Donna was a nervous wreck. Her days were filled with anxiety and fear. Like an anchor around her heart, limiting beliefs were weighing her down and preventing her from fulfilling her greatest wishes and desires. At 60 years old, she thought she would be well-adjusted, married and happy. Instead, she was scared, single and sad.
Where did this all start? Even before we are born there is an environment. Studies show that a fetus can detect the mother’s words, thoughts and feelings. Then there is the next environment: our family, siblings, grandparents, friends, teachers, rich, poor, culture. Every environment is fundamentally flawed in some way — after all, we are human. Growing up, we are affected, influenced and trained by what we were taught from our environment. This is who we have become today.
As time goes by we develop coping skills and form our identity based on the perceptions that we have of our experiences and they are stored in our subconscious mind. These perceptions slowly become deeply held beliefs, whether they serve us or not. The mental and emotional baggage that is held deeply in our subconscious mind becomes “limiting beliefs” that no longer serve us. They can’t be overcome simply by wanting them to go away. The mind is like an iceberg — 10 percent is above water (conscious mind), and 90 percent is below water (subconscious mind). And, it processes almost a million times faster than the conscious mind. Think of it as a tape recorder that is always running, always recording every single thing that ever happens in your life.
The only way I know to clear mental and emotional baggage from our lives is to change our limiting beliefs with effective communication between our conscious and subconscious mind. The conscious mind is our wishes, desires and goals. The subconscious mind is where we hold the memories of our experiences in our environment — and this is where limiting beliefs reside. Donna has been seeing doctors and therapists for years, undergoing medication, supplements, individual therapy and group therapy, you name it, but nothing worked. She had a strong conscious desire to change her life, but none of those strategies were able to get under the water line to her subconscious mind and those limiting beliefs.
There is something you may have heard of called “Brain Dominance Theory.” This explains how the left and right sides of the brain control our different behaviors. Simplified, the right hemisphere is all about creativity and the left hemisphere is all about facts and figures. In a perfect world, both sides would function equally. However, as one of those coping skills we developed, under stress one side becomes dominant. The key to conscious/subconscious communication is to have both hemispheres working equally and effectively.
While in a “whole brain” state, we can change those limiting beliefs that are stored in our subconscious mind and align them with our conscious wishes and desires. We can go back on the tape recording and give ourselves subconscious beliefs that do support our current life. You can free yourself from the baggage of past memories.
Donna had a tough childhood. As an immigrant raised in a rough New Jersey neighborhood, she and her entire family were shunned and bullied. Combine that with an alcoholic, abusive father and a distant, mentally ill mother and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. She had deeply held limiting beliefs that she wasn’t good enough, that she didn’t belong. Despite an outwardly successful career, her daily personal life was full of fear and dread. Relationships were a thing of the past. Seems hopeless, right? Not!
When Donna came to me, on a scale of 1-10 her anxiety level was normally 8 or 9. After one session of Whole Brain Therapy with Energy Psychology techniques, her level dropped to a 3 or 4. After several more sessions she says she hasn’t felt this good her entire life! She is now able to manage the fear and anxiety in her daily life. She has replaced her limiting beliefs, that mental and emotional baggage, with new beliefs that serve her conscious wishes and desires for a better life.
