Does it feel like there’s something within you that’s holding you back from what you really want? Maybe you know what you need to do but can’t bring yourself to do it. Or maybe you sabotage yourself when things start to get good.
These are symptoms of an inner conflict – part of you wants one thing, another part of you is resisting or holding back, so you can never quite get there.
Maybe you label yourself as a “procrastinator” or that you’re just “lazy”, but really, there’s so much more to the story. Making strides in the direction you desire requires you to work through the inner conflict that’s causing you to sabotage.
Until you get all parts of you on the same page, it will feel really difficult to see real change in your life. Hypnotherapy can be an incredible tool for resolving inner conflict because it allows you to get to the core issue. In hypnosis you can understand what’s really going on inside, and more easily come to a resolution.
If this resonates with you, keep reading. Let’s break down what self-sabotage is really telling you and give you some tools to start working though your inner conflict so that you can make real change in your life. Check out a real client’s success story and a journaling exercise to get you started on resolving your inner conflict.
Inner Conflict Leads to Procrastination and Self-Sabotage
Your self-sabotaging patters are the surface-level symptoms to an inner conflict happening on a deeper level. This self-sabotage might look like:
· The desire to go all in with a partner, a business, or a big life change, but pulling back
· The desire to move on or let certain people, places or jobs go, but holding on
· The desire to be seen and heard either in relationships or at work, but playing small or staying quiet instead
Perhaps you can see the ways you are sabotaging what you really want with excuses or reasons why it’s not possible for you, or it’s too risky. There’s a voice inside that wants you to reach for more, but an equally loud voice that fears the consequences of the unknown.
Many times, this show up when we have outgrown something in our life and deeply feel and desire something new but are fearful of what might happen if we take the leap.
Maybe it’s leaving a friendship that no longer serves you, or putting yourself out there to grow your business, or speaking up and being heard where you’ve been letting things slide before.
This inner conflict causes us to go half in then pull back, or simply never take the leap at all. The key to getting though it is to understand the rest of the story. We do this effortlessly in hypnosis because the conscious mind that likes to use logic and reason takes a back seat, and we can use the subconscious to get directly to the core issue.
Resolving Inner Conflict with Hypnosis (Client Success Story)
Bypassing the Logical Mind
When you enter a state of hypnosis, you are entering trance. This means your focus and attention is on your inner experience, which gives you greater access to your stored emotions, memories, and belief systems. In trance we can use techniques to access the emotion and beliefs that are fueling the inner conflict.
Let’s break down this process with a real client’s session. For the sake of this article, we’ll call her Jane. Jane wanted to make big moves in her career but was noticing a lot of self-sabotaging behavior and would feel extremely overwhelmed and fearful of putting herself out there.
She would come up with lots of reasons why it’s not a good time, or not a good idea, so she would never go all in and make anything happen. She would beat herself up for procrastinating or being lazy, but really, she was stuck in an inner conflict and couldn’t find a resolution.
Identify and Explore Conflicting Parts
In hypnosis, with her logical mind out of the way, we investigated both the part of her that wanted to go all in and the part of her that was holding back. As we dug a little deeper and become curious about the part of her that was holding back, we started to understand the rest of the story.
We discovered that the resistance stemmed from a belief that she’s not good enough for this big change and that she will be ridiculed and humiliated if she put yourself out there.
Uncovering the Beliefs and Underlying Emotion
As we dove into the fear and shame that fueled this belief, we found that this emotion has been stored from previous experiences, and regressed to a particularly painful childhood memory of presenting in front of the class and feeling humiliated by the teacher.
Now we understand the whole story! It’s not that she’s not good enough or that it’s not a good time to make this big career change – it’s that her subconscious mind had associated this career change to the pain and humiliation of that unresolved childhood memory and is desperately trying to avoid that same pain from happening again.
She had created a belief that was fueled by fear and shame and has stuck with her all this time, now showing up in the form of procrastination and self-sabotage. By quieting the logical mind, we were able to get to the root of the issue – fear and shame from a past experience that were fueling a false belief that she was unworthy.
Releasing Emotion and Reframing
While in hypnosis we were able to release the shame and fear she had felt and reframe the memory to have it mean something else. As that humiliated child, that memory held a lot of meaning – it meant that she wasn’t good enough. But in hypnosis we get to change the meaning, and we can see and understand it differently.
By bringing in a new perspective, Jane was easily able to see her child-self through a new lens. She could see that she was learning and trying something new, and that took a lot of courage. In that moment as a child, she had decided that she was unworthy based on the teacher’s behavior. But her teacher’s behavior doesn’t determine her worth.
Jane gets to decide what this memory means to her now. By releasing the fear and shame, Jane was able to see that this experience means nothing about her worthiness, it was simply an experience, and she is worthy and capable regardless.
Reframing the memory means seeing it in a new light and associating a new meaning to it. After reframing this memory, Jane felt empowered and confident, which allowed her to see herself in a new way.
Coming to a Resolution
Once the underlying shame and fear had been released, and the belief reframed, there was no longer any internal conflict holding Jane back from making this big career move. The part of her that was holding her back now felt safe and worthy of what she wanted.
I checked in with Jane a few weeks after the session and she reported feeling a sense of confidence that she hadn’t had prior to resolving this inner conflict. She was already making strides toward this big career move. The overwhelm and procrastination were no longer obstacles, and the fear of this big change was replaced with confidence and excitement.
Using hypnosis as a tool to access your inner beliefs, emotions and thoughts, we are able to understand the rest of the story that may not have been obvious before. When we don’t understand what’s holding us back, we get even more frustrated and down on ourselves because we think, ‘I must be lazy’ when really, it’s a part of you that’s trying to protect you.
Hypnosis is such a powerful tool in resolving inner conflict because it allows us to understand ourselves on a much deeper level. We have the opportunity to see that all parts of us are just doing what they can to keep us safe. By resolving the stored emotion from past experiences, we essentially free ourselves in the present to make choices that fuel the future we desire, instead of choices dictated by our past.
Journal Exercise to Resolve Inner Conflict
The unique thing about doing this work with hypnosis is that you are in a trance state, which allows you to access your deeper mind. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use the same approach to address inner conflicts in a conscious state.
Use the following journal prompts to begin to address both sides of your inner conflict and, with an open mind, tap into a compassionate sense of curiosity to understand what these parts of you really feel and believe.
1. Think about an inner conflict you’re experiencing in your life. Imagine separating the two sides of this conflict. On a blank page, identify these two parts of you. For example, one might be The Part that wants to go all in and the other might be The Part that holds back.
2. Close your eyes and imagine connecting directly with these parts of you one at a time. As you become curious about each Part, imagine asking what they really want. Write down anything that comes to you.
3. As you continue to tap into these parts with compassion and curiosity, begin to notice what kind of emotion each part feels. Write down anything that comes to you.
4. By now, you might begin to get a sense of what these parts of you really want, and how they really feel. You might even notice that both parts ultimately want the same thing – happiness, safety, fulfillment, etc. Imagine asking both parts what they need from you to achieve what they want (refer to the second journal prompt above). Write down anything that comes to you.
5. Finally, ask each part what they would need to be able to work together for a common goal (ie. Your ultimate happiness, fulfillment, etc.) Write down anything that comes to you.
Through this process you might find you learn a lot about these parts of you, some things might even surprise you. However, you might find that you come up against a lot of resistance and don’t get much, and that’s okay too. That simply tells you that these parts may need a little more help to open up.
This is where hypnosis can be extremely helpful, because it allows you to tap into yourself without judgement or logic and get straight to the source of the conflict.
Next Steps
If you can start to see your inner conflict as a conflict between two parts of you that ultimately want what’s best for you – but simply going about it in very different ways – it becomes easier to use curiosity and compassion to understand the deeper beliefs and emotion fueling the conflict.
The journaling exercise above may prove to be a useful tool in getting to know these conflicting parts and resolving the inner conflict. However, if you get stuck or simply prefer a more tailored experience, you can check out my hypnotherapy sessions or book a free consultation to chat with me directly to see if hypnosis would be a good fit for you.
If you’re new to hypnosis and would like to learn more, this post has lots of great information to help you understand the process and likely answer some questions you might have.
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