People often ask me, “How can hypnosis help with self-confidence?”
The most common assumption is that you will go into a deep state of trance and listen to a string of positive affirmations about being confident and self-assured. You might imagine yourself succeeding in situations that, up until now, used to cause you to experience uncertainty, self-doubt, or even dread.
That can certainly be part of the process.
The wonderful thing about hypnosis and hypnotherapy is that you can do all that and more, going much, much deeper into your ongoing healing, growth, and transformation.
But first, let’s take a look at what causes a lack of confidence in the first place.
What causes a lack of confidence?
I like to push back on that question whenever I hear it. It’s not that we lack confidence. In fact, our true nature, the essence of who we are, is supremely confident all the time.
Think about your breathing, or your heartbeat, or your digestion. All of these fundamental, biological processes operate without the slightest hesitation or question. Even in those who experience a physical imbalance or disease that interferes with these basic functions, the body continues to do its best until the condition changes or it’s time to die.
Lack of confidence stems from learned habits, erroneous beliefs, and internalized messages that call into question one’s autonomy, value, and inherent goodness.
Let’s take another example. Look at any child from infancy up until about 3 or 4 years old. Except in cases of extreme neglect or abuse, young children are bubbling wellsprings of spontaneous, joyful, exuberant confidence. Generally speaking, it’s only as they get older that they learn to doubt and subjugate that natural confidence.
Which brings us to the cause of this so called “lack” of confidence.
Lack of confidence stems from learned habits, erroneous beliefs, and internalized messages that call into question one’s autonomy, value, and inherent goodness. All of these doubts are like computer viruses or ransomware. Unless they are deleted, they can temporarily block the normally uninhibited flow of our pure, confident being.
This can give rise to all kinds of self-limiting beliefs and behaviors that in turn lead to all kinds of unnecessary suffering such as,
- Depression
- Procrastination
- Addiction
- Low self-esteem
- Distorted body image
- Under-achievement
- Over-achievement
- Codependency
The list goes on.
Fortunately there are many ways of working with all of this. One of those is hypnosis.
How can hypnosis help with self-confidence?
We’ve all heard the term “hypnotic trance”. But what is a trance? We are in trance when we’re caught up in a great book or fully engrossed in a good movie. We suspend disbelief, allowing ourselves to get swept up in all the action, suspense, horror, and romance. A part of us knows that it’s just a story, but it feels real.
In the same way, we get caught up in the hypnotic trances of believing that it’s our fault that our marriage ended, or we got addicted to drugs and lost everything, or we were abused as children.
Woven into all of these storylines are feelings of deep, toxic shame. I call these “shame trances”. Unchallenged and unexamined, these beliefs can wreck all kinds of havoc and misery in our lives.
Ironically, waking up from trances like these is the main objective of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Throughout the entire process we shine a light on habitual ways of thinking about ourselves that we might not be conscious of. We look into root causes of these beliefs and tend to them with love and healing. This can be a profoundly transformative experience as we release the guilt, regret, and shame that we may have been holding onto for decades.
Once we wake up from our trances of unworthiness and incompetence, all that’s left is an experience of our true nature-that deeper, wiser part of our being that is endlessly resourceful and creative. It’s that childlike spontaneity of the pure, joyful expression of our being that has been temporarily covered up by our pain and confusion.
And the beautiful truth is that’s who we’ve been all along.
