Let’s Just Skip the Part About Forgiveness And Get On To Part Where My Life Changes.

5/26/09
Valerie A. Grimes

Let’s Just Skip the Part About Forgiveness
And Get On To Part Where My Life Changes.

When clients visit me for a hypnosis session, it is usually after they have tried many other methods to relieve their emotional pain and are now ready to work on their failed relationship, addiction, feelings of anxiety or low self-esteem. Our process consists of four distinct phases required to bring about change that must be conducted in this order:

1) Discovery of Cause (Why Do I Feel Anxious? etc)
2) Emotional Release (Giving Voice to Inner Child)
3) Forgiveness (of Self or Others)
4) Re-learning (Placement of new belief system and process for strengthening)

However, where I see progress bogging down is with the third step -- the process of forgiveness to ourselves and/or others. Most clients want to skip the part about forgiveness and just get to the part where their life changes and they can be happy. Not going to happen.

We hear a lot about the benefits of forgiveness through DVDs, CDs, podcasts and books on the subject. But don’t those resentment gurus know how hard it is? Yes, but they also know it is possible, or they wouldn’t suggest it. Holding resentments affect the body’s ability to thrive. And, if one desires to improve one’s chances of being healthy, then releasing this resentment can free the body from stress and give them a sense of accomplishment, as feelings centered around an old experience begin to change. By letting the energy that was tied up in the resentment be redirected toward constructive decisions, one get closer to the kind of life one wants to live. And that is a lovely thing.

Effects of not forgiving

If you are experiencing regret, sadness, hurt, fear, guilt, blame, anger, resentment and sometimes even revenge, it is an indication of the need for forgiveness. If left alone, these feelings cause chemical reactions creating depression, physical ailments, chronic pain and suppression of the immune system. (For more on this, read: “Molecules of Emotion,” by Candace Pert). I have witnessed clients in various stages of cancer, all with the same common negative emotion – resentment. “The Course In Miracles” states, “All disease comes from a state of un-forgiveness.” Our lives just can’t flow freely when we hold onto resentment.

However, through forgiveness therapy, memories become powerless and no longer generate feelings of anger, rate, frustration, depression and resentment.
Making true peace possible.


I can’t confront the person.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean the person has to confront the perpetrator; forgiveness exists in the heart of the forgiver.

Emmit Fox created a visualization which places the person you want to forgive on stage, receiving praise from the audience, seeing them happy and full of confidence and sureness -- I’ve used this one before and I am amazed at how the client can get to this point especially considering some of the acts of the perpetrator. But to see one visualizing this person receiving love and praise is almost as if one can feel the room get warmer as the heart melts and opens into a state of true forgiveness. Keep in mind this is a process and it not usually achieved in one or two sessions. (Darn, there is really no magic hypnotic wand). The client only gets to this point after they have released anger and frustration and feel safe enough to do so.


Is the Law of Attraction Working For You?

Positive Self Talk and Affirmations won’t work unless accompanied by emotions that match the beliefs that are already in the subconscious. Orison S. Marden, the father of the success movement, states, “Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.” Hypnosis is a rapid method for matching thoughts to desires and desires to thoughts, so the Law of Attraction can work in a positive way.

Hypnotherapy facilitates true healing by releasing buried emotions and gives the client freedom to experience the person they truly are. One doesn’t need to know how, just willing and pick up the phone and call me.

www.valeriegrimes.com