Monday, March 07, 2005

Thought for the Day

(hat tip to Orlin Grabbe - www.orlingrabbe.com)

Underneath all the so-called problems, lies that fuel called fear: fear of rejection, fear of dying, fear of falling, fear of not being good enough. Whatever you tag it, it still comes out fear. Fear is what makes the field fertile for the "planting" of hypnotic suggestions which result in behavior labeled by some psychiatrists and psychologists as neurotic, psychotic, paranoid, manic depressive and, in rare cases, normal. There was a case reported some years back of a young woman who couldn't say no. She was labeled nymphomaniac. Hypnosis revealed that as a child she was expected to obey without question. Her mother would fly into rages if she didn't. One day, she said no to her mother. Her mother beat her and she fell back into a stove and was burned by hot water, while her mother screamed, "Don't you ever say no!" As a young woman, whenever a man asked her for sex, she would always say yes. Without even knowing why, the fear of saying no was so great, she carried out the hypnotic suggestion by saying yes. Remember the young man who, everytime he gets close to being better than his father, blows it by getting himself fired. He too was responding due to his fear and the suggestion of the past. The cast of characters is different but the story (and the monster called fear) is the same.

—Steven Heller, PhD, and Terry Steele, Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's no such thing as hypnosis?

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