I went to see a hypnotherapist. [View all]

[Tobin S.]

Like I was saying in an earlier OP, I had decided to go to see a hypnotherapist for an anxiety issue involving my physical certification to do my job. I need to pass this physical every year and it really weighs on me because I'm afraid that at some point I'm not going to be able to get by and I won't be able to work- at least, not as a truck driver. Then I'll have to scramble to find something to replace the income which has proven impossible for me because I've been trying to do that for the last four years with no success. That only adds to my anxiety.

So I went to see this woman in my little home town in Indiana. She was a great character. She was 66 years old and had been to Woodstock and had also met the members of Led Zeppelin. She has some great stories about that. She was a lot of fun to be around, and I think that helped with the hypnotic session. I was there for 2.5 hours. One hour was the actual session. The rest of the time was spent on an initial interview with me regarding my problem and then afterward with her telling her stories. It was an enjoyable experience, and I think I've made a new friend. Her husband is also a Mason like myself and belongs to my home lodge although I have never talked to him.

I'd never been hypnotized before. I was aware the entire time, perhaps more so than I am in my ordinary state of consciousness. We were able to zero in on the exact moment when I first felt this anxiety regarding my physical, and it was something that had not been registering in my awareness when I felt this anxiety. It was not some terrible, traumatic event that started all this off, but a really simple understated event that first planted the seed of doubt about my health in my mind. I quickly buried it, but it kept coming back as this anxiety around the time of my physicals. The actual event I did not recall until now. I just felt the emotion that it introduced.

The sensation that I experienced when hypnotized was of heightened awareness, not unconsciousness. I felt a lot like I do when I am deep in meditation.

Speaking of the unconscious, I wrote a little while back that I thought that the culprit regarding this issue might be an unconscious desire to sabotage my trucking career because I find it undesirable and would really like to do something different. This woman told me that the unconscious mind is truly an ally and is where all of our truth resides. The unconscious mind doesn't want to hurt us in any way. It's a step beyond old Freudian psychology and into the realms of the profession that I find most attractive- Jungian and transpersonal psychology.