Day 4 Inside The Hypnosis Toolbox- Parts Therapy

"Part of me wants to lose weight but part of me just wants to stay home and not go to the gym and eat ice cream."

You are made up of different parts. When all parts of you are working together, things flow smoothly in life. When there is conflict between parts of yourself, you experience an internal battle. People who are trying to lose weight experience this. They go to the freezer and find themselves taking out the ice cream. A part of them says "you shouldn't be doing this if you want to lose weight" but another part of them says "come on, it tastes good. You know you want it. You deserve it. You can go to the gym tomorrow." It is like the cartoons you used to watch as a child. The character had an angel with a halo on one shoulder and a devil with a pitchfork on the other.

Parts therapy enables you to work directly with a habit, behaviour, emotion or thought process. It allows greater understanding of what is happening. All behaviour has benefit.

An example would be someone who wants to lose weight. In hypnosis when working with the part of them that wants to go to the gym and lose weight the client might discover that this part wants them to feel good, look good and be healthy. They also might discover that part of them that wants to eat ice cream also wants to feel good or comforted. Both parts actually have benefit and want the person to feel good! However, both parts are going about feeling good in very different ways. Once we uncover the underlying motivations of each part, we can begin to come up with new alternatives using the creative mind. An example would be that the part that goes to the gym does so from Monday to Friday and on the weekend a bowl of ice cream can be had as a treat.

This allows greater integration of the parts within oneself. When parts of you are in alignment you don't feel like you are being denied anything. With this comes greater balance within the inner ecology.