I used to visit a support forum online for people recovering from various types of trauma. It felt like a wonderful place, and I know it does a lot of good for people. But after I was there for a while I started to wonder, “why don’t I see anyone getting well here?” Out of all the people there, you would see lots of people having “insights,” but the insights didn’t seem to translate into anything but small improvements in their actual lives. The more time you spent there, the more you saw people repeating the same patterns. Once in a while people would suddenly quit coming and I’d wonder, “what happened to them?”

I really wanted people to get well and to feel better myself so I kept thinking what to do next, what was the next step? …and then suddenly one day it occurred to me:

You can’t become happy and healthy without doing the things happy and healthy people do.

And happy, healthy, people didn’t spend hours every day reliving the most tragic and painful moments of their lives! Instead they were out playing with their kids, taking a class, going to the movies, working, whatever. They were going on with life.

It taught me that there is a subtle, but very important distinction between “healing” and “healed.” We need sometimes to reflect and discuss, but we should never lose sight of our goal. The goal is not the healing process, but rather to feel good again. Focusing on healing is akin to someone pointing to the moon but you stare at the end of their finger. Too often leads you into your pain and limitations and not to where you wish to be.

Since then I often think of my personal growth as one big matching game. If, for example, my dream life includes being very healthy and feeling youthful, well then today I might try to match. A healthy person has healthy eating and exercise habits. Or, say I wish to be confident. Today I might try to speak better of myself and hesitate less.

Self-help is like a middle step that sometimes we need and use, sometimes we don’t need but we worry ourselves into thinking we do, or sometimes we discuss the self help but fail to apply it.

Anger is not a very enjoyable emotion and it can cause many problems. We often feel helpless in our anger, but there are some simple techniques we can learn to help us reduce or eliminate our anger and direct it in more healthy ways.

Anger often is born out of a build up of stress, so the first thing you can do is learn relaxation techniques that you can use when you are feeling stressed. One technique is simply taking a break and breathing deeply and letting go of the tension held in your body.

It is our exaggerated and dramatic way of thinking that makes our anger escalate, so it is important to start breaking the habit of this distorted way of thinking. When we are angry, we might be imagining that people are deliberately trying to hurt us or that we are powerless or that things beyond our control matters more than it actually does.

Control issues especially come up with anger. We need to learn that we can’t control others but also that we don’t need to control others to be happy and safe. We only need to be able to direct our own thoughts and behavior, and more consciously choose to take positive things from situations and life.

Blame is another issue that comes up frequently with anger. Blame is very dis-empowering, and it is sometimes sneaks its way into our psyche in disguise. Make a conscious decision to let go of blame just as you would let go of holding onto something that burns you.

Expression is the last key to managing your anger. Trying to suppress anger you feel only makes it fester until it boils over or causes damage to you. Anger often can be unraveled by using the techniques just mentioned, but when it can’t, it is important to express it in ways that do not harm you or others. Sometimes it is enough to communicate to someone, “I am angry because I feel like…” At other times it is not helpful or possible to talk to the person with whom you are feeling anger. General anger can also be expressed in painting (even if you are not an artist), in poetry or music, in a journal, or some other safe manner. Just be careful that when you are expressing your anger, you are letting go of it and not increasing your anger. Managing anger should always make you feel more empowered.

“Monsters from the Id, John.”

Dr. C.X. Ostrow clutched the arm of Commander John J. Adams in the 1955 science fiction movie “Forbidden Planet” and stared at him feverishly.

“Morbius was too close to the problem. He didn’t see that when the Krell machine gave the Conscious Mind a boost, it also boosted the Id that lies in the Unconscious. It is where the mass of formless, bestial impulses develop…”

Anyone who saw “Forbidden Planet” would never forget it as the first movie to convey a postulate of Freudian psychoanalysis … the Unconscious Mind.

For those too young to remember “Forbidden Planet”, it’s a tale of Morbius, a mad scientist who survives a disaster on a distant planet and discovers a super-scientific race known as the “Krell”. The Krell had developed machines that boosted their intelligence and gave substance to their thoughts.

Unfortunately, the Krell destroyed themselves by unleashing primeval monsters lurking in the Id.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

Shakespeare used the concept of the Unconscious Mind in many of his plays, and indeed, “Forbidden Planet”, is a remake of “The Tempest”. The concept predates him, however, and was explored in the Hindu Vedas between 2500 and 600 BC (Wykipedia, Unconscious Mind).

In his development of Psychoanalysis, Freud proposed a model of the mind which consisted of the Conscious and Unconscious, the latter consisting of the Superego and Id. Later psychoanalysts elaborated on the concept of the Unconscious, or disputed its actual existence, but none denied the notion that there were buried, non verbalized impulses deep within the human psyche that resulted in unexplainable, and sometimes irrational, behavior.

OUR UNCONSCIOUS TALKS TO US

I rent rooms in my home. I once put an ad on the Internet advertising one of my rooms and forgot to mention that I had a cat. I received an inquiry and set up an appointment to show it. Everything was going well until the prospective renter saw the cat.

He paled. “I…I uh, am afraid of cats.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Cats? Oh, our cat is harmless. He’s just a housecat and we’ve had him for years.”

When I saw the genuine fear in his eyes, I decided his reaction wasn’t ridiculous. For some reason, he was afraid of housecats, and I sincerely doubt he knew the reason for it

Something must have happened when he was very young. Fear of cats lurked in his Unconscious and was being communicated to him nonverbally in a way that was very difficult to deal with.

ADDRESSING THE “ROOT CAUSE”

Panic Attacks are acknowledged to be different from Panic Disorder, which can be treated with drugs that modulate the neurotransmitters in our nervous systems.

Even though medications may treat the “symptom” of the Panic Attack, the root cause is not addressed and dealt with. In order to do that, you have to have a little conversation with your Unconscious Mind.

DEALING WITH YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND

Why should an incident like waiting in line in a grocery store suddenly cause bodily sweating, shaking, and unreasoned fear? The Unconscious Mind is responding to the stimuli, and the question is…what is it communicating that is causing this kind of reaction?

Communication, however, is a “two way street”. The Unconscious can “talk” to us, and vice versa. How can we find out what it is saying, and how can we talk to it?

There are at least 9 ways we can attempt to communicate with our Unconscious Mind:

1) Hypnosis. This can be a way of talking to and reprogramming the subconscious. There have been amazing success rates in overcoming phobias by this means.

2) Dreams. The Unconscious communicates with us through dreams. In order to use them as therapeutic tools, you must immediately record the dream when you wake up and most likely get professional help in interpreting them.

3) Meditation. Take time to clear your mind…stop all Conscious thought…give the Unconscious the opportunity to communicate with you.

4) “Freudian slips”. Freud believed that when we involuntarily say things we don’t mean, we are given clues to what is going on in the Unconscious.

5) Flashbacks. These can be vivid recollections stemming from the Unconscious, and can give us clues to problematic behavior.

6) Imagination. What we imagine when our minds are allowed to “drift” can give us clues as to what is going on in the Unconscious.

7) Regression techniques. These are done professionally in an attempt to take us back to our childhood to explore Unconscious programming.

8) Inner dialogue. Sometimes just “ordering” the Unconscious to come up with something works. It may take time, but the machinery starts operating, and may produce surprising results.

9) Intuition. When you have a “gut level feeling” that either agrees or disagrees with the rationale of your Conscious Mind, it is your Unconscious communicating with you.

NO BRAIN BOOST FROM THE KRELL

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we can’t receive a “brain boost” from a super scientific race like the Krell in “Forbidden Planet”. If we could, maybe we would be able to drag the monsters out in the light where we could talk to them.

Meanwhile, however, we are stuck with the techniques of psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy and meditation.

But, come to think of it, that might be for the best. I didn’t really want to talk to the monsters anyway.

Procrastination is a problem that usually affects students, but it can be found in the working world, as well. For many students, getting an assignment that is due in two months is a great thing. They have two months to slowly work on the assignment, making necessary improvements all along the way. That is how it is supposed to be done. Other students plan to get to work on that assignment, but they never get around to it. Then, the due date rolls around and that student is left pulling an all-nighter so that he or she can barely make the deadline the next morning. Does that sound familiar? If it does, then you probably have a problem with procrastination.

Procrastination is not limited to the world of academia, though. In the work world, many jobs are lost because a worker did not get to the work in time. Deadlines are missed because a business plan wasn’t given enough consideration early on. Even worse than that, droves of workers sit at their desks and do nothing for hours, just killing time before the clock says that they can go home. These things cost businesses large amounts of money in lost productivity. What is at the root of all of this procrastination? Some might say that it is laziness, but it is really just a problem with mindset. People are so conditioned to putting off work that after a while, it becomes a habit.

It is difficult to stop this terrible habit. It takes a concerted effort a long time to truly change your ways. By doing that, you would be changing the way your mind processes work. In my time as a hypnotherapist, I have used hypnosis to deal with this problem. Like many of my colleagues, I can use hypnosis to stop people from smoking and keep them away from stress. I find that it is a reliable solution for a host of other issues, as well.

Many people don’t even consider hypnosis as a treatment option because they associate it with the shows in Las Vegas and the depictions on television. That’s not what hypnosis is about, though. Hypnosis is really about changing a person’s basic senses so that their thinking is permanently changed. This sounds like a perfect way to counter procrastination, doesn’t it? If you want to change your ways and get to work, you should get information on hypnosis and make a big change. You will be happy that you did.