Hypnosis to cure anxiety/fear/trauma?

[Ezio]

I have been curious to know about this since a long time. Could we possibly cure severe anxiety and fear through hypnosis(even self-hypnosis), basically ordering and forcing our brain to not feel a particular feeling anymore?

Just some minutes ago i watched an episode of the "The Vampire Diaries" serial movie. I got watching this movie because of one of its starring characters - Damon Salvatore, for the purpose of studying his persona. So, in this movie, among many supernatural abilities that have been given to vampires, one of those is also the ability to compel people and control their mind. This thing and the whole movie is fantasy, but this special ability can be translated into our reality with the name hypnosis. Here is where i want to stop: the hypnosis! - perhaps, it can be used to compel ourselves by influencing directly our subconscious, thus giving a solution to anxiety problems?!... Not believing in magic pills, but maybe a ray of hope of science.

Brothers, i am embarrassed to tell you this but, tonight, i felt weakest than ever. I realized i have endless trapped emotions, be it fear,anger,shame,hurt and so, gathered inside me and each contributing in the creation of a possible trauma.

To elaborate it more, this is how i feel:

Once upon a time, i was able to feel anxiety, fear or whatever like that, but it never was able to take me, to become me, to put me into autopilot mode. I would feel shame, doubt, anxiety and feelings like that, but if i decided to approach a "dangerous" situations, going out of my comfort zone, then really, those feeling could not stop me. Trust me when i say that i have LITERALLY done the most conditionally dangerous things(like approaching girls in stupid situations, or other social stupid situations with people or taking steps out of my comfort zone in different aspects) and real dangerous things(taking decisions that meant risking my life), i have also had situations when i was ashamed and disgraced in front of people. And it was meant for the ice to be broken, like they say: " It is hard untill you break the ice", but for me, i break it, and it comes back freezing even stronger that it was before - i am like, what the fuck myself?!! Are you kidding me?!

I am imprisoned. I have lost the battle(sure not the war, i am never gonna lose it!) against my emotions at this moment in my life. I have become my emotions - my emotions have become me. To put it practically, when i am standing around a girl i like, but not neccessarily just around a girl, but in any situation that seems uncomfortable to me, be it even with friends(boys), i FREEZE, my mind goes blank, my mind takes me into autopilot trying to act cool and it doesn't act cool but trying to act cool it freezes, it goes blank, and awkward silence invades me or sometimes i even say awkward things. And no - no, no, no! - it is not the classic kind of anxiety, i think that there is a difference between feeling an emotion to the extreme and becoming the emotion itself. It is a more severe case of one person experiencing the reality.Do you remember Altair?
I think this is why many people struggle to understand him, the dimensions in which he is experiencing the reality are different. He has no control over his emotions, his emotions have become him, he is on autopilot, therefore, when he is out of his comfort zone, he can't make the difference between the emotion and him. He goes into an unconscious state, with the single difference of this being that it is not accompanied by physical reactions, like fainting. But he is, psychologically, fainting.

Let's make it clear, this kind of anxiety, fear or trauma is not what the most of guys experience, it is more severe. Just to say it again, most of guys experience it like an extreme emotion, but not to the extent of fainting psychologically, and some like me now, and probably Altair, become the emotion, thus, fainting.

I suspect it is also a physiological issue. Two years ago i had a severe surgery which lasted about 4-5 hours. It was only post-surgery that i was manifesting emotions physically. I felt them, but i did not shake, freeze, or get into autopilot. I got panic attacks that i have not had before in my life. And it is ridiculous, most of the things i get afraid to do, i have done many times before.

This is all personal speculation and thoughts of mine on this matter, but, anyway, this is how i think.
---

So, i am scientifically curios, to know more about it and study it, and i was wondering if forcing our brain or interrupting this procces by "hacking" our brain through hypnosis would work? And what are alternative ways?

Any thoughts would be greatly welcomed! Please suggest me any material to read on it. Books, articles, websites, whatever. Except that i would want to solve this for myself, i am eagerly curious to know about this phenomenon. Even, even, i'm more curious, not that much desperate.

Love to all,

-Ezio.

 

[Drck]

Yes, but it is more complicated. You cannot order your brain to do things that it doesn't want to do. You can, however, make the brain want things that it wants.

You are talking about emotions, fear, anger, shame, doubt, weakness... A good way to think about it is that those are all negative emotions.

There are also positive emotions, such as confidence, forgiveness, acceptance, relaxation, strength and so on.

So, let's say that brain is just a simple object that can be polarized. Normal person has a mixture of both, positive and negative emotions - sometimes he feels happy, other times he is down, but overall he's doing ok.

Very anxious person has brain polarized more towards negativity, he experiences all the emotions you are talking about, maybe even panic attacks, depressions and so on.

There are people who have brain polarized positively, they are usually perceived as charismatics people, they are enthusiastic, they smile, they are positive, humble yet strong, outgoing... Viz many people in politics including current leaders. There are also a lot of religious people who are able by constant prayers and admiration of God change their natural mixed polarization to very positive. I don't know their names, but just put on TV on Sunday morning and you'll see, the energy just radiates from them...

Now, the polarizations is basically just the content of your mind. If a water in a cup can be called content, and the cup is called a container, person's mind is like that cup, and his thoughts and feelings are the content of that mind. Simple enough.

So you have a cup with dark coffee in it, the dark coffee is your negativity. The black water is your black feelings. You then remove the coffee and pour pure clear water in the cup. The water obviously represents positivity. In reality it is of course much more difficult to change your negative thoughts and feelings for positive, but this is the whole concept.

So change the content of your mind. There are couple important ways to change it, but focus mainly your thoughts and your feelings.

* Change your thoughts by positive affirmations. There is already a couple good articles about affirmations, so I'm not gonna repeat it. Simply, self talk is very important, for example if you keep telling yourself "I am a miserable failure, and nothing is working out for me" the results are totally different than when you keep repeating "I am a great and happy person, and everything is working out just fine". If you have hard time let me know, me or other people here can let you know what exactly are your negative words, thoughts and beliefs. Sometimes it is just easier when others point them out...

* Change your feelings by relaxation, meditation. You let go, you learn to breath deeply and slowly, learn to relax all of your muscles. Learn to experience joy, reward yourself here and there. Practice in the morning and in the evening. Then practice during the day, everywhere you go practice good feelings...

* Also change your expectations. For example, if you never slept with a girl and you want to be a perfect seducer who seduces 500 girls, it is just too much for your brain. Your brain can easily say: I can't deal with it, that is just too many girls for me, too much sex at once, so go fuck yourself. I'll switch into anxiety mode so you can't do anything. Congratulations, you've just cock-blocked yourself, you built a huge barrier for you and you can't climb over it. On the other hand, if you never slept with a girl and you want to start with just say 2 or 3, your brain will be more compliant. It will say: Ok, maybe I can deal with that, I can do two-three pussies, but don't push it too far fucker or I will make you anxious again. And then you sleep with 3 girls, and you change your expectation to 10. That is more reasonable now, the brain thinks. I've been there and I've done that twice already. So then you reach 10, and now maybe you can expect 20. Ok, piece of cake, says your brain, I already know what to do. Just go out and don't fuck it up, your brain tells you...

* Hypnosis, visualization, NLP,... Ok, they are all good. Personally I wouldn't use them as a main source, but they are definitely a great support to the above.


Also, don't try to "hack", "hijack", "fool" or "trick" your own brain in any way. Your brain is your best friend, and if not - make him that way. Trust him fully, learn to trust your brain more than you trust yourself. Your brain is simply, well, it is you. Trust yourself brother, trust yourself more than you trust anyone else...

 

[Ezio]

Hello, Drck!

These are very well thought thoughts. There is a lot of valuable advice here. I already told you, i love the way you explain things and your advices. Thanks a lot!

But before i go any further, please free to point me out my negative words, thoughts and beliefs. I welcome any constructive feedback, even if it is said to me "harshly".

 

[ray_zorse]

hey Ezio it's a long thread and I only skimmed through briefly to get the gist, but I will say that many if not most of the guys here have some sort of childhood abandonment issue or deep seated self esteem issue that has prevented them being their unfiltered self around women -- since it is in our DNA to approach and attract women, if "being yourself" doesn't accomplish this, it generally points to some kind of inner game issue that is screwing the process up. Even with poor "outer game" you should be able to find a gf sometimes.

So dudes are getting lonely and frustrated and making their core issues worse with addictions to food, porn, drugs or alcohol, Internet or whatnot... and to a large extent the solution is to cut out these external behaviours that make you feel bad, and simultaneously to learn good "outer game" -- a step by step process to meet, converse with, attract and bed the women you encounter.

You can reach a pretty good point just by learning seduction techniques and rehearsing them so many times they become an automatic part of who you are, plus focusing on fundamentals (e.g. I have approached about 2000 women since last September, 41 in the last week, I work out regularly and wear fashionable clothes and jewellery).

Improving your inner game tends to go hand in hand with this process, mine has improved a lot through getting lays and acting in more assertive ways and getting good reactions and reference points, but I still have some sticking points which are down to low self esteem and toxic shame, such as, overeating, "leaning in" to conversations, approval seeking/qualifying myself, "scanning" with my eyes... and I am trying to address my core issues by attending a 12 step programme among other things. Every little bit helps.

I suggest to read "No more Mr Nice Guy" by Dr Robert Glover, and "Healing the shame that binds you" by John Bradshaw. This latter contains self hypnosis techniques that address your inner game issues. I have tried them and they work, but were hard to put in place solo, so I now have a recommendation to a practitioner who can help to implement the techniques, have not had time to contact him though. I can send further information if you need it.

Ray

 

[Drck]

Agree with Ray. Inner world and outer world are interconnected, what you do inside is reflected how you interact with people, and interactions with people will be reflected back in your mind.

For example, if a guy was raised in critical environment, parents were constantly telling him all the bad things he's done and doing, he won't feel great about himself; he will have low self esteem, he might be depressed, down... this 'inner' behavior will then be reflected in how he interacts with other people. He most likely won't have many friends, he will be more insecure of himself, he will be over-analyzing his own behavior and so on.

On the other hand, a guy who was raised in loving, nurturing and peaceful environment where he was in contact with many people, this too will be reflected in his overall behavior. He will be most likely more outgoing, more friendly and social. He will be 'naturally' more optimistic.

There are of course different factors to it such as genetic predisposition, neurotransmitters imbalance and so on, but let's keep the concept simple.

So you want to improve in both worlds; you don't want to be just stuck in 'inner world' or 'outer world'.

In the 'outer world' try to socialize more, try to find couple of good friends, go out and talk to people (not just girls), hang around positive people and so on.

The 'inner world' is your believes, your thoughts, your emotions. Working on Relaxation is important - just sit down, close your eyes, release all the tension in your body, release tension in your face, let go of all the thoughts... clear your mind, just focus on slow natural breathing. See if you can be aware of different parts of your body, slowly move the attention from one part to another. That is it, there is nothing else to accomplish in simple relaxation, just the relaxation itself. Practice couple times per day, at least when you wake up and before you go to sleep. Once you get better, practice among people. Go to the crowd of people and relax. Relaxation will decrease your anxiety. You can meditate, listen to some meditative music, imagine that you are at some great place (beach is usually popular), and try to FEEL great. Good feelings will further decrease your anxiety....

Once you are practice enough relaxation, your mind will be less critical, more relaxed, more positive, and more open to new ideas. With this relaxed mind it is much easier to accept new beliefs. Basically, get to the relaxed/meditative state and start repeating affirmations, do it couple of times per day.

=======

Now something about your Mind. You say that have severe anxiety, fear... You want to 'order' and 'force' your brain to do something so you feel better. But see, these are strong keywords that you are using, you are kind of making your brain your enemy. Think about your brain as if it was just a simple, stubborn but very accurate computer: It only computes what you put in. Nothing more and nothing less. If you input 2+3, it spits out 5. If there is something wrong, it refuses to computes and it gets stuck in anxiety.

So those words like 'order' and 'fear' are basically your input, they are making your brain too anxious. You want to order your brain and force it to do something that it doesn't really want to do, so your brain then simply says: Fuck you, I'm not doing anything, it is too much pressure. 5+2 is not 8. And it spits out results: Even more anxiety because there is something wrong with the input...

So change those keywords from severe anxiety, fear, order and force to: relaxation, easy going, acceptance... You can use affirmations, for example:
* "I used to be anxious but now I am more and more relaxed". "My mind is relaxed and I feel great"
* "I used to force my brain but now I am more open minded, I am more and more open to accept great ideas, I am in harmony with my brain"

Now your stubborn brain/computer starts thinking: Aha! This fucker wants me to be more relaxed now, and he wants me to feel great about myself, now he wants to be a friend Ok, no problem! And he spits out more relaxation and better feelings, because 4+8 is 12...

Another ones, which is pretty much similar to the above:

* "i am embarrassed"
>>>> Change it to: "I used to be embarrassed, now I am fully accepting my feelings, I am accepting myself the way I am"

* "i have endless trapped emotions"
>>>> Change it to "I used to have trapped emotions, now I accept all emotions. Emotions are just emotions; there is nothing wrong with emotions and they are all natural product of my brain, and I am focusing on developing positive ones"

* "fear,anger,shame,hurt and so, gathered inside me and each contributing in the creation of a possible trauma."
>>>> The same. Change it to: "I accept those emotions and I let go of them. They are just emotions"
"I used to feel shame but now I fully accept myself, I approve of my feelings and myself"
"I used to feel trapped, but now I am letting go. I feel more and more free, and I feel great"
"There was a possible trauma in the past, and I let go of it. It is gone now. I am focusing more and more on acceptance and harmony, on better feelings and greater future"

* "I would feel shame, doubt, anxiety"
>>>> "I used to doubt myself, but now I am more focusing on confidence and trust. I am more and more confident, and I trust myself, I trust my brain"


---------
* "but if i decided to approach a "dangerous" situations, going out of my comfort zone, then really, those feeling could not stop me"

>>>> Let's think about it. Those feelings are your second best friend. Say you are in the nature, and some hungry bear chooses to approach you with the desire to suppress his hunger, and you of course don't have any weapons. Would you feel calm, peaceful and confident in this dangerous situation? Would you want to give that bear a hug? Fuck no, you would be a fool, and he will rip you apart. Don't be a fool! You want to feel this anxiety, the more anxiety you feel the better for you... you want to have that adrenaline pumping, so you can run very fast; you want to outrun bear's breath on your back...

So accept those feelings, they are great and natural, they allowed our ancestors to survive. We are here only thanks to those feelings, they allow us to survive in many dangerous situations...

On the other hand, you might want to consider what is dangerous. If you go out to meet some girls, and you consider interaction with those girls as life threatening situations, well, your high anxiety will automatically kick in. They can even paralyze you, you won't be able to approach, your brain will make you run away because that is how it was programmed... Your brain says: There is something wrong with those girl because I feel in great danger. I'm not approaching, those pussies are probably hungry and they bite, so I am running away... 8+1 is not 10, let's get the fuck out of here...

So change "Approaching girls is dangerous situation" to "Approaching girls is normal; I can easily relax around girls, I am more comfortable and confident, and I can have fun with lots of girls because they have great nipples that I can lick..."

* "approaching girls in stupid situations, or other social stupid situations"
>>> There are no stupid situations. Stupid is just another keyword that you are putting into your brain, it makes you feel dumb, less confident and it creates low self esteem in you. So change it to something like: "Approaching girls is just fun, girls are silly, cute, sexy and friendly"

* "i have also had situations when i was ashamed and disgraced in front of people".
>>>> Change it to: "Everybody has had situations like that, it is no big deal. I used to worry about it, but now I laugh it out because it is just silly and it has no meaning. I could easily stand in front of people and laugh, because many of them would be ashamed".

* "It is hard until you break the ice", but for me, i break it, and it comes back freezing even stronger that it was before"
>>>> Change it to: "I stop breaking and destroying ice, there is no point of destroying and damaging because it doesn't work. Instead, I melt the ices now with warmth, smile and positive attitude. I am very attractive, and I melt girls hearts..."

* "I am imprisoned. I have lost the battle(sure not the war, i am never gonna lose it!) against my emotions"
>>> Change it to: "I felt like I was imprisoned and like I lost the battle before. But now I'm letting go, now I am more free and relaxed, more peaceful. Now I am more focused on creating positive emotions and great feelings"

* "Two years ago i had a severe surgery which lasted about 4-5 hours. It was only post-surgery that i was manifesting emotions physically. I felt them, but i did not shake, freeze, or get into autopilot. I got panic attacks"
>>>> Change it to: "I accept my surgery, it helped me a lot and because of that I am doing much better today. I accept the panic attacks because I used to think that I was in dangerous situations and these attacks were just natural reactions of my greatest friend, my brain. Now I no longer feel threatened, I am more relieved and relaxed, I am accepting what happened and moving into the future with relaxed mind and better feelings"

And finally: "My brain, with all the work it does and all the emotions it generates is my best friend. I trust my brain and I trust all the feelings it generates. I am nothing without my brain, and my brain is nothing without me!"


Hope some of it helps....

 

[Ezio]

I have been thinking, re-reading and analyzing the advice you gave me here since you wrote it. I like to read and analyze things you give to me in order for me to grasp it and actually apply it. That is why it takes a little bit long for me to reply instantly, in case you ever thought he is just taking the advice and not giving back even a single "thanks" - so that is not the case. I even thought to print your advices, so i could remind myself of those when i would be feeling stuck. Maybe that would not be a bad idea.

Drck, I judge that everything you said is all right and accurate. Therefore, i agree with you, but i think i always had an internal mind conflict with affirmations. My intellectual self nods and agrees with the fact that it works, however some part of me thinks it doesn't work. There again is another part of me (might be the ego) who thinks it partially works, but it counters me saying: " You really think you can fool me with some positive words, by making me believe something that is not real? And if you just try to fake it any situation with your so called positive affirmations, you will come across fake and people will sense it, they will see you are pretending,so because of that you ll just drive them away?" - this might be all crap, but sometimes i am feeling several persons inside me.

Even so, i managed to apply it. I had a university speech to do about a subject and i was feeling a lot of anxiety beforehand, even it wasn't the first time. Anyway, i went in front of the public and did it. I got shaking, my body making awkward moves, got sweaty, and my voice got weird at times, but I told myself, it is not a big deal and it is okay. You know what? Afterwards, i did not feel ashamed - i felt proud and actually one or two gave me slight compliments about my speech. A little bit consciously and mostly unconsciously, i remembered the advice you gave, applied it, and things turned out well. I take pride on this.

I will go through the advice given here again and i will at least try to put as much of it as i can to use.

Ray, What further information did you mean?

I just finished reading "Pandora's box" and then as you suggested, i started reading "No more Mr Nice Guy" by Dr Robert Glover and "Healing the shame that binds you" by John Bradshaw is next in my list.

I'm impressed with your approaches. Were you always this good and what is your success percentage? I'm curios to know.

So, guys, as for my curiosity of the questions at the top of this post, i surely plan to go further in knowing more.

Thanks,

-Ezio.

 

[ray_zorse]

Hey brother, good to hear you're getting your teeth into that material. Check out this site:
http://www.nlpca.com/
I emailed Tim Hallbom about reprogramming shame based memories and he kindly replied with recommendations for practitioners in my area. I also tried NLP Marin but they were not as good, tried to sell me a course or Skype coaching and have been spamming me ever since, haha.

My approaches... well I work hard but that does not necessarily mean I work smart. I recently came to the notion that I've picked up some bad habits from approaching a shit ton of women, that are kinda geared towards keeping things going rather than getting her snatch wet. For instance I was not really the entertainer type when I started out, more the serious deep diver type, but since I've become more and more self amused I'm always cracking some sort of sexual joke (e.g. this morning searching my pockets for some $$ to pay for coffee, had already got her name, complimented her smile etc, said "I had some cash here somewhere... you can find it, can't you")... and have definitely started to fall into the entertainer trap. Remember reactions != results. See snipefield's recent FR and specifically radeng's response for some advice on this, which I'm also taking on board.

Ray

 

[Richard]

Psychology. Love it.

This very idea has been proposed before and some NLP techniques like the double disassociation movie theater technique works as I've used them before. Behavioral psychology aims to essentially rewire the state you associate with a stimuli (a state being anxiety, fear, trauma, etc.) and the findings are pretty interesting. If you use behavioral therapy or NLP early enough in your life when the anxiety or fear is relatively new and your brain is still growing then you can permanently disable that fear.

However, depending on how long you've had this fear, anxiety, or trauma the best you can do is rewire and reassociate. In some cases this is permanent, and in other cases that rewired state or rewired association only exists in certain contexts (i.e. you may only be able to touch a spider in the room of your therapist, or with family, but not in any other environment) so the fear isn't truly gone.

However, I do feel strongly that, because your brain is the control center, you can definitely force yourself to beat this anxiety and trauma. But, at the end of the day, an idea without massive action creates either very small change or no change at all. There is no magic pill for destroying fear except confronting that fear in the end. It's simply against human nature to change easily, at every corner of change your mind and emotions are deliberately trying to sabotage you to keep the "you" who has survived all this time alive. <--- This just gave me an idea/theory.

Anyway, I think it is possible but a very long shortcut in the end. I'd say it's like driving across the United States only using country roads instead of highways: it is possible but there are much shorter and faster ways to get the same result.

 

[Lotus]

A lot of good points here already I just want to add a little.

When your meditating and trying to relax its important to quiet your mind. Stop your thoughts, just listen and feel your body. Feel your slow deep breaths, just as Drck mentions. When you are able to effectively meditate and quiet your mind you can't possibly be anxious... You are just there present in the moment. Not happy, not fearful, not anxious, just at peace.

At first you won't be able to keep away the thoughts for very long but with practice you can extend the time of quiet longer and longer. The negative emotions cannot survive in that space because they don't exist without your mind.

Just because our minds are powerful tools doesn't mean everything that runs though them should be taken at face value. The ego works to create those emotions as a defense mechanism, but that doesn't mean the emotions generated are the truth. If you can work to listen and watch the emotions as they surface without giving into them the ego will lose its power over you.

I just got through The Power of Now, and it's completely changed the way I have looked at emotions, the past and present. Throughout the course of the book Tolle gives you time to quiet your mind and let the messages sink in. Now I can quiet my mind substantially longer then I have ever been able to.

Music and nature sounds are great portals into quieting your mind. When your actively listening to the sounds your not thinking your listening and feeling.
- now obviously going to the beach or listening to the rain are ideal, but I have an app that called "Sleep Sounds" which brings nature to my bedroom

-brum

 

[Ezio]

Ray,

I checked out the site. However, keep me informed about your progress on this matter. In overall, i wish you even greater success!
-
Richard,

Thanks for your post. A lot of good material in there. This one about rewiring and permanently disabling the fear sounds interesting. But, if I am understanding you, you are saying that it is better to face fear head on than trying techniques like NLP, Hypnosis and so, that look like shortcuts but in the end facing the fear head on itself, comes to be an even shorter way.
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Brum,

Thanks for your valuable advice.

I had started reading the " The Power of Now", i enjoyed reading it while reading, but then the next day, don't know why but for some reason I did not have that much of a desire to read it. I think it is great and there is very good stuff, but its style, maybe sounds to me like a bit very spiritual - it seems like i like more practical and straight forward stuff. Anyway, i think i ll get back to it, to read it again in the near future.
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Very good advices here guys, i hope it helps even other people except me, in case they are reading this topic.