Bitchin’ and whining won’t change a thing…

…and neither will hypnosis or any other therapuetic tool while you keep on bitching’

We all complain.

Some of us are masters at it. If it was an Olympic sport, there wouldn’t be enough gold to make medals for all the categories of world class complaining. A few subject classes could be these, although there are endless possibilities and sub categories!

Being sick and having medical conditions.

Money problems.

Family Issues.

Work and career disappointments.

Other people.

The world.

Yep, we can complain about everything and nothing all the time and many people often do.

One thing I’ve noticed is that people are so quick to tell me what they don’t want. ‘I don’t want to feel like this anymore.’ ‘I don’t want to be like this.’ ‘This is too hard and I can’t cope anymore.’

And they tell me these stories so fast, so easily, its as if its been rehearsed.

Of course it has. These are the same things they’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen to them for as long as they have been distressed by some aspect of their lives.

And what’s worse is that our society bonds through adversity. Support groups exist for everything and the people in them, many will be worse off than the next person.

I remember the first time I really observed this, I was sitting beside my Mum in her hospital bed, and my aunts came in and sat down and after a perfunctory, ‘How you doing?’ to my Mum, proceeded, each one of them, to list their many illnesses and health complaints. My Mum actually said to them, ‘I should get out of this bed and let you in here.’

She was different my Mum, never complained. Even though she had a tumour the size of a melon removed from her only weeks before and was undergoing very aggressive chemotherapy to try to arrest the advance of lymphoma. She never complained.

That scene stuck with me ever since and I saw parallels when I first started working in the Mental Health field with charitable organisations and support groups for anxiety and depression. Most of the people who came in just wanted to tell their story about how hard things were, how awful life was, how tough they had it, worse than anyone else and the people there, just like my aunts in that hospital room bonded with each other through tragedy, pain, adversity.

I would create self help programmes and they would be so poorly attended that funding would be cut.

The problem is that complaining feels good. All that moaning and groaning and getting it off our chest, it releases dopamine, we get a hit and want more, same as with anything that gives us a slight reward, like getting like on social media. But complaining repeatedly doesn’t help.

Can’t help at all and in fact makes it worse. Because you are affirming to yourself, to your subconsicous mind every time you utter a complaint that this is how life is and its what you want to see more of.

Yeah. I know. You don’t want it. Don’t want more of it at all. But constantly talking about it holds everything that’s causing you pain and distress front and centre of your mind. And the more you think about something, the more you speak of it, the more you experience it and that spirals and snowballs.

And hypnosis and nothing else either will change your experience without you changing your habits too. Particularly this one.

This takes energy, commitment. The application of resources, the nvestment of time, money and effort.

I had an enquiry once from a person with alcohol problems. They drank too much too often, to blackout stage and wanted to stop. Could I help them?

I spoke to them about their issue, their life, circumstances etc and then started talking about what would be required from them, the effort, the commitment, the work they would have to put it.

Nope, Not interested in that. They thought all they would have to do is lie back in a recliner while I put them into a trance said ‘abracadabra’ and hey presto! No more alcohol problems.

Its the same with many people, they contact me regarding their health problem or their gambling addiction or pornography use or depression and anxiety or whatever, doesn’t really matter. They all stem from similar places and require the same path to healing.

But they get in touch and are able to ryhme of their issues like it a favourite memorised poem or prayer.

But when I ask what they want instead?

Silence.

When I ask if they are prepared to commit to the effort it takes to change and make that investment in themselves?

Silence.

So here’s some fr** advice for ya – stop complaining.

Think about what you have that’s good. If you have bad knees, how’s your arms? If you have a headache, be grateful you have a dark quiet room to lie down in.

I’m being a bit flippant with those examples but there’s always good in our lives if we would just stop staring at the sh!t and look for it.

My Mum lay in that hospital bed, not complaining even though she was going through the most painful, invasive treatment for a disease that ravaged her body. She always answered with a cheery, ‘I’m grand’ when people asked how she was, and then listened attentively as they went on to describe their altogether much worse ailments. My Mum’s been dead over 25 years now, she was only 47 when she passed, five months after the cancer was found in her. Most of my aunts are still alive.

Focus on what’s good in your life, and allow yourself to start thinking about how you can make it even better. And when time comes to start making those changes. Commit and get support because its always easier with someone holding space for you to grow into.

Love,

Cynthia xx