Worst Things Happen At Sea

How many shipwrecks have you survived? Okay, you may not have left dry land though traumatic events can leave your poor mind vowing never to set sail ever again, even if you really want to!

Problems can be defined as rigid patterns of thought, behaviour, or emotional-response that require the introduction of new elements to enable more flexible patterns to develop.?

Maybe at the moment you are just not ‘seeing the wood for the trees’ and a bit of rebalancing will help.??Or maybe, you are not even aware of the impact unresolved trauma is having on your mind, your body, your future - and those who live with you!

Developing confidence to bridge the gap between before the trauma and now, is useful as we may be truly dealing with a lack of confidence in safety, in our ability to keep ourselves and others safe. Maybe a reminder to seek restoration of confidence may help right now.

Principal Objectives of getting back to balance

Extending Choice

Progress is often blocked by lack of available choice in behavioural or cognitive response. Often these limitation were not there at all before the trauma. Let's fix that with a little exercise.

When anyone extends choice by clarifying what responses could apply in the problem situation (what would your mom have done, what would James Bond do, what would the guy down the street do, what would… anyone else do here?)?this enables you to widen your response repertoire appropriately.?It also leads you to understand the reasons why you are doing what you are doing for the reasons which you explain to yourself.?[‘Oh, they don’t have my debts to pay/bad knee/weight problem/lack of support/age/short hair’!]

Overcoming Limitations

We are sometimes subject to limitations imposed by learned experience or parental injunctions. You can overcome these self-sustaining limitations by allowing yourself to simulate a limitation-free version of the problem situation.?For example, how would life be different if you had no one to please but yourself, or if you had not taken the job, or were younger – be limitless (at least for a while; at least in your head, for it will expand your consciousness to be more solution focussed and get out of its cage).

Resolving Conflict

Conflicts can be internal or external, but the essential treatment remains the same. If you work by clarifying the conflicting outcomes and then escalate them until it becomes ridiculous this can help. For example, if you have found you would do anything for a certain person because you love them so much, ask yourself if you would jump off a bridge if they said so.?Would you rob a store, swallow a teaspoon of pepper – find that boundary!

Accessing Resources

We are often unaware that we already possess the resources (such as confidence) we require. These resources may exist in other areas of our lives. Open access pathways to these resources in response to the problem situation.?For example, ‘I can tell the switchboard off for putting an irate client through to my office, why do I find it difficult to ask my neighbour to stop playing the TV so loud I wonder?’

Implementing Change

Resistance to necessary change seems fundamental to many problems (eg. over-extended grieving). Enabling yourself to let go of the pre-change self-identification, and replace it with the post-change self-identification. In other words, in this particular example, consider how that situation of the person being alive defined you.?Were you so identified with being a wife, a son, a brother, a close friend etc that you cannot imagine NOT being that anymore??Do others and/or environment totally define who YOU are, always?

Managing Success

Measuring success can itself become a source of problems, especially with high self-expectations. Help yourself in contextualising expectations and managing success criteria relative to your core needs.?In other words, are you being hard on yourself??Would you chastise someone you loved for not doing this fast enough, well enough??Be gentler, be softer, be kinder to yourself, you are good enough right now, always becoming better, yes, though good enough, right now.

Self Image

Trauma can shatter our self image. Self conscious attitudes towards your body are seated deep within the mind, so deep you are unaware of it, which is why it is called the Unconscious, because you are not conscious of what goes on in there.

You KNOW you shouldn’t judge your self worth by how your body looks you KNOW it would be better if you accepted yourself the way you are but you cannot argue yourself out of this way of thinking because the problem is in your unconscious mind.?This part of the mind is much more powerful than the conscious mind.?If you could change your attitudes and beliefs with your conscious mind with rational thought alone, you would have done it by now.????

A good way to think about this (if you stop yourself from solving a problem because you are too fat, or too short or too [ whatever ] then turn it around by realising that you do not judge other people that way.?You do not judge other people based purely on their physical size and shape and so you can not judge yourself that way either!?It is doing others a disservice by imagining that they will judge you based purely on how you look.?It is just you doing the judging.?

I hope the above helps and that you give the youtube video a listen to restore any lost confidence, or to get a little boost right now. Thank you for reading, if you want any further help please visit www.jenniekitching.com

#hypnowoman #hypnosis #hypnotherapy #trauma #resolvingtrauma #confidence

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