About 50,000 thoughts pass through our mind every day and, if mostly negative, they can poison a person’s self-worth and happiness, according to hypnotherapist Deborah Marshall-Warren.
This is why she believes one of the keys to happiness is positive internal vocabulary – that is, the words that stream through our minds.
Vocabulary is as important as the food we put in our mouth
“Vocabulary is as important as the food we put in our mouth,” Ms Marshall-Warren says.
“Vitamin-enriched vocabulary has a direct effect on the immune system. If someone has gone down a track of repeating ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I’m not worth it’ they are effectively programming themselves, each and every single day, to believe it.
“Their body begins to bend. Rather than holding themselves high, they think of themselves as low,” she adds.
Hypnotherapy lets the mind relax and this, in turn, allows access to the subconscious and suggestions can be made to it.
Over the past eight years, living and working in Malta, Ms Marshall-Warren has used hypnotherapy to help many address problems such as anxiety, nervousness, low self-esteem, anger and fear. She travels regularly to the UK to run her London clinic.
She stresses that hypnosis is not mind control and is a voluntary state. Many fear they will not remember what happened to them but this is not the case. While hypnosis looks like sleep, it is not.
She likens hypnosis to that feeling people experience when they are deep in prayer or when they are driving and arrive at point B without having any recollection of the route.
“If the person driving in front of you slams the brakes, you’ll be there in a heartbeat. Your conscious mind comes back to act. However, if you fall asleep at the wheel, it’s very different,” she says stressing that the whole point of hypnosis is gaining control and remembering.
“It’s what we don’t remember that causes trauma in our lives. Hypnosis is about logging in, not logging out. It’s a state of presence rather than absence. It’s not about losing control but about gaining control and steering your life,” she says.
When a client goes to her she uses hypnosis to take them back to that moment, or one of the moments, when their anxiety, low self-esteem or fear first rooted itself in their subconscious.
“I invite your older self to the younger self. The older self can say to the child: ‘hey, you failed that one exam but you’ve accomplished so much more’. We bring the emotional CV up to date with the career CV so that a person lives their life more congruently and in an integrated way,” she says.
In June, Ms Marshall-Warren carried out a workshop on self-hypnosis in collaboration with Lead Events and will be having another one in November.
She teaches people how to help themselves into this altered state so they can make themselves positive and empowering suggestions. Learning to do so is a tool that will help them change their vocabulary and self-labels from negative to positive.
“There are various self-hypnosis techniques. Rather than saying ‘I’m anxious’ you begin to change that word to something that does you justice. Over a period of time the subconscious is going to hear ‘I’m calm, I’m calm’,” she explains.
“People are so happy to take responsibility for illness. Self-hypnosis allows them to begin to take more responsibility for their wellness,” she says.
For more information visit www.marshall-warren.com or http://wholebeingtoday.com/blog .