Relationships

Gabrielle Csaszar

Summer 2017

How Cognitive Hypnotherapy could help your Relationships

 

I believe that romantic relationships can be magical, but it is not always easy. One thing is for sure, you won’t be the only person struggling with relationships and perhaps unaware of why. This can be true of people from all walks of life, the rich, the famous, the labourer or the academic.

From the beginning of time, human beings have been social beings. We lived in groups and supported each other’s survival. Men went out hunting and protected their family or groups from any danger they faced from predators or nature itself. Women took care of their living environment, the fire of the home and the children. They would go out and gather fruits, roots or any plants that could be eaten. Both men and women would go out in small groups to increase their chance of survival should they come across any form of threat. We have always relied on the protection of the group for survival and company. This social way of living enabled us to learn, grow and develop, as much as it offered protection and a means to survive.

From the Cave to Modern Day

Surprisingly, very little has changed in the way our minds operate since the Stone Age. We have simply updated our environment as time has passed. We now live in a 21st century version of that cave and we still have the social pressures of those old days, just represented in more modern ways. We tend to live in smaller groups now, this would be our family, relatives and friends and we still value the importance of that network of support for our own personal growth and to help support our survival.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that humans need social interactions to thrive in all areas of life. And yet, loneliness and the lack of healthy relationships, whether romantic or otherwise, are a common problem in our modern world.

In these modern times, we don’t have to survive in the same way we once did. We don’t have to face the same kinds of physical threats that we once did, We no longer find ourselves frequently in a position that requires us to flee, freeze or fight. Instead, our modern-day monsters live in our heads. They come in the form of limiting beliefs, perhaps about our ability to be loved or liked, fears of social inadequacy or exclusion that to our unconscious mind still equals disaster, trapping us behind an invisible fence that we feel unable to get past. Our limiting beliefs can lead us to ignore the problems we are having, burying our head in the sand, until it gets so bad that we can no longer ignore it and survive.

These limiting beliefs often develop during our childhood or sometimes later. This can be because of misconceptions made by our young minds or perhaps other significant events that have had a negative impact on the way we view ourselves and/or others. Regardless of how these problems occur, you can be sure that your mind is trying to protect you in some way, to keep you safe, it is the mind’s primary function.

Unfortunately, that same function can cause all sorts of problems in our modern-day life. We may find ourselves triggered into certain thoughts, feelings or behaviours, simply because we are reminded of similar previous events that led to something painful or unpleasant, whether emotional or physical.

Our out-dated survival system, together with learned unhelpful beliefs and ways of thinking, can be a breeding ground for problems in our most intimate relationships, so often being sabotaged without our conscious awareness of what is actually happening.

When you consider the mind’s deep desire to survive, your relationship with a significant other is top on the list of things to get right. This means the pressure is on, which can highlight these modern-day issues, even more where our intimate relationships are concerned, than perhaps other areas of your life. In an attempt to keep us in a relationship, which to our outdated survival system means we are safe, can result in us staying stuck in unhappy relationships. Without an understanding of how we can improve that relationship or the connection we hope to have with a significant other, we can remain stuck and feeling hopeless.

Our relationships are the offspring of our earliest influences.

As a small child, we learn much from our parents and other significant adults. We learn important rules around social interaction, our place in the family and our social circle. A child learns by mimicking the behaviour of their parents and from the responses they get from them. This becomes the foundation of how we interact with others and how we choose to respond to situations that may arise in any relationship we develop later on. As we get older, other comparable experiences are likely to be added to the existing set of experiences and beliefs we developed as children.

We can’t expect a five-year-old child to understand the world around them, the relationships that matter to them and their survival in the same way that we might do as adults. Yet, it could easily be the understandings you took from the relationships around you at a young age, that influence your adult relationships.

A young child sees things in a very nominal, black and white way. As adults, we know that relationships are never as black and white as they may appear, but a young child does not understand that. A typical situation would be when a child thinks it is his fault that their parents are getting divorced. We all know that would have nothing to do with him or anything he has done, but his small child’s mind can only work with something he knows and understands. So, he might start to be on his best behaviour so that the parents will stay together. He may overcompensate to get love or go down the negative root and start to blame and label himself as bad and take all the responsibility for the family breakup and suffer in silence, covering up the pain with things that temporarily make him feel happy and safe.

Our parents form the foundation of our social skills, our beliefs and ways of thinking. Our parents also use their own outdated survival system, their own belief systems and ways of thinking, behaving, etc. to teach us how to survive in the world. This means both positive and negative patterns can become reinforced through the generations. You’ve probably seen patterns of abuse or failed relationships running through families. If no one ever stops to question why those patterns are reoccurring, either in your own relationships or throughout a family, then we simply continue with potentially destructive patterns, sabotaging our relationships and further cementing negative and unhelpful ideas about ourselves or others.

How can Cognitive Hypnotherapy help you achieve more fulfilling relationships?

Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help you let go of any liming beliefs or misconceptions you have around relationships. These can be negative beliefs that you have about yourself, as well as beliefs you might have about what a significant relationship needs to be. These negative beliefs, feelings and patterns tend to show themselves during times of stress or difficulty, at times when your relationship is under pressure in some way.

You may find yourself behaving in ways that bother you, as a result of your emotional brain hijacking you in some way, seeking to protect you from something it sees as threatening. Perhaps your partner has gone out with his friends to watch football and your unconscious feels threatened by the fact that he is not choosing to spend that time with you.

Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help you address misconceptions learned at an early age from significant family members or a particular parent. We can help you look at the expectations you have of a current partner in relation to your early relationships and whether those expectations are really right for you now as an individual.

Sometimes, we transfer old feelings for parents or other significant adults in our lives as kids, onto our significant other now. Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help you address a wide range of issues that can occur in what would otherwise be a healthy happy relationship. Equally, if you find yourself in and out of unhealthy relationships, we can work with you to discover the root cause of that, enabling you to develop healthier, happier relationships.

Change is always possible with Cognitive Hypnotherapy and you can have the relationship you want to have. You can believe in love again.

We may not be able to control how someone feels about us, but we can change the way we feel about ourselves. We can increase our understanding of how people relate to each other, how to communicate with each other more effectively and find value in our differences. The unconscious patterns that form in our early days don’t have to equal a lonely existence. Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help you re-align your beliefs and your mindset to one that can achieve more of what you want from your relationships. To become the best version of yourself and be ready to embrace a relationship with that special someone.