A few years ago, I was given a chance at life.
It wasn’t my second chance, third chance or even my fourth chance. I’d been given more chances at life than I have fingers to count.
But this chance was different.
This chance was not thanks to the medical equipment keeping me alive, this chance was the chance to learn how to keep myself alive. This chance was the chance to learn to use my mind.
After 15 years of not understanding why I was consumed by such extreme emotions, of being at the mercy of what people did and said to me and of being eternally both ashamed of and at war within myself I was given a chance to learn to do things differently.
A chance that looked nothing more remarkable than a small office space and one woman.
It was within those four walls, listening to the sound of that woman’s voice where not only was my physical life saved but where living, really living became a possibility.
It was here and with the facilitation of this one person where my life for the first time began to become my life.
The Truth
My experience with hypnosis is something I’ve toyed with writing about numerous times and never quite managed to get the words out and onto paper, not even for myself, let alone to share with the world.
It’s hard to say exactly why this is and my hesitation has likely been due to a number of reasons. One being that while I do talk openly and frankly about the 15 years, I spent living with anorexia nervosa it is still deeply personal.
The pain of that time, despite the fact I now live a completely different life, is raw.
It’s raw, not because I can feel it and connect to it in the way I once did but because it was real, because it was the entirety of my existence and most of all because there are others still living this nightmare.
Then there is the fact that my thoughts and feelings about the life I used to live and hypnosis have shifted and changed drastically in the time I’ve been well, and I have no doubt they will continue to do so. Which means to capture what I feel about it today will more than likely be very different to how I feel about it tomorrow or next week and most definitely next year because I am always having new insights, revelations and above all I am always continuing to change. It is no longer of the monumental fascination it once was to me in comparison to the life I now live. I’d much rather focus on the now and the future than to bother with going back there but I think if you are struggling to recover my sharing may be of value to you which is why I am.
Today as I sit and write these words, slowly between long stares at the rainy world outside my window and with the music washing over me I feel there is no way to capture or bring any semblance of justice to those years I spent in illness nor equally to the hypnotherapy sessions which allowed for the indescribable change in my existence since. There simply are no words written or spoken which can adequately describe these experiences.
It also feels like a very strange claim to make that hypnosis saved my life after being someone who lived for randomised controlled trials and scoffed at anecdotal evidence and personal stories, if I’m completely honest I’ve not wanted the attention or judgement which seems to inevitably follow vulnerability, but the truth is, it’s the truth.
Hypnosis saved my life.
I may never have the words to fully capture just what that statement means but I know by sharing the insight I can I may allow just one person out there, be it you or somebody else, the option of experiencing something you may have never considered or taken seriously and perhaps because of this begin your own transformation.
The Beginning
Although I have a fairly good understanding of the things which predisposed me and lead my mind and body to spiral into anorexia nervosa, I will never completely understand why I got sick and that’s ok because to me the “why” no longer matters (if you want an explanation of the factors which can predispose someone to this illness have a read of my earlier blog “anorexia is genetic; so what?”)
I didn’t have to know why I fell sick in order to heal and I don’t have to know why I fell sick in order to live the life I now live.
My falling sick wasn’t personal.
I wasn’t broken, weak, too sensitive or any of the other things I shamed myself with and which kept me stuck.
It simply was what it was and in truth there are parts of me grateful for what I went through.
Grateful in that there are many lessons I learned and undoubtably it was one of the greatest shaping forces in who I am today and yet given the choice to live that life over I would not choose it. Ever.
Living with anorexia nervosa was living in hell.
Every day waking with the knowing that I was unable to meet my most fundamental human need for nourishment was terrifying, exhausting and at other times I was apathetic and numb.
Every moment was the most tenuous grasp on reality.
I felt like I was relentlessly clawing my way to some kind of normal and forcing myself to go through the motions of life, of what I was supposed to do but never understanding why.
I felt everything I had, everything I was could be ripped out from under me at any moment.
Because it could.
The New Beginning
Hypnosis is not what many people believe it to be, mind control.
Hypnosis is not someone getting you to do what they want you to do and which you don’t want to do.
It is the opposite.
It is facilitating you to do what you want to do.
I didn’t change because hypnosis made me do anything I didn’t want to do.
I changed because hypnosis helped me do the things I wanted to do.
I never wanted to be sick.
I never wanted to feel as though I’d rather claw out my eyeballs, scratch off my skin or die than eat.
I just had no control over what I did or didn’t do.
Hypnosis put the control back in my hands.
How?
The thing you must know is that as much as you want something you are only wanting it with about 5% of your brain. Or in hypnosis language what we call our conscious mind. Which means the rest, the remaining 95% of your brain, or your unconscious mind is doing things its way.
This 95% of your brain is doing things the way it’s learned and most of what it’s learned it learned very young with minimal questioning, taking into account other points of view or alternative realities and essentially no choice over the conclusions it drew.
Until you update this here is where you will stay.
Until you update this you will forever stay stuck in the despair or shame of wanting to change but not fully being capable of that change for anything longer than fleeting moments of sheer determination, willpower or guilt.
On the other hand when you update all parts of your neurology, especially that 95% we ignore because we don’t understand it, are not taught how to use it, or as was my case don’t even know existed, and you will achieve the change you want.
It’s impossible not to.
Which is why I say hypnosis saved my life because having stayed stuck as I was, I’d probably not have made it much longer and even if I had what kind of a life would that have been? A life in which I was at war within myself 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because even when I was asleep or in the arms of my very best of friends it was there.
Every system, every organ, every cell of my body was exhausted and longing for a way out. I could never have imagined that the way out was to be something I did not believe in, had no experience with and knew nothing about, hypnosis.
Why?
It wasn’t that I didn’t seek treatment, it wasn’t that I didn’t follow all the best recommendations, see the best psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors and dietitians it was that I was incapable of changing the way that I felt and as much as there were times where the motivation of lessening the shame, getting my mum off my back, getting out of hospital and not causing any more harm to those I loved nothing truly changes until the feeling changes. Nothing truly changes until you’re doing it for you.
Hypnosis offered me what nothing else could.
Hypnosis changed the feeling and that changed the game.
Gratitude
I often think about how thankful I am for hypnosis, for neurolinguistic programming, for coaching, for this one woman who stuck with me and taught me because the amount of things which once dis-regulated me was monumental.
Now, even in chaos I am able to remain conscious and choose my feelings and my actions.
That is profound and to me the definition of recovered, to remain conscious in situations which once made you react unconsciously.
That is choice and having choice is freedom.
Jump Off the Fence
I wish I’d been offered clinical hypnotherapy right back when I first fell sick because in the years to follow I was offered and only knew about such a very limited range of therapies. I had so many traumatic experiences with treatment and so many failed attempts at recovery that a lot of me had given up on thinking it would ever be any other way. By the time I gave clinical hypnotherapy a last desperate attempt I had all but resigned myself to a life of “maintenance” which to me meant keeping some facade of physical health but never truly feeling mentally well.
I want you to know there is another way to do things than what you’re offered. If you’ve tried and tried and tried and blamed yourself for your lack of change perhaps it’s time to look outside of that model.
It might not be clinical hypnotherapy that changes everything for you (or it may be) but whatever you do I want you to know that your treatment is your choice because your recovery is your choice.
Recovery is for you and there is always a way to come home to you.
I am just one example of what’s possible and you must find your own way.
Do the experiment.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
If you’re interested to understand more about clinical hypnotherapy click this link for a short breakdown of what it is (and isn’t).
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
