There may be times in your life when you are not living, but surviving. For example, the feeling that you are surviving may emerge when you are in a traumatic situation or even after a traumatic event. In current times, even a higher energy bill can cause you to feel like you are surviving instead of living. How do you deal with that?
Surviving from moment to moment
Sometimes you can be in a total state of survival, such as when you are actually very inclined to commit suicide. You then choose each moment, as it were, whether to stay alive or not. You can do this with a kind of mindset where you choose not to die or with a kind of mindset where you choose to live in the moment.
On one hand, this sounds terribly stressful, but on the other hand, this is the lifeline you have if you are very troubled by suicidal thoughts. In fact, by choosing not to die right now or to live in the moment, you are also choosing a chance for help to be able to get out of that very negative thought of contemplating suicide.
Actually, it is also a moment of great doubt about your purpose or destiny in life[1].
At such a time, you can be very much in discussion with yourself about reasons you need to find to keep choosing life.
You may be suffering from intense feelings of insecurity. Insecurity in your neighborhood, your home, with your friends, and you even feel unsafe for yourself. These feelings of total insecurity are then difficult to express and then the idea may arise that putting an end to it is the only way to get rid of it. Also because shame and fear of this stigma prevent people from talking about their depressive feelings .
Helping someone with their story can also help to find out why someone has the emotions they do, and this can cause anxiety to diminish, as there is at least an understanding of where all the negativity is coming from. This can help shift from a focus on death to a focus on life.
As a counselor, you can do a lot for someone who is in survival mode by talking to them and figuring out together how it got to this point. Study participants said they much preferred this to extra pills to solve a problem[2].
Hypnosis can help in cases like this to uncover unconscious beliefs that are causing this deep mental struggle for survival, so you can figure out what to do about it.
Also, generating more control over thought patterns then helps to choose life and thus make survival easier (source 2). This also helps to shift the focus away from death and more toward life.
Working to change thought patterns is often possible only after a person can refocus on choosing to live rather than choosing not to die (source 2).
Call 113 if you are currently experiencing suicidal thoughts and need help.
Survival with little money
In this time of inflation and utility bills rising from month to month, you may suddenly feel that that easy first world life is suddenly slipping into a less easy second world life where you suddenly have to survive on little money.
How do you go about it, and how do you make sure you still enjoy all of this mentally, too?
Low money can come from being uncertain about the survival of your job and thus living as frugally as possible for security. In addition, unexpected financial problems can also affect your own identity, for example in terms of your socioeconomic status. Where you always thought you had enough money for a nice average life, your situation suddenly seems more like that of a poor slob and that does something to your ego.
After a social disaster, such as this extreme inflation, people may suffer more from PTSD, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
For example, your well-being depends on your subjective identity and cues from your environment that fit that identity. For example, if you could afford a semi-detached house, but now find yourself in financial trouble because of the utility bill, that does not fit the subjective identity that you can have if you can afford a semi-detached house. Then you suffer from cognitive dissonance; a feeling that something is not right.
This is why stability of energy prices, for example, but more generally of the society around you, is so important. At least then everyone knows where they stand and what you have to put effort into certain things[3].
Hypnotherapy can help you deal with the mental side of poverty . For example, hypnosis can help you with your self-image, with giving meaning to life, and to reduce conflict (which is about money, for example)[4].
Strengthening the ego, for example, is something many hypnotherapists do to reinvigorate your identity. This can be done, for example, by repeating certain suggestions, such as:
"The amount of money I have says nothing about my value."
"I am valuable and good enough."
"I am creative."
These are just examples. Depending on the problems you are having due to low money, you can get other suggestions to strengthen the ego.
Surviving Midlife Crisis
Something else you may want to survive is a midlife crisis. You've always done as you should and have since achieved what can be achieved and then suddenly you think, "Is this it now? Is this life?"
How do you make sure you deal with this realization rationally and don't suddenly ditch that sweet partner of yours for a younger model and have to go back a few years later with hanging feet?
Or how do you make sure you at least choose someone better suited to you in the next round when you really do come to the realization that this can't be all for you?
How do you make sure you don't quit your job on a whim without a good alternative?
How do you make sure you don't get an STI because you are suddenly having more casual sex because that proves your youthfulness to yourself?
This is then also combined with the realization that you are running out of time, that you are over half of an age you can expect to reach on average[5].
It is a period when you also begin to reflect on what your life has brought you up to that point,[6] and in some cases that can make you very unhappy. In that case, hypnotherapy can help you figure out why you are unhappy about how things have gone so far and change your outlook on it.
But even better, hypnotherapy can also help you make some kind of plan for the future. In this case, you don't go back to the past in your mind, as in regression, but instead you move forward in your mind toward a particular future that you want to achieve.
Then, in your mind, you take steps from that future vision back to the moment in the chair with the hypnotherapist. This gives you a clear plan and provides a handle on how to achieve that image.
This is an advanced technique that you can learn at the HIN in the third course to help people get some purpose in their lives; whether early in life or during midlife crisis.
Survival can be on multiple degrees. You can have a very difficult time mentally and therefore feel like you have to survive from moment to moment. It is then very important to ask for help.
You may also have difficult life circumstances that make you feel like you have to survive. For example, when bills suddenly become unexpectedly high. In that case, the image of yourself and your identity may no longer match well, and that can also feel bad. In addition to the practical steps you need to take to survive, it can then also be helpful to take mental steps so that survival feels at least somewhat "fun" as well.
Sometimes you may also have periods in your life when you are struggling with how your life is going. Or that you suddenly get the realization that your time here is limited. In that case, hypnosis can also help you make a clear achievable plan for your future.
Want to learn more about hypnosis? Then come to the free online master class.
Or register for one of our seminars or trainings.
Sources:
