Drinking, smoking, drugs, extra marital affairs, anxiety, poor eating habits you name it. A lot of our behaviours stem from our familial setting, and particularly, what we have witnessed, growing up. Breaking familial patterns is essential in order to overcome the habit, whatever it may be, but also to redefine yourself as your own person. It is essential in order for you to experience the gift of choice.

Following familial patterns of drinking

Ben was a drinker. At the end of the working day he would come home and consume a six pack and two tall bottles of beer. On the weekends he would drink all day. Through our discussion it became clear that Ben grew up in a household of drinkers. His mother had now been sober for five years. His step father had long left the scene. But despite the change in his mum and removal of his step-father, Ben was still a drinker.

Ben’s child mind was still treating alcohol as a kind of release from the pressures of life, and as a comfort. It had not caught up with the change in circumstances, so this is one of the things we needed to do.

Breaking the chain

To assist Ben in putting the past behind him, where it belonged, we did timeline regression focusing on that feeling of uncertainty, which he described as the predominant trigger for his drinking, thus the need for comfort. As we traced it back, we found, not surprisingly, that this uncertainty surrounded his youth because when parents drink, they are unreliable emotionally and physically for their children. We reframed that memory in a useful way.

Then we did some forgiveness work around Ben’s mother and step father, to allow him to break the familial patterns associated with the drinking. We followed up with a host of other hypnosis and NLP techniques to assist Ben to make that emotional transition.

One of these techniques introduces alternative behaviours into the mind, that will serve as the same comfort tool that drinking was fulfilling. In Ben’s case, his unconscious mind chose walking with headphones as one behaviour, and playing guitar as a second behaviour. When I mention that Ben’s unconscious mind selected these activities, I mean that we investigated the options in a hypnotic state so that the unconscious could come to the fore and identify what behaviours would really work for Ben. It ifs far more reliable that thinking it out logically. These were two good behaviours that Ben could do every day, instead of drinking. After one week Ben had stopped drinking.

Familial patterns can be deeply ingrained, whether it is violence, alcohol abuse, anxiety, emotional detachment, just to mention a few. The techniques I use are designed to rescue the client from their inherited baggage, while assisting them to thrive in their chosen direction. This is true freedom.

If you need assistance breaking familial patterns, we can help. Horizons Clinical Hypnotherapy Sunshine Coast