By Fern Tausig
Your Body, Your Mind
Fern Tausig
We often define ourselves by our relationships. I am a daughter, a wife, a mother and a sister.
At one time or another each of those relationships caused me some stress. Although one may think that it is completely normal to have stress in a relationship, one might wonder: do we have stress that affects our relationships or are our relationships causing our stress? When we are under stress, we don’t make good choices or behave as patiently as we would in a better state of mind.
Hypnosis, especially self-hypnosis, can adjust and improve one’s state of mind. I have worked with a variety of clients who had relationship issues in which hypnosis was successful.
The first relationship I will address is the parent-child relationship. Because most parents aren’t trained in child rearing, they experience feelings of failure and inadequacy when they don’t know how to handle a child’s misbehavior. Sometimes parents take it personally when kids misbehave or test boundaries because they don’t understand why they do it. The parents sometimes argue about how to handle it and the situation worsens from there.
When I work with parents, I teach them self-control because although they are having difficulty controlling their children, they can only control the way they respond. They can control the way it affects them. No one can control another person. It doesn’t mean they don’t try, using threats and yelling and even hitting, but when they fail, they feel angry and out of control.
When you change the way you respond to your child, they change. Exercising self- control is useful in every situation and helps to change your perspective from helplessness to confidence. When parents feel helpless, they blame the kids’ behavior and begin to focus on the child’s misbehavior instead of the child’s needs and feelings that may be driving the behavior.
Hypnosis and self-hypnosis can help increase confidence and self-control. Remembering that you love your child and want to help and nurture them instead of control them improves relationships and promotes peace in the family.
I have also worked with marital relationships. A marriage is so intimate that it doesn’t take much to create hurt feelings or misunderstandings. Problems arise when couples can’t or won’t communicate about minor issues, so the feelings get repressed and the negativity begins growing inside. Each person feels frustrated because they cannot control the other.
When a couple first comes together, falling in love, they see each other through rose-colored glasses. They get caught up in passion and excitement and don’t focus on the little negative things that may bother them. As time goes by, life challenges like finances or children enter the picture. The rose-colored glasses come off, the little things appear bigger and there are more of them to deal with. Couples often forget to focus on the things they love about each other. They focus instead on the negative things that bother them and that they can’t control about the other person.
Hypnosis and self-hypnosis can change that focus to what you feel good about instead of what’s bad. When that happens, those negative things become less important and can be dealt with as little things instead of being blown out of proportion.
Relationships are complicated, but all relationships have certain things in common. They all require mutual respect, mutual validation and the feeling of being loved, understood and valued. When you learn that controlling your own behavior and responses causes people to respond positively to you, all of your relationships will improve.