As a clinical hypnotherapist, I constantly hear stories about how people believe they became the way they are.
 
They want to change the past in the vain hope it will ring in a bright future.
 
It is hard to let go of negative behaviors that have been with you for so long.
 
Remember your behaviors were formed between birth and 12 years old. To a large extent, you will still handle your problems the way you did when you were 12.
 
As babies, we experimented. We learned to crawl, to walk, to speak, and to act in the environment where we were raised.
 
This May Be a Surprise
 
We learn our behaviors from our secondary caretakers, fathers or the most dominant male figure in our lives. From our mothers, we learn how to communicate.
 
What effect does a father have? As a baby when you needed anything you would cry a certain way and your mother would do what was needed.  Your mother would do for you quickly because she was there for you. When your father came home, even though you were crying, your mother did not rush to you as fast as when your dad was not present.
 
Therefore the baby thought that since his mother was focused on his father, if he emulated his father’s behavior, his mother would be more responsive. The baby’s logic: The love she felt for her husband would translate to the baby if he acted like his father.
 
What If He Were Different?
 
Imagine the chaos, however, if the father were a physically abusive drunk. The baby would grow up believing such behavior was appropriate because his mother tolerated it.
 
I am working with a client who is experiencing severe night sweats and tremors. She knows why she gets them.  She wants to stop them.
 
From the age of 4 to 13, she was sexually abused by her father. She once thought that she had handled it. Unfortunately, the night sweats began two years ago. They have been disrupting her sleep and her life. 

She wakes up in the middle of the night, shaking, unable to swallow or speak. Once conscious, the feeling passes, leaving her alone and scared.

She was spending too much time focusing on the past, hating her father, angry toward her mother who would not believe her daughter until she was 11 or 12. Finally, she contacted the police. The jailed father will remain behind bars for some years.
 
Poor nutrition was another childhood problem. She did not eat much, mostly carbohydrates, leading to severe mood swings and panic attacks.
 
Moodiness and panic attacks were resolved once she understood the importance of eating a small amount of protein every two hours. In stabilizing her blood sugar levels, she began to think clearly, from the higher functioning critical reasoning areas of her brain.
 
Now we could deal with childhood traumas, not by repeated examinations but by acknowledging that they were gone and unchangeable.
 
What could be changed was the way her subconscious handled her daily life.
 
She devised a roadmap of where she wanted her life to be.
 
Through hypnosis and desensitization to her past traumas, she conceived of new behaviors, how to react to old thoughts.
 
She caught on fast, and the vast landscape of her life was dramatically altered.
 
Her night sweats and panic attacks have vanished.
 
Today she is as happy as anyone can be.

Do not hesitate to contact me by telephone, 310.204.3321, or by email at nickpollak@hypnotherapy4you.net. See my website at www.hypnotherapy4you.net