Article: Get Unreal! / Judith Simon Prager, Ph.D.
When people say, "Get real!" or "You have to face reality," they are always talking about the downside, "grim reality," "the way things are." But as a practicing hypnotherapist, I find that "mastering reality" means limiting the possibilities. And it is in finding "alternities" -- alternate realities -- that we can, as Thoreau said, "live the life we imagine."
What if you could have a conversation with a fruit bowl or an angel or dance with your cancer and find the answers you seek? My clients have accomplished those awesome outcomes. And although I work with them in trance, you can do it for yourself with your imagination.
It has been scientifically demonstrated that every thought or visualization we experience not only has a physiological reaction but has the SAME physiological reaction as if we had experienced it in reality. You need only remember the palpitating heart, the sweaty palms, the rush of adrenalin that accompanied your last nightmare to understand the connection. After all, you weren't really being chased by a lion, you just imagined it.
The fact is that, through your creative imagination, even without trance, you can effect life-changing transformations. Two simple, yet powerful techniques involve using either roll models (of which there are too few in our society) or a resource from the past.
The Role Model Technique
One client who had been the victim of medical malpractice came to me feeling completely disempowered. In a badly botched surgery, the muscles around her eyes had been injured and she could not move them in their sockets from a fixed, 45 degree, downcast angle. To see anything, she had to turn her head and tilt it back, and she believed her life was ruined. Although she was suing the surgeon, she metaphorically couldn't "see" a good outcome. In an ordinary conversation, I suggested that she reminded me of Jacqueline Kennedy at JFK's funeral. That image had a profound effect on her. Suddenly, trapped behind those dark glasses, she stood up straighter and began to hold herself with greater dignity. With that simple image in her mind, she entered the courtroom, was able to testify calmly and with great effect against the surgeon, and won her case.
Using a Resource From the Past
Another client admitted to me that she had serious control issues. While not denying a long history of the problem, I had only that opportunity to work with her and I knew she could be helped if we could find a resource. In the course of conversation, she told me she had done something out of the ordinary the weekend before – she had taken a motorcycle ride behind a biker. "He told me not to compensate for the turns," she said, amazed.. "If he leaned one way, he explained that I should lean with him, not lean in the other. Just follow his lead." I suggested that that experience provided a great metaphor for taking life as it comes. What if, instead of trying to control the situation, she just leaned in and saw where it led her. I had her go back in her mind and recreate the experience of "going with the flow" in every cell in her body. When she embodied it, she smiled. Sometime later I met her and she told me that seeing the world in this new way had changed her life. When I asked her "how?" she said, without hesitation, but with some astonishment, "Sex! I'd once gone to a sex therapist and he said I could never enjoy sex because I couldn't give up control. But remembering that motorcycle ride, I just followed his lead…"
A
resource from the more distant past was used by another client, who, because
she was being sued had developed dangerously high blood pressure. The
suit was unjust and threatened her psychotherapy license. We discussed
her past and uncovered much fear due to episodes in which her mother had
chased after her with a knife when she was a child. This fear of being
unprotected arose again and was causing the serious medical condition.
I asked her to remember a time when she felt brave. She closed her eyes
and went deep into her imagination, smiling when she recalled that she
used to be Annie Oakley riding on the handlebars of her bicycle down steep
hills with the boys.
"Weren't you afraid?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Why did you do it?"
"It was exciting."
"But wasn't it scary?"
"Yes. And exciting."
"And you were brave."
"Yes."
"So, something can be scary and you can be brave enough to do it?" She
agreed, and I had her feel that adventuresome feeling in her whole body
and bring it back into this moment. By that evening, her blood pressure
returned to normal and the case against her was dismissed.
What if we're not a victim of the downside of our life but a participant in the adventure of it? If reality is, as Einstein said, not fixed at all but relative to the observer, it's a matter of the way we choose to observe it. Everyone has resources and an imagination. The next step is to know that when you use it, you can create transformations in your life that engage your strengths, your wisdom and your joy.
Return to: