Everyone has moments when they feel inferior, but if you suffer from this for a long time you can suffer from an inferiority complex. You often feel less beautiful, less smart or whatever less than the people around you. This is very unfortunate, because this can cause you to suffer all kinds of negative consequences that are completely unnecessary.
Therefore, in this blog I will discuss what an inferiority complex is and how hypnosis can help against it.
What is an inferiority complex?
As mentioned, you feel inferior to other people for a long time. You feel uglier, dumber and in other ways inferior to those around you.
Especially if you have a variety of experiences that confirm these feelings, such as being fired, getting failing grades in school, divorces and other ways that show you are "not good enough" you may suffer from an inferiority complex.
An inferiority complex is a problem because it can affect your ability to think. For example, it is well known that students can suffer from negative thoughts at the time they are studying that take the entire focus off of doing homework, for example.
Check inferiority complex
Worried that you suffer from an inferiority complex? If so, there are a number of symptoms you can check to see if you are indeed suffering from excessive feelings of inferiority.
The following symptoms belong to an inferiority complex:
- Low self-esteem.
- Self-doubt.
- Uncertainty about yourself.
- Sense of standard quality/behavior not meeting.
- Many negative thoughts about yourself.
- Very sensitive to criticism.
- Less socializing/ belittling other people or being extroverted just over the limit of what is polite.
- Feeling victimized by the world/people around you.
- Finding it difficult to give compliments to other people.
- Avoids competitions/can't stand his/her losses.
- Fear of failure.
An inferiority complex can also take place subconsciously, causing you to overcompensate. This is why people with an inferiority complex are capable of incredibly extraordinary things, but sometimes things just go incredibly wrong.
Precisely because an inferiority complex can also be subconscious, hypnosis helps to treat an inferiority complex. In fact, hypnosis is the way to influence your subconscious.
Emergence of an inferiority complex
Many subconscious problems have a starting point in childhood, and so does an inferiority complex. A child is physically weaker and, of course, adults are often smarter at that time. This can already mark the beginning of feelings of inferiority.
This is also due to feelings of dependency and helplessness. If you also have siblings who are better at some things than you are, or a romantic love at a young age that influenced feelings of inferiority.
Authoritarian parenting can also create inferior feelings in the child.
The impact can be on how you look (pretty, ugly, slim, muscular), how you react to situations (crying at a movie when no one else thinks it's cool), or the skills you have (or don't have).
Next, a slightly more conscious cause is that certain things in adult life don't work out. For example, if as an adult you want to have a certain degree of security in the form of a good job and a pleasant home and this does not work out, it creates an (unconscious) confirmation of feelings of worthlessness that can cause you to suffer from real feelings of depression or the real inferiority complex.
So this can leave you with all kinds of doubts about who you are now and what you are actually doing on this earth. The purpose of your own life can become unclear if you find it difficult to achieve those goals you once imagined or that those around you expected of you.
What to do about an inferiority complex?
As mentioned, there is already an awful lot where hypnosis can help, especially if the root of the problem is in the subconscious, which can certainly be the case with an inferiority complex. Initially, it is important to be mindful about the thought process you are having.
Omdenken
Then, when you realize that you are thinking negatively about yourself or your environment, you can start to reverse think.
For example, if you're thinking, something like, "Why is he succeeding in getting that promotion now and I'm not?" then you can rethink to "If I develop these and these skills, I'll also have a better chance of getting a promotion or a better job."
However, this is a technique that usually provides relief only in the immediate moment, but it is not a long-term solution.
Regression
For the long term, it is important to address the root of the problem. Regression is a hypnosis technique that allows you to go to those moments in childhood that laid the foundation for the inferiority complex.
With regression, you can look at that moment with more emotional distance, allowing you to change your beliefs about yourself and the world quite quickly to suffer from feelings of inferiority almost immediately.
The craziest results can emerge with regression. After all, as a child you don't always make the most logical connections, and by re-evaluating your beliefs that were formed then as an adult can provide a lot of relief.
Socratic conversation
Do you find it difficult to go back to a similar moment in regression? Then a Socratic conversation can also do an awful lot to get to the root of your beliefs.
In the process, this conversation may even cause you to realize that there is actually no basis for your beliefs at all. When you get this realization, you can learn new beliefs through hypnosis as if on a blank page.
(Self) Acceptance
Accepting yourself and your environment as it is is one of the most important lessons your life gives you. Instead of blaming your past for where you are now and dreaming about a future that you now find unattainable, or quite undesirable, it is better to live in the here and now.
Accepting yourself and your environment also helps you see more quickly where you can improve.
It's ok if you're 40 and don't live in a villa yet, it's also ok if you're 55 and still have a mess in your house like you live in an adolescent room. No one is perfect.
To accept yourself, you can make a list of your good and bad qualities.
The good traits give you insight into what you can be satisfied with, and your less good traits give you insight into where you might want to improve, or just accept that you are just human and therefore not perfect. You are not a robot! (And they have bugs too, sometimes).
Hypnosis also helps with self-acceptance. This can be done, for example, with hypnotic suggestions that you can repeat at home during self-hypnosis.
Initially, you relax and close your eyes. When your breathing is calm and even, you then name the hypnotic suggestions aloud, for example:
"I am good enough the way I am."
"My environment accepts me as I am."
"I am allowed to have imperfections."
"I get to be kind to myself."
"I am my best friend."
Note! These are only examples of hypnotic suggestions. Depending on your beliefs about yourself, a hypnotist may choose to give you other suggestions.
Increase self-esteem
In addition to self-acceptance, it is also important to increase your self-esteem. A key belief needed for this is the realization that life is not a competition. Everyone plays life at their own level, and that's a good thing.
In the process, other people's success does not get in the way of your own success. By letting go of competition, you can have a much greater appreciation for what you have already accomplished and what you can achieve.
By making a list of everything you have already accomplished in life, both in business and in life, you will already gain much more self-esteem. Even your lacing diploma is something you can be proud of, and that baking course you once took is also something that helped you develop yourself.
One event that can lower your self-esteem is, for example, when you participate in a sport as an adolescent and come in last at tournaments time after time. For example, I know someone who used to have this.
Losing this time and time again started to gnaw at her self-confidence. Her mother would always say, "but at least you're better than anyone who doesn't participate!". This may seem very logical and even something that doesn't matter, but this was something that cheered her up and kept her having fun in the sport. The fact that she at least made an effort meant she was already better than other people who didn't even try to enter a tournament.
Want to learn more about how hypnosis can help people, such as with the inferiority complex? Then come to the hypnosis playshop or check out the Hypnosis Institute calendar and register for 1 of our events.
