Metaphorically Balancing Your Mind With Your Relationships
When I talk about relationships in general, I like to mention a few things first…
In the earlier days of my career as a hypnotherapist, many people used to ask me if I had plans to create and put together hypnosis tracks or a programme to help enhance their relationships and I tended to give a fairly stock reply when I responded in the negative to the question.
My stock reply was that I had struggled with relationships myself, not found someone I had felt capable of committing any substantial part of my life to and despite having encountered a number of relationships, I had not deemed any of them to have been particular successful. Who was I to therefore advise on how to have effective relationships?
I had many great friendships and professional relationships, just not the kind of personal relationships people were asking me about. Maybe I could have suggested that my listeners do as I say, not as I do, but that felt disingenuous, so I never wrote about it or really worked with relationships a great deal.
However… Just as I had finished reading Osho’s book on the art of aloneness, I met the woman who was to be my wife. She became my wife, and we have had several years of what I consider to be a truly remarkable and wonderful relationship; a marriage that has already had to endure some incredible challenges that we have overcome together. Some of the things we encountered may have pulled people apart, however, we have grown stronger and share something that only the two of us truly appreciate.
We have a lot of joy, laughter, mutual respect, support and know each other incredibly well.
At the time of writing this, it was our wedding anniversary and as we celebrated another year together and look toward many more years of happiness, I have started to feel much better equipped to offer up techniques and strategies for helping others with enhancing their relationships. The requests have continued and so I am finally yielding to such requests and several hypnosis tracks on offer here are going to be showcasing ways of using hypnosis to help advance ourselves to subsequently enhance our relationships.
Note that I said “advance ourselves” because we can only really be fully in control of ourselves within our relationships.
Recently, Katie and I were dogsitting for a family pet; Mick the dog, who is a very good looking, incredibly well-behaved 10 year old Border Collie.
Katie and I took him out for a couple of very long walks over to local woodlands, and Hengistbury Head too, (a lovely area by the sea near to where we live) we went through the wooded area, up to the top of Hengistbury head, back down the other side onto the pebble beach and all the way back along the beach.
It was at this beach, that Mick decided to initiate the stick throwing and fetching game. He found a stick, a piece of driftwood that he took to. He would trot in front of me, turn back, look at me and plop it on the floor. Then he’d take a couple of steps backwards whilst looking at me, crouching and ready… I would then pick up the soggy, chewed, dribble and sand covered stick and launch it as far as I could and he’d run off to fetch it, bring it back and we’d start all over again.
This went on seemingly tirelessly, though he slept incredibly well in the evenings, I must say. For his early morning and late evening ablution walks around the nearby woods, we’d do a similar game with his ball (which thankfully has a ball throwing gizmo meaning I do not have to pick up his ball with my hands, it is constantly wet and chewed and a worryingly brown colour) and it’d help wear him out some more.
I say all this, like it all went smoothly and simply.
However, all was not as plain as it seems from my initial write-up. Oh no.
Every now and then, Mick did not want to fetch what you’d thrown for him; one evening we got to our back gate and I thought I’d throw the ball for him one more time. In response, he sat by the gate and stared at me as if to say “I have had enough of the ball throwing game, I want to go in, you better go get the ball.”
I had to go and get the ball, and I got plenty of exercise on that occasion.
Other times, I thrown the ball or the stick and he’d not go for it, but as soon as I got close to it, he’d dash in with speed and pace and grab it from under my nose and then want to play a sort of “dog-chase” game that usually involved him goading me into a tug-of-war with the ball or stick.
And on other occasions, he’d get the ball if we were going in particular direction, but not in another direction. It all took a lot of flexibility and learning about how best to do things in order to derive the best responses.
Ok, so this is all a little bit tongue-in-cheek and I am unlikely to be championed as Cesar Milan material just yet, but we had a wonderful time with Mick and my relationship with him is something that is used as a metaphor for enhancing relationships with this simple, and highly beneficial hypnosis audio track.
Corydon Hammond himself uses a process of a Golden Retriever metaphor for helping people who constantly pursue uncommitted partners and almost begs them for love, so I thought I’d adapt such a process based upon my experiences, research and professional work and offer you a lovely process here.