[Adapted from Dr Knight's Health and Happiness with Hypnosis]

You Can Heal After Loss

Contact with other people is essential for our emotional well-being. We have a built-in need for love and acceptance. We thrive when cared for; we shrivel when isolated.

When we are abandoned -- through neglect, indifference, or death -- we are devastated.

Emptiness also seizes us when other significant losses disrupt our lives: the disappearance of a pet, for instance, or being laid off, or sudden ill-health, or moving, or finishing college, or even the end to writing a book.

In all these examples, something dear to us ends. A relationship -- with a person, a place, a pet or a project -- is over. How can hypnosis help us cope? By allowing the release of feelings, a change of thinking and an inducement to healing.

Typical behavior when we suffer a loss is:

>>to brood,
>>to feel anxious,
>>to tire easily,
>>to have sleep problems and
>>to eat too much or too little.

Often the sorrow is felt as a physical sensation in the throat, chest or stomach. Anger may be present too (particularly when a loved one has died); frequently this anger is turned inward, thus exacerbating the feelings of anxiety and depression.

George was bothered by all these symptoms. He had been laid off by the multinational corporation with whom he had been a vice-president. Despite the industry-wide slump that precipitated his and 350 other layoffs, George blamed himself. At 55, he despaired of finding other employment -- especially at the salary level to which he had grown accustomed.

At first George passed the time day-dreaming about “the good old days” when he had enjoyed prestige and power.

His nights were spent prowling around the house he could no longer afford. There was no way his meagre savings, nor even the fairly-generous company settlement, could cover the debts George had recklessly run up while an executive.

George's wife became alarmed as he consistently refused to eat more than a nibble of the meals she prepared. He rarely spoke to her anymore, except to complain. When his wife found George early one morning sobbing in the kitchen, she insisted he go for professional help.

Inaction often follows loss. George's wife saved their marriage, and her husband's self-respect, by her insistence that he take action by seeing a therapist. She recommended the social worker in private practice who had helped her to lose weight and gain confidence. George liked the idea that this therapist used hypnotherapy; he wanted a fast solution to his troubles.

Hypnotherapy can help you choose to live rather than to shrivel.

After listening to George for a while, the therapist asked him to make a list of all the negative statements he was repeating to himself. Comments such as “I'm too old to get a job”; “No one will want to hire me”; “I must be stupid to have been laid off”; “I can't possibly pay off all our bills”; “Even if I do find a job it won't be as good as the one I had”; “None of my friends will want to know me now”; “A real man would have held on to the job.”

Such negative self-hypnosis (NSH) must be counteracted for depression to be conquered.

Logical argument (e.g., you were not to blame for the plant shut-down, or your creditors will accept partial payments) rarely has much impact.

The cause of loss-induced depression is emotion, not logic. That is why hypnosis is so effective in changing the doom and gloom that follows loss. Hypnosis taps directly into your deep emotional self.

George was encouraged to make a list of positive statements. These were not necessarily directly linked with the NSH list.

This positive list included such messages as “My wife loves me”; “I am an honest person”; “I have much to offer an employer”; “I enjoy hard work”; “I am competent”; “I am confident”; “I am well-educated”; “I know so much about mining.”

These statements were fed back to George while he relaxed in hypnosis. He was also urged to repeat them to himself several times a day.

To help George leave the past behind, he was also encouraged to watch the Psychovisual Therapy (PsyV) DVD, ’Relax & Let Go.’ Relax & Let Go

After these initial steps, the social worker used hypnosis to probe George's deepest desires, what he really wanted to do with his life.

To George's surprise, he discovered that an adolescent dream was still very much alive within him. He had long fantasized about working abroad, not to make money but to serve the needy.

Now he came to see his layoff as an opportunity in disguise. George's enthusiasm grew, especially when, in hypnosis, he saw himself as highly successful, loved and appreciated, while helping villagers in some unnamed developing country.

With new-found confidence and growing optimism as results of his hypnotherapy, George and his wife decided to sell the house they no longer needed.

They made careful enquiries and then applied to one of the programs that loans former executives to so-called Third World countries on a semi-volunteer basis.

George now fully appreciates the message on the PsyV DVD, ’Relax & Let Go’: “Happiness is focusing on what is, on what you've got. Unhappiness is focusing on what you haven't got.”

Comment:

Good morning!

I have read your article and find it really makes the case for hypnosis as a reliable, fast and remarkably easy way to go from depression to productivity. This example really hits home as many more people George's age will face exactly what he was facing.

I remember all too well the feeling of being let go from corporate America, over 50, with nothing else on the horizon. In my case, the company was sold to another who promised all management that we had a place in their growth strategy. Three months later that didn't seem to be the case as all 34 branch managers nationwide were let go on the same day. Now I recognize that it was only a blip in the road but I sure wish that I had known and used hypnosis back then!