What Sort Of A Face Do You Wear? Is It Hiding Behind A Mask?

Posted on 21. Dec, 2011 by in General News, Health Articles, hypnotherapy

Don’t be fooled by me.  Don’t be fooled by the face I WEAR.  For I wear a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off, and none of them are me.

When people come for therapy how much do they tell you about what is really going on inside?  For some, pretending is an art that is second nature to them.   They give the impression that they are secure, unruffled, confident and cool.  That is their surface, the mask they show you, as they laugh and joke with you.  However, what is underneath?  What is really going on inside, the real them?  Their experiences that may talk about physical and psychological abuse. They don’t tell you about the bullying at school, the alcoholic father, the gambling mother and more.  They often hide this, they don’t want to show any weakness, anxiety, guilt, shame or fear, or be exposed to their inner most feelings, just in case you would look down your nose at them, or think they are not good enough, and so they create a mask to hide behind.  Consequently, they (all of us) do this – we wear different masks at work compared to at home with our spouses, with our grandchildren, or with friends etc.

Yet, that is exactly what we; the therapist needs to know from our clients, so that we are able to release any feelings for them to create the outcome they wish to attain.  Even although they know they need to tell you, they are scared that you may think less of them nor accept their past, and sometimes they don’t tell you, they don’t dare to.  They are afraid to.

Therefore, they play their game, showing confidence outside and feeling like an anxious child inside.  In addition, they parade a face of masks, which often lead to behaviour, such as drinking heavily, or gambling all their money away, or smoking heavily, or eating too much.

It is the therapist’s job to assist clients to understand that what is past is indeed history.  It is something that happened but is over now.  It is only a memory.  It is not who they are today.  The feelings and emotions that they experienced was a happening in the NOW time at THAT time in their life – but it is not happening NOW in the PRESENT time.  These feelings are OLD feelings.  These feelings are no longer needed to keep them safe, or make them shelter or run away to keep safe.

Or, if what I am saying is not strictly true, perhaps they are still living that life?  Were they abused as a child and made the wrong decision in their life as they grew up and chose a partner, who is still abusing them?  Or, perhaps they chose the right partner who was kind and gentle and fun loving and his job took him to fight for his country and he has come back with PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder).  Now he has fear and anger and therefore he drinks heavily, loses his reasoning when he is drunk and lashes out at everyone.

I can remember a client who 12 years after her husband had died, still couldn’t sleep, despite her doctor’s medication – her subconscious was listening for the key in the door that would tell her that her husband was coming into the house.  The whole family would go to bed at 8.00pm and switch off the lights in the hope that he in his drunkenness he would go to his room and collapse onto his bed and go into a drunkenness sleep of oblivion.  Nevertheless, that didn’t always happen.  Sometimes he would be so drunk that he could not get the key in the door.  In his irrational mind, he would vent his anger, saying things like; “I know you’re trying to keep me out… you just wait till I get in there… I’ll show you whose boss…” and he would become so violent that she had the children run next door to the neighbours out of harm’s way.  We sorted this issue in hypnotherapy in 2 sessions.  The client now sleeps well.  I would imagine that the brain changed itself, wouldn’t you?

There are many client’s that have come to release their destructive behaviours as well as those that have come to release the feelings and emotions this has caused them on the receiving end of that behaviour.  All these people’s brains will have changed from what they were previously.

ASSAM (The American Society of Addiction Medicine) is redefining the definition of addiction, grouping all destructive addictive behaviour in the same melting pot, be it a gambling addiction, an alcohol addiction, a cigarette addiction (and marijuana), food etc. etc.(1)

How can we acknowledge that each person has a unique fingerprint, yet assume that each person’s brain is the same when they are addicted?  I would hypothesize that in years to come with the invention of better imaging, in line with the current Stanford University invention of ‘array tomography’(2), we will find what looks similar in the brain will be as different in each person as their fingerprint.  To say we can judge a person by the brain anatomy and physiology does no more than give them a label for convenience sake – and no doubt there will be a good multimillion dollar chemical pill introduced that will take care of that label.

ASSAM state that research shows that both behavioural and chemical addictions entail the same major alterations in brain anatomy and physiology.  Two decades of advancements in neurosciences convinced ASAM that addiction needed to be redefined by what’s going on in the brain.(1)

A typical, healthy brain houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor, and tens of thousands of them can connect a single neuron to other nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies.  These synapses are, of course, so tiny (less than a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter) that humans haven’t been able to see with great clarity what exactly they do and how, beyond knowing that their numbers vary over time. (2)

What would happen to my client who had a gambling addiction for many years, yet stopped in one session when we released the anger and resulting relationship and stress problems from the gambling habit (caused from a happening 22 years earlier)?  If they now did that neuroimaging would they find that his brain had changed itself in a matter of one and a half hours? Where would that leave the client that had been classified in a melting pot of addiction labeling?

This type of transformation happens repeatedly with different addictions such as weight issues, alcohol issues, cigarette and marijuana issues…  yet we will classify them with a mental health disorder that requires medication.  How many of these people will be walking around like zombies believing that there is no alternative?  How many Doctors will prescribe medication believing that there is no alternative?  Quite frightening really, wouldn’t you agree?

We already have research that shows the mere act of laughing causes changes in the brain… meditation causes changes in the brain… releasing fears and emotions causes changes in the brain… placebo causes changes in the brain…  You can change the neurons in the brain by tricking phantom limb behaviour through looking into a box with a mirror in it…

If this is the best specialists can come up with after decades of their own thinking, then perhaps it is time to change what we call scientific research, into a more appropriate common sense approach.

Let us get rid of this tunnel vision and understand that the whole person is comprised of Mind, Body and Spirit.  You cannot take into account just one aspect of the person and ignore the others.

(1)   http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cupids-poisoned-arrow/201109/toss-your-textbooks-docs-redefine-sexual-behavior-addictions

(2)   http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20023112-247.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody;1n

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