This is a follow-up post about the Hypnotherapy Project, which I collaborated on in July and August of 2007 with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hoped to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

I have had a couple of follow-up meetings with Greg, debriefings of a sort. We did some tweaking, he tried out a few new tools he picked up at a recent convention (topline: they’re way cool, and Greg is slowly but surely turning into an unstoppable force.) Both times, he tiptoed around the issue of me following up—mainly, what was happening with me and why I wasn’t.

I could blame it on the heat—you can blame a lot on 96ºF weather, especially when it’s happening in your apartment*.

I could blame it on a busy work schedule, or the necessity of attending to various items that were somewhat neglected as I devoted up to four hours per day, 30 days in a row, to plumbing the depths of my psyche.

I could even blame it on mental exhaustion and it would be true: you plumb the depths of your psyche and expose it to the world 30 days in a row and see how sprightly you feel.

But the truth is, another big reason I haven’t written any follow-up analysis of my 30-day hypnosis experiment because I was afraid.

Afraid that my analysis would be wrong—how can I know what really happened to me, and how it’s affecting me now?

Afraid that my writing would be inadequate—how could analysis of something after the fact be as compelling as writing made raw and present by exposed nerves and immersion?

Afraid: isn’t that why I agreed to try the experiment in the first place, to deal with my fear?

Well, no. No, it wasn’t. I got into it to see what would happen. What I found out was—big surprise—there was a lot of fear under there, gumming up the works. We put names and faces and events to the fear, but hoo boy, was it startling to run up against so much of it.

Did I think that it was all going to evaporate once the 30 days were up? Once I could put names and faces and events to it? Apparently, a part of me did just that, and was astonished when—oh! there it is—it popped up again here, when the phone rang, or there, when I opened my checkbook register.

The bad news: the fear does not just evaporate when you turn the lights on.

The good news: it is easier to look at it in the light than imagine it in the dark.

Some examples:

• While I still feel a bit of resistance come Thursday, when Toastmasters rolls around, it is nothing like the paralyzing fear I had (even if I was good at hiding it) when I first took over as President back in June.
• I’ve had the money my father left me sitting in a low-interest holding account since he died three years ago this fall. I mean crap interest—personal savings account-level interest. It’s my last tie to him and I guess I was afraid to let it go, a not-uncommon thing after a loved one dies, apparently. This week, I wrote a check for the whole shebang and closed it out. The writing was a little shaky on the check, and I felt a little sick and nervous walking to the bank, but I did it.
• I’ve started keeping a daily calendar where I actually slot out everything that must be done that day so I can see how much I’ve committed—and over-committed to.
• As a result of the above, I am actually taking on less. At least, I think so.
• Heaps of books, clothes and other goods have been making their way out of my life, I’ve made considerable inroads on the mountains of paper to be entered into various accounting programs.
• For those of you into the woo, I had a pretty amazing thumbs-up from the Universe about 10 days ago. I’m not quite ready to talk about it now, but it went a long way towards validating the public writing work I’ve been doing over the past three years.

How much of the change is directly attributable to the hypnotherapy, vs. the regular therapy or even the super-regular process of living with my eyes and ears open? It’s impossible to quantify, of course. There’s no double-blind protocol when you are working on you, no matter how many of your sub-personalities have signed on for the test. But I assure you that great change has been set in motion.

And I will do my best to document it as it happens. Maybe not fearlessly, but openly, honestly and with the great hope in my heart that any step one of us takes moves us all forward a little bit.

xxx
c

*As documented by a thermometer purchased 10 days ago to prove to myself I was neither exaggerating nor going mad. And that’s with shades drawn, and windows blacked out with foam core and beach towels, and three fans blowing the sad stream of cool air generated by the portable A/C directly on my mainly-naked person. But hey—it’s a dry heat.

Image by ffi via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: change, fear, Hypnotherapy Project, truth.

This covers day 30 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I’m collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

like butterfly wings

that create the breeze
that releases the wheel
the statue
the equation
the story
or the love inside hearts
that really moves mountains

sometimes the ending
comes quietly

but it is no less extraordinary
for coming without fanfare
or parades
or exclamation points
or punctuation
of any kind
except maybe
ellipses

if the end
is really the beginning
then maybe ellipses
are the only way to go…

xxx
c

Image by darrin170 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: Hypnotherapy Project.

This covers day 29 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I’m collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

As I’ve mentioned before, most people wouldn’t know it to look at me, but my self-esteem usually hovers between weak and non-existent. I’ve made up for my shortfall in this area the way I suspect most people like me do, with a combination of bluster, good face and lotsa hustle.

But I’m finally realizing the need to address this core issue of lack head on. I mean, I can continue with the tap dancing, but Jesus God, it’s exhausting, and I suspect that energy could be put to more productive use. Besides, using the team or “hive mind” theories of advancement (the latter of which is maybe more appropriate to a discussion about sub-personalities), isn’t it just way more efficient to utilize all of your resources? If I’m really interested in moving things forward, wouldn’t a few extra bodies help?

So, how to get there? Well, first you get that 98-lb. weakling—self-esteem, in my case—into training. There’s no end to methods for tackling this, but they seem to boil down to two: (1) do what you can with what you’ve got; and (2) act as-if about the rest (I can’t find it right now, but Steve Pavlina has a terrific podcast about using as-if to get you from where you are to where you want to go).

One critical component of moving forward is support. I’ve got a few things already in place—a file of You Go, Grrrl! emails and suchlike to sift through when I get down, and a short list of people to call on when I just plain need comforting. But these are relics of places I’ve been, and chroniclers of events I’ve been through; how does one get to the next step? How do you stay “up” as you turn your attention to the big places you want to get to when all you have is this poor, 98-lb. weakling to escort you?

Apparently, you solicit the support of the people who are already there: your heroes and idols, the people you admire who are farther (waaaaay farther) down the path you’d like to travel.

For the record, I had no idea what Greg was going to do on this last day together. And, like many of our experiments (including, if I’m honest, this whole Hypnotherapy Project itself), I might not have agreed to it had I known what the getting-there would be like. A lot of this is really hard emotional work, even if it does leave you feeling great afterwards.

On Friday, he put me under and brought me to a large room. And one by one, all of my heroes and idols came to me and said a few words: some, of encouragement; some, of advice; some, just a “hello”. Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King. I met old teachers and bosses—leaders whose skills I admire even more now that I’m learning how to lead. I met Oprah and Barack Obama. And at the very end, my core of support—my parents and my paternal grandparents, whose approval and admiration meant more than anyone’s to me—came out to greet me. I’m weeping now as I write about it, but believe me, I was weeping more then, and from the start. Wave upon wave of love and support and the power of the ages swept over me; it’s a good thing Greg picked a Friday, is all I have to say.

Well, of course, that’s not all I have to say. I have to say this: we are not alone in our quest. We are supported, all of us, by some invisible (but no less real for it) web of energy that flows between us now, and through us to all people of all time. It’s right there—right there—all the time, ready to tap into whenever we need it.

The trick, of course, is letting ourselves do it. It’s so easy to get closed off as we navigate through our super-sped up world. It’s easy to be a grownup and hard to be an adult who accepts that a part of herself is eternally childlike. But I am, and you are. You are still that child inside who, hopefully, had a time of wonder and wide-open imagination. And if you did, you can go there anytime and experience the greatness of the All-That-Is.

I don’t live there all the time; I’m not sure if it’s a good thing to do that. But to know it’s there, to understand that at the core, we are love and love is all that matters, and to live with that knowledge all the time—well, I’m not there yet, either, but I can start to see what it will be like.

And it is the most beautiful, beautiful thing of all.

xxx
c

Photomosaic by MontanaRaven, from 36 Flickr photos by other contributors, via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. For the record, I couldn’t link directly to the Flickr page with that image, so I created a workaround URL; it says http://xrl.us/wonderful, but it redirects to her Flickr page.

TOPICS: Hypnotherapy Project.

This covers day 28 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I’m collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

A funny thing happened at the end of my last week: I started flipping out about the whole thing ending.

Don’t get me wrong—I knew I’d find plenty of use for all of that extra time I’d be getting back come Monday. (The project was due to end on Saturday, a “tape day” for me, so much less of a time commitment.) But I’d come to rely on and look forward to this everyday therapy, this daily confab with a good friend who was also on the path but whose job at this juncture was taking care of me.

I am not used to being the one taken care of, or cared for, you see. This became abundantly clear during my five-month incarceration in Cedars Sinai and my own apartment while recovering from my Crohn’s onset. As I’ve discussed before, when you’re unable to walk up a flight of stairs sans assistance, you learn pretty fast what it’s like having people help you out. (Topline: hard, at least for some of us.)

Add to that what my actual shrink calls my (lack-of-)entitlement issues, and you can see where this time with Greg was some heady stuff. Talking when I wanted to talk, about myself and some high-level, non-immediate issues—it was like being a sophomore in college again, only with someone way smarter and more experienced, who mainly wanted to talk about you.

I got a little lax in that last week. My notes are sketchy in those last few days, and I was busy enough to feel okay with putting off my updates until I wasn’t so busy. Greg’s notes are sketchy, too, but he has down that we did a live recap of the doorways trip, which makes sense since Thursdays are big days for me and Day 28 was a Thursday.

Four weeks of intensive growth is splendid, but a bit overwhelming. And writing from four days after the whole shebang is over, I can see that while things have begun to shift in this heady time, the real growth will happen much as it always does, slowly and over the long term.

At which point, of course, it will seem to have happened all at once. The 10-year overnight success, personal growth edition.

xxx
c

Image by tobym via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: Hypnotherapy Project.

This covers day 27 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I’m collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

When I first worked with Greg over a year ago, it was (ostensibly) to help me get back on the SCD, the diet I use to control my Crohn’s disease. The dang recording he made me worked so well, though, that I immediately told him we should not waste one more second on the diet stuff—I’d take care of that on my own time—but that we should start poking around to see what other enormo-changes we could effect.

Fast-forward to one year later. I’m back off the diet (big time) and in need of a tape that’s not a tape, or what I like to call “a digital file.” So yesterday, we made me a new recording to keep me off the bread and sugar, chocolate and potatoes, rice and soybeans.

Now, I’m fairly brutal with myself: I can force me to do an awful lot. But after a while, this makes life not so much fun and me not so much fun to be around, so to find this lovely, elegant way of doing an end run around myself at the ripe old age of 46 is pretty damned extraordinary. Hypnosis swiftly connects the needed action to the uber-goal, a really handy trick when it comes to delaying gratification. (And in case you hadn’t noticed, a plate of fresh-cut fries from In-and-Out Burger is awfully gratifying in the now.)

It’s up to me to commit, and to reinforce the good lessons learned and habits begun during these almost-30 days with Greg. But I think I’ll probably continue to check in with the blog about my progress in the weeks and months to come.

Partly because it might be illuminating for you. Mostly because it will be honest-making for me…

xxx
c

Image by newyork808 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: Hypnotherapy Project.