I love what I do – and the more I do this, the more I marvel at the power of our subconscious minds and how simple it is sometimes to overcome problems that can otherwise appear insoluble.
One client, we’ll call her Fran, came to see me recently in relation to her drinking. She’s not a big daily drinker – a glass of wine in the evening maybe, but nothing major. Her issue is the big nights out – the evenings out with the girls or a dinner with friends when the prosecco flows and one glass quickly morphs into another. She’s a bubbly soul who doesn’t need alcohol to be fun or sociable but she enjoys her wine…. And she’s a happy drunk – she doesn’t do or say anything embarrassing – it’s just that now that she’s in her 40s, she’d rather be able to stop after a couple of glasses and wake up feeling refreshed the next day rather than writing it off with a hangover and a mother’s guilt…
The vast majority of hypnotherapists will tell you that alcohol is an all or nothing deal – that you can’t use hypnotherapy to moderate drinking – only to cut it out completely. It’s easy to see how logically one might reach that conclusion – and for a true alcoholic, you can see that may well be true. But Fran didn’t want to give up drinking – it wasn’t destroying her life, just the occasional Sunday morning and cutting it out completely and drastically changing her lifestyle would have left her miserable, not empowered.
As I delved into the topic, I discovered that there are successful programmes designed to moderate drinking, rather than cutting it out altogether. I did a fair amount of research into the sort of specific help I could give her – but I wasn’t sure how successful we would be together though and I warned Fran that we might have to do some deep work to deal with this.
Fran said no. She didn’t think there was an issue to tackle – her life was good, she was happy – she just wanted to cut back. So we agreed: one simple session to see how she responded – and we would go from there.
One session. 1.5 hours.
And Fran reports “being cured”.
No more “just one more glass”, no opening another bottle… She enjoys her wine, but drinks more water along the way and knows when to stop – eyes firmly on the prize of a clear head the next day that she can enjoy with her family. She is still the fun loving soul that all her family and friends adore – she may just have lost the monika of prosecco queen along the way.
I remain in awe. Once again reminded of how important it is to take listen to my clients and follow their cues and instincts and once again I am reminded of how powerful our subconscious minds are – and just how many issues can be resolved with such little effort, if only we allow ourselves that luxury and harness the power within.
You can find out more about the subconcious mind here