Q & A
Common Life Coaching & Self-Improvement Questions & Answers
Question: What is Life Coaching?
Answer: Life Coaching is focused on treating each client as a unique individual with unique insights, perspectives, personality characteristics, coping skills, psychological strategies and life challenges and working individually with that client to help them become more resilient, empowered, improved, abundant, prosperous and successful in a holistic way. It’s also focused on providing the client with the methods, skills, resources and tools that they need to be resilient and to help manage and solve future challenges, issues, problems and dilemmas on their own (i.e., without professional assistance).
Life Coaching can also be more proactive, action-based and solution-centered compared to traditional talk therapies where the client is sharing and the therapist is essentially just listening and interpreting. In my opinion life coaching also involves an approach that recognizes the interactivity and connectivity of different elements of the client’s life as well as the practical consequences of some approaches, decisions, behaviors, goals and choices.
Life Coaching is essential because if you are not empowered to make the emotional, psychological, cognitive & behavioral changes that are required to begin delivering the results & outcomes that you desire to receive from your daily actions & behaviors, then the therapy being provide to you is being delivered to you in vain. Additionally, the vast majority of therapists, counselors and other mental health professionals only enable their clients to voice & communicate their surface symptoms. They usually fail to identify and address the underlying issues that have led to those surface symptoms in the first place.
Question: What are Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy?
Answer: Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy are techniques that change or alter your state of consciousness and promote a trance state, a state in which your conscious self defense mechanisms and processes are bypassed. Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy allow your mind, body & spirit to change state so that you can release your past baggage, which allows for new, positive thoughts, feelings, perceptions and expectations to be embedded within your unconscious mind.
Your past baggage generally drives the vast majority of your thoughts, feelings, actions, behavior patterns, expectations and outcomes. Essentially, Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy bypass your conscious effort (which occur automatically) to filter, interpret and synthesize the information that is being shared instead of just taking it in at face value. Moreover, hypnosis allows you to receive positive suggestions, cues, thoughts, ideas and concepts without your conscious mind getting in your way.
Question: Why should I try Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy or Coaching instead of just going to a Psychiatrist, a Psychologist or a Therapist?
Answer: You should try hypnosis, hypnotherapy and/or life coaching because they are holistic means of changing how you respond and react to the circumstances around you. In many ways, you are your reactions and responses to stimuli (i.e., circumstances within your environment), and the consistency of your reactions and responses to repeated stimuli form either adaptive (i.e., beneficial) or maladaptive (nonbeneficial) patterns of behavior that define who you are, your personality, your coping skills and mechanisms, and ultimately the results and outcomes that you get in life (i.e., your perceived level of success).
Specifically, hypnosis, hypnotherapy and life coaching help to promote the concept that pills aren’t the long-term solution to many life issues and that eventually you benefit from learning to become accountable for how you respond to the circumstances and conditions in life. In particular, hypnosis also teaches you how to do self-meditation and coaching teaches you strategies for solving your own problems and challenges in the future, without professional intervention or assistance.
Your past baggage generally drives the vast majority of your thoughts, feelings, actions, behavior patterns, expectations and outcomes. Essentially, Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy bypass your conscious effort (which occur automatically) to filter, interpret and synthesize the information that is being shared instead of just taking it in at face value. Moreover, hypnosis allows you to receive positive suggestions, cues, thoughts, ideas and concepts without your conscious mind getting in your way.
Question: What is the Subconscious Mind & what does it have to do with Hypnosis?
Answer: Your subconscious mind, even though you’re not consciously aware of it, drives 99.9% of your thoughts, feelings, actions, behavior patterns, and expectations. How you perceive and react to those drives your outcomes & results in life By bypassing your “Conscious Mind”, which filters your experiences & expectations and actively decides which parts of your experiences to store, save & incorporate, Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy allow you to pull out the negative thoughts, feelings and expectations (i.e., Your BAGGAGE) and replace them with carefully planned & purposefully constructed ones that you choose & design!
If you are having problems, challenges, dilemmas & or difficulties achieving your goals, aspirations & desires, then a hypnosis session or a hypnotherapy session are just the right tools to help reset your state of mind.
Question: What are defense mechanisms and how do they affect how you deal with life circumstances? How does hypnosis help with defense mechanisms?
Answer: Much of the purpose of using Hypnosis and other Freudian and Ericksonian techniques is to move beyond the past defense mechanisms that we have set up unconsciously in order to protect our views of people and the world. Our minds are very proactive and reactive when it comes to protecting us from things that might damage our sense of well-being or the security that we have about the world around us. As such, defense mechanisms can become very complex and intricate; and they often elude us (we don’t even realize that they are in the background, working against us).
One of the most common defense mechanisms is “denial”. It’s one of the most common defense mechanisms because it’s simple and easy. Just deny what will challenge, damage, or interfere with your current views of the society, people, and the world–which is thought to protect your present view of the world. The problem is that denial fails to deal with reality and it prevents you from growing, maturing and evolving as a person. Denial is a very common defense mechanism because it requires very little energy or thought.
Other common defense mechanisms that you may have heard of include “repression”, “reaction formation”, “sublimation”, and “rationalization.” You tend to see repression and sublimation a lot with people who have had to deal with repeated physical or psychological traumas. And you tend to see rationalization a lot in politics, social life and business. Generally speaking, with rationalization, people do exactly what they want to do (regardless of the consequences) based upon their internal drives, motives and ego, then they present a different, more reasonable and/or empathetic reason for why they did what they did. Essentially, they do something for primarily selfish and ego-driven reason and then, when challenged about what they did, they present another, seemingly less selfish and socially-acceptable reason for their position or action. Basically, they’re being hypocritical, since they would likely hold a different position or would have acted differently had that been in the position of those who are negatively impacted by their current position or action.