PART 1 | Chapter 4 | Thought Traps & Mindset Myths

"But I'm not anxious - I'm a very positive person!!"

When I first encountered hypnotherapy (which was an accident) and went along to my first session - somewhat filled with scepticism, somewhat overlooking the ‘therapy’ part of the equation - two memorable things happened.

Firstly - I was blown away by all the *actual* science involved.  I had wrongly assumed that it was all a bit mystical and fluffy which, at the time didn’t hold any weight for me. To be honest, I didn’t hold much hope for it actually working.  Hands up - I learned a valuable lesson about preconceptions that day!  And safe to say my opinions have shifted since, as I’ve come to understand that actually science and spiritual/therapeutic concepts are often far more aligned than we give them credit for (or more often than not, one and the same in different clothing).

The second memorable thing was the revelation that I had this thing called anxiety.  This was news to me - and not welcome news.  I’m not even sure I really knew what it was!  I was slightly outraged/surprised/perplexed. I hadn’t gone for help with anxiety.  I’d gone for help with stage fright - a completely different thing in my (clearly limited) book.  

Ok, maybe I was a tiny bit in denial.

So I sat there, learning about how the brain works, and thinking “Yeah, but this doesn’t really apply to me, all this stuff about anxiety, stress and the primitive brain.  When do we get to the ‘fixing my stage-fright’ bit?”.

In classic Abi style, I’d decided I was fine thank you very much.  I had my sh*t together, there was just this little ‘problem’ that needed sorting out if I wanted to pursue my passion for singing without wanting to have the ground swallow me up every time I opened my mouth (even in front of my teachers). 

Obviously there was just something wrong with ‘that’ bit of my life.  I had something a bit wrong with the ‘I love to perform’ switch in my brain and everything else was just dandy.

Only, it wasn’t.

My lovely therapist asked me to tell her what was going well in my life at the moment.  “What’s been good recently?”

And as a self-proclaimed ‘very positive person’...

I have to admit I really, really struggled! 

Oh crap.  Maybe I wasn’t so positive after all.

You see, what I thought was positivity was really my suit of armour.