I have noticed recently some people describing themselves as ‘broken’. I don’t mean in the sense that they have had a breakdown, a sudden major mental collapse, it’s more that they consider that they aren’t quite like everyone else. They think that they are different and not entirely whole or normal, because they are exhibiting physical or emotional symptoms.
For example a lady with severe insomnia said she thought for years that she was broken, she was just the sort of person who couldn’t sleep and that was why she couldn’t. She endured years of exhaustion, consequential illness and depression because she had this belief. Or a man who felt that he couldn’t say no, he was just that kind of person, the type of person who doesn’t have boundaries and people walked all over. Or a woman who said, certain as you like, that she is an anxious person and that is why she is constantly feeling overwhelmed and stressed, it’s part of her, and she is broken.
And yet..the truth is that none of these people were born like this, as a baby they didn’t have these beliefs, and as a toddler they didn’t consider themselves broken. Children don’t think that they are broken and they aren’t broken, they are perfect and exactly as they should be. So somewhere along the line, somewhere in their lives these people have formed a belief about themselves, and they have taken ownership of it and begun to make decisions based on a belief that they made up.
And we all do this to some extent, where we have a belief, and it causes our brain to give us thoughts and reactions to situations based on that belief. Such as, I can’t take that job, because I’m not the sort of person who can hold down a high powered job. Or I won’t be able to cope with the hours, because I don’t sleep well and therefore I had better not take it. And over the years it becomes so familiar to us that we stop thinking that this is something we have made up, and instead we believe ourselves and our stories.
RTT method hypnotherapy helps us to unpick what stories we have told ourselves, and what beliefs we have created for ourselves, and to see where they were perhaps helpful for a while but are now no longer helpful in our lives. Often we can’t see these for ourselves, and it’s a mystery to us where they have come from, as they are hidden deep in our subconscious minds. All we see is the impact now, insomnia, depression, anxiety, lack of boundaries.
Other people can give us clues, but it’s not until we do the work in our subconscious minds that we can get right to the root cause of what is going on, and why we feel we are broken. We can then look at what it means to be broken, and whether in fact it’s just a misplaced belief and all along there was nothing to fix.