Fighting Off Guilt.

Your relationship with guilt should be a healthy one. Guilt shouldn’t make you feel embarrassed or shameful. It should motivate you and correct you but not judge you. The greatest attribute about guilt is that it can be anticipated before any action needs to be taken. It urges you to think about the consequences of what you’re considering doing or will be saying. Not taking immediate reaction or retaliating does not mean that you’re a coward. guilt

An unhealthy relationship with guilt is like walking through a valley of eggshells and apologizing for every broken shell. It’ll make you so concerned for the wrong people around you that your own life will go un-lived. You should care for others but your thoughts and feeling matter also. Sometimes you’ll have to say no situations and people in life and you shouldn’t feel bad about that.

guiltI work with people that struggle with their overbearing feelings of guilt and shame. Some hold back from making extremely important life decisions out of fear for guilt that has not even taken place. Anything that keeps you from advancing or moving forward in life is something you have to let go of, regardless of the guilt that may or may not take place for having done so. Hypnosis is great for treating guilt prone minds because it diminishes the negative thoughts in your brain and helps you to think more rationally. This is helpful because it will help you to assess whether or not the guilt you’re feeling is necessary. If it is not, you’ll learn to cast the thought away and if it is, you’ll learn to spend less time torturing yourself and more time correcting your error.

What’s holding you back from making that final decision? What’s sitting so heavy in your heart that you cannot go about your daily life? Guilt doesn’t have to burden you, but if it does, come in for a session. I’d love teach you how to manage your guilt in a positive way.

Before You Choose Divorce, Consider Hypnotherapy.

Before discussing divorce with your spouse, consider hypnotherapy as an alternative to couples counseling.

Marriages experience rough patches, or two, or four while on their way to marital bliss. The key is to not give up at the first or second or fourth sign of trouble. There may be tension and arguments filing your home right now, but with patience and proper guidance, couples can rediscover the the love that lead you down the aisle on your wedding day.

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Hypnotherapy for marriage counseling helps in the following ways:

  1. It rebuilds confidence and trust. Your husband may have forgotten your 5th anniversary and he may have forgotten to pick up the milk on the way home and thus, in a state of anger, you emasculated him with harsh words. As a result, you’ve developed an inability to believe your spouse can be trusted with the simplest tasks and in return, your partner starts to develop animosity and stress every time he or she is asked to do something. If this confidence and trust isn’t restored, it will affect the way you view your spouses compatibility and capability in loving you and providing for you.
  2. It strengthens communication. They say communication is key. A marriage with open lines of communication will be a successful one. Couples need to be open to expressing the things that hurt, the things that make them happy and the things they value differently. Not discussing these things will keep individuals in a place of perpetual heartache, crippled by harboring their resentments and anger inside. Your spouse cannot be held accountable for the things you fail to address. Furthermore, are you really angry at your partner or at yourself? Is the frustration you’re projecting meant for you for not measuring up or feeling inadequate?
  3. It will help you rediscover the reason why you fell in love in the first place. Regardless of how you may feel about your husband or wife in this current moment, at one time you loved them with a blind eye. You loved them enough to overlook their flaws and fell in love with them for who you became when you were with them. Somewhere inside, that love still exists. Love is a verb; it is an action; it is a choice we make every morning. Hypnotherapy will help you exercise that choice with full confidence in good spirits.

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The movie Stardust has this great line, “So, yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can also be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and, well, strangely easy to mistaken for loathing.” If you feel like your spouse has failed you, the loathing you’re experiencing may be disappointment. You may feel like they’re always falling short of loving you the way you expect to be loved. We have to realize that just because our needs are not being met the way we want them to be met, that does not mean that your partner is not trying his or her best. I’m here to help you discover what you want and to help you express the wants in positive ways to further strengthen your marriage.

Losing A Loved One.

Death is such an inevitable part a life. We shouldn’t be shocked when it comes for us,  yet we are. The unfortunate truth is, everyone will one day lose someone, or something they love. Coping with the loss of a loved one isn’t easy, but it is necessary.

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Not everyone will take solace in knowing that their loved one is finally out of pain or that they are no longer emotionally suffering. But some will. Those who do will still grieve and mourn the deceased, but they will also be comforted by what they believe comes after death. There is resilience in having a system of faith.

No matter your belief, grief is a common season that people deal with. As mentioned in the last blog post, there is no right or wrong way to mourn. You might experience denial, anger, confusion, sadness, and a lack of enthusiasm. That’s okay. Given the nature of the vital role your loved one played in your life, their passing will greatly effect you. Give yourself time to get re-adjusted to your life.

Feeling like you’re on an emotional rollercoaster is completely normal. One day you might feel okay and the next day you’ll be devastated all over again. This will fade over time. If it doesn’t, you might be suffering from complicated grief.

Mayoclinic.org defines complicated grief as such: For some people, feelings of loss are debilitating and don’t improve even after time passes. This is known as complicated grief, sometimes called persistent complex bereavement disorder. In complicated grief, painful emotions are so long lasting and severe that you have trouble accepting the loss and resuming your own life.

For a list of symptoms, click here.

If you believe you are suffering from complicated grief or you’re just having a hard time dealing with your loss, speaking with a life coach can be just what you need. Together we will sort through your emotions, redirect your thinking, and get your life back on track. You will never really get over losing someone you love, but with help, you can address your loss from a healthy perspective.

 

Dealing With Death.

People surviving the death of a loved one should know: there is no order to which the stages of grief passes. Mourning is different for each person. The time you spend mourning is based on your relationship to the person you lost. If you had a wonderful relationship and interacted with your loved one until their passing, there is grief and loss, but there is no guilt. You will wish to have said and done more, but these feelings are quite common.images

For some, there will be mixed feelings about a persons passing. Maybe the person who passed was unkind or abusive and because of this, you harbor animosity towards his or her passing. Does death absolve the you?

Most people would say, “yes!”
I say, let’s be honest.

If you’re hurt because you never got an apology you knowingly deserved, acknowledge that pain. If you feel relief that your abuse is over but guilty for being at peace, acknowledge these feelings too! Keep in mind, the choice to remain angry becomes an internal cancer. You will end up a victim of your own doing if you allow anger to ferment for too long. Anger is not and will never be nullified by death. If the persons passing seems like the perfect time to let go, then do it! But do it for the emotional benefit of yourself because death holds no special atonement for a persons wickedness.

UnknownIf hatred is prolonging your grief and not allowing you to move on, please come see me. Bad mouthing the dead and internalizing such anger will not bring closure to your emotional wounds. It will not help you sleep at night. It might provide a moments worth of relief, but that will pass and guilt will come again. Hypnotherapy can help you let go. You can begin to assess your abusers actions and make a logical decision to no longer be controlled by them, even after they’ve passed.

 

Post Pregnancy Depression

People see children as gifts. They believe that children teach parents to be selfless, compassionate, and above all, patient. There are mothers and fathers who say seeing their baby for the first time transforms their life. As beautiful as it is to create a life and addition to the family, the American Psychology Association states that “1 in [every] 7 women in the Untied States will suffer from a mood disorder known as Postpartum Depression (PPD).”

Post pregnancy depression, or PPD, is a type of depression brought on by childbirth. Unlike the “baby blues” which lasts only a few weeks and causes a mother to feel, as apa.com puts it, “stressed, sad, anxious, lonely, tired or weepy,” PPD can last several months, and can cause a mother to feel hopeless, disinterested in her child, and in severe cases, make her want to kill her baby or herself. PPD can, and does, affect women of every race and social class, and is not partial to unwed mothers.

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For a list of common PPD symptoms click here.

Many cases of PPD goes untreated because its symptoms vary from woman to woman. It can look like depression to one individual, anxiety in another, and compulsion in someone else. Notwithstanding, PPD is often overlooked because of shame. Women are constantly told how amazing it is to have a child, and it is!, but that isn’t the case for every mother. NPR’s Know The Signs: For Some, Post-Pregnancy Is Anything But Magicalfollows Paige’s emotional and mental decline after the birth of her son. Of her darkest day, Paige says,

And I looked at the bus and I had this impulse out of nowhere to throw myself and Max in front of the bus and just end it. … As the bus passed, I remember looking at my reflection in the windows of the bus and the faces looking back at me, but seeing my face, and being like, ‘Who is that person?’ … I had to do something to save myself and to save my son.

Paige got the help she needed to live a full life not only as a mother but as an individual. Her experience is a devastating one, but her story should comfort you if you’re suffering from PPD. Paige survived her PPD and so can you.

If you find yourself suffering from PPD symptoms, it’s imperative that you seek help. Hypnotherapy has a successful track record for easing the minds of mothers caught in a mental and physical battle with their PPD. Hypnosis can teach you to focus on what is real. It will also help you to get back to, or establish, a better peace of mind. From that new way of thinking you can approach your life and relationship with your child from a healthy mind.

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