosis is also great for reconnecting with yourself[7]. This can even have an effect again very quickly.

For example, regression can be used to identify the cause of dissociation, such as childhood trauma. This can then be processed using other techniques, so that shutting out the pain is no longer necessary. Strengthening the ego can also be used to reinforce the change.

This can also reduce behavioral problems caused by not being able to reach your feelings[8].

Removing limiting beliefs is usually also an important part of hypnotherapy to make it possible to get back to your emotions. Also for obstructive beliefs, regression is often used to find the moment when you decided, for example, "I am not allowed to have negative emotions." Then you can spend the rest of your life blocking those negative emotions and therefore eventually feel like you can't get to your feelings.

With hypnosis, instead of your rational brain, your emotional brain is influenced to subvert and remove these types of irrational beliefs[9].

One way this can be done is with techniques of Ericksonian hypnosis[10]. Much use is then made of metaphors and symbols to get changes done. For example, if something is blocking you from reaching your emotions, you can imagine that it is a wall that you are going to break down and demolish so that you can reach your emotions.

What to expect from hypnotherapy for your feelings

Generally, three to five sessions are required to solve problems. In the first session, you have the preliminary conversation in which you can talk more about your problem of not being able to access your emotions.

You can then talk about the impact this has on your life and what you think is the cause of the problem.

In the first session, hypnosis is also explained and you will go into hypnosis for the first time. A small start can then already be made with hypnosis techniques, such as imagining that you are in a safe relaxing place where you can completely relax.

The real therapeutic work often takes place in the second session. That’s when the techniques come into play—such as metaphors, regression, and conversations with your inner child—to break through whatever is currently blocking you from connecting with your feelings.

There will also always be a piece for strengthening your ego and post-hypnotic suggestions, so you can stay in touch with your feelings outside of therapy.

The third session is verification that the hypnotherapy has worked. Have you worked in your daily life that you do get back to your feelings? If so, the course is over, and if not, a hypnotherapist will continue therapy with you for a while longer to really make the blockages disappear completely.

In severe cases, suppose you have violent trauma, for example, this may take more than 3 sessions, but generally the third session is also the last session.

Even if you don't know now why you can't get to your feelings.

Learn Hypnosis

Would you like to learn hypnosis to help people reconnect with their emotions? Then come to a free masterclass to get started.

Or register directly for one of our events and trainings.

You can take the trainings in class in Assendelft, or join the class live online. Super fun! And ideal if Assendelft is too far away for you, or you don't even live in the Netherlands.

Check out our calendar here.

Check out our training courses here.

Schedule a 1-on-1 consultation here if you have a question about our training. This is really a check to see if the training suits you, not a therapeutic conversation.

Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:

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