When you realise you’re floundering, ask for help.

None of us has all the answers. And sometimes we forget the stuff we know that could help us because we’re so caught up in whatever is going on around us. That’s an unfortunate byproduct of the autonomic nervous system bypass, straight to the hind brain, the limbic system, which means that when we’re stressed we don’t have access to our conscious and creative mind and that’s usually where solutions will come from. So, when we’re stressed we are hampered in our ability to solve problems.

And we’re all susceptible to getting caught up in our ‘stuff’ and not realising it. Earlier this year, at the end of January – which BTW seems like a lifetime ago now as so much has changed in our world because even though back then we knew about Cov-19 and were concerned about it, (more concerned than Boris &Co, that’s for sure) we had no idea of the impact it would have on us all – and once again I digress,

Okay, back to January, I had gotten soaked to the skin walking Amelia, I had worn a coat I had forgotten isn’t waterproof and a pair of leggings and we got caught in a downpour, a monsoon like rainfall. Literally soaked to the skin, all my clothes were soaking wet and I had to get back to the car and drive 30 minutes home.

I had wisely put a towel in the car for Amelia, so she got dry and I sat on it as I drove home so I wouldn’t soak the car seat. But I unwisely stopped at the shop to get money out of the ATM, adding even more time spent cold and wet.

Of course I developed a stinking cold. What was worse that it came on top of a period of great stress and anxiety. I had moved from Northern Ireland to the North West of England a few months earlier, I was still sorting out all the bureaucracy of the house, my finances, banking, postal address etc and I was still dealing with the grief of Reilly’s loss, so of course I was overwhelmed and open to infection.

And this was on top of my already weak autoimmune system, I’d been diagnosed with a thyroid condition in 2015 and living next door to a complete nightmare caused me significant continual stress that had weakened my health significantly. All things I’d moved to hopefully improve.

And now I had this sticking rotten cold, but what also came through at the same time was nose polyps in both nostrils, so I was totally congested and unable to breath and had a nose swollen to x3 its usual size because of the polpys. I was sore, uncomfortable and felt horrible, exhausted and at the end of my tether.

I managed to get in to see my doctor and she prescribed oral steroids and started the process for me to see the hospital specialists in the ENT clinic.

And the steroids, much as I am always reluctant to take any kind of medication, in this case I could hardly wait to start the course. And the effect was almost instantaneous. The polyps disappeared, the congestion was gone, my energy levels rebounded and I felt like I had superpowers, I could breathe through my nose!

Until the course ended and within days the polyps reappeared. And I gave it a couple of months before the discomfort sent me back to my doctor. Of course by now, Covid-19 had come into play and I couldn’t see her and all she could do was represcribe the steroids and send a follow up letter to the hospital.

And once again the steroids cleared up the polyps and congestion and again the improvement lasted only as long as the course of tablets and once finished, the polyps and congestion came back.

And around this time I started to realise that this wasn’t about a cold anymore. I’d gotten over the cold, this was something else, a chronic condition and chronic conditions are 99% caused by stress.

It had taken a while for the penny to drop but it finally did. We can be so blind to our own situation, can’t we?

What does a hypnotherapist do when she realises she’s suffering from the physical manifestation of stress?

Well, if she’s stubborn, as I definitely sometimes am, she attempts to heal herself and that’s what I did.

All the things I knew, self hypnosis, subconscious dialogue, clearing and processing through tapping and energy healing. All great and I could reduce the polyps and in fact the one if my left nostril disappeared but the one in the right nostril and the congestion stayed. Nothing I did was working.

And so I did what I would recommend anyone else do. I started working with a professional who specialises in body/mind work. I’d done my initial hypnotherapy training with Jozef although we’d gone in different directions after that initial certification; me into healing childhood trauma and dissolving the blocks to living a happy, successful adult life, Jozef into mind/body work which complemented his nutritional and massage expertise.

And we’ve been working together now for a couple of months, six sessions in so far, because as I tell clients, hypnosis isn’t an instant fix. And whilst I feel better in some ways, the polyp in the right nostril and the sinus congestion are still there and still annoying. Not as overwhelmingly so as before but certainly a drawback to feeling my best.

But we continue working on it and even though I’m impatient to feel better, I’m patient with the process because I’ve had allergies and issues with breathing through my nose since I was a baby.  50 years of that subconscious conditioning isn’t changed in an instant. Unless it could be – another belief to explore later!

In our last session, Jozef displayed an intuitive grasp of my resistance to following his protocols and rightly called me on it. And he went through everything he had prescribed for me and asked me how I was getting on with it, and if I wasn’t doing it, why not.

This was really powerful for me on several different levels. The first being how it made me grasp the fact that I wasn’t fully committing to my own recovery. I bought the probiotics but didn’t take them. I used the netipot to rinse my nostrils a few times but not every morning and evening as I’d been instructed. I did the meditation and breathwork occasionally or not at all. And as for the Zumba, I hadn’t even remembered that I was supposed to do it.

Now that makes it sound like I wasn’t doing anything, I was doing a lot, including my own healing and clearing practices, I’d gone gluten free too and started my own fitness training programme. But I wasn’t following Jozef’s protocol and he’d been intuitively guided to prescribe those processes for me, so I needed to step up.

The second powerful realisation I had from Jozef checking my adherence to the protocols was how important it is to interrogate the resistance to following through. Both for myself in this situation but also for my clients when they do not do the work I ask them to do to create the shifts in their thinking that we are working towards. There is learning to uncover in the resistance.

All of this comes together as a healing process, the hypnotic intervention, the self work and following the resistance to discover and process what it reveals. It all creates a loop that goes deeper as you heal deeper, enabling incredible healing and self discovery.

Jozef wasn’t finished yet, he moved on to ask me about pain, what was pain for me and I gave my therapist’s answer to that, describing the difference between acute and chronic pain, the physical, emotional and spiritual components of pain and how it can come from any part of the mind, body or soul and affect any part of them too.

And Jozef didn’t let me off lightly, I had to describe what pain was for me, and all the time I’m talking, he’s tapping and rubbing and soothing his body, his hands and arms in constant motion around his head and body.

And as I start to describe my pain, and I close my eyes at this point and part of me moves into that altered state of hypnotic trance, I start to feel the pain I’d been denying. The stress I’d been holding at bay by keeping myself busy, always busy. The grief of Reilly’s loss, still a major tear in my heart. My fears of not creating the impact I want to make in the world, not doing the work I love, all the resistance I have in not being fully myself as I still struggle with feelings of not being good enough, special enough, who am I to dare dream so big?

All that came through and as I finished speaking, Jozef simply said, ‘Keep going.’

And that’s when I started to become aware of the pain in my body, pain I’d denied, suppressed, ignored because it was inconvenient. The pain in my right wrist which I can only imagine comes from gripping my pen painfully tight as I write my journal and blog every day. The pain in my shoulder and neck from all the tension I hold, my shoulders habitually screwed up high as if waiting for a blow. My knees hurt, my left ankle, there was discomfort in my stomach and of course, the pain of my sinuses.

All these things that I didn’t ever allow myself to notice, to pay attention to. How could I move forward when I was so stressed and tense where I am right now?

And so we started doing some body exercises to release some of the tension I was holding and although it was hard work, the release was incredible.

And as the session came to an end, I knew I had been wanting, expecting even, the same magic bullet from Jozef that some clients expect from me.

And whilst there is magic, it’s not instant. Which is why people turn to medication, but even that’s not the magic cure all you might think it to be, it may or may not repress your symptoms but as the root issue is unaddressed and the root issue is almost always unprocessed trauma and emotions, then it will rise to the body level once again as something else.

You have to do the work. I have to do the work. The emotions have to be processed and sometimes that takes longer because we’ve buried them under so much crud.

An hour in a therapists chair is not a miracle cure, but it usually is a relieving event and a signpost to deeper work to be done.

That’s Jozef’s gift to me this week. The realisation that I’m not immune from wanting it to be easy and the kick up the arse to play my part in my healing of my body, mind and soul.

Because I can either take the steroids every couple of months and continue to feel mostly awful much of the time and with the threat of greater side effects or I do the work, take the long road, feel awful now but slowly improve bit by bit, day by day, restoring myself to my original blueprint of full health and happiness.

I want that, a complete restoration to health and happiness. And I’m going for that, nothing less. Wouldn’t you?

Love,

Cynthia xx

PS. If you’ve been stuck, feeling like you’ve been living the same day over and over and its no fun anymore, if you’ve fought weight issues, depression, anxiety, addiction, or simply a feeling of general dissatisfaction with how your life is unfolding for you, and you feel like you’ve tried everything and nothing has worked. It’s natural to feel that a solution is almost impossible.

That’s part of what keeps the problem in place.

But real lasting change is possible.

Think how it would feel achieving your goals with far less resistance,  whether it’s dropping excess weight, gaining freedom from depression and anxiety, being a rockstar in your business or career, or excelling in your personal relationships. You can do it, you have no fears about staying stuck and not moving forward anymore.

See yourself fully present and grounded, living with total fulfillment and satisfaction with how life is unfolding for you, with no regrets, as you carve your own path forward, moving forward always forward, no looking back .

Want this now? Check out this page and get in touch to get started on living your ideal life today.

https://cynthiacurry.uk/change-for-life-with-hypnotherapycoaching-reconnect-to-your-true-self/