How hypnosis improved my life

A few years ago I was working in a big company. The job was good and reasonable and well paid and I liked my coworkers and so on and everything was fine. I worked hard to make myself valuable, not only for the company but for my coworkers and especially for myself. I was that kind of workaholic that sleeps in the company (well, literally. I had a flat 50 yards away from office back then) and worked until midnight not only once.

That was before 2 years ago my workplace changed. I was ordered on another job position and that's were things went complicated. The job I had to do there was boring and with few liability. I tried and make the best off it, thought it would only be a matter of time until they notice they need me on my old job (that new guy was, well, overestimated). I had done quite everything for my employer, so I found it was only normal to do me a kind favor and put me back where I thought I belong.

They didn't. I had overcome burnout syndrome, I came back from my holidays (9 days in summer), I worked at night when I had to - nothing counted. So I fell into depression. I didn't notice at first glance, but as time went by I could hardly find any sleep and got demotivated more and more. I noticed being dissatisfied and unhappy. Yet what I didn't notice was the fact, that I wasn't happy anymore. Things I used to enjoy quite much didn't make any fun, I stopped reading books and meeting my friends (although my social life was severely damaged before because of the job I thought was quite satisfactory). My doctor sent me home for 2 weeks, at first because of my problems with sleep. After that, for another week. Then another one. I was at home because of my depression for nearly half a year without any useful thoughts or activities. Just lay in bed and stared to the ceiling. I thought very, very miserable of myself. All my self esteem was gone to the dogs. Even the easiest tasks like answering the phone or getting my mail overcharged me. It took me weeks just to get out of my bed and tell somebody "Yeah, I'm still alive..."
When I got professional help, I temporarily was the workaholic again. But it wasn't satisfying me. It wasn't quick enough, everything lasted too long, it was so hard for me to do just what I used to do without any problem, without even thinking about it! If I had my leg broken I wouldn't expect myself running a marathon in under 2 hours - yet, with a psychic disease it was different, because it was hard for me to accept that some things temporarily, and that was the point, didn't work as before. I couldn't get in my head that it was a matter of time and trying. I was near giving up again.

That was when I saw some stage hypnotist on TV.
I was just "Wow! If one can be made to do things like that, how about easy tasks?" and started to read and ask questions. I interviewed my psychiatrist about that whole issue, and he thought it might be a good idea someday, but I shouldn't make a cocktail of therapy. I just thought she was shortsighted, as I already HAD a cocktail of therapies. The whole day I did nothing else than going from one therapy to another. So I decided to give it a try. With a little help from a friend I found a hypnotist I finally trusted. We had a few hours of talk before he actually hypnotized me, because there was so much I wanted to know and quite a bit he wanted to know about me and my problems. He didn't want to involve himself in my actual depression (although there are quite some who do, mostly psychiatrists with advanced training in hypnosis), instead we did focus on something else.

I had no planning for the day. I used to get up at around six and went to bed at one or two in the night at the time I was happy. The time we started I slept until 9, did my therapy, went to bed between hours and went to bed early, always swallowed my Prozac in the morning (not actually Prozac, but another one. I chose this as a wide generalization) and my Valium in the evening. Shortly after he hypnotized me the first two or three times, my days became longer. I went up at 8 and didn't go to bed until 11 o'clock. Thus my sleep was better again and I didn't have to use valium as much as before. He started to restructure my life by simply telling me to structure my day on a daily basis. That was so damn easy. Four weeks before I didn't even manage to get my ass out of bed, and then I went up, sat down and began to write what I wanted to do on this particular day. I went to my therapy with more confidence and managed to accept smaller steps as I could see the huge progress I had made, and the tiny steps the others did.

And it wasn't hard after all. Basically, I just lay down and listened to what he told me. Hypnosis isn't anything like your unconscious or sleeping or brain dead or something. To me, it was basically a great relaxation, physical and mental. The next day when I opened my eyes, I just stretched my muscles, went up and took a shower. As my eye fell on the clock on the wall, I just realized I had actually gotten up ages before nine. That made me confident and helped a lot, because I had proof that hypnosis worked quite well for me.

It's been a year since I left therapy now. I have a new job, a new home, new confidence. I now use hypnosis quite often since it was so important to me to actually getting things done in that hard time I had. I used to take a bath when I needed some relaxation, and there were times I needed it very often. Now I can use hypnosis for that and safe a huge amount of water =).

I stopped going to that hypnotist since I moved to another city. Now I have some CD's on different topics. You can buy them on the internet and they're actually quite good. They can help you to quit smoking or lose weight without greed, improve school marks or just help relax. They even use it on phobia. You're afraid of spiders? Needles? Flying? There is absolutely no need to keep it that way. I've also been learning self hypnosis for a few weeks now, but for a start you should get a CD if you want to give it a try.

Hypnosis has helped me in a very difficult time has improved my life since then.
Thus I wanted to share the experience in the hope that some people may find it useful.

This is my favourite CD I'm using ever since and that helped me quite a lot.

Feel Good About Yourself
The Feel Good About Yourself CD contains 3 specially selected hypnosis sessions.

For me, this works really great. You can find loads of other stuff on this website, but this is one thing I can personally recommend.
Feel free to drop me a line on the guestbook. But please don't be harsh as this is my first lens and I'm no native speaker - or writer in that case.
Thanks for reading, and all the best!

Tommy