Hypnosis for Overthinking - ACT Metaphors to Calm the Mind and Release Intrusive Thoughts - The Hypnotist

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Welcome to The Hypnotist, the show that gives you inside
access to cutting edge hypnosis with real clients facing
genuine. Issues.
Brought to you by The Hypnotherapist, Demanded by
celebrities, CEOs and even royalty, Adam Cox.
These recordings took place livefrom Adam Smith in London's
world famous Harley Street. So get yourself comfortable and

(00:31):
enjoy today's episode of The Hypnotist.
Hi, it's Adam here. And in this session of the
hypnotist, you're going to be listening to a hypnosis session
all about intrusive thoughts. And I was working with a.
Client that had an event that had made them think about stuff

(00:53):
in a really emotive way. And since that point, every
thought that related to their relationship felt like a really
high stakes, really serious thought.
And they also felt that they hadto do something about that,
whereas in the past they would think about things and it
wouldn't really be that much of a big deal.
So in this particular session, you're going to hear various

(01:13):
metaphors from something called Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy. And that's.
Fused within a hypnosis session to really give them a feeling of
detaching from the thoughts and suggestions about considering
these thoughts to be low stakes.Rather.
Than high stakes, If you have intrusive thoughts and it really
seems to put you in a spiral andthings seems to amplify and

(01:38):
really exaggerate and catastrophize, then I think
you'll get some value from this session.
Just be aware of course that it was created for an individual
and some of the suggestions might be perfect for them and
not quite right for you. But if you do like the idea of
something more bespoke, there will be a link in the
description where you can get a free 30 minute consultation call
to discuss me being your hypnotherapist and then we can

(01:59):
actually do a session together. For now, though, find a quiet,
comfortable place where you won't be disturbed.
Relax and enjoy the session. Take a deep breath in, and as

(02:35):
you breathe in, breathe in that long, calm, relaxing breath.
And as you exhale, just feel a wonderful feeling of release, as
if any tension, stress or worries are leaving your body in

(03:00):
that outward breath. Breathing in relaxation and
exhaling tension, each breath taking you deeper and deeper.
Relaxed. And I want you to think.

(03:25):
Think of that part of your mind responsible for being vigilant,
being on edge. Maybe you could imagine a
bodyguard on high alert or a guard dog expecting a problem,

(03:50):
but as you breathe in that resourceful relaxation, send a
message that it's time to stand down.
They don't need to be on high alert.
There is no threat. There is No Fear, there is no

(04:14):
danger, so for now they can justgo off duty and notice when it
feels like they're no longer with anything they have to do or

(04:38):
need to do. It's a signal to yourself that
everything is manageable now, and I want you to feel that
sensation in your body of being able to cope easily, that

(05:05):
feeling that everything will be all right, everything is
manageable, everything will be fine.

(05:25):
So as you breathe in and breatheout on every outward breath,
just imagine tension leaving your body and look for clues in
your body, like the tiny musclesin your forehead relaxing,
shoulders loosening, jaw releasing any tension until your

(05:52):
body feels just a little lighter, a little freer.
As your mind opens up, becoming more receptive and curious.
And I wonder if you can use the power of your imagination to

(06:18):
imagine that you are sitting by a quiet stream somewhere in
nature. And maybe you could imagine
sunlight flickering through the leaves, and you notice the
gentle sound of water flowing. And on this stream you notice

(06:43):
leaves drifting by, one after another, slowly carried along by
the current. And I'd like you to place a
thought, any thought at all, onto a leaf and watch it as it

(07:04):
drifts away without effort, without resistance.
That you don't need to do anything with that leaf.
You don't need to distract yourself from it.
You don't need to submerge the leaf underwater.

(07:28):
Just allow it to float on by. And then imagine another thought
comes, and just imagine picking it out of your head, placing it
on the leaf. And again it floats away.

(07:49):
And some leaves drift quickly and some more slowly, but all of
them keep moving. And as you notice this, you
realise that thoughts can come and go without you needing to

(08:13):
hold them, fight them or chase them.
And then I want you to imagine there by the stream, there's an
old fashioned radio. And you might imagine that your

(08:35):
mind is like a radio station on that old radio, and sometimes it
plays music you enjoy and other times static, noise or a genre
of music you don't really like. You don't have to be annoyed.

(09:02):
The radio can just play in the background while you go about
your life connected to what matters most, and you don't have
to turn it off. You can choose to have it

(09:24):
playing while your attention is elsewhere and suddenly by that
stream, a bus turns up to take you somewhere.
And I want you to imagine that the bus driver, instead of

(09:48):
asking for your ticket, offers if you would like to drive the
bus. And just imagine you're driving
that bus in the direction of what you value most in your
future. Consider yourself driving

(10:09):
towards love, connection, playfulness and intimacy.
And sometimes there's noisy passengers that climb aboard
that bus. Doubts, worries, what ifs.

(10:32):
And they may shout and they may distract, but only you can steer
the bus. They can try and distract,
provoke, or perhaps just be there making noise, but it

(10:57):
doesn't change the direction that you're driving towards.
They cannot steer the bus, only you can.
And the more you keep driving towards where you want to go,
the less power those passengers really have.

(11:23):
And you may imagine leaving thatbus.
And I want you to imagine seeinga monster, a cartoon monster,
perhaps in the style of The Simpsons cartoon, you know, the

(11:47):
style of animation. And imagine that monster is
holding a rope. And for a while, it feels like
you've been on the other end of that rope, pulling against a
monster of worry, straining, exhausting yourself, believing

(12:16):
you must win. And I wonder how long, how many
weeks or months you've been playing that tug of war with
that monster. But as you let go of the rope,
you realize that you're free. The monster may still be there,

(12:42):
but now it's just holding a rope, and that rope is no longer
connected to you. So without your grip, your
effort, your focus, your energy,that monster loses its pull over
you. And in this calm, resourceful

(13:09):
state, you can remember the feelings of love, attraction or
arousal can flow naturally when there is no pressure, no test to
pass. And I want you to think of the

(13:31):
person you love the most and feel a connection between you
and them. And that connection is also
connected to life and with yourself.
And every now and then a thoughtwill try and break that

(13:56):
connection, but it can only do it if you allow it to happen.
I want you to imagine drifting back to perhaps 5 or 6 months
ago and to feel how you felt back then.

(14:16):
Feel that connection and feel that when thoughts and worries
came up, it kind of felt that they were no big deal, that it
will be all right. That even if a challenge comes
up, I want you to get that feeling, that sensation that

(14:41):
it's a piece of piss to just deal with that issue as you
consider yourself dialling everything down, leaving a high
stakes environment to a low stakes environment.

(15:02):
I want you to imagine if you were in a casino and your entire
life savings was dependent on one spin of the roulette wheel.
That would feel that whatever happens is so important, but if

(15:24):
it was a tiny amount, no big deal.
Even if it doesn't land on the number you want, it will be all
right. And I want you to think for a
while now that you've been treating something like it's a
high stakes environment. And I want you to feel that you

(15:47):
are reducing your stake. Because actually, when you
reduce the stake, the emotional investment in the thought, the
idea, the memory, it will be allright, it will be manageable.

(16:10):
Everything is no big deal. And maybe you can recall times
in your past when you felt that way, when a thought was just a
thought, when it was no big deal, it would pass like a cloud

(16:31):
in the sky. And I want you to feel that you
are reawakening all of those neural pathways and taking them
all the way into the present. So you don't have to distract

(16:53):
yourself or suppress a thought. You can notice thought.
Thank you for showing up. Extract the wisdom, the inside
if there is any, and let it drift away while you return to
living. And I wonder if you could

(17:19):
imagine seeing a short movie on a screen about how you've been
these last few months on edge, hyper vigilant, spiraling.
And I want you to see you on that screen like you're a

(17:39):
cartoon character, maybe with exaggerated features or yellow
skin. But I want you to play this
short summary of what it's been like and then imagine watching
it backwards in reverse, like everything's happening

(18:03):
backwards. Just rewind it as I go.
You rewind it all and just imagine what that would look
like if you rewound everything to before it all started.
Just rewind it, seeing yourself do everything backwards, all the

(18:29):
worrying in reverse, the thinking in reverse, see it all
happening backwards, and then imagine stepping into the end of
that movie and feeling what it would feel like of three or four

(18:51):
months worth of worry all happening backwards.
When you've got to the beginning, jump back to the end
and just rewind it again, thinking backwards, walking
backwards, moving backwards. And then imagine doing it one

(19:19):
more time, but going all the wayback to when you felt absolutely
fine, that everything would be all right, that these thoughts
were no big deal. So in the end of that movie, and
find yourself back in your body maybe six months ago, and

(19:43):
imagine having the same thought and feeling that this is
nothing. Nothing to do, nothing to think
about. Consider it the opposite of
spiralling insignificance. And if your unconscious feels
that you've messed up a current pattern and reactivated a

(20:08):
previous pattern, let me know bynodding your head.
And let's reawaken it even more as you imagine two or three days
from now, having a thought, the kind of thought that may have

(20:33):
spiraled you in the past and nowit almost makes you smile.
It's so low stakes, it's a pieceof piss.
It's no big deal. It will be fine and allow it to
pass like a leaf on a stream. And if it feels like that's what

(20:58):
your future is, that even if thethought does come up, it has no
significance over you anymore, let me know by nodding your head
and let's test it out. One month forwards now, one

(21:21):
month from now, imagine having an intrusive thought about a
relationship or a big event. Allow the thought to come up and
allow it to pass. No big deal.

(21:45):
Nothing to do, nothing to dwell on, no one to talk to.
No big deal. And imagine it perhaps one or
two days before a wedding, and just imagine there's a thought

(22:16):
of a doubt. Call it a second thought, and
just allow it to pop up in your mind and float away.
Because there's a part of you that already knows that you've
been feeding these thoughts. You've been feeding these

(22:39):
thoughts emotions, and that's what's made them bigger and more
frequent. But I want you to feel that you
can starve these thoughts of your attention and your emotion.
You can have a thought and you can allow it to pass and

(23:02):
everything will be all right. And if you could imagine
something like that, where not only does it not spiral, but it
hardly becomes a blip on your radar.
Let me know about nodding your head.

(23:24):
That's it. And then imagine going back to
that stream, realizing that you've been playing a tug of war
with a monster, pouring petrol on a frame.

(23:48):
You've been feeding thoughts to make them bigger and treating it
like it's a high stakes casino. But now all of those things are
undone. It's low stakes, the monster has
the rope by itself, the stream is carrying away your thoughts,

(24:16):
they're on the leaves and you are driving your bus in the
direction that you want to take it.
It's time to leave this place realizing that you've been on a
journey in your imagination, a journey of thoughts within

(24:40):
thoughts, ideas within ideas, and dreams within dreams.
But it's time to return now to the here and the now as I count
from 1:00 to 10:00 to awaken you.
Starting to count 123 Waking up 456.

(25:04):
More alert 7-8 Open your eyes. Open your eyes 910.
Wide awake, Wide awake. Wide awake.
Thank you so much for joining meon today's episode of The

(25:27):
Hypnotist, and if you've enjoyedtoday's episode, I would
encourage you, if you haven't already, to hit the subscribe
button or follow button to make sure that you're automatically
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Also, by doing that, it lets thealgorithm know that you like

(25:48):
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that might not know that this show exists.
So that would be helpful for me.And if you like the stuff that I
do, take a moment just to have alook in the show notes or the
description because there's lotsof free things that I have to
offer, including free hypnosis downloads without the intro or

(26:09):
the outro like I'm doing now. So thank you again for joining
me on today's episode, and I'll see you again soon for the next
one.

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Hypnosis for Overthinking - ACT Metaphors to Calm the Mind and Release Intrusive Thoughts

Episode Transcript

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