“I Thought It Was All About The Mind!”

When I was having hypnotherapy towards the end of 2012, I was told we were all nothing more than a conversation in our head. As a result of this, the way for me to change my life would be for me to change what was taking place in my mind.

I remember hearing this and being amazed at what I had heard, and then I started to think about how easy it would be for me to change. Up until this point, I had had energy healing, worked on my beliefs, looked into what took place before I was born and observed my inner processes, and this had only got me so far.

I Thought This Was it

In the beginning, I started to notice a difference; I thought that this person knew what they were talking about. I wasn’t on board with everything that this person said, though, as I felt invalidated at times.

I would speak about what I had gone through as a child and that I found it hard to let go, and what I said was often dismissed. I thought that this was someone who couldn’t relate to what I had gone though.

A Different Upbringing

This wasn’t much of a surprise as they had told me that their upbringing was completely different. Yet, while I did feel invalidated at times, I continued to work with this person.

As far as they were concerned, I could just let go of the pain within me by putting it into a draw or cutting a cord, amongst other things. Yet, the pain within me wanted to be acknowledged, not covered up and avoided.

This All Changed

I was in a lot of emotional pain and this pain got ever worse after a relationship came to an end in the beginning of 2013. It was around this time that I heard about the ‘emotional body’.

In a way, this was when everything fell into place as it was clear that focusing on my mind was not working. The trouble was that I had heard on numerous occasions how my thoughts created my feelings.
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A Half-Truth

In reality, this was not the complete truth, and this was something that I later read about in Tian Dayton’s books. The other part of this was that my thoughts could also trigger emotional pain/trauma that was trapped in my body.

When this emotional pain came up to the surface, thinking positive and observing my mind didn’t do much good. It became clear that it wasn’t all in my mind and believing this had made things even worse.

Not a Surprise

But as it is human nature to avoid pain and, let’s face it, the western world is all about avoidance, I wasn’t surprised that this outlook was so common. Through focusing on the mind, someone can avoid what is taking place in their body.

Changing our beliefs and thoughts is a lot easier than going into our body and embracing what is taking place there. After I had been working through the pain in my emotional body, I came to see that I was only getting so far.

The Need to Be Loyal

When I was working with a therapist called Vijay Rana in 2015, I said that I felt the need to be loyal to my father. During this time, he said that something called family constellations might help with this.

Interestingly, not only had I heard about this while I was on a course at the end of 2009, I also had had this type of therapy saved on my phone. I soon realised that it was not just what was taking place within me that was holding me back; it was also what was going on around me, in my family system.

Weighed Down

I reflected on my life and saw that I wasn’t living my own life; I was living a life that was nothing more than continuation of my ancestors. And by this I mean my mother and father, and other family members.

What helped me to realise that I had the need to be loyal to my father was when I read a book called Guy Corneau - Absent Fathers, Lost Sons: The Search for Masculine Identity. Vijay was the therapist who asked me if I ever cried and to see if I could do this when I was by myself.

A Number of Things

So, there was processing the emotional pain, crying out the grief that was within me, and dealing with my need to be loyal. As time passed, the emotional pain within me was no longer as strong and my need to be loyal started to subside.

The trouble was that I was still carrying a lot of trauma, and what I had done up until this point hadn’t really deal with this. When I say trauma, I mean the fear, anxiety and general edginess that I was experiencing.

One Direction

I would often feel as though I was in a war zone, and I didn’t know what I was going to do to about it. There was the mental level, the emotional level, and then there were the entanglements that I had to my family, and focusing on these aspects hadn’t done it.

I ended up trying something called somatic experiencing and this wasn’t bad, but I soon moved on. Soon after this, my attention was drawn to someone called Bessel van der Kolk again, and this was a time when I heard him talk about something called Neurofeedback.

The Next Step

I felt that I had to try this; I was at a point where I was finding it hard to function. Fortunately, this was highly effective, which meant that I started to feel at peace for the first time in a very long time.

Neurofeedback is a form of brain training that can train the brain to function differently. When I think back to this moment, I remember that I was amazed that I had finally found something that would settle me down.

It Didn’t End There

But while this had settled me down, I could see that I was still carrying trauma in my body, and there were moments when I would feel completely worthless. Fortunately, I came across a healer/therapist called Ben Ralston and, shortly after this, I found out about a technique for healing trauma.
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Through working with Ben, I was able to let go of a lot of trauma, and it was at this time that I came to see that there are healers out there who are the real deal. The technique for healing trauma was called Total Release Experience (TRE), and I was blown away by how effective this was.

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk