I promised you a post on my hypnotherapy, and I’m nothing if not honest (much to most peoples’s chagrin). I have been realizing, for years now, that there is a significant portion of my childhood about which I have only isolated memories and no sense of my emotional condition at all until I was about 12. And it was as though I just woke up and, boy, was it ever on the wrong side of the bed! I was one angry girl … Angry at everyone. And no memories to clue me in. I have, for the past couple of years, begun to heavily suspect that, for me, the path to wellness has to be through my past issues.
This appetite thing has been going on for almost four years now and, until this Megace, food has just repulsed me altogether. Cancer diminishing, but still can’t eat. That is trouble and WTH? Through my therapy, I have learned that a fetus in utero physically reacts to the mother’s energy. My precious Momma was desperately trying to save her marriage and I was the Great White Hope. Add to that that she only ate 900 calories a day to keep her figure and you have a malnourished infant with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck twice. Somehow, I am coming to realize that I have come full circle … From not being nourished in utero to not being able to nourish myself now. Somehow it seems the key for my healing is to unravel these issues and to convince my inner child that she deserves to be here and has a right to be. It is really no wonder I was born with my fist in the air.
But despite our best efforts at trying to peel back the haze over my childhood memories, my inner child wasn’t talking. Me being the hard-head that I am decided that I don’t have unlimited time for therapy, so we needed to quit pussy-footing around here. So she referred me to a local hypnotherapist named Kay Atwood with http://www.hypnosis-health.com/. At first, my therapist thought that might be too harsh for my inner child, but what I wanted to do was to go back into what few memories I do have, with my adult self to intercede for the child who had no voice. She gave me the green light for that, so off I went.
Hypnosis always sounded like some woo-woo thing to me. I mean, how on earth can someone be made to bark like a dog, in front of a room full of people, and not even know they’re there? Well now I know differently. You are never unaware. You just don’t really care. Your mind is very focused but your body just feels heavy. So the hypnosis state is really just a meditative state where you are highly suggestive. You are still fully in control and no one could plant something alien into you and you be ok with it. Many of my sessions have involved conversations. But it is an Alpha brainwave state which is where we are right between being awake and being asleep. This is where we are most suggestive.
So after all the things I had tried, with so very little success, I wasn’t too hopeful. I honestly didn’t believe it would work for me, but it was the absolute last thing I could think to try. It was a very relaxing experience. She takes you down by various techniques, but mostly we visualize me going down a flight of stairs and, with each step down, I go deeper. At the foot of the stairs is a doorway that leads to my safe place which I have chosen as a lovely spot we found trail riding in the mountains last summer, by a river. And while I am there, I have dealt with all sorts of things.
One example … My father, God bless him, was as flawed as the rest of us. His demon was alcohol. As a result, my growing up was rife with conflict, strife, yelling, anger … I never even knew he drank till I went to college and my Mom told me. So I was on a hammock in Maui during this particular session and she had him enter into my space. I saw my father as the young, vibrant man he had once been … Rakish and handsome. She had me envision me saying anything … Everything … That I had never said to him because I would get in trouble or whatever. So I did that. Then she had me envision him saying what he needed to say. Then she told me how he never meant to hurt me and that he was going to leave me with the only gift he could give me now. She had me envision him holding a vacuum cleaner attachment hose and me guiding that hose to the places in my body that still have cancer and sucking it all out. Then he reversed that vacuum and sprayed that stuff into the universe. And then he left.
That night, I began to eat. Now not nearly enough still … But it was a start and probably doubled what I had previously been consuming. And then came Megace so I am able to eat three meals a day right now. We have also done some work around my mother. But the last time, I think we really uncovered something significant. I knew that I had not been seen for who I was as a child my mother dressed me up like a little doll several times a day. Understandable … I was the only girl child of four. But I wanted to climb trees, catch craw dads, and play GI Joes! Every bit of femininity I have, I owe to my precious Momma, to include my undying love of shoes! However, not seeing a child for who he or she is can have its own set of issues attached to it. More on that issue next time.
