Even with years of mindset work and nervous system resets (RTT), obsessive thoughts can still creep in and take over.
This past week was a tough week for my husband, John. Again. When John struggles, John’s wife struggles. I want him to feel better! I want to find solutions. We’ve been to over a hundred doctor appointments so far, and while he has improved dramatically, I found myself in the same spiral of obsessively thinking about his health and solutions. Then, the defeated thoughts began to take over: “Maybe this is it. This is the best he’s going to feel. He’s never going to get better.”
I keep remembering that I still have yet another recurring thought:
One day, John‘s going to jump up out of bed and be back to his “normal self.”
And as the last months have gone by, he’s felt better than he has in a long time. But subconsciously I was still holding onto the idea that after a traumatic health event, like a major open heart surgery, one day, you magically pop back into your “old self.” The way things used to be will suddenly reappear. And that, unfortunately, is not reality. While I am immensely grateful that he feels better, I still have to continuously grieve what I thought our lives would look like. I must acknowledge my expectations and let them go. Even though his health crisis started 2 1/2 years ago, I continuously must re-evaluate my expectations and release them. Sometimes I can do this with ease. Last week wasn’t one of those times.
Have you ever expected something in a specific timeline? As “Miss manifest-her-soulmate herself,” I have hard evidence to the power of visualization. I believe in manifesting. I believe in the power of prayer. Visualizing outcomes we want to create is a wonderful habit and has helped us create the life of our dreams. But it can be a dangerous game when we try and manifest an exact timeframe. When it comes to recovering from major surgery, we cannot predict how every different body will respond. We cannot predict specific outcomes in a specific time period. We can’t skip over the process. We can’t skip over the healing journey, snap our fingers, and feel amazing 24/7. We only have control over our thoughts and our actions. It benefits us greatly to keep our thoughts focused on the positive, on the progress, and on the future we want to create.
But sometimes, it’s not so easy.
When our thoughts turn negative, and if that negative thought pattern turns into habitual excessive thoughts, we need to re-boot our nervous systems.
I thought because John had been feeling better and no longer had fevers every day that he would “definitely” be 100% by summer.
This week he has felt like garbage.
We only know one other person who has had the same aorta replacement as he has. John called him the other day. Poor Ryan still feels like garbage, too. He is 20 years younger than John and his surgery was 18 months before John. Ryan is going on five years post-surgery, and he is still struggling. When John called me to tell me about this conversation with Ryan, he started to tear up. I started to tear up. His ongoing frustration of not feeling 100% is always present. And the ongoing frustration of one’s husband not feeling 100% is also bubbling under the surface and emerges from time to time.
So I had an RTT session with my therapist. Here I want to share the three scenes that came up for me during regression. We always use hypnosis to guide our minds to the root cause of our suffering, and I’m always surprised by them.
The first memory was the four-year-old me at home watching and waiting for my Dad to come home. I was the only kid (of 11 children) that did this. I would stand at the window waiting for him to drive up the driveway every day. The purpose of regression is to figure out what beliefs were created in the memories your mind is showing you. I was led to believe that I was only safe if my father was home. A year earlier, I was molested when he wasn’t home. So my sweet little four-year-old brain determined that I was not safe unless my dad was in the house. But now as a grown (almost 50-year-old!) woman, that belief is not true.
The second memory was of my Dad and me on a trip to visit several colleges in Texas to audition for vocal performance scholarships. It was interesting that the scene was just Dad and I in a hotel room by ourselves because that was the only time in my entire life that had ever happened. With 10 siblings, you can imagine how many people we could cram into one hotel room. And now as an 18-year-old girl, I’m alone with my dad on a road trip. The belief I had developed was that I was only as good as my performance. Because I had a talent for singing, Dad wanted me to audition and receive scholarships from these Texas schools so that they could be announced at my high school graduation. (which they did. I was offered scholarships from all of them, and I was extremely proud when they announced them!) Except my Dad didn’t want me to go to any of these schools. He wanted me to go to Brigham Young University, the only school that didn’t offer me a scholarship as a freshman.
Not all memories that emerge in an RTT session are traumatic. Some of them can be, but they are not necessarily traumatic events. They are simply showing us the beliefs we developed. I was led to believe that I am only valuable when I perform well. That I have no inherent value as a person. My value lay in my ability to perform well, and my performance was the only thing that mattered. It’s incredible because once we understand what led us to create core beliefs, we can release them!
The last memory was during a really difficult time at BYU. I was sitting in the audience in the performing hall, sobbing, watching the choir (MY choir) perform on stage without me. I had gotten in trouble for drinking, which was against the honor code that I signed and agreed to. I’m not a victim here. I signed an agreement saying that I would abstain from alcohol, among other things. I never imagined that I would ever drink alcohol. I had never even tried it before. Then when I did try it, someone told the honor code office. I never imagined that BYU would kick me out of school because I had been practically perfect my whole life. That was the quest of my young brain: to be perfect. I’d followed every rule they’d ever given me.
Until I didn’t.
I was having a faith crisis, an identity crisis, and all the fun crises of a 21-year-old. I had just gotten word that they decided I was allowed to stay in school and finish the semester, but I would not be allowed to be in choir nor would I be allowed to go on tour to Australia the following month. I was devastated beyond belief. I had the shame of telling my family that I wasn’t going to Australia, and why. I was kicked out of the only class I cared about: choir. When you’re in the top choir at BYU, you sing daily with each other. It’s not a Mon/Wed/Fri nor a Tues/Thursday situation. Choir was my entire life. All of my closest, most trusted friends were in choir with me. We were a family. And I had been cast out right before our month-long tour. They would be going without me.
Back to the reset real quick, then I’ll finish the story. When you are reviewing scenes from the past in your RTT sessions, you are not re-living them. You’re just reviewing them. Just like the best memories of your life, you can’t go back and relive them even if you wanted to. When you’re in hypnosis, you feel relaxed and slightly detached from your memories. Emotions come, tears come, and that’s a beautiful thing because when we feel our emotions and release our emotions, we not only immediately feel better, but we also allow our cells and organs to use their energy on rejuvenation instead of staying in fight-or-flight mode.
This quote has been attributed to both Joyce McDougall in 1989 and Sir Henry Maudsley, a 19th-century British psychiatrist, in 1867. The idea that unexpressed emotions, such as holding back tears, can lead to physical illness was a central theme in Sigmund Freud’s work in the early 20th century. I whole-heartedly believe this to be true. Repressed emotions can lead to dis-ease.
Back to my college choir story. The belief I had created in this scene as a 21-year-old kid was that if I tell the truth, I will be cast out.
If I had known that I would have been kicked out, I might have lied about drinking alcohol. They can only discipline you if you admit to your actions that go against the honor code you agreed to. But I thought that because I had such a perfect record I would be rewarded for messing up and coming clean about it.
I was not.
Now, this is crucial because I learned that locked deep inside my subconscious was the belief that telling the truth will get you banished from the people you love. But that belief is just a belief. That isn’t true. We know that being authentic is the only way to create meaningful fulfilling relationships, and we’re not going to be best friends with everyone we meet. I moved to Arizona the following year and onto an incredible journey. I met my first husband who gave me my two children, I started an amazing career in marketing. It gave me 8 beautiful years as a single mom when it was just the three of us, and it led me to my soulmate. I realized that if you change one thing from your past, you change everything. So even though this experience was difficult at the time, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
And when I realized what beliefs I had created and understood them, I was able to let them go. I was able to reset my nervous system. I was able to be more calm, more compassionate, and let go of the frustrating negative thoughts that had plagued me the entire week prior.
John, my soulmate and love of my life is not 100% better yet. And that’s OK. He’s still alive. He’s still with me. RTT helped me come back to center. RTT helps me look at things from a different perspective and release beliefs and thoughts that are not serving me.
And it can do the same for you!
Thanks so much for being here! If I can help in any way, please email me or send me a DM on Instagram!
xoxox,
Karen
