It’s Time to Fire Fear as Your Hypnotist

In the simplest terms, hypnosis is focus. Whoever or whatever powerfully captivates our attention could therefore be called a hypnotist. Also, a deep focus on any given subject brings about a certain suggestibility. For instance, when we’re deeply engrossed in a movie the suggestions, in the form of things like scenery, acting, and plot affect our emotions. The movie would not have an effect on us if a) we didn’t give it our attention, and b) we weren’t suggestible to it. Without this kind of engagement our books, movies, music would lose their power to hold our attention and influence us. Our favorite speakers, nature scenes, hobbies, work, and people would also leave us dry. The ability to be hypnotized allows us to experience positive emotions like joy, awe, love, interest, and gratitude that make life worth living.

On the other hand, it’s all too easy for people to get hypnotized by things that ultimately leave them hollow like:

• Advertising
• Over-shopping on Amazon.
• Binge-watching on Netflix.
• Doom scrolling on Facebook.
• Junk food.
• Alcohol & drugs.
• Peer pressure.
• Pornography.
• The news

When we look past the various things that both enthrall and empty us, fear is unveiled as the master hypnotist behind them all. In each case, we are distracting from impending feelings of anxiety. It’s not that any of the items in the list above are evil mind-controllers in themselves, or that distraction is always a bad thing. However, too much distraction tends to create another problem on top of the original one. Unless we address the underlying fear, we are vulnerable to exchanging one distraction for another. For example, we might:

• Quit drinking and start eating too much junk food.
• Stop binge-watching on Netflix and start buying too many things on Amazon.
• Stop looking at porn and become involved in a co-dependent relationship.
• Quit smoking but then can’t stop watching horrifying stories on the news.

Fear can hold us captive in life-defeating habits, forever distracting in one way or another, that limits our capacity to experience positive relationships, engaging work, and feeling a sense of freedom, joy, aliveness.

Fear is the primary reason why we collectively:

• Eat too much
• Drink too much
• Smoke when we know it’s killing us
• Get caught in negative thinking and feeling patterns
• Distract too much,
• Avoid meaningful adventures,
• Avoid intimacy,
• Numb ourselves to life,
• Put off what we’ve always been longing to do
• Betray our best interests.

Fear is often why our legs shake uncontrollably or why our gut is overly sensitive to whatever we eat. Chronic fear compromises our immune system, breaks down our heart and lung capacity, and wears out our joints prematurely. Fear leaves us feeling dead even as we live. Fear does all this while promising to keep you safe.

How does fear come to control us?

Human beings have a negativity bias. Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson says our brains are like Teflon for positive experiences and Velcro for negative ones. In order to survive, we tend to focus on the negative and dismiss the positive. Given the number of humans on the planet, one could say fear has served us well in this regard. But the brain centers that activate our fight, flight, and freeze responses know absolutely nothing about our long-term well-being.

Left to its own devices, our threat detection system is often not sophisticated enough to know when the emergency is over. Therefore, it stays switched on in the background like virus detection software, then creates a new layer of fear when a new danger arises. This multi-layering of fear can become crippling as it drives us more fervently into distraction, rendering us less capable of resolving what bothered us in the first place. Fear may serve us extremely well in the short term. However, in the long run, it can become the very thing that robs us of our lives while having us believe it is our protector.

One way to counteract the negativity bias is to simply practice focusing on the positive. This practice is important, but often doesn’t set us completely free, because the fears which control us are not usually conscious. They lay under the surface and keep us guessing. Therefore, even with ardent and regular practice of positive focus there is often something else that seems to be controlling our actions, but we don’t know what it is. The fact that we can’t name our fears makes the situation more frustrating and frightening. We may come to believe that our fears are unresolvable and that we are helpless against them. Therefore, distraction offers our only relief.

How hypnotherapy helps

The genius of hypnotherapy is that it can help you access, understand, and resolve unconscious fears in a way that is relatively quick and gentle. It can help you become more conscious of what was bothering you, how that came to be, and then help you come to peace with what scared you in the first place. The process is both illuminating and resolving at a deep level. What was unconscious becomes conscious. What was overwhelming fear can become compassion, wisdom, and understanding.

In other words you quit fearing, you quit distracting, and you start living. It might look like you:

• Quit drinking
• Quit smoking
• Quit eating too much
• Quit picking at your nails, skin, or pulling your hair
• Quit binging, porno-ing, and over-shopping

And then you are free to truly start:

• Engaging in healthy relationships
• Relating to yourself in positive ways
• Doing what truly matters
• Having healthy, life-giving habits
• Feeling an increased sense of freedom, aliveness, and fulfillment
• Having more fun
• Being comfortable in your own skin

You feel more alive and engaged with what matters.

The term hypnosis sometimes spooks people. They equate the term with mind control. In a way, they are right! The truth is that anyone who knows how to play on your fears and insecurity can direct your focus with little effort and for their own benefit. The way out of being hypnotized by fear is to work through what is scaring you and to claim the freedom on the other side. Hypnotherapy is one effective way to do this. It tends to be quicker and more gentle than other forms of help.