WHY SO MANY QUESTIONS?? – Hypnotherapy Works – Create Calm by removing Anxiety

Why so many questions during the first session?

Well, as you may know the first session with me can last up to 2 hours, the reason for this is so I can get a big picture of where you are, what your past has been like and where you want to be. All of this is so very important no mater what you have come to see me for, whether its smoking cessation, weight management, anxiety, fears or phobias, the list goes on. What has happened in our past creates the person we are, our experiences good and bad, shape us and the way we behave.

So even if what you feel is a more simple problem it can often be a symptom of something and that something maybe from your past. The subconscious brain or old brain (sometimes called the reptilian brain) is a very simple learning system and is constantly taking in information and putting it into files (for want of a better way to look at it). Those files are good or bad, right or wrong, alive or dead. This can sound extreme and very simple, but this part of our brain is that way. It is referred to as the old or reptilian brain because it is the part of the brain that developed first if we look through the history of man. If we go way back to more cave men times, we were only interested in 2 things, survival and procreation. This part of the brain is still their inside of us doing its bit to keep us alive.

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So this old brain learns how to do things and over the years they become the way we do things. So if we learn as a child that food is a reward for doing something good or making you feel better when hurt, the old brain learns this and this is part of how we therefore are in the here and now. For example: young person at Uni gets dumped, they go for the ice cream tub or the chocolate draw or the crisp cupboard, the old brain is saying ‘eat food it makes you feel better’ and that food is treat/sweet/salty foods because that was the treat in younger years (sweet for doing well at school, a biscuit when you fell over and hurt yourself).

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This old part of the brain has no logic, not like the more conscious or new brain, it also doesn’t have a sense of time like our new or more conscious brain. It has stored the information that if you get hurt, food helps you feel better, simple as that for the old brain. Your new brain may well be saying ‘this isn’t good for you’ or ‘you should be able to cope with this without a sweet treat’ but the old brain is stronger. The old brain looks for a pattern of what it has done in the past that worked and does it again, it goes ‘food helps’ so off to the sweet draw or chocolate tin, etc. The no awareness of time also hinders things for us, the old brain knows something has happened and was successful, you are alive and it doesn’t mater that you where 5 years old and you fell over playing out and mum or dad gave you a biscuit to stop you crying, it just goes that worked before when I was hurt or felt hurt and does it again and again and again.

So there can often be a battle that goes on inside of you, “eat the sweet stuff , you know it makes you feel better” (even if is short lived), “no don’t eat it, it will make you fat” or a “spider, RUN” where the other part of your brain is going “its tiny for goodness sake”. I often here “its like their is a battle going on inside of me….” your old brain is so much stronger than your new brain, your old brain is all about survival and this is a far greater need over everything. The panic of seeing a spider far out ways the part of you that is going “its tiny”.

So coming back to the question, “Why so many questions?” because there may well be something from your past that is sabotaging how you feel and want to be in the here and now. If this isn’t looked into then your symptom, the reason you have come to visit me, may well reappear in the future, some ‘tweaking and adjusting’ to alter the path the brain has always gone down and create a new path may where needed.

I just want to add that the old brain is working about half a second earlier than we a consciously aware of, so that message to “eat sweet food” or “run away from the spider” occurs earlier than we are aware of. So the old brain is heading off down it’s path before we are aware of it, so how do we stop that. Well that would be where BWRT®️ Comes in to play, see the blog BWRT®️ video 1

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