Most people come to hypnotherapy wanting the feeling or the behaviour to change. Stop the anxiety. Stop the craving. Stop the panic before it starts. Very few come in asking “why do I do this?” And yet, more often than not, that question is exactly where the fastest, deepest change begins.
Why Bother Finding the Cause?
In hypnosis, it isn’t always necessary to know why an issue started in order to resolve it. Smoking is a good example of this, with a few exceptions. Someone can walk in as a smoker and walk out a non-smoker without either of us ever discussing where the habit began.
Yet time and again, I’ve found that helping a client uncover their own “why” allows us to move faster. Once we understand the beliefs and feelings that were generated in that original moment, we can disable them directly, rather than working around them.
Some clients arrive already knowing their why. For others, it surfaces during our work together. And for some, it never fully reveals itself; the cause stays hidden, and that’s fine too. Some come to me having racked their brains trying to figure it out and fix it themselves, with no real answers. None of this matters, because the subconscious mind holds all the answers it needs. Once we understand the beliefs and feelings formed at the beginning, clients can start making the real change: updating old beliefs and choosing new ones that are appropriate and relevant to the person they are, and want to be, today.
There’s a second, equally important reason to understand cause: when you understand how the subconscious mind works, how it “ticks”, it becomes far easier to make long-term, deep, life-enhancing change. I teach my clients the rules of the subconscious mind so they can keep using them long after hypnosis, long after our sessions end.
The Rules of the Subconscious Mind
My understanding of these rules shapes how I work with every client in hypnosis, whatever the issue and whatever the goal. Here are three worth knowing.
1. It Moves You Towards What Is Familiar
Think “wine o’clock”. I always drink socially. When I’m watching my favourite programme, I have a glass of wine. The subconscious mind isn’t trying to sabotage you here; it’s simply pulling you towards the pattern it already knows.
2. It Moves You Towards Pleasure and Away from Pain
If you’re feeling sad, bored, or lonely, your mind naturally wants to make you feel better. It searches your memory bank for what has worked before: “oh, the wine”, and moves you towards it, believing it is helping you out.
3. It Is Always Listening, and Gives You What It Thinks You Want
A client called me just after lockdown. “I need your help,” she said, “I just can’t stop eating.” When she came in, I quickly noticed she kept saying the same thing in different sentences: “I love food.” “I just love food.”
I explained that one reason for her insatiable appetite was that her mind had been listening, and it believes what it hears with repetition. A belief that rules our feelings and behaviour is, at its simplest, a repetitive thought. Her mind was, in effect, in love with food, in a relationship with food, and so it was naturally moving her towards more of it.
The Past Affecting the Present
Everything you’ve ever experienced, every emotional memory and belief, your entire lens on the world, is stored in the subconscious part of the mind. Until it’s updated, it keeps driving unwanted feelings and behaviours.
Memories aren’t stored as neutral facts. They’re stored based on how that person interpreted them at the time. Many times, a client has begun forming beliefs during a challenging childhood: a cold or critical parent, for example. Rather than seeing the shortcomings of the parent for what they were, a child will often internalise the experience instead: it must be me, I’m not lovable, I’m not good enough.
Beliefs formed this way can be entirely inaccurate, and yet they persist well into adult life, causing all sorts of issues: low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and negative repercussions across every area of life.
This is the real work of hypnotherapy: not simply removing a symptom, but going back to where a belief was formed, understanding it through the eyes of the person who formed it, and gently updating it to something true, useful, and fitting for who you are today.
What This Means for You
If you’ve ever felt frustrated that willpower alone hasn’t fixed a habit, a fear, or a pattern of low mood, it’s not a lack of effort or discipline on your part. It’s simply that the change hasn’t happened where it needs to happen yet: in the subconscious mind, at the level of the belief and the feeling, not just the behaviour on the surface.
Whether we uncover exactly why a pattern began, or simply work with what’s there now, the same principle holds: once the subconscious mind is met with understanding rather than force, it becomes remarkably willing to update, to let go of what no longer serves you and settle into beliefs that reflect who you are today.
Ready to Get to the Root of It?
If you recognise yourself in any of this, whether it’s anxiety, a habit you can’t shake, or a belief that’s been quietly running the show for years, you don’t have to keep managing it on your own. Get in touch to book a session, and let’s find out together what your subconscious mind is really trying to tell you, and start updating it for the life you want now.