Inner emptiness is the feeling that is mostly experienced by people who are diagnosed with depression. The question is what is Depression and How Hypnosis can address it?
Depression is a set of multiple symptoms that last anywhere from a few weeks to years. There are four clusters to depression: how you think, how your body reacts, how you act and how you feel. Depression can develop rapidly or come slowly over a period of weeks. It can range from mild to moderate, severe and profound. When depression is mild, you are able to go through your normal routine but you lack energy and feel pessimistic. When depression has become chronic and escalates to severe and profound levels, the person becomes suicidal and requires inpatient treatment to get fully rehabilitated and resume normal functioning again.
Depression should not be neglected and it must be addressed when it is mild so that it does not escalate to severe levels. A negative state of mind that colors all of your experiences is the hallmark of depression. Then the person becomes extremely negative, often cries, and is unable to do chores requiring efforts. Person also becomes self critical and berates him or her. Sometimes the person believes that he or she is being punished for something they did wrong. The self esteem is adversely affected and the person begins to lose confidence. Dependency is another characteristic of depression that shatters self confidence of the person. The person feels an inner emptiness and this creates a void within. Often the person becomes addicted to drugs, alcohol, food and cigarettes. It is very dangerous when the person becomes suicidal due to looming feelings of dread, apathy, isolation, withdrawal, and avoidance. These symptoms must be addressed professionally. Suicide is a leading cause of death in Amereica. Research has found worldwide one percent to 4 percent of adults state they have attempted suicide (Jamison 1999).
Depression is Treatable and Recovery is Possible
Cognitive behavioral technique has been widely used to treat depression. Therapist tries to work on cognitive distortions of the person and helps them develop a rational way of thinking to reframe the person’s dysfunctional thought patterns. Once the person learns how to reframe a negative way of thinking, identify perceptual distortions in thinking, and challenge the negative thoughts by replacing it with a more rational counter-statement, the intensity of the feelings is reduced significantly. Moods can be changed by applying the cognitive restructuring of dysfunctional thought patterns principles and depression can thus be reduced.
How Hypnosis Helps You Overcome Inner Emptiness and Depression
Hypnosis is a very safe and effective tool to address depression. I have been using a variety of methods and visualizations along with multiple hypnotic anchors to help my clients overcome depression. Because the person feels depressed, there is lack of energy and overall feeling of fatigue, lack of efforts accompanied by poor sleep, loss of appetite, apathy and isolation. In hypnosis, the hypnotist tries to induce deep relaxation to relax the mind and body, followed by a depth test and a deepener. When the person achieves a deep state of relaxation, the alpha waves begin to flow and the subconscious mind becomes highly receptive to the suggestions offered by the hypnotist. The client is encouraged to draw the darkness of the black cloud within and breathe it out. Then the hypnotist would ask the client to visualize a healing white light that is penetrating in all his body parts. The healing white light tends to provide the energy and vitality to the client.
Similarly, there are multiple sessions on how to dispute the negative thinking and bury the inner emptiness at the root of a tree. Sometimes clients are asked to visualize a garden of life, rake all the leaves symbolizing negative experiences, frustration, anger, hurt, guilt and failures into a heap, set fire to them and then find a fertile patch in the garden to sow seeds of hope, love, gratitude and other positive emotions, water the soil and cover it. It is hoped that those new seeds will keep growing and give hope to the depressed person.
Since clients do all these visualizations in a deep trance and the more they do the visualizations, the more the suggestions get implanted in the subconscious mind and the better it is for the subconscious mind. They are also asked to visualize their future on a blank movie screen and picture themselves having full energy, vitality, positivity and resumption of full glory. These visualizations tend to make the person‘s subconscious mind think that it is real and then it begins to change the way a person thinks, feels and acts. Additionally, clients get audio of the hypnosis sessions so that they can listen to them at home and benefit from the exercises.
Case Example
I had a client who had grief and bereavement issues because of the loss of her mother. She came for hypnosis after reading my blog post on Inner Emptiness. She signed up for 8 sessions. I worked with her on her negative thinking, inner emptiness, void, inner child and isolation through a variety of hypnosis sessions. She began to feel positive and happy after three sessions. I continued building on her self esteem and confidence level as part of her treatment too. She had lost her job due to depressions. She began to look for a new job and found one. She began to feel energetic and reported a significant change in her overall mood and thinking. She became more optimistic and looked forward to her sessions. Her inner emptiness completely disappeared and she began to nurture herself in self nurturing activities which gave her a ray of hope. I discharged her after eight sessions and she felt grateful to me for helping her recover from her inner emptiness and depression. Bereavement sessions helped her accept the loss of her mother and she started to move on. I did four weeks follow up and she did not report any relapse of the depressive symptoms.
In this way, we see that Hypnosis sessions are instrumental in alleviating symptoms of depression. If you feel a looming feeling of inner emptiness, please do not wait till it gets worse.
Call Blossom Hypnosis at 585-281-2988 to schedule a free consultation. It’s never too late to seek professional help. It might change your life.
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