Overcoming adversity: hypnosis helps

Do you know the story of Job? God and the devil made a bet about Job: if they turned his life into a living hell , would he or would he not continue to believe in God? The devil said he wouldn’t, but God said he would. So they took everything away from Job. I don’t remember exactly what it all was, but it was one setback after another. Yet Job remained cheerful, 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 isn’t good for you[1]. For example, a car breaking down is a setback, but losing your job can also be seen as a setback. So you may encounter both major and minor setbacks in your life.

Setbacks can lead to conditions such as depression and anxiety if you’re unable to process 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 in overcoming adversity is coming to terms with it. You must, as it were, accept that what happened to you actually happened. Acknowledging that you have or had a problem is the first step toward coming to terms with adversity.

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?

In fact, if you believe that the setback occurred because you didn’t handle matters within your control properly, this affects 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 start learning 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.

For example, you might reframe the outcome of the setback to see the positive side of it. If, for instance, you’re divorced because your ex cheated on you and there was nothing you could do about it, you can reframe this as your second chance to find a great 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!

Has a setback left you with less money? Then you could, for example, think of it as a fun challenge to find great items at thrift stores and figure out how to make your new purchases look brand-new with a fresh coat of paint, without spending hundreds of euros[3].

Give yourself a hug

Self-compassion is also a good way to cope with setbacks in your life. Japanese research shows that students who have more self-compassion cope better with failing exams and, as a result, are better able to decide whether to keep moving forward by taking the right steps to achieve a difficult goal or to stop (source 2).

With self-compassion, it’s important to maintain a kind mindset toward yourself when you’re facing setbacks. This means not blaming yourself or being too hard on yourself. Instead, it means being kind to yourself. How would you treat friends who are dealing with setbacks? That’s exactly how you should treat yourself.

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 practice mindfulness, this helps you emerge stronger from adversity[5].

Hypnosis and overcoming adversity

There are a number of factors where hypnosis can play a role in coping and overcoming adversity, namely:

1. Reframe
2. Setting (new) goals
3. Self-Compassion
4. Make friends
5. 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.

Hypnosis can also help you build social connections and put yourself out there in social situations. For example, through visualizations, you can overcome social anxiety and gain more self-confidence to introduce yourself to new people with whom you might connect further in the future. In addition, you can receive suggestions that boost your self-confidence, which is also helpful.

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’ll go back to the moment when a certain belief about how the world works and how you function best within it first arose. These are often moments from your childhood, but back then you didn’t know what you know now. That’s why revisiting such a moment—but this time with your current knowledge—can go a long way toward changing beliefs that aren’t helping you move forward and overcoming your fears.

This, in turn, can help them overcome adversity.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help people? Then join us for the free online masterclass.

Or sign up for a seminar or one of the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands. Ideal for helping others and helping yourself.

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