Therapy for the mind (rather than things like physiotherapy for the body) is often perceived as being really serious/slightly scary.
But therapy means many different things to different people and there are all sorts of therapies out there.
And hopefully, after reading this, Therapy won’t seem so serious and may even seem like a good idea.
For me and the therapies I practise, therapy is really just about
uncovering how your past is influencing your current thinking and therefore what you are experiencing in your life, and
re-evaluating and learning from your past so you can experience things differently, get different results in the future AND feel better about your past.
What’s not to love eh?
I’ve been a client for all the therapeutic interventions I offer now which is why I got qualified in them.
I like them because they are quick (normally hours, rather than days or months), effective and don’t keep you dwelling for long in the past.
Each one has transformed my life in some way at least once. For example…
Time Line Therapy
Allowed me to remember my late mum with a smile after 10 years of only being able to remember her through tears. At the same time, it allowed me to clear out the anger, sadness, fear and guilt from my past and learn different ways to think about things so I don’t feel those emotions in the same situations as I used to. All part of a breakthrough session day that set me up for the future.
Rapid Transformational Therapy
Helped me explain some niggling, seemingly odd behaviour by uncovering and learning from events in my childhood that got me believing that life had to be hard…and because of that, if it wasn’t hard, I’d make it hard! Helpful right? Resolved in a couple of hours and embedded by listening to a short audio track for 21 days.
Hypnotherapy
Helped me get rid of a very bad, unhealthy habit in just a couple of hours.
Neuro Linguistic Programming (“NLP”) used therapeutically
Made me whole again. Part of me wanted one thing and another part the opposite, so I’d sabotage my efforts in either direction. Also not very helpful. Once whole (after about an hour), I could decide what I wanted and keep moving forward without my old internal saboteur.
…. All of which are pretty normal issues to have, not massively ‘serious’, but really quite debilitating and, quite frankly, annoying!
So why therapy and why these therapies?
I’ll go into them in a bit more detail, but I mix up those four things
Time Line therapy – which uses mental imagery to clear up the past and set things up for the future.
Rapid Transformational therapy – similar in structure to Time Line Therapy but uses hypnosis.
…and I throw in bits from Hypnotherapy and NLP into those two when I think it’s useful.
So why those two therapies (with added extras)? What can they do for you?
Why therapy?
As with coaching, the basic premise of change for these techniques is ‘reframing’...like this image...the scene looks completely different in colour (the town looks quite inviting) vs black and white (it looks a bit bleak).
If you can see your experience a different way, the meaning you attach to it changes and you feel better about it. And the process of doing that helps you learn things that you can use and will help you in the future.
For example, any time you make a comparison including yourself you are reframing your experience
“I’ve never really felt like I was getting anywhere, but when I look back over the last 10 years, I’ve actually achieved a lot”
“I thought my job was pretty simple but when I started explaining it to that new person, I realised it takes quite a lot of skill to do what I do”
…both of which will help with your self-confidence going forward.
But the focus for coaching is on the future, and the way we think about things now is impacted by all the things we’ve experienced (and learnt as a result) in our past.
Coaching may acknowledge what’s come from the past and perhaps explore it a bit, but the main focus is to find out how it’s impacting you currently and then work on and embed different options for the future.
“Given that’s what you’ve learnt and what you use today, what do we need to do to change it for the future”
Therapy does that too but also purposely looks at the past.
What’s the root cause of your current thinking?
How, when why and what did you learn from past experiences?
How did they make you feel?
How can you learn to feel differently about what happened, learn something new and embed that new way of thinking for the future?
...and that's how therapy
helps you look at your past differently so you can feel better about it,
captures and embeds useful learnings from that review for use in your future
Why are these therapies quick and effective?
Because they use the power of your Unconscious Mind and how it works.
What you need to know about your unconscious mind and how to get the best out of it as a result, is the topic of a blog for another day.
For this blog, all you need to know is that your unconscious mind is like your internal computer that stores all your memories and everything you have ever learnt.
To use the iceberg analogy, your conscious mind (what you ARE thinking about right now) is the tip of the iceberg and your unconscious mind is everything below the water line...everything that is outside of what you’re thinking about right now.
All our habits of thought and behaviour are maintained and driven by our unconscious mind, so it’s that that needs to change if we want to change the way we habitually think and behave.
And just like any computer, because the capacity and processing power of your unconscious mind is so much bigger than your conscious mind, it works REALLY fast.
Time Line Therapy and Rapid Transformational Therapy take advantage of how the unconscious mind works and work with it directly by sidelining the conscious mind using an element of trance.
So what’s the basic process?
Identify the root cause(s) of your issue
that may be outside of your conscious memory. These are generally events in your childhood and later past with high emotion attached to them. Just understanding where an issue came from can be incredibly liberating as it demonstrates the reason for what can seem like irrational thoughts and behaviours.
Review, reassess and reinterpret these memories to resolve them
releasing the emotion associated with them. By doing this, these old memories become emotionally flat and relationship scars are healed. When you think of these old memories again, you will no longer get pulled back into the same negative emotion that was attached to them.
Install new learning, beliefs, options and strategies at an unconscious level.
The benefit of this is that they become part of who you are and how you behave quicker than you could achieve through conscious practice and repetition.
What’s the difference between the two therapies?
Time Line Therapy
Uses the fact that your mind stores all memories by time which can be viewed as a line - your time line.
It uses mental imagery to float above and along your time line.
Reviewing and visiting past events.
Learning what you need to learn to let go of past emotion and the unhelpful things you learnt or decided.
Installing new decisions and 'future memories'.
As with meditation, this type of mental imagery results in a very light trance that's still deep enough for the changes to be embedded in your unconscious mind.
Reflecting on what you learned after the session reinforces the learning for your conscious mind.
Rapid Transformational Therapy
Rapid Transformational therapy uses hypnosis and some specific techniques to complete the core therapy process.
In trance, your unconscious mind picks the memories related to your issue. By reviewing and analysing these, your mind understands the connection between these past events and your current issue. Specific techniques help you resolve the memories.
As part of the session, new choices are embedded using the power of suggestion in hypnosis. This part is recorded for you to listen to for the following 21 days. Embedding the suggestions firmly in your unconscious mind so that they easily become your new way of thinking.
So do you NEED therapy? Possibly not
Will it make you feel better about your past? Yes!
Can it help you change? Absolutely!
Contact me if you’d like to explore if one of these therapies or coaching is a good option for the changes you want to make in your life: mary@mezza.me.uk.
And if you'd like to try out my monthly emails that provide a roundup of my blogs as well as other insights, you can sign up here.