edmonton hypnotherapy for youth self esteem

Youth Self Esteem

Youth self esteem and the subconscious mind

Granted, it may be a little hard, on first glance, to imagine what the subconscious mind could possibly have to do with a youth’s self esteem. But read on and it will become very clear:

Keep these points in mind:

Our identity is rooted at the subconscious level.
Our subconscious mind swallows messages minute by minute
Kids and youth are highly suggestible and literally assaulted daily with messages that are potentially harmful to their self esteem.

Not all the messages youth receive throughout the day are necessarily positive, life affirming and esteem building. In fact, many of them are quite the opposite.

What messages are being fed to suggestible youth? Messages that tell them that violence is acceptable, that drugs make you feel good, that gangs are cool, that “pimping” your ride is acceptable and that being thin, pretty and wearing brand names will make you more popular.

Shocked to be reading this here? Well you shouldn’t be, it is what youth are exposed to on a daily basis. These are messages that our youth are being exposed to on a regular basis.

Not all messages make it past the conscious mind, the gatekeeper and into the subconscious mind. However, there are a few “by passes” that you may want to be aware of. Messages will eventually make it past the conscious analytical part of our minds eventually and be swallowed by the subconscious mind when::

-there is enough repetition-we are in a suggestible state (zoned out)- we are experiencing a charged intense emotion; we are all simply more suggestible during times when we are feeling tired, stressed, overwhelmed…. That makes our youth pretty suggestible.

Harmful, sexist, and damaging messages come from, TV, parents, siblings, friends and enemies in the school environments, the bus stop, mall, and arcade and movie theatre. Messages also come via the radio, newspapers, CD’s and other forms of media…Instant messaging, MSN, text messaging…..and the list go on. Never in the whole of our existence have there been so many threads of influence on young minds.

Youth cannot be surrounded by so many negative influences and not be impacted. Self esteem suffers, confidence plummets, skewed beliefs develop. It is too big, it is too overwhelming and we cannot do anything about the debilitating messages surrounding youth. Or can we? Actually yes, we can.

Our youth must become aware of and develop a respect for the power of their subconscious minds. Our subconscious stores memories, is the seat of our self identity and it is responsible for the health of every cell in our body. Our subconscious is made up of our brain, our spinal cord and all the little nerves that run through our body; it is the real deal.

If our mind and body are receiving negative messages on a daily basis (and they are) we are kept from reaching our potential…unless we take charge of our minds. Youth can learn to do this just as enlightened and motivated adults can.

Once we learn to effectively tap into the amazing power of our minds, we certainly can take control of the multitude of messages that come our way every minute of the day. We can learn to work with our mind and influence our subconscious.

A hypnotherapist uses knowledge of the conscious and subconscious mind and specialized techniques to assist clients to begin to do more deliberate, mindful conditioning so that thoughts and behaviour are directed towards meaningful attitudes and outcomes. Learning to take command of the very seat of our identity versus leaving it up for grabs to the advertiser or the bully on the bus…just makes good sense.

On the whole, youth are more creative, open minded then most adults. This makes them excellent candidates for hypnosis. It is my belief that a professional ethical hypnotherapist will ensure that hypnotherapy takes place in a learning environment. All work should be experiential.

Experiential simply means that there is no mystery, no bells and whistles; everything is explained and practiced. Hypnosis is simply one more method available to the helping professional. It allows both adults and youth to begin to use creative visualization, cognitive crafting of messages and relaxation techniques in all areas of life not simply for a presenting concern.

There is one more very powerful and influential form of messages that daily impact all of us. It is our internal dialogue. For those who consider hypnosis to be “messing with the mind” ethical clinical hypnotherapy is the exact opposite.

It teaches you how to take back control of your internal messaging. Interrupting conditioned patterns of thought and replacing them with thoughts and images that are solution focused, results and value based, focusing on what we want vs. being at the mercy of the thousands of messages we receive daily from media, others and our own negative self talk.

Let’s talk about stress and the terrible impact of internal messages. Often we expect more adaptable behaviour of our youth then we as adults are able to role model! Adults struggle with the stress of day to day life and repeat negative thoughts to them selves over and over.

Adults mentally condition themselves for continued failure. I see this daily in my office. Youth are no different; they absolutely must learn to manage internal messages that impact their subconscious mind…period. Youth can benefit by learning to be more mindful of their internal messaging and suggestibility to external messages.

Like adults, youth naturally go in and out of trance throughout the day without necessarily realizing it. Just like an adult, youth can learn to easily access a light state of trance so that positive agreed upon suggestions can be given. Whether we are an adult or a youth, we must learn to manage the multitude of messages that come our way minute by minute. Learning to manage outside and inside messaging in a manner that is empowering, can increase and pump up our self esteem.