Pattianne is physically fit (she gets to her high-end gym and personal trainer at least three times a week), she’s engaged in her community (she volunteers at her kids’ elementary school and is on the Community Arts Board of Trustees), and she’s mentally stimulated (she’s able to audit classes free of charge at the university where her husband teaches).
By her own admission, whatever Pattianne wanted has seemed to fall right into her lap, or was achieved with minimal effort. She has the self-awareness to see that her worry is unreasonable, yet feels unable to stop it. She won’t describe herself as anxious because when involved in her daily activities she functions confidently and comfortably. Talk therapy seemed indulgent so she stopped that after six months. Despite all of her chosen activities, Patti says “I feel like I’m in a tiny little dinghy, just bobbing along in calm water. But then I’ll sense a strong wave coming and I realize I have no control over whether I can stay safe. It’s completely out of my hands and it makes me panic; I don’t even control the damn boat!”
She came to me for hypnosis looking for an antidote to her worry. As she explained it, Pattianne said that as long as she is busy and engaged in mothering, volunteering, keeping house, and working out, she feels in control and at ease. Only when she doesn’t have something to do does Patti feel a wave of worry. She told me when she felt it beginning to build she’d quickly get to the next task on her list as a way to hold back the wave. But when she lay down in bed to sleep at night, the wave crashed over her, reminding her that all could be swept away at any random moment. Even now, preparing for our first hypnosis session Pattianne was worried that the moment she relaxed into hypnosis and stopped thinking something on purpose, her worry would drown her.
I asked her, “How in control of your thoughts do you feel?”
“I’m not in control of my thoughts at all,” she answered. “The circumstances of my life control my thoughts; the minute all the circumstances are taken care of, my own personal thoughts fall down on top of me. As long as I’m thinking about what needs taking care of in my life, I’m okay.”
We drilled down on the basics of hypnosis as I assured Patti that achieving the hypnotic state was better described as focused concentration — it actually is controlled thinking — than as letting go of all mental control. Engaging in hypnosis would be controlling her thoughts by causing her to keep her attention on one single new idea while letting go of other distracting thoughts or feelings.
But before we got to the hypnosis part, I wanted to learn more about Pattianne’s self-esteem. On the surface she truly did seem to have it all: good health, a happy family home, fulfilling and purposeful work, a healthy social circle and spiritual group, and an anxiety-free financial situation. Yet I couldn’t forget what she’d said to me on the phone when making her first appointment: “I can’t seem to stop worrying that it will all be taken away.” I brought this up to her and asked her to tell me more about that particular aspect of her worry.
“I can’t really seem to relax with all I have,” she said. “I mean, who am I to have these great things when others work really hard and don’t have half as much? I don’t even have to work for a living!” Pattianne sounded truly distressed.
“Who do you mean by ‘others’?”
“Well, my older sister for one. She had a learning problem growing up that nobody recognized — schools were different back then — so she never made it past her high school GED. She works at an okay job, but she only makes minimum wage. I know she’s smart and she’s so kind and sweet, and she’s married to a guy who is good to her but also makes minimum wage. They have a kid who has hearing problems and all their money goes to trying to keep up with her schooling and therapies.”
“Do you two get along?” I asked.
“Yes, we’re as close as we could be considering our own families now. You know, I was dyslexic too but I’m ten years younger than my sister and by the time it was discovered my parents and the school had better detection and remediation in place. I just can’t believe I got all the good stuff and she was totally robbed, just because I came along later.”
“Is that how you really feel? That you got more than your share because you had better services available to you?”
“Not only that, my parents never let me forget Julianne’s bad luck. They meant well, but they never stopped drilling into my head that I was the recipient of extraordinary good luck, nothing more. They wanted me to be grateful every single minute for all the great things I had and God knows I am.”
“Do you think it was pure luck that you have so much more than your sister does?”
“Absolutely! And luck is completely random. Believe me, it could all be taken away at any minute!”
No wonder Pattianne felt overwhelmed by worry that “it could all be taken away.” When you truly believe you have no agency in your own existence, it makes total sense you’d feel out of control. Furthermore, to have the gift of a generous provider for a husband and all the extras that came with it, Patti couldn’t help but feel she was the random recipient of plain, dumb luck.
As long as she was actively involved in the tasks of her day, Pattianne felt she was appreciating her good fortune. Because she was living with great abundance, she plumbed her own participation in it to the Nth degree. She was so appreciative of her good health, she poured even more resources into it by celebrating it, generously paying and tipping her personal trainer, and doing her best to treat her healthy body with honor and reverence. She immersed herself 150% in everything she did as a way of living her gratitude. She never let herself simply enjoy what she had, hyper-vigilant for the certain moment it would all be taken away.
When all activity stopped and Patti was winding down to sleep, she was intensely aware of how lucky she was. Instead of allowing herself to continue to feel blessed, Patti instead began to worry that:
- she wasn’t grateful enough
- it wasn’t fair that she was so lucky and her sister was not
- she hadn’t done anything to earn this random dose of good luck
- her sister Julianne was terribly jealous and had every right to be
- that she was letting down her parents if she stopped actively appreciating, and
- deep down that ultimately her good luck would turn sour and she’d be living a life like her sister’s, and she knew she wouldn’t have the courage to endure such a low-level, depressing lifestyle.
Instead of applying a hypnotic band-aid as an antidote for her worrying, I asked Patti to work with me instead on her self-esteem. She wasn’t convinced she had a low self-esteem (LoSE) problem, but as I re-framed her sense of deserving and her daily gratitude payment of over-activity, she agreed to look at recovering her inherent self-esteem (RISE).
Many LoSErs feel that they’re hanging onto happiness by a thread that the Fates could cut at any time. I felt the same way when I had low self-esteem; all my blessings came from an external source, even God Himself was outside of me, up there in the sky, judging me. Early parenting taught me that my behavior was more valuable than my being, and even then it was rarely praise-worthy. When I was given a gift it came with reminders that it was expensive, that the giver had to sacrifice to get it for me, and I’d better show extensive gratitude.
Not too long ago a dear friend gave me a rare and beautiful gift, which was a pair of antique pearl earrings she had no use for. She couldn’t remember where they came from but knew she hadn’t purchased them herself as they weren’t her style. She teased me by saying, “You can have these, but never forget that I slaved for years to save the money to purchase them!” Of course she was joking, as she just finished telling me she hadn’t, and that she never wore them because she truly disliked them. But boy-oh-boy, did my inner LoSEr rise up! I was frozen on the spot, my hand extended to receive the earrings. My flashback must have shown on my face also, as my friend immediately began to back-pedal. She scrambled to reassure me she was joking while I strove to control my thoughts. Can you imagine? Thirty-something years later and this shit still kicks me?
RISErs know that we feel first, and think second. Here is where I had to grab the thinking mind’s reins and get that feeling mind under control. It took me several seconds and a few deep breaths to remind myself I was not 15 years old again, being shamed while being given a gift. After a minute I could receive the earrings with appropriate gratitude and explain my reaction to my friend.
This incident came to mind and I shared it with Pattianne. As I explained the difference between the conscious/thinking mind and the subconscious/feeling mind I could see her excitement as she began to nod over and over. “Me, too! I know exactly what you mean!” she kept repeating. We talked about her inherent self-esteem — the part of her own Self that is ageless, creative, and perfect. This wonderful, life-affirming, joyful and curious part of our spirit loves to give and receive. There’s as much joy in saying “Yes, thank you!” as there is in watching someone say it to us.
When the toxic fog of low self-esteem (LoSE) has clouded ones ability to see the perfect, whole, deserving part of our own being, we forget that we don’t need to earn our place here, nor do we need to earn all of the blessings that come our way.
We learn that there are many ways to receive blessings, including ways we can’t imagine, or ways that don’t fit the cultural formula. For example, we might think the only way to have riches is to earn it or marry someone with money. But the Universe has multitudinous ways to prosper us, and we limit ourselves when we believe there are not.
After a few hypnosis sessions helping Pattianne begin to RISE, she began to relax in her good fortune. If you’ve read my book “Fix Your Screwed-Up Life,” you’re familiar with the formal RISErs know: Be—>Feel—>Do. When you recover your inherent self-esteem, you know that your Being is already a miracle and needs no defending, so you can pay attention to what you Feel is the right life for you, at which point you can begin to Do what it takes to make that life a reality. LoSErs have the formula backwards, as my client had: Do—>Feel—>Be. LoSErs Do everything they can to Feel worthy of Being here, taking up valuable earthly resources.
Once Pattianne recognized that she had a perfect, holy Self within we got to work on her sense of control over her life.
I asked her, “Is it now possible to see that your thoughts control the circumstances? Do you have anywhere in your beliefs a system that says you get what you focus on?”
“I don’t know. I want to feel in control my thoughts, though,” she answered me.
I told Patti that the first step to controlling her thoughts is in controlling when she thinks them. Once she could train herself to do that, and as she recovered at least some of her inherent self-esteem, she’d feel less worry about the panicky waves that could sweep away all her good fortune.
I suggested that Patti choose the thoughts she would focus on before falling asleep. She could make a recording to play for herself or simply use her imagination. I reminded her that we have to make believe over and over (with will and discipline) in order to get a belief into the subconscious mind. She had to make believe she could control her thoughts, and with repeated make believe those thoughts become true.
I also suggested that she use the power of her thinking mind more wisely during the day. If she allowed herself to worry for an hour after the kids got on the school bus, then spend the next hour daydreaming without limit, brainstorming, playing, and imagining. I wanted her to consciously spend as much time choosing relaxed and happy thoughts as she did worrying about random destruction of her good fortune.
In time Pattianne began to see the blessings in her life in a more relaxed way. She stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her self-esteem improved which automatically gave her a sense of greater control over her life. She knew that as long as she had a powerful mind over which she had total control and a profound awareness of her own inner perfect Self, that she could enjoy genuine security and peace of mind. When our minds and our spirits work together properly, we understand that nothing can prevent us from enjoying all of the blessings we inherited as children of our Creator.
