Sometimes You Just Need to Hypnotize Me

Have you ever had such deeply entrenched bad habits that, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to figure out how to reverse them? If so, we have a lot in common because I will practically beat my head against the wall trying to change mine to no avail.

If you are anything like me, you have tried therapy, reiki, mindfulness meditation, accountability partners, and every other healing mechanism in the book. Don’t get me wrong, all of the previously mentioned modalities work wonders for me in most situations. There are even times when I can overcome bad habits with some combination of the above. However, there are a handful of mean little monsters in my brain that have burrowed themselves so deep in my neural pathways, that nothing seems to get to them.

I’ve had enough therapy over the years to understand that there are patterns that started in my childhood, developed over decades, and have dug paths in my brain that are only routed one direction. The direction they are routed is towards what feels comfortable, and what feels comfortable is the way I have been doing things since childhood.

For instance, when I was a small child, I hated going to bed, and I despised waking-up in the morning. I wanted to stay up playing until 2am, and to sleep until 10am. My mother was a stay-at-home parent at the time, and she accommodated this unusual bed-time schedule. When it was time to start preschool, I went to the afternoon half-day portion, rather than the morning one. When it was time to start kindergarten, getting me out of bed to be at school by 8:30 was a headache for everyone.

From then on out, there was never a single day of school, from kindergarten to senior year of college, where I had an easy time waking up. Not once. In fact, my mom got so tired of coming upstairs several times every morning to get me out of bed, that she started paying my brother to do it. As you can imagine, when I entered the workforce and lived on my own, I slept through many an alarm clock, and have been late for work more times than I care to admit. To this day, my preferred sleep schedule is 2am-10am, and I really struggle to find a living situation that allows that to happen, considering America gets started at 8am.

Another habit that started from a very young age was peanut butter at bedtime. This one goes hand in hand with my sleeping issues. In addition to not wanting to wake-up, I have also been known to never want to fall asleep either. Trying to make me go to sleep as a kid was as hard as trying to get me up in the morning. I would cajole my mom into laying in bed with me at night, and telling me stories to help me fall asleep. Of course, really, I was just trying to delay the process and talk to someone.

One trick that always seemed to help with sleep though, was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I am not sure how it started, but at some point, I convinced her to start sneaking it to me in bed. My dad had strict rules about no food in the bedroom, and no night-time snacking. However, I did not let that deter me. I convinced my mom to make me PB&J’s, and sneak them up to my room. I would eat it while she told me a story, and I would feel so comfortable that I found it easier to fall asleep after this.

You can probably guess what’s coming next. Yup, as a 40-year old woman, I have spent most of my life using someone talking on TV and some sort of peanut butter snack to fall asleep at night. A silent, dark, peanut-butter free bedroom is my worst nightmare.

The list of bad habits I have picked up over the years goes on. While a handful of them are a comfort issue, others are a matter of emotional coping mechanisms. For instance, when I was a kid, I was bullied a lot and had no friends. As such, the evenings and weekends at home with my family were my safe place. Since my mom knew I had no friends, she would try to make up for it on the weekends by taking us to do fun things. Occasionally, that included events such as going out for pizza or ice cream. Other times, if I’d had a particularly hard week, my dad would bring me home a little toy or take me to the mall to go shopping.

My parents also worked with the school to try to curb the bullying, and sent me to therapy to try to help me cope, but those tactics weren’t doing the trick. They spent a lot of time talking with me about it, and trying to help me from a communication standpoint, which was quite helpful. However, my personality really enjoyed and clung to the moments when I got to have junk food or go shopping. My brain developed circuits that just became more and more entrenched over the years. The constant messaging in my head became “If you want to feel better, you should eat some junk food and/or spend some money.”

In 2016, I had been in therapy for 4 years. I had begun the really hard work of sorting through all the deeply buried pain from the traumas I had gone through in my life. While therapy was really helping me get a lot of buried emotions off my chest, it was also kicking up a lot of issues that I hadn’t ever dealt with. As such, I turned to late nights, peanut butter, fast food, and shopping to cope with all of the pain I was dredging up in therapy. To be fair, I had been using these as coping mechanisms all along. However, now, I was in turbo mode. 

I am a huge advocate for therapy, and I still see a counselor to this day. With that being said, when you really dig in and start doing the work, it gets worse before it gets better. To deal with the discomfort, I was utilizing meditation, creative outlets, talking to my friends and family, journaling, and a host of other healthy coping mechanisms. However, I was also diving into my unhealthy ones, as well. No amount of my “good” ones could seem to outweigh the need for the “bad” ones. My neural pathways needed to be re-circuited. 

All of a sudden, I had an idea. My brother and mom had both completely given up their smoking addictions with hypnosis. They had tried several different methods of quitting, and that was the only one that had done the trick. Could I see a hypnotist for my food and shopping addictions? I set about Googling this, and sure enough, you could see a hypnotist for just about anything having to do with your mental and emotional health. I found a local one with good reviews, and bought a package of 3 appointments. 

Before the appointment, I asked my mom and brother what to expect. They told me that I shouldn’t anticipate it being like what we see in the movies. I wouldn’t go under and not be aware of what was happening. It wasn’t like where people black out and start walking like a chicken and have no recollection of doing it. They informed me that I would simply be in a deeply relaxed and meditative state, and I would be aware of everything the hypnotist was saying. My brother told me, “You will probably walk out of there thinking it didn’t work, because you don’t ‘go to sleep’ when you are in the session. However, over the coming days, you find yourself not wanting to do the thing you are trying to quit doing, and you will realize it worked.”

That was exactly what happened. I saw her for cutting back on sugar and high fat foods in those sessions. I sat in a recliner chair, she guided me through a body scan meditation that relaxed me from head to toe, then she counted me into a deeper relaxation, and after that she started implanting all of these suggestions into my subconscious. I heard her say them, but it was like I was deep in my body and mind, and hearing her from a place that felt safe. 

The next day at work, it was someone’s birthday, and they brought donuts. I passed them right up. In the following days, weeks, and months, I was much more discerning about when I was going to partake in a treat. The hypnotist sent me a recording of the sessions so I could re-listen to them and keep it all going.

Over time, I stopped listening to the recordings, and after a couple of years, I started slipping into old patterns again. Further tough times in life were bringing up increased rough and buried emotions. In 2018, I started seeing a new therapist who specialized in these unhealthy coping mechanisms, and she brought up the idea of hypnotism. I told her I had tried it before and experienced good results, but over time I had lost my way again. She informed me she had a hypnotist on staff that I could see, if I was interested.

Through some talking with my new therapist and her staff hypnotist, I came to realize that the first hypnotist I saw was doing the sessions from more of a shame-based place. The narrative was, “I should feel guilty and bad about myself if I slipped up and ate sugar, and I should feel good about myself if I ate vegetables, etc. What I was coming to find out from this new therapist is that a lot of my behaviors were coming from a place of shame and guilt. I was being super hard on myself, and making myself feel so bad about slipping up, that it just caused me to fall deeper in the hole. The deeper I fell, the more I was using these addictions to try to appease the guilt and shame. And doing so, would make me feel more guilt and shame. Vicious cycle. What I needed was a love-based hypnosis treatment. One that worked from a more positive and gentle script. The narrative should be more like, “because you love yourself, you want to make healthy decisions to take care of your body, because you love your body,” etc. 

Turns out, that did the trick. I saw the new hypnotist for that notion, and lots more since. I like to do hypnosis about once a year to keep up with my mental and emotional health. I have seen her for coping with generational trauma, loving myself and body-positivity, online shopping, and unhealthy food. I listen to the recordings after the sessions, and I go back to her when I have something else to tackle. It has become a very helpful tool in my wellness kit. I have daily meditation, weekly therapy, quarterly reiki, and yearly hypnosis. It is my perfect little mental health cocktail, and has served me well. They all work together to help each other do their job. I couldn’t do the hypnosis without the rest. 

I think of it like keeping your carpets clean. Maybe you need to vacuum once a week, but every few years, you probably need to rent the carpet cleaner machine to do a deep clean of them. Every year or so, I have some emotions and habits that are stuck deep down in the crevices of my brain, and I need something that can get all the way down in there, and wash them away. Therapy and meditation are great, but sometimes you just need to hypnotize me.