One of the keys to mental healing is the belief that experience has meaning. From my book, “The Foundations and Practice of Lay Hypnotherapy,” I offer this insight: We hurt and then heal each other because we are still learning how to express our capacity to love.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Hypnosis Rising video, Designed to Love.

I have a unique view of physics that convinces me that this reality was designed so that love works. That may seem to contradict experience. The natural world is harsh on living creatures – not least through our dominant predators.

Still, after three billion years of Darwinian evolution, human beings took over the world because we combine certain capacities.

First, right behind our foreheads is the conscious mind that thinks about “who I am.”

Starting from that self-concept, “I” relate to others, thinking about who they are. Through empathy, “I” build rapport – the ability to feel in myself how they feel.

Then we have imagination – the ability to conceive of how their experience would change if the world changed. Through rapport, we are biased to seek what strengthens them.

Finally, we have the means, through words and tools, to make those changes – not least by teaching our children.

Simply put, among all creatures, we are most able to love.

For the last ten thousand years, we have been teaching each other how to love. When frightened or angry, those lessons may fade, and we revert to ancient behaviors that traumatize trusting intimates.

Among the professionals that heal trauma, hypnotherapists have a unique focus. We address the universal wound, the split of our mind, around eight years of age, driven by the conflict between expectations for our public and private behavior. The goal of hypnotherapy is to soften the divide separating our conscious and subconscious minds, increasing mental harmony.

If you are interested in “Bringing Your Whole Self to Life,” reach out!