Every week I see people at my hypnotherapy clinics in Cambridge & Huntingdon wanting help with different issues and many issues are fairly straightforward. It may be a phobia that needs dealing with such as a fear of flying or a client wants more confidence in a certain area of life.
However, some clients come for therapy when life doesn’t seem to hold much meaning for them. They may feel that life doesn’t have a point to it or they have lost their ‘joie de vivre’ for one reason or another. Sometimes this occurs when challenging events force us to stop and take stock of everything – events such as relationship breakdown, redundancy, personal injury, illness or bereavement, where we perceive a great deal of loss.
We might question whether we made the right decisions in the past or maybe the future doesn’t look too enticing. Not too long ago I went to see the film ‘Gravity’ (warning spoilers coming up if you haven’t seen it) which was about a scientist, Dr Ryan Stone played by Sandra Bullock, battling to find a way back to Earth following a collision between the Space Station and space debris. During a conversation with her astronaut colleague, played by George Cloony, we learn that in the recent past Ryan lost her child due to an accident. It becomes clear to the audience that she is suffering from loss and a sense of meaningless. Floating in the blackness of space serves as a metaphor of her current state of mind.
The film itself questions the point of life and we hear Ryan asking the question ‘is there a point to life’? This is a hard existential question to answer as there may ultimately be no point or many different ones according to a person’s beliefs. What we all have though is an opportunity to enjoy the ‘ride’ and what is important is that each and every one of us has a story to tell as Ryan comes to realise later in the film.
Some stories are more incredible than others but it is our personal stories that make us who we are: the stories that we tell ourselves and others about what happened to us, how we feel about them and the world around us. At a critical point in the film Ryan is faced with what seems to be certain death and she accepts it, even seeming to embrace it. It is at this point though that she experiences a kind of re-birth, enabling her to decide to fight and survive! To survive and tell her story – that becomes the point of life at that moment in time!
Every story we encounter and live through helps us to grow and evolve in consciousness – perhaps that’s the point of life! You might wonder what this has to do with Cognitive Hypnotherapy but every week I hear many stories from clients that I see. I feel honoured to be a part of their story and that they choose to share some of it with me. What has become clear to me though is that resistance to one’s circumstances, which often includes the need for change, creates a great deal of suffering. I know this too from my own journey in life that the more I railed and resisted a particular thing, the worse I felt. Of course, as a hypnotherapist I aim to help clients change the way they feel about something according to what they want to achieve. Sometimes we can change our circumstances and we may need support to do so but, at other times, it is not always possible to change them. In these cases however, we can change the way we respond to them.
Changing our response often helps to change the circumstances because we are no longer reacting in the same way. It allows us to enter into a different space where new meaning and possibilities can emerge! As soon as Dr Ryan changes her response to her circumstances she finds her way back to Earth having decided to take charge of her situation, whatever the outcome! If you are in a challenging space at the moment and would like some help, please give me a call and we discuss how Cognitive Hypnotherapy in Cambridge or Huntingdon could help you. In Cambridge I work at The Coach House Clinic in Trumpington and the Salus Wellness Clinic near The Grafton Centre. Adele Richmond Cognitive Hypnotherapy https://adelerichmond.com Tel: 07703 211449 email: adele@adelerichmond.com