by Celeste Hackett
If God appeared to me and gave me the gift of being able to cure the world of just one hurtful feeling, do you know what it would be? What would it be for you? Some things to consider are sadness, anger, loneliness, fear, and guilt just to name a few. Any of these feelings would be quite worthy choices. It’s a most fun question. Isn’t it? Some people dream of what they would do with a million dollars, some with 3 wishes from a genie, but I guess I am weird because I prefer this kind of dreaming if I am going to spend time dreaming that is.
Well, I know my choice and it would be loneliness. I’ve just run into this problematic feeling so many times and it is the cause of so many other bad feelings and bad actions. Think deeply on it and you will see what I mean. And to help humanity overcome the loneliness this is what I would instill, a sense of connection, a full warm heart, a feeling of being whole and complete. Close your eyes and spend some quiet time meditating on what those things feel like. Aren’t they the opposite of loneliness or at least very close? Can you imagine feeling those warm and wonderful feelings and then needing to overeat? To Smoke? To drink too much alcohol? To do drugs? Can you imagine feeling those good feelings and taking a life? Probably not.
A few weeks ago I finished hypnosis session number 4 with a Policeman. He came in to see me for what he described as bouts of panic. His wife had been caught in an affair with a good friend and he had been sleeping on his stepmother’s couch while awaiting a divorce. He was brimming with emotions over the whole thing, but the worst one was the feeling of utter loneliness that he said he felt “deep in his gut”. He also felt so scared of feeling lonelier that every time he thought of getting his own apartment he’d have a panic attack. Fear of feeling lonely was causing his panic attacks!
When the panic attacks began they so shook up this man that he reached out for help. We did the usual regression stuff to uncover the start of the feeling. The initial sensitizing event by all appearances seemed to be his Dad’s death when he was in preschool. Regressing before the death of his Father, found him only feeling peaceful. I thought we had gotten somewhere after that session, but when he opened his eyes and sat up he did something totally unexpected, he looked glum. Then, he shook his head sadly and said with obvious disappointment, “I don’t feel any better.”
Thinking quickly, I responded with “Just let it all soak in”, and I also added, “Do your 7th Path” (our special brand of self-hypnosis).
It is unusual when a client emerges still feeling badly after I am so certain that we’ve done good work. I made a note of his reaction after the session, but then I remembered that anything can happen with clients and that he would probably begin to feel better as all the work we did became real for him over the coming week. Still, I thought, his reaction was a bit unusual.
He arrived for session 3 with that still awful, gut wrenching feeling. As he walked through the door of my home (I conduct sessions in a home office), he put his hand to his stomach in an attempt to self-soothe. He said that he couldn’t sleep. He said he felt like he was going crazy. The fear of being alone constantly knawel at him, and he said he had a lot of trouble concentrating which concerned him when he thought about his job performance. I noticed that he had dark circles under his eyes, and heavy energy.
In the session that day I regressed on the feeling that was still there and worked through some more scenes that his mind hadn’t provided before. Try as I might, however, I could not help him clear that feeling this time at all. I tapped that day using EFT style techniques, and had him rub spots that hurt and encouraged him to express his feelings. I regressed again and again complete with many informed child moments, but as the time ticked by nothing seemed to ease his pain.
When those things didn’t work, I didn’t quit. I carried on. I had him put the feeling he was feeling into his fists and then into a pillow over and over in a punching action. He cried gut-wrenching cries and sobbed and then after quite a bit of time he said he only felt minutely better.
I had no choice but to emerge him because time was up. I directed him to practice 7th Path a few minutes first and when he became visibly calmer, I directed him to exit the hypnotic state. After emerging he hung his head and said, “I don’t know if I feel any better! I don’t know if this is helping. Maybe I should go get on meds”. Still more tears brimmed in his eyes.
I felt worried about him, but frankly, we had taken up so much time working together that day that now another client was waiting for me, so I didn’t have time to continue worrying about him at that point. Instead, I said again, the tried and usually true sentiment of “Let it soak in.”
He arrived on a rainy dark day for his next session, and despite no sun his dreariness cast a shadow on my door step. I had been so busy I admit that I had hardly thought of him since the week before. He said he was still feeling, in his words, like “utter crap”. Now I began to be more concerned. Utter crap is not what I had hoped for.
Thinking back to the last session I remembered how I tried everything to help him to feel better. A spontaneous regression enters now into my own mind at recalling that session. I am a child watching Rudolf the Red nosed Reindeer on TV. The Mountain man leading the exposition to the land of misfits, (or was it from that land?) is a miner who is always hopeful of finding gold. At one point in the cartoon he forcefully chips at the ice with a lot of hopeful enthusiasm and then after awhile licks his pick axe to see if he tastes the precious metal. With great irritation he finally grunts, “Nothing!” It’s funny how a scene like that can come to mind at a time like this. Well, Cal Banyan always told us the mind works by association.
The next session I was inspired by a quote, someone once told me “keep shoveling until you hit cement”. I can’t remember who said that? Matt Sison? Stephen Parkhil? Sorry boys, for my memory lapse, but I do remember the sentiment itself and have been grateful for it many times. So, with that I embarked on yet another intense session of regressing and releasing emotions and I also worked in other phases of 5-PATH® as it seemed to fit.
At one point I thought I had discovered a DFE (dark force entity), but it just turned out to be more fear. Finally, when all else seemed to fail in this session I tried using reason to persuade the subconscious mind that holding onto the fear wouldn’t help him, and once I began to feel like I was having an argument with him, I moved into direct suggestion for his issue.
He emerged once again saying, “I don’t feel any better” while rubbing a hand over his sleep deprived and tired of the tears falling face. In that moment, I thought back to the first day he came to see me. He had said a psychiatrist diagnosed him with bipolar disorder. She had come to this conclusion after having him fill out a questionnaire that took him all of 15 minutes. As he told me about this diagnosis that day tears had sprung to his eyes while he pleadingly asked me, “Is it true? Do you think I am bi-polar? Do you think she is right?” I said, “I don’t know, but seems to me that when you are going through a messy divorce and your wife has cheated on you that you might have a lot of feelings coming up and that, possibly, she hasn’t considered that fully. I’m no doctor, mind you. Why don’t you get a second opinion?”
That seemed to soothe him, but now, after all of this work, I began to wonder, could there be an actual mental illness here that I was just not capable of helping with? Hypnotists like me work with the emotions of ordinary everyday people. And most times the feelings can be relieved and when that happens clients improve greatly, but that just wasn’t the case here, now was it? The feelings were not being relieved!
After he left my own mood took a turn for the worse. I felt like I was failing him, and I came to the sad realization that I had no idea what more to do him. I had never seen a mind hold onto pain and wrong thinking like this guy. If a subconscious mind could be a pit bull, he’d be barkin’. The way I saw it I only had one thing left that I could really do, give up. I made a decision that if he wasn’t better by the next session that I’d refer him out.
Feeling helpless I turned to prayer. His last session was on a Thursday and I prayed all that night, then all day through Friday as I would think of him and I had him on my mind a lot. I prayed all weekend long as I puttered around the house doing the usual activities, washing the dishes, brushing my teeth, and vacuuming. I also did a 3 hour meditation where I talked everything over in my mind with the Supreme Spirit.
When I prayed I flat out informed God that I had not asked him to be sent to me and that if God did not shift him that I was referring him out to a psychologist. I threatened God with an ultimatum like that. I also said that this client had a problem that was like a brick wall, solid, unmoving, but then I thought well, who makes the fabric of the bricks for any brick wall? Who makes the stone on the earth? Who makes every thing? Who makes the thoughts we hold? Who inspires us? Who strengthens us? Who is in charge of this old planet anyway? And who was putting these questions in my mind?
I began to meditate on the idea that God can send a little wave of a thought whenever and wherever he wants to that can change everything, and he has many, many times. I reminded him of that. I mean, haven’t you ever been blue one minute and lifted the next? It happens all the time. Where does that shift in mood or idea that changes everything come from?
Along with asking for the Divine to give my client the changes he wanted, I also visualized my client improving using my other successes to imagine him changing like they had. This made it feel more real to me that he could change. In my mind I could “hear” the happiness in his voice as he told me he was better and I could feel how happy I was about that. In doing this I was trying to get my belief up since there is a very old bible scripture that says, “Pray, believing”. I pretty well turned my tenacity to prayer and bugged the hell (sorry for the pun) out of the good Lord.
Well, what do you know? He called me on Tuesday to tell he was going to postpone his appointment the next day, so he could sleep late after what would be a long, hard night shift the night before. Sleep in? Was he sleeping? He said yes that he finally was. He didn’t know what happened, but he just felt better. In fact, He’d need next week off too so he could move from his Stepmother’s couch to his new apartment. He found an apartment and was ready to move into it, alone! His voice was cheerful and light. My mouth hung open wider than the sky and I got a flash of a picture of the Divine, smiling. Gratitude can not begin to name the feeling I felt that morning. I was fueled by that for weeks.
Want to make a difference? I teach this stuff here in Dallas a couple of times a year. I’d love to show you how you can have amazing experiences helping clients. We so very much need more hypnotists helping humanity become more positive and emotionally balanced. Won’t you join us? Don’t worry; most clients are much easier than this one was!
