That thought is not real!

“What if I was driving and I just ran over some kid?”

“What if I get cancer?”

There are a lot of thoughts in Fred’s head. Fred has a lot of anxiety, and he knows his triggers like the back of his hand; and he was incessantly pulling those triggers. “What if can’t work anymore? I wont have any money. I wont have insurance! I’m going to have to live in a tent in the woods!”

Fred came to see me for excessive anxiety*, and he was a “What if…” machine. One of the things we worked on was watching his thoughts for things that cause his anxiety to increase. It quickly became apparent to him that he was living in a nightmare world, where he spun horror stories to himself over and over.

(* Anxiety as commonly used to describe what he was feeling, this is not a diagnosis. He had not been diagnosed with Anxiety, and Hypnotherapists are not trained to diagnose mental disorders.)

These thoughts caused him to feel fear, and that fear caused more thoughts. In his mind, he was just trying to see all the possibilities of things that could go wrong. However, the problem is, his Unconscious mind (the part of him that controls all of his internal functioning, including bodily sensations and hormones such as Adrenaline) cannot tell the difference between reality and imagination.

In hypnosis I gave him a hypnotic suggestion that he monitor his thoughts very closely, and when he noticed he was creating an imagined horror, he should immediately tell himself: That is not real! That is not real! Cancel that, Unconscious, that is just pretend!

With this information, his Unconscious mind could stand down from Fight or Flight, short circuiting the anxiety cycle for that thought.

I further added a suggestion that he immediately follow that up with gratitude. Maybe it’s thinking of how much he loves his first cup of coffee. Or maybe how much he loves watching Basketball. Anything.

By inserting a positive feeling after immediately negating a horrible feeling, he is gaining a more positive outlook, step-by-step, second-by-second. Pile up enough of these little victories, and you have a much healthier outlook on life.

By the end of our 6th meeting, his attitude was strikingly different than our first meeting. He was much more relaxed.

“I never realized how much awful stuff I was thinking,” he said with a broad smile. That smile was new too. “But, I had a thought …” he said.

“Uh, oh,” I replied.

“No, no… Not like that. It’s a question. Do I have to do the same thing with any happy pretend scenarios I come up with, too? Do I tell myself ‘this is not real’ for positive thoughts?”

“No,” I laughed, “Keep the positive ones. Heck, even encourage them. Say to yourself, ‘Yeah, that’s going to be great!’”

Again, he smiled a big toothy grin. “Cool,” he said. I smiled back.

If you need help with gaining control over your thoughts, click here for a FREE consultation.

And as always, I wish you peace and joy, because you deserve it. You really do.