I’ll get by with a little help…

© Mary Ratcliffe, 2015

A colleague once said, “Even a therapist needs help at times!” and my first thought was that a therapist is no less likely to need help than anyone else.

If we’re feeling like we shouldn’t need help, because we’re a therapist, then we are putting undue pressure on ourselves to struggle on and somehow manage to cope.

And it’s not just therapists who do that kind of thing. A computer expert can feel they ought to be able to fix their own computer. A car mechanic might feel embarrassed waiting beside a broken-down car for the recovery team to get the vehicle moving again.

And when it comes to our health, we might feel totally comfortable telling people about our ruptured appendix, the leg that was broken in a rugby match or even of some rare brain disease. There’s no embarrassment, so awkwardness, no urge to keep it secret.

But the mind – that’s totally different, isn’t it?

It’s us!      It’s about as personal as it gets.

It’s so tied up with who we are, how we feel about ourselves, how we think others see us, and maybe even how they judge us.

If our computer is broken, we might just fix it ourselves if we have the right skills and equipment, or we might just take it to be repaired.

But there might not actually be a component or a connection or anything else ‘physical’ to fix.

It might be the software, the code, the operating system – and that’s not a physical thing. It’s just a set of instructions.  That’s all it is!!

But if it’s the operating system, it’s a very important set of instructions. It’s what makes it boot up when we press the ‘On’ button, and what makes it ‘listen’ to the keyboard and the mouse (and the screen if it’s touch-sensitive) so that it can carry out our wishes.

If any of those instructions contain errors or get corrupted at any time, that can lead to big problems. It might not boot up or it might keep crashing. It might take no notice of what we type or where we click the mouse.

We might feel a bit awkward about that if we do something in that field for a living or we call ourselves a geek. Otherwise, we just complain about it, get a bit of sympathy from others and get it mended or buy a new one.

Back to the mind!!

We get ‘programmed’ at a very young age. Before we’ve developed any critical faculties, all we can do is soak it all up. For a big part of our early life, a long and involved game of Chinese Whispers makes the final output totally unrecognisable from the initial input. That’s just how we are, how our minds and our brains develop.

It’s not our fault!

We don’t deserve to suffer for it!

It can be put right!

And it’s not just therapists who can feel they shouldn’t need help. We might be…

A teacher

A lawyer

A doctor

A scientist

A mechanic

A mum, a dad, a grandparent…

If we have any position of respect, authority, seniority, accountability, it’s still ok to get help with our own internal operating system.

And if anyone judges us for it, then maybe they’ve got an operating system fault too, and they deserve help as well.

Lesserian Curative Hypnotherapy…

…helps find and correct any errors in our operating system, in the set of instructions deep within us that help us live our lives the way we want and need to. Some errors can lead to phobias, irrational fears of everyday objects, unwanted and persistent habits/addictions, puzzlingly low self-esteem and countless other ongoing uncomfortable states we might find ourselves in. Once those errors are corrected, we can get on with life with only the ordinary day-to-day stuff to deal with, just like everyone else.

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