Changing a mental problem permanently
A mental problem often seems chronic, especially if it is a problem related to anxiety such as fear of spiders, fear of heights, or problems in how you interact with people.
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to solve a mental problem to permanently change it. In this blog, I'm going to walk you through some of the techniques that a psychotherapist, such as a hypnotherapist, can help you with
Connecting with good feelings
One of my favorite techniques helps people permanently change a problem. This is because you get to work with your neurological networks, making you actually feel the problem as something problematic. It doesn't feel right, shall we say.
This technique has four steps that you keep repeating, as if doing some rounds, to change the problem to something that is not problematic.
Step 1: Sensing your problem
This is difficult for some people because they are unwilling or unable to feel. It’s unpleasant to feel a problem, so people aren’t interested in doing so.
This does matter, because when you feel it you experience it. In your brain, that network of your problem then lights up.
So that fear of the spider
Step 2: Stop feeling the problem
And no, you can't skip step 1. You have to activate it first, then not feel it. With this, you begin to change the problem.
How do you do this? By distracting yourself. For example, you could go jump around, dance, do something else, or look at something else.
Helping someone here? Then ask that person a crazy question so they are distracted. This is because this neural network is still activated. You just don't feel this anymore, because your focus has shifted to the distraction.
Step 3: What do you actually want to feel?
How do you want to feel when facing the problem? Freedom, love, bliss? A good feeling? Ask yourself if you’ve ever experienced such a feeling, and recall that moment so you can experience those feelings again.
Step 4: Hold this feeling and think about your problem
So you hold this feeling while thinking about the problem situation.
You have then activated the neural network of your problem. Then, with the distraction, you have activated a neural network of something that feels good. In your mind, you have then made small connections between the problem neural network and the good feeling neural network. The stronger the good feeling is and the stronger you can link it to the problem, the fewer rounds you need.
In fact, you can repeat these steps, like rounds, until the problem is changed.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1648678-hoe-kan-je-problemen-blijvend-veranderen?play=true
Shifting focus from problem to solution
Another way hypnotherapy can help with mental problems is to shift the focus of your thoughts from the problem to the solution[1]. For example, you have something you don't like, such as your anxiety, and there is a certain way you do want to deal with it.
You can then receive suggestions to focus specifically on what you’re good at and on the things that are going well in your life. This helps you shift your focus away from what isn’t going well and from what you perceive as a problem.
For example, if your goal was to get a 7 on a test and you didn’t succeed, the suggestion that you’ve learned a lot because you put more time into studying can help put the problem into perspective. For instance, you used to get mostly failing grades, and now you’ve gotten a 6. That’s still progress.
In addition, suggestions about resilience are important. Sure, sometimes you can have a down day, or a day when you're too scared to go out, but the day after that is another one in which you are fully recharged and can take on the world again.
You can then get suggestions such as:
"My best is good enough."
"I have talents that count."
"I am a magnet of good energy."
"I am a go-getter."
"After a down comes an up."
These are just examples. Depending on your beliefs about your problem and where you want to go as a solution, you may get other suggestions that are more applicable to you personally.
Visualizing desired behaviors
Sometimes you already know what you want to do. For example, you just want to calmly and cheerfully walk onto the plane and take your seat, or calmly and cheerfully get behind the wheel for a road trip.
In that case, you can perform the swish technique. You then visualize what you don't want to do and alternate that visualization with a visualization of what you do want to do. With what you do want to do, you also start evoking very happy feelings.
You are going to quickly alternate those two images and also those happy feelings each time you invoke the image of what your solution is, of your desired behavior.
By quickly alternating this, your brain gets a little confused and has to start choosing what it likes best right now. Adding those positive feelings to the desired image makes that choice very easy.
This can help you feel more confident behind the wheel, for example, but it can also help you reach for a carrot snack instead of chips. Super handy!
German research also shows that this technique helps with processing trauma[2].
The past lives that caused the problem
Sometimes a problem is actually a problem because you established the wrong life rule in your subconscious—or even in a past life—long ago. When you’re young, you determine for yourself how the world works and how you function within it.
With regression therapy, you can go back in your current life, and some people even go back to their past lives. Through this, you can learn why you do certain things the way you do and how you can change this. For example, you might discover why the problem you’re facing isn’t actually a logical problem at all.
Research shows that regression therapy exploring past lives can help you experience a better quality of life in this lifetime, have more self-confidence, and even believe more strongly in karma (if you do good, good will come back to you; if you do bad, bad will come back to you) [3].
With regression therapy, you first go into hypnosis. Then you are suggested to go back to the first moment when you felt something, which is now causing your problem, for example. Usually you then come back to a memory from your childhood.
Then you start looking at that event with your current adult knowledge, and you can use that to change the moment in your mind already. For example, you can empathize with other people who were present at that moment and answer the question of why they did as they did.
After all, you have that knowledge now, but often did not have it as a child. In addition, most people do not consciously go back to such a moment to look at it more closely, but during a hypnotherapy session this can be done nicely for a while.
That way, you can solve mental problems quickly.
So changing a mental problem permanently can be done in several ways. You can go deeper into the mental problem with regression, or you can shift your focus with, for example, the swish technique and hypnotherapy to shift your focus to the good sides of yourself.
My favorite technique is one of the most fun because you don't actually have to bring up all kinds of problems all the time. Instead, you turn your problem into something fun.
Would you like to learn more about what hypnosis can do for you? Then join the free online masterclass on hypnosis.
Or enroll in one of our training courses. The trainings are conducted online to ensure that the training is continuous and does not suffer from lockdown measures or anything like that. The online classes are taught from a professional studio and with lots of online guidance.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10591-020-09539-5
[2] https://elibrary.klett-cotta.de/article/10.21706/tg-14-1-76
[3] http://www.ojs.mcu.ac.th/index.php/JIBS/article/view/667