Inner Child and Shadow integration through hypnosis.
As humans, we are programmed to pick up information and learn things at an intensely rapid rate in the early years of our lives. We all come here to learn lessons, to overcome pain, to experience joy. To learn and grow. To me, that is the true purpose of our time here on earth.
We all have painful childhood experiences. It is part of the human condition. Whether picked up from your family, something you witnessed outside of the home, or something taught to you through culture, society, or even TV, as children we absorb information like sponges. As children, we are constantly learning who to be, how to behave, what is just, what love looks like, how to avoid pain. In my estimation, the draw towards receiving love is the strongest of all the others (more than avoiding pain or sometimes even avoiding death). So as children, we go through the world picking up clues for what will get us the most love. We see how our caretakers behave, how they give and receive love. We see how people outside our family unit are treated, picking up even more cues on what to do, or not to do. We watch TV and movies, we learn how it’s done through all of those experiences, through the mirror neurons (the “see to believe” signals) in our brains.
It is rare for someone to not create coping strategies along the way because we all experience some level of pain as children. It doesn’t mean you were abused as a kid, though many of us were. Upon learning a strategy, to receive love, or to protect ourselves, the brain lays down a pattern, a shortcut, as the basis for all future behaviors. This is laid down, inside our psyche, as an impulse. This neural pathway says if you behave this way, you will get love. Even if as we grow, and consciously recognize a particular behavior that isn’t serving us (how many times have you said to yourself “Why am I like this”), that old background loop is still the basis for a lot of our impulses. Even if we don’t want to behave this way anymore, it is very hard to consciously stop ourselves from following through on the impulse. The impulse is now operating on its own track that was laid down years and years ago. The simplest way to change the impulse, and to rewire, is to go back to where it was laid down and recorded, in the subconscious mind.
You may have noticed that when people are triggered, stressed out, or anxious, they don’t usually behave very rationally (this is easiest to notice with other people, rather than ourselves). That is because in moments of stress, we all fall back on our comfort behaviors. The most familiar, the oldest reactions that we picked up when we were learning how to navigate the world around us. As an adult, throwing a tantrum when things get rough is objectively not a great response mechanism, but how many of us do it? Some of us learned a long time ago that when we cry and make ourselves seen, problems have a way of resolving themselves – maybe we even receive love and attention. For those who learned this pattern in their childhood, the natural reaction will be to metaphorically lose their shit. Even if we know it won’t solve things, or may even make the situation more difficult, it will still be the go-to response, because it is recorded as our baseline “problem solving” mechanism. When we access our subconscious programming, we have a chance to rewire those old neural pathways.
There are two ways to access the subconscious mind. One is in our sleep – we access it all the time during the REM cycles when we get deep sleep. Unfortunately, as you have probably experienced, we often don’t have much control over what comes up in dreams. The other way to access the subconscious is through the state of trance, which is what we do in hypnosis. It isn’t woo-woo, there is nothing mystical about what happens in session. At the end of the day, a hypnotist is simply a guide that knows the right questions to ask and the right places to take you to, in your own mind.
Your hypnotherapist as your guide, can help you harvest your own innate resilience, your own creativity and your own resources. This is an incredibly empowering place to problem-solve from and it all comes from within you. All the solutions to our perceived problems are stored in our subconscious. You are able to rewire your own brain when you choose to do the work. How fucking cool is that.
Just like the coping mechanisms that we develop in our childhood, and are rarely aware of, we also carry with us a “shadow self”. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined the term in the 1940s, describing the shadow as the “unknown dark side of the personality”. Basically, the shadow is the unknown side of ourselves, a set of traits we either don’t recognize as our own, or actually fully reject. Finding our own shadow aspects can be a very simple process. Notice what traits really trigger you in other people. Very likely those are the traits that you abhor in yourself, and do everything in your power to avoid expressing. We are all hiding these shadow aspects from ourselves by loudly rejecting them, pretending they don’t exist. Meanwhile, our behaviors and impulses come through revealing those very shadows.
Just as with Inner Child integration, it is helpful for us to become aware of our Shadow aspects. When we are aware of our inner impulses, we understand why we behave a certain way (or respond to stress, criticism, you name it). In trance state, you are able to resource that shadow, to use its positive aspects, and accept yourself further. The most empowering tools to have in your toolbox are inner love and acceptance, the ability to release deep shame, and knowing that you can learn to change and continue to become the person you were meant to be.
Learning never ends, there is never too young or too old. We can all be better. We can all do more to make this life better for ourselves and others. Unlearning old lessons is the key to releasing the Shadow and to releasing the shame that is trapped inside our bodies, weighing us down. Releasing shame is the key to letting go of the many things we unwittingly cling to.
With hypnosis, you can learn how to alter the behaviors you wish to change. You can relive those old experiences differently, see the future through a positive lens, and allow your unconscious mind to write a new neural pathway. A different story.
