Ever felt like you’re absolutely drowning in responsibilities or tasks calling for your attention? That overwhelm can become so intense that it causes you to procrastinate or even avoid important tasks all together. Overwhelm is common among many of us in these busy modern times, but what if I told you that this feeling of being completely paralyzed by your responsibilities might have deeper roots than just a busy schedule?
That’s where hypnotherapy comes in. It’s not just about relaxation or a quirky trick to help you sleep. It’s a powerful tool for diving into the subconscious and uncovering the real causes of your stress and anxiety. Sometimes, these causes trace back to past experiences—often from childhood—that still linger in our minds and affect how we handle stress today.
In this blog post, we'll explore how hypnotherapy can help you get to the bottom of your overwhelm. We'll share real stories from people who, through hypnotherapy, discovered that their stress wasn't just about their current situation but tied to earlier life experiences.
By addressing these deep-rooted issues, they were able to release pent-up emotions and overcome the barriers holding them back. So, grab a comfy seat and let’s dive into how this fascinating approach might just be the key to finding your calm.
How Overwhelm Stems from Childhood Associations
Wondering how the overwhelm you experience now as an adult could possibly connected to childhood experiences? Allow me to explain. Childhood is an incredibly crucial time of your life because you are essentially creating a blueprint to how you will go through the rest of your life.
In childhood you come to conclusions about yourself and different parts of life that you keep with you long into your adult life. These conclusions create negative or positive associations which we call beliefs.
Your beliefs become the lens in which you look through to experience life. Two people can experience the same scenario and come away with very different experiences based on their beliefs. The tricky thing is that because it’s the lens in which you look through to experience life, it’s often quite difficult to identify your beliefs because to you, that’s just life.
These negative and positive associations are fueled by emotion. Positive associations make us feel good, and carry positive emotion, whereas negative associations make us feel bad and are charged with negative emotion. These associations can cause havoc later in life when we find ourselves in situations that trigger those negative associations – like overwhelm.
The feeling of overwhelm isn’t inherently bad, it’s a normal human emotion that shows up when we have too much on our plate. However, if you’ve created negative associations, that overwhelm might be triggered by everyday tasks, causing you to constantly feel overwhelmed to the point of procrastination or avoidance.
This is when we need to address the root of the overwhelm and release the negative association so that you can react to situations through your adult perspective, instead of reacting from an old wound. This is where Hypnotherapy comes in. In hypnosis we can address the childhood experience that created the negative association, releasing the stored emotion, and ending the pattern of overwhelm once and for all.
How Hypnotherapy Works
Hypnotherapy is a technique that allows us to connect directly with the subconscious where we can establish new ideas and beneficial thought-patterns. When you enter a state of hypnosis, you are entering a state of deepened focus or heightened consciousness, also known as trance.
To explain trance, let’s talk brain waves. Brain waves are oscillating electrical voltages in the brain which have been categorized into five widely recognized frequencies. At the top with the highest electrical frequency is Gamma, which represents high concentration. At the lowest frequency is Delta, which represents deep sleep. Most of our day is spent somewhere in the middle, between Beta – which is an active, externally aware state, and Alpha, which is a more passive relaxed state of awareness.
As you slow the frequency down from Alpha, you enter Theta, which is a state of deep relaxation with an inward focus. This is the state that you enter when meditating and doing hypnosis – this is trance.
Things like daydreaming, exercising, getting engrossed in your favorite tv show, or even driving a familiar route can induce a light trance state. As you deepen this trance state, which you can do by simply closing your eyes, you go from Alpha into Theta and will experience a more meditative state.
All you’re doing when you deepen trance is bring your awareness internally. For example, when you are in Alpha or Beta you are very aware of your external world – the people, places and things around you. When you close your eyes and go into Theta, you become more aware of your internal world – your thoughts, emotions, impulses and sensations.
As you venture deeper into Theta you become what Hypnotherapists refer to as “suggestible”. In other words, it becomes easier to make changes at this level, because you no longer have the interference of your conscious mind which relies on logic and reason. Instead, you are working with the subconscious mind which deals with emotion and associations.
The subconscious mind is illogical – it doesn’t necessarily make sense – it deals with emotions. That’s why its so difficult to resolve an emotional issue with the conscious mind. Logic often does nothing to emotional issues like anxiety, guilt, shame, fear, etc. These issues need to be resolved on an emotional level, which is what we can do when we work in trance.
Real Client Experience: Hypnotherapy for Overwhelm
Now, let’s put all of the pieces together to see how they show up in real life client sessions. To protect my client’s privacy I’ve changed her name, and will refer to her as Jane.
Jane was a busy entrepreneur trying to balance home life and work life and was struggling to get it all done. As the tasks would build up, she would find herself feeling so overwhelmed that she would procrastinate and avoid them completely, which only led to more anxiety and overwhelm as deadlines crept closer.
This pattern of overwhelm and procrastination was becoming a serious problem, causing her to always feel on edge. She felt like she couldn’t relax because when she should be taking care of paperwork or household chores, the overwhelm would completely paralyze her and nothing would get accomplished. She was falling behind in all arenas of life and felt like she was drowning.
In our hypnotherapy session, I guided Jane to reconnect to that feeling of overwhelm that she felt when she thought about all the tasks and deadlines. When she tapped into that feeling, I prompted her subconscious to show us where that feeling stemmed from, and she found herself in an early childhood memory. In this memory, her mom insisted she tidied her messy room, closing the door and leaving her to figure it out all alone.
She could vividly recall standing in the middle of her room, looking around at the mess, paralyzed by the overwhelm that she felt inside. At this young age, she didn’t have the skills needed to tackle such a large task on her own, and the pressure she felt from her mom’s impatience only added to the intense feeling.
I guided Jane to reframe the memory and slowly, she was able to change her perspective and start to release the anxiety and overwhelm that her body had stored from that experience. As she began to feel the pressure lifting, she started to feel more confident about tackling the mess.
Jane realized that the combination of the pressure from her mom, mixed with the seemingly large task caused an extreme reaction – and a negative association in her mind. As an adult, this negative association was being triggered by those nagging tasks that were constantly calling for her attention. Because of this negative association, she was unable to react logically, and instead was reacting as that little girl in that messy room.
Releasing that overwhelm and reframing that memory was like lifting the veil for Jane. After this session she no longer felt paralyzed by the tasks and projects on her plate. Instead, she started to see them as manageable tasks that she could easily tackle.
This really changed the game for Jane when it came to procrastination. She no longer felt scattered or anxious about her to-do list and felt that she could think logically and work her way through it. This is the power of resolving the root of the issue on a subconscious level. By resolving the root, Jane felt different and thought different, and therefor, she naturally behaved differently.
The Benefits of Addressing the Root Cause
When we address the root cause of Overwhelm, we see long-term changes to our behavior. This is because we are resolving the cause instead of the symptoms. The symptoms of overwhelm might be avoidance, procrastination, self-sabotage, or even anxiety – these are simply the byproduct of overwhelm, not the cause.
If we try to work through overwhelm by addressing the symptoms, you might see short-term results, but this strategy has one main flaw; you are relying on willpower. Willpower is an unreliable resource, it comes and goes – and when it goes, you will find yourself reverting back to those old patterns because you haven’t addressed the emotion.
If you still feel the same way, and have the same thoughts, then forcing a different behavior will feel very difficult. But if you get to the root cause and release the emotion, you’ll actually feel different and think different, so naturally, you will behave differently.
When you address the root of the issue, you don’t have to rely on willpower or coping mechanisms to see changes, the changes happen much more naturally because you’ve resolved the cause.
Conclusion
In the whirlwind of modern life, it’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed by responsibilities and tasks that seem to pile up endlessly. This feeling of being paralyzed by your to-do list isn’t just a byproduct of a hectic schedule—it often has deeper roots that reach back to your formative years. Childhood experiences and the emotional associations we form during those early years can significantly impact how we handle stress as adults.
Hypnotherapy offers a profound way to address these deep-seated issues by connecting with your subconscious mind. By uncovering and resolving the emotional triggers from your past, hypnotherapy can help you shift your perspective and manage stress more effectively.
As we’ve seen through real-life examples like Jane’s, resolving these underlying emotional patterns can transform your ability to handle overwhelm, turning it from a debilitating force into a manageable part of life.
By addressing the root causes of your overwhelm rather than merely treating its symptoms, hypnotherapy allows for lasting change. Instead of relying on willpower alone—a resource that can be fleeting—hypnotherapy helps you make deep, internal adjustments that naturally lead to improved behavior and reduced stress.
Next Steps
If you find yourself consistently struggling with feelings of overwhelm, consider exploring hypnotherapy as a powerful tool for uncovering and resolving the emotional baggage that might be holding you back. Perhaps, like Jane, your reaction stems from negative associations created from stressful experiences in your past. Resolving those emotions could help you end overwhelm and procrastination for good.
If you’d like a personalized approach to tackling this issue, you can book a Hypnotherapy Session with me and we can work through it together. You can also book a Free 30-minute Consultation to speak with me directly and we can discuss your specific circumstances and find out if hypnosis is a good fit for you.
New to hypnotherapy? Check out my free Think & Feel Positive Hypnosis to give you a taste of what hypnosis is like. If you have questions, I’m here to help.
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