Hypnotherapy: Tapping Into Your Subconscious Power

My first step to healing when I crashed to my rock bottom was traditional talk therapy. I learned some much-needed skills and my therapist gave me a killer reading list. Unfortunately, our sessions left me drained, raw and extremely emotional. I had to avoid people because I cried for hours afterwards.

Hypnotherapy is so different for me. Granted I moved past survival mode when I started, but I always feel happy and optimistic when I leave, even on my rough days.

Is it like what they show on TV?

The first concern people usually ask about is if it's like what they see on a stage. I guarantee that my therapist has never had me doing a crazy chicken dance — at least not against my will.

I think of hypnotherapy as opening the trapdoor from our conscious mind to our subconscious mind. The subconscious is a vast land of stored memories, emotions and the root of our triggers. It's there we discover why we hold on to bad habits or unknowingly react without thinking.

My hypnotherapist describes it best: let's say you have zero self-control around chocolate cake. You think this time you'll have just one slice. Then you're sick from eating the whole cake. You dig down and remember that every time you visited your grandma, she served you a piece of her homemade chocolate cake. Somewhere along the way, you connected chocolate cake to grandma's love. Through hypnosis, you can disconnect the bond — and finally turn down the cake without feeling like you're rejecting your sweet granny.

My experience

I've been working with a hypnotherapist with the goal of improving my self-confidence, because I know that's the key to everything I want. We have tackled feeling unlovable and a fear of speaking up for myself.

That sting of rejection had little to do with not getting the job or the guy not calling. Those minor events tapped into a root that runs deep to a place where my subconscious stores unresolved childhood material. And it's not about blaming my parents. My parents, just like me, did the best they could with the tools they had. It's much more empowering to bless and release than to believe we are helpless victims.

Hypnosis gives me the tools to take my power back. Rather than solely focusing on the negative emotions, it's about leaning into the emotions that bring abundance and bliss.

It's a modality that helps me focus on the evidence of abundance in my life and say, 'Thank you, more please.'