Do you know the story of Job? God and the devil had a bet on Job that if they made his life hell he would believe in God or not . The devil said he didn't, but God said he did. So they took everything away from Job. I don't remember exactly what all, but it was setback after setback. But Job remained cheerful and happy and grateful for life. The devil had lost the bet.
So overcoming adversity was something Job could do best, but how did he do it? You can read more about that in this blog, or rather how you can overcome a setback.
Setback meaning
A setback is an event that is not good for you[1]. For example, a car breaking down is a setback, but you can also think of losing your job as a setback. So you can encounter big and small setbacks in your life.
Setbacks can cause symptoms such as depression and anxiety if you cannot handle them properly[2].
If you have searched on overcoming a setback, chances are you now want to overcome a slightly bigger setback, but how do you do that? How do you move on after a setback?
Coping with adversity
The first step of overcoming a setback is to process the setback. You have to accept , as it were, that what happened to you really happened. Acknowledging that you have or had a problem is the first step in overcoming the setback.
Could you do something about it or not?
Because if you can determine what happened to you now, you can also determine how it got there. Did you get the setback because of something you could control and thus do differently in the future or did you simply have a lot of bad luck?
After all, when you think the setback happened because you didn't handle things properly that you can control it does something to your brain, giving you more willpower to correct your mistakes.
For example, did you fail a test because you didn't study enough? Then for the retake, you do get to learn regularly.
Feel like you couldn't avoid the setback? Then the brain can still do nice things to process the setback, such as determine reasons why the setback is actually something good for you.
Then, for example, you start reframing the outcome of adversity to determine how it's right. For example, if you are divorced because your ex cheated and you couldn't do anything about it, you can reframe this as your second round to find a nice partner.
And just dating and having fun for a while can also be a lot of fun, especially since you now have no one to consider. You can do whatever you feel like doing!
Do you actually have less money due to a setback? Then you can think, for example, about how this is a fun challenge to find nice things in thrift stores and how you can use a lick of paint to make your new purchases like new again, without spending hundreds of dollars on them[3].
Give yourself a hug
Self-compassion is also a good way to deal with adversity in your life. Japanese research shows that students who have more self-compassion cope better when failing for exams and, as a result, also cope better when choosing to move on to take the right steps to achieve a difficult goal or quit (source 2).
With self-compassion, it is important to have a kind mindset toward yourself at times when you face adversity. This means not blaming yourself and being hard on yourself. Instead, this means being kind to yourself. How would you act toward friends who are experiencing setbacks? This is how you can do.
In addition, self-compassion is also realizing that you are just a human being and that you may continue to interact with other people despite adversity instead of isolating yourself.
Self-compassion helps you suffer less from negative emotions when you suffer setbacks. This also makes it easier to accept the setback.
Support from friends
As mentioned above, isolating yourself may be something you want to do when you are experiencing a setback, but it is better to seek social support instead. Meet with friends and/or family and talk to them about your setback.
Just expressing the setback and what feeling it makes you feel can be very relieving.
In the process, your friends and/or family can contribute solutions to overcome your adversity.
A 1980s study of people who had been laid off and how they dealt with it showed that people who had social support and thought in solutions were more likely to find a job they liked and were more motivated to find another job[4].
Adversity makes you stronger
Setbacks can make you stronger, but this is not true for everyone. How is it that a setback can make one person stronger and not another? This is partly because of how you reflect on that setback.
Research shows that if you want to learn from the moment and if you are mindful that this helps you come out of adversity stronger[5].
Hypnosis and overcoming adversity
There are a number of factors where hypnosis can play a role in coping and overcoming adversity, namely:
- Reframe
- Setting (new) goals
- Self-Compassion
- Make friends
- Overcoming fears
One of the things a hypnotherapist often does to help people with problems is to reframe the problem. For example, reframing a setback, by finding out its benefits, is something a hypnotherapist can do[6].
If you feel that you have no future or can no longer think of goals due to adversity, for example, progression can help you still feel that there is something you can live toward[7]. This technique also directly helps you think of the steps to work toward that future vision, which if you do it right is something you actually want. In this way, the progression technique can help you set new goals or find new ways you want to achieve your current goals.
Improving self-compassion is also something that can be done very well with hypnosis. This can be done, for example, with self-hypnosis in which you repeat certain suggestions to yourself, like you can repeat affirmations. These can be suggestions such as:
"I am my own best friend."
"I am someone to care for."
"I'm allowed to make mistakes."
"I can do anything."
"Everything can be figured out."
"I get to take it easy."
These are just examples. Depending on your setbacks and the self-compassion you have now, you may get other suggestions from a hypnotherapist to work with.
To socialize and thus put yourself in social situations, hypnosis can also help. With visualizations, for example, you can overcome social fears and gain more self-confidence to expose yourself to new people with whom you may have more contact later on. In addition, you can also get suggestions that will boost your self-confidence, which again helps.
A setback can also create new fears, and eliminating fears is something hypnosis can very well help with. There are several techniques a hypnotherapist can use to overcome a fear, such as visualizations. Making fun of the fear can also help eliminate a fear. After all, if you can laugh at something, it is no longer a problem.
In addition, you can also look at why you became afraid. Is it actually something that was there before the setback? Might the fear be related to the occurrence of the setback? That again is something regression can help with. With regression, you go to your past instead of the future.
You go to the moment when a particular belief about how the world works and how you function best in it was formed. These are often moments from your childhood, but you didn't know then what you know now. Therefore, revisiting such a moment, but with your current knowledge, can do a lot to change beliefs that are not helping you move forward and overcome fears with them.
This, in turn, can help them overcome adversity.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help people? Then come to the free online master class.
Or enroll in a seminar or one of Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses. Ideal for helping people and helping yourself.
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