Todd Goodwin on The Rx Podcast, With Conor Flynn 7/30/2018 (Part 12)

The following text is an excerpt from a conversation with Todd Goodwin, Board Certified Hypnotist at GoodwinHypnosis.com, who was interviewed by Conor Flynn, host of the Rx Podcast (DrinkRxCoffee.com), on July 30, 2018.

This 12th segment shares a client example of how “it’s not just what you’re eating but what’s eating you” that really counts.

TODD GOODWIN: We do so many things, and we’re not even aware of why we do it. And most people when they drink alcohol, or they smoke, or they overeat, it’s not why they are doing it. I had a client once who was like 60 years old, had been 50 pounds overweight for a long time. And she thought it was just stress eating, she just thought it was her husband who you know, would stress her out. And she would go have a glass of wine and cheese and crackers every night at home after eating dinner. And, you know, obviously, this made weight loss difficult. And as we were working on that through one of the techniques we were doing, we were working on the root of the feeling of stress. And basically, it brought her back to a memory when she was seven or eight years old, where she believed for the first time that her father didn’t really love her. Now, the details of it are not as important, but she believed that her dad didn’t love her. So she grew up believing at a subconscious emotional level that she wasn’t worthy of love because daddy didn’t love her. Her mom loved her, but dad didn’t. He loved her brothers, not her. She grew up with this kind of hole that she was always trying to fill.

CONOR FLYNN: Did she become a stripper? Because I feel like the girls with the daddy issues…

TODD: No, I don’t I don’t know what she did in her 20s. She was 60. And I, you know, I wasn’t trying to imagine her as if she were a stripper or had been in that line of work, but my point is when we dealt with the emotional trauma, if you will, of that experience, it maybe took 20 minutes, we were working through it. The tears started coming down, and then at the end of it, she said, “That was really big.” And I asked her what happened, and she explained it to me. She said, “I now feel for the first time that my dad always loved me.” And it was based on the work we did with that memory. That’s how quick the work…you asked me how quick the work can be. So basically, that quickly, it shifted her perception of her past and herself. Then at the end of her session, she went home. She came back the next week, I asked how things been going, she said, “Amazing. I haven’t done any stress eating this whole week, and my husband’s behavior has not changed.” But hers had, she just felt so much better, and then she went on to lose, last time I talked to her, 30 or 40 pounds.

So really, it’s not just what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating you. And it’s the same thing with drinking and all that. And when we dealt with the original injury, basically, or perception of injury, her self-worth issue relating to being rejected by her father improved. That was really why she was overeating. It was not because of her husband. And it’s not because the food tastes really good or because she loves food or because it’s boring to eat kale. Those are all rational lies. The real reason that she was unaware of was because she had never felt “good enough.” And that not feeling good enough created an underlying anxiety or a mild unhappiness. It wasn’t so bad that she was 400 pounds. But the point is, it was enough to make her feel uncomfortable. And guess what? When you’re uncomfortable, what do you do? Eat, drink, smoke, whatever. And for her when she was eating and drinking, she felt good. Rinse and repeat. But until she dealt with the real issue, no matter what diet she did, and even if we had done hypnosis just on eating habits, it probably wouldn’t have worked, or maybe it would have been temporary. Because again, the roots of the weeds are still there.

So when I come back to, which is more important. Is it the hypnosis? Or is it the understanding of human behavior? They’re both important. It’s just that if we’re doing the best hypnosis, or the best NLP or neurolinguistic programming, and that the best techniques are focused on the wrong target or symptom, it would not be nearly as effective as it would be if you can figure out what’s really causing the problem. The real problem was not the eating or the husband or the stress. The real problem was her feeling of rejection and not being good enough, which is only a belief. She wasn’t born with that, she learned it. And it just happened just the same way when people have post-traumatic stress. It’s not the event. It’s not her father’s fault. It’s not the event that did it. It’s your perception of the event.

The next segment explores what really causes post-traumatic stress and how to resolve it.