Healing the Past
We all carry emotional baggage. Feelings of anger, sadness, fear, hurt and guilt remain harmful.
Hypnotherapy and other Transformational Therapies can be an effective way of dealing with your demons, as editor of Live Preston, Peter Holland discovered.
I’m not a fruitcake, nor do I consider myself to be damaged goods. However, having survived some of the bad things life can throw at us, I do carry emotional scars. You probably have them too?
The basic theory of Transformational Therapies is that we need to let go of these negative emotions. Only by healing our past can we hope to move on to create a happy and more fulfilling future etc, etc…
Intrigued by the idea of unpacking and discarding my old, unwanted baggage (and acquiring a new set of matching luggage) I volunteered for a session with hypnotherapist and achievement coach Narina Riskowitz. She informed me that I would be going on some little journeys.
“You will be visiting a different world, visiting your unconscious mind. It’s the space in between being fully conscious and asleep,” she explained.
Among the treatments Narina practices is Time Line Therapy™ where you navigate back and forth between your past and your future. Relaxed in a comfy chair, with the lights and the window shutters down and my eyes closed, I was soon neither fast asleep nor fully awake. At the controls of my own time machine, I revisited times and places I hadn’t planned to.
Suddenly I was a boy again, playing in the timber yard near my grandmother’s house. I knew I shouldn’t have been there and uttered the word “mischief” several times.
A subsequent journey along my time-line found me dancing around the Maypole in the playground at St Andrew’s Primary School in Preston. It would be the spring of 1967? My old friend Gregory Clarkson was there too.
It was lovely to see him again. Sorry we lost touch Greg!
Other journeys backwards and forwards along my time-line were less enjoyable. Although I never once felt uncomfortable, I did become tearful. Gently, Narina encouraged me to re-visit the unpleasant stuff. The longer I analysed those memories and the less painful they seemed.
Why had I chosen a balance of pleasant and unpleasant memories?
Did I want to contrast the innocence of childhood with the complexities which were to follow?
Whatever the reason, I talked openly about some painful issues.
Afterwards, Narina’s notes contained words and phrases which I’d spoken during my treatment; “hurting,” “teasing,” “selfish,” “stupid,” “powerless” and “arrogant.”
I drove home emotionally drained. By early evening I was off to bed, physically worn out too.
Treatments like this are credited with helping to regain confidence, empowering people to deal with lifestyle and relationship issues, career changes and personal goals.
Since that session, in mid December, there has been one significant change in my state of mind. I’m tending to fast-forward to the future rather than constantly re-winding.
Maybe the traditional New Year mentality is responsible for this? In all honestly, I think it is probably much more than that…