“Eating your own dog food” is the rather disgusting expression the technology industry uses to mean using your own product.
Lately, I’ve been working on what was originally a course on emotions. (It’s now split into a free course on Simple Stress Management Techniques and another, yet-to-be-announced product). Ever since I’ve been working on it, I’ve been dealing with emotional issues in my own life. I thought I’d tell you a little about how that’s been going.
The Case of the Manic Mini
photo credit: christian.senger
I was driving along the road, a little distracted, when a car coming in the other direction cheekily turned across in front of me to go into a side road. Now, I have a bad habit when people do that. I don’t slow down much, so that I can make the point “You really didn’t have room to do that maneuver, hold back a bit in future”. I don’t actually ram into them, of course, or do anything unsafe, but I don’t slow all the way down either.
Next thing I know, out of the same side road, turning across in front of me to go in the other direction, comes a Mini – which definitely shouldn’t have tried that move. I stamped on the brake and swerved and barely missed it.
It shook me up. I’ve been in a few car crashes over the years (most of them not my fault, by the way), and a near miss like that scares me. At one time it would have taken me a good hour or so to calm myself down.
I used a technique that’s in my Simple Stress Management Techniques course – the Welcoming Practice – and by the time I reached my destination a couple of minutes later I was fine.
The Case of the Depressing Day Job
I don’t yet do hypnotherapy full time, though I’m working hard on changing that. I have a day job to help pay the bills. It’s not been going well just lately, and I found for a while that when I was driving to work I’d start feeling down.
When the depressed feeling started, I’d immediately apply a technique of my own invention, which I call the Gut Bump. (It’s in the Simple Stress Management Techniques course.) It’s an immediate mood-lifting technique which involves turning the sinking feeling in your stomach upside-down with a bit of imagination.
It dealt with the sad feelings quite effectively. And I didn’t have to eat, drink or otherwise consume any substances to feel better.
I’ve been using a few other techniques to deal with the stress of the day job, too – the Welcoming Practice and anchoring, for example. They’re in the course too.
The Case of the Youthful Screw-Up
I’ve alluded a few times to a bad experience I had in my early 20s – 20 years ago as I write, in fact. It was largely down to me being clueless, though the fact that the other people around me were also clueless prolonged it and helped it to get worse than it otherwise would have. I won’t go into the grim details, but suffice to say that I became very stressed and very depressed and suffered significant emotional losses. Some things that were very important to me turned out to be impossible, and I took that very hard.
I’ve been aware at various times over the years that some of that hurt had remained with me, and though I’d told myself repeatedly that it was time to get past it, I never completely did.
Until this year. A couple of months back I accidentally came across a way that I could get back in touch with someone peripherally involved in the original mess. At the time, I didn’t feel I could do that, which reminded me that there was still a part of me holding on to the old pain.
One night, I was thinking about the situation and decided to use a trauma-releasing technique which the famous stage hypnotist Andrew Newton recently invented. I learned it from him earlier this year, so it was fresh in my mind. (It’ll be in the advanced version of the course.)
It took two repetitions, maybe 10 minutes or a little more. And after 20 years, the trauma was finally dealt with.
I contacted my old friend.
This Stuff Works
I could say more about how I’ve been dealing with stress, calming myself down, and generally navigating choppy emotional waters lately, but I think three stories are enough to make the point. This stuff works. I don’t just teach it, I use it myself on a near-daily basis.
Now it’s your turn.
Technorati Tags: stress, stress management, personal development, anxiety, depression, emotions, hypnotherapy
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