As someone with a strong critical mid, and a PhD to go with it, as well as someone with a strong intuitive side, it was quite the struggle for me to learn how to marry these two sides. When I was in my 20’s a very wise counselor said to me, “Think your thoughts, feel your feelings”, and it proved to be the greatest wisdom for my needs.
Why is it important to integrate these two sides? The answer is about energy. When you are divided, you lose energy. You do not function efficiently. You might plan and strategise on something but then seemingly sabotage your efforts if a part of you intuits a different way to go. You may, for example, decide to go for a promotion and of course you want to impress your boss, but if part of you doesn’t want to follow that path, you might find yourself consistently coming in late.
Now imagine this scenario if you had acknowledged both sides and resolved any emotional blocks around this job. You would come to an internal agreement instead of contradicting yourself with your behaviour. That could look like this – ‘yes’ , we’re going for it, let’s put in 110 per cent; or ‘no’, it’s not going to make me happy so I’m looking for better opportunities.
Denying your unconscious mind – feelings, urges and images, causes confusion, delays and what people often refer to as self-sabotage. But it’s not really sabotage because sabotage implies that your unconscious side is a problem. But what if your unconscious side is a solution? It is your creative centre after all. Or, what if, by acknowledging and integrating your unconscious side, you come up with an even better idea! You cannot sweep your unconscious mind under the carpet without consequences.
Feel Your Feelings – Heal Your Mind and Body
Healing trauma, or even some physical conditions that stem from emotional imbalances, can be greatly helped when you know how to think your thoughts, feel your feelings, and acknowledge both. This is a technique I do in clinic called Parts Integration.
In healing the mind, and the body in some cases, it is often the cognitive process or problem solving, that interferes with the healing process itself. When we can influence our healing and prompt the body’s natural healing process to kick into gear, it is through awareness and mindfulness primarily. We can’t force it by overthinking. The aim can be focused, but not managed. It can be intentional, but not prescriptive. When the body heals itself, it is not doing so under orders of your conscious mind. Rather, it finds emotional homeostasis or balance, and this allows the healing to occur because the ’emotional blocks’ have been shifted.
As mentioned, emotions rest in the realm of the unconscious mind, and so we need to play by the rules of this fascinating domain.The unconscious mind is creative. It uses the language of imagery and symbols. It is emotional. It is where your urges spring from. The unconscious mind is intuitive. All of these qualities are hampered by prescriptive thinking and rational thought found in the conscious mind. Sometimes that’s a good thing! But when we are wanting to clear emotional blockages, it only gets in the way.
There are several modalities useful for allowing the unconscious mind to clear its emotional debris, and hypnotherapy is numero uno in my experience. To be able to feel your feelings without mind chatter, or more damaging, criticism, and to allow the feelings to transform, is the key. It doesn’t matter if you understand the transformation process or otherwise. What matters is that your unconscious mind is given the opportunity to resolve these blockages. Hypnosis allows for guided processing of these emotional blocks. That’s not just done through direct suggestion, but through a whole toolkit of techniques.
Yes, you can change your brain, and calm your mind. That in itself can heal the body in some cases – think anxiety or depression and addiction. But it goes further. How far it can go is a case by case scenario. Some people have claimed to heal themselves of physical illness using their minds by raising their immune systems, halting the aging process, building muscle, and more. There are also studies on IBS and cancer survival. You can heal your emotional trauma with hypnosis and then, maybe, you can heal your body too. In any case, thinking your thoughts and feeling your feelings, acknowledging and respecting both, is the golden key. Horizons Clinical Hypnotherapy Noosa.