So why do you need help?

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to create lasting change?  Well, firstly it’s to do with the way we learn, producing those automatic reactions and responses that define our personality.

If your a driver, have you ever been a front seat passenger in a car and gone for the "phantom brake" when the driver has got too close to the car in front? Well this is an example of an automatic response that has been learned and its quite interesting because  it just "comes out of the blue" and can be amusing to other passengers in the car. This could quite easily be the same automatic response such as when we are stressed causes us to smoke or eat. It’s the same basic subconscious reasoning, there is always a situation and always an automatic response.

Another reason is to do with something called the Law of Reverse Effort, which basically states that the harder you try to consciously do something then the harder it can become to actually control. When a smoker tries not to think about cigarettes, guess what all they can think about? Yes – Smoking! And the dieter who wants to control their appetite by forgetting about food can only think about is food, food and food!!!

A Quick test - Don't think of a policeman!

Are you thinking of one? Most people will too. So don’t worry, you are not alone. How simple was that task but how hard was it at the same time? It happened automatically without any effort didn’t it?

Do you see and believe what is truly there?

You can make sense of the paragraph below because your mind sees what it wants to see based on what it already knows (the correct spelling) and believes. In the same way as the text says the mind does not read letter by letter but the word as a whole, the mind can miss the facts and look at a situation as a whole based on what its seen before. Problems arise when the mind believes what it wants to believe based on what it believes it knows but can be a fasle belief. False beliefs are what hypnotherapy works to correct and does it well.

"Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs. cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef , but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! "

All about the MIND

You probably thought we had only 1 mind, but there are actually 2 parts to the mind. They are called the conscious and sub-conscious.

Think back to being a small child and learning how to tie shoelaces. Each time you tried you had to remember from memory the task then think about how to perform the steps in the correct sequence; it seemed so difficult didn’t it?

During this learning phase, you were using your conscious mind extensively and had to think about how to perform the task. I bet if you had to tie a shoelace now, then you could do it with your eyes closed and many would say this would happen without any thought as if it were somehow ‘automatic’.

Learning to drive is difficult for most people but once they have passed their test they drive automatically without even thinking about all the complex actions needed to drive.

The way our minds work is that the conscious mind is very heavily used when learning new skills and tasks – We have to think. When we have learned the skill or task, its stored in the subconscious, where it is recalled automatically without any thought.

I hope you can see from these simple examples that once something has been stored in the subconscious mind it is recalled without any conscious effort, therefore it can happen automatically. This is fine when the automatic action is positive and desirable but what about when its not.

All irrational fears, phobias and habits (including smoking and excessive eating) are caused by automatic, undesirable responses or actions.

Let’s look at the fear of small house spiders as an example; for the sufferer, the fear is very real but totally irrational. The sufferer probably feels foolish because they know there is nothing to fear about spiders, but somehow they can’t help the automatic reaction they have when seeing one. They would have developed this fear by seeing the actions of another person, as a small child who has this fear. They would have seen the same reaction a few times and once this reaction was perceived to be the correct response in the spider-situation, it was committed to the subconscious, where it appears automatically. In adulthood therefore, the fear is felt but there is know knowledge of why the fear should occur because the subconscious thinks it’s the correct reaction and it happens automatically.