Understanding and Managing Emotions Through Hypnosis
Written by Fauziah Shah, MA, HBCE, BCH, CI, CPHI
Emotions and Feelings
Emotions are strong feelings of any kind, for example anger, happiness, sadness, fear or guilt. An emotion is a mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort. Many great classical philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Hobbes had theorised about emotions. Surprisingly, twentieth century mind philosophers and psychologists had neglected them. In recent years however, emotions have once again become the focus of vigorous interest in philosophy, as well as other branches of cognitive science and in hypnotherapy. A particular emotion can give rise to feelings, which are the sentiments felt by a person, leading to physiological changes, such as an increase in pulse rate, rise in body temperature or change in the rate of breathing.
How Emotions affect our Life
Emotions are what drive people to react in a certain way. For example, when a person receives good news, the response is: “Wow! Life is great!” And bad news may generate a negative response: “Life stinks!” Our experience of life is based on our interpretation of each event. Our interpretation of each event depends entirely on the emotions that we attach to the event. How we feel about each situation, determines our experience of, and our reaction to, the event. A person’s view of life may change from day to day and from moment to moment, depending on how he or she interprets the event or events in his or her life.
Understanding Emotions- the key to managing them
Our emotions affect our thought processes and attitude. For example, people can get upset when things go wrong, like when there is a slip up at work, when things are not done on time, when they cannot meet deadlines or when they are overworked. As their emotions take a turn towards unhappiness, their attitude also swings in the same downward direction, becoming prone to more negative thoughts. This soon starts affecting every aspect of their lives. This demonstrates how important it is to understand our emotions and why we feel a particular way. The more we understand our emotions, the better we’ll be in trying to manage them so that they do not adversely affect our performance, both in social and business situations.
Albert Schweitzer (Jan 14 1875 to Sept 4 1965), a German philosopher, physician, humanitarian and theologian who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, once said: Managers and employers alike need to realize that when making decisions, they are in a state that is driven partly by reason, but also partly by emotion.” So, if we are not aware of our emotions and do not understand what caused them, they can be a problem in our work place. Such unattributed emotions can create havoc, particularly for people working in high-stress, fast-paced jobs, like judges and parole officers, who have to make quick judgements of people. Because they move from one incident to the next without the luxury of time to sit back and gauge their emotions, they are more likely to misattribute emotional states.
How Hypnotherapy and Self Hypnosis can Help?
The way to get permanent change is to ensure that our beliefs and resolutions reside in the subconscious mind. If we use our conscious mind to decide what to do, it rarely works out as our deep seated emotions, thoughts and feelings reside in our subconscious. That is why using hypnosis works as it deals mainly with the subconscious mind. When we understand how emotions affect us subconsciously and if we learn to re-program our minds so that we become more aware of our emotional state, then such an emotional state will not bleed into our judgements of others or cloud our perceptions. Learning self hypnosis will also help us visualise happy things so that we can literally feel happier despite facing setbacks.
What is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is actually an altered and heightened state of consciousness which we can naturally enter so that, for therapeutic purposes, beneficial suggestions may directly be given to our subconscious mind. In this way, hypnosis is an effective way of making contact with our inner (subconscious) self, which is both a reservoir of unrecognized potential and knowledge as well as being the unwilling source of many of our problems.
Examples of alterations in consciousness occur frequently and most people experience some of them. Both children and adults can become so absorbed in daydreaming that they lose track of what is going on around them. Some people consciously use daydreams to divert themselves from certain aspects of their existence. When someone is concentrating on a work project, the hyper-focusing that aids the work may also shut out noises and other distractions. Someone who is absorbed in an activity may, when the activity ends, need to take a moment to reorient to the external world.
Contrary to some people’s fears, no one can be hypnotized against their will and even when hypnotized, a person can still reject any suggestion. Thus therapeutic hypnosis is a state of purposeful co-operation.
How Hypnosis really works?
There is another part of the mind that rejects any new information if it is inconsistent with what is already in the Subconscious Mind. Hypnotists and Hypnotherapists call this the Critical Factor. It is actually a protective mechanism but if a person erroneously believes in something, the Critical Factor will try to protect the person from anything that tries to defy this belief, so the only way for Hypnosis to work to help a client make the necessary change is to bypass this critical factor.
In hypnosis, when the Critical Factor is bypassed, change can be effectively made in the Subconscious Mind. That is why sometimes hypnosis is defined as the bypass of the Critical Factor to the establishment of acceptable selective thinking. This means that when a person goes through a hypnotic induction, this allows the mind to be more receptive than usual, thus allowing the mind to accept the suggestions that you like. The protective part of the Subconscious Mind will prevent the person from accepting anything that he doesn’t like. That is why it is important for a person to want to make the change for hypnosis to work successfully. The line I use frequently is “If you want it badly enough, you’ll get it!”
About the author:
Fauziah Shah is a Board Certified Hypnotist and Clinical Hypnotherapist. At Petra Hypnosis & Training Centre, they use advanced techniques that help their clients go to the root cause of their emotional problems if necessary so that the old emotions that caused the problems are neutralized and the clients start feeling much better. She can be contacted at 91000432 or 64639500. Alternatively you could write to her at info@petrahypnosis.com For more information, you may visit: http://www.petrahypnosis.com.
The information contained on this blog is provided for one's general interest and knowledge only, and it does not constitute as therapy. Those seeking professional attention on specific issues are advised to contact us directly. My team and I are based in Singapore and offer one-on-one hypnotherapy, counseling and coaching sessions. We can be contacted by email at info[@]petrahypnosis.com. You may also call us at 6-250-6166 or 9-1000-432.
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