I hypnotized myself not too long ago, using the pendulum method to ask my subconscious questions about why I have anxiety, about what the cause is for my mild neurosis. I discovered the reason why, but for some reason, I decided to ask the question: Am I a good person? Well, the answer was a definite NO. I decided to test this answer with: Am I a bad person? The answer was a definite YES. Now I'm upset because I don't want to be a bad person (obviously), and I can't understand why my subconscious would tell me this. Would it lie to me? I'm really upset. One of my neuroses is that I'm a bad person. I've had this belief for awhile now, but I never expected my subconscious to agree with this idea. I try to be the best person possibleall the time.
Can anyone help me understand why it thinks (why I think) I'm a bad person? What does it mean?
What if you went into self-hypnosis and told yourself that you are a good person and then give yourself evidence in your mind of your own worthiness with positive suggestions and positive self-images?
As you already said in your post, this is the very issue that you are working on. You already fear that you are a "bad" person. You asked the one question and stopped there. Thats a waste of time. What does "bad" mean? Why does your unconscious think you are "bad", what would you need to change for your unconscious to think you "good", what does it mean to be "good". Without clarifying your definitions, for all you know good = saintly, bad = everyone else, in which case I'm bad as is everyone on this forum. You need to ask yourself more questions until you have it all at the detailed level. Part of the point here is that good and bad are just words without meaning until you give them meaning - and finding out those meanings is part of what every hypnotherapist does when a client says that they are "bad" or they "hate" themselves whatever (which is quite common even with well adjusted folk). Sometimes the meanings turn out to be quite the opposite of what you might first think. But since you are already scared, I suggest that you find a good local hypnotherapy practitioner and get them to guide you through this rather than going it alone.
I think that's good advice. I shall do that next time I perform auto-hypnosis. Then I can see if the subconscious can correct itself. It seems silly that I haven't tried this already.
Yes. It was a waste of time. I do need to discover the meaning of "good" and "bad," but the problem is that I don't really know what to ask to uncover my definition of these words. In fact I don't really know what questions to ask in general. I often find myself stumped and sometimes fear the answer, though so far the answers haven't been as bad as I feared they might have been. But what questions to ask has been my biggest problem. I suppose I should go see a hypno-therapist. I actually asked my subconscious if going to see a hypno-therapist would be a good idea, and it said it didn't know, but it did say that I should figure it out for myself, that it would be better this way.
Do you believe the subconscious has a greater understanding of what is going on than the conscious self, that it is efficacious to make decisions with the subconscious mind rather than the conscious mind?
I believe that the unconscious mind knows some things, and is good at some things, and that the so called conscious mind is good at some things and knows some things. I think people get their best results when they use both. I do leave many decisions to my unconscious, especially where I have reason to believe that I have unconscious skill. I use self hypnosis almost daily to deal with all sorts of things, learning and decision making. When it comes to "personal problems", and by this I mean where a person has cognitive or behavioural issues, then I believe it is almost impossible to make useful progress without finding out at least some of what the unconscious processes are that are involved in the issue. In the case you present, I would want to know about what "good" and "bad" mean to you, why they are important and when, when they don't matter and why, and how you are choosing to categorise yourself from moment to moment. Most people, by the way, would say it a good thing that you are willing to contemplate your "bad"ness. We tend to think it bad when a person thinks of themselves as being "good" all the time. The best people are a little bit bad are they not?
What I've learned from experience is the subconscious can appear to be your worst enemy. I started hearing voices one night from staying up too long on speed and at first these voices seemed to be friendly but after a while it became clear these voices were definitely not my friends. Most of the time they were talking about my imminent death and my mind seemed to be lashing out at me for my careless use of the drug. Kept saying "is your life really worth the $10 you paid for the pill?" and strangely enough said "just pack your bags and leave your dead already" or "you've 5 minutes to get out of the house then we're coming to kill you". Scared the living **** out of me to be honest.
In fact I think I'm going to get a hypnotist to bring me back to the situation. Would that be dangerous? Could hypnosis bring out this angry voice in my head again without me being sleep deprived?
Yes, it may be able to do that. But, you'd only want to do it if the angry voice/feeling still seems to be present in your mind. In hypnosis, it's generally referred to as Parts. A part of you feels 'this' way and another part of you feels 'that' way. A fairly normal thing to have in ones mind. Though it can get pretty scary as the parts disagree and get more divided - a sense of duality.
BTW - your comments connect with our other conversation fairly well.