Weight Management - III

These days it seems almost everyone wants to lose a few pounds. It's on of the most common reasons why people come to see me. For years hypnosis or hypnotherapy and weight loss have gone together. Why? For obvious and not so obvious reasons. The obvious reason is that works. By helping the psyche to resolve conflicts and sending the right message it works.

The not so obvious reason is that weight is intimately connected to the way you perceive yourself. Working with a qualified hypnotherapist you can quickly and easily access the thoughts that sabotage you and prevent you from succeeding.

Of course there's one potential problem. From time to time someone will visit my office desperate to lose weight. The problem is that these folks don't need to lose weight. Because our weight is so closely linked to the way you perceive yourself, its possible that your perception be skewed in the wrong direction. People who suffer from varying degrees of anorexia nervosa, bullemia and the like are hurting themselves and extreme care should be taken in helping them.

Let's look at what's really going on in these scenarios. It would be an understatement to say someone in this situation has a self-image issue. So what's a hypnotherapist to do? First, remember, a qualified hypnotherapist should not dictate your healthy weight or body size to you. It's my job to help you resolve the mental conflicts that prevent success. Because those conflicts are deeply rooted in the subconscious mind I won't plant a suggestion without first understanding the underlying conflicts.

In the case of someone seeking to lose more than they seemingly have to spare I might suggest I might look for those things that prevent them from seeing reality. But I wouldn't stop there. Part of hypnotherapy is slowly peeling away the layers until, the subconscious and the conscious mind work in tandem to accomplish the desired result. Just because perception of reality is one of the more obvious layers does not mean it is an easy one to remove or that it is the only layer to address.

Hypnotherapy is a process. Yes, most issues follow a logical pattern but there can be surprises along the way. Saying that, its important to restate that there is nothing that the mind cannot resolve. Sometimes, I simply help people to remove barriers and obstacles to allow their own subconscious mind to resolve issue.

Getting back to the issue at hand, an altered perception of reality is typically a protection mechanism. How could killing oneself slowly, be a protection mechanism? Think of it as a diversion. It points away from the real problem.

Let me share a story. A woman came to me with the intent of losing weight. Of course, her medical doctor could not or would not approve of it. She was extremely thin. You didn't have to be a licensed and trained hypnotherapist or a MD to know this. Rather than tell her I would not help her I suggested that we begin exploring what was really going on so we could help her. As we began to walk through the process of hypnotherapy we discovered some very interesting facts. As a child her father would always tell her (in a very negative and unkind way), that she shouldn’t eat this thing or should eat to much of that thing because she was going to get fat. He constantly reminded her that fat people don't get far in life.

Because this message was imparted to her repeatedly from a very early age from someone she loved and trusted it had an intense impact on her self-esteem and self-image. This perception issue didn't stop at her weight. It carried over to her professional life as well. No matter how high she moved up the corporate ladder, she always felt insufficient, lacking. Through the process of hypnotherapy, we were able to empower her to replace her negative scripts with a new and empowering script that would keep her safe, fulfilled and seeing reality.

What areas in your life do you have skewed perception? Where could you benefit from seeing the real picture?