How do you find the real you? Does it feel as though you are hidden beneath layers of events, anxiety, trauma? This is how one brilliant client recently described their journey from sleepless anxiety to calm and relaxed happiness. “I feel as though I am at the centre of an onion, and that one by one I am peeling away the layers to get closer to the real me” So how do we do that? How do we come to find the treasure that is the real, authentic us through hypnotherapy?
Anxiety and depression cause the fight flight freeze part of our brain to be on permanent alert – protecting us by keeping us on guard and creating layers of defence whilst at the same time preventing the kind of loose relaxed thought that leads to creativity and calm.
Over the years, the layers build up, until it seems that the person we once knew as us has become hidden and we no longer know how to be the real authentic ‘us’ any more.
Solution Focused work combined with Hypnotherapy allows us to begin peeling away the layers of protection, slowly and gently, until there are glimpses and then real sightings of the person underneath. These exceptions gradually become the norm, until all the layers are gone, and we can begin to live life freely again.
I’m talking in metaphors here, but time and again I see in my therapy room the magic of those layers peeling away. Clients who at one time believed that they would always feel anxious or depressed, seeing themselves once more as happy, secure, positive people with so much to offer.
Our brains are so good at creating the protective layers. Hypnotherapy is so good at removing them.