Chapter 15 A True Story About Alcohol Dependence and Hypnosis

Chapter 15

Healing?

Excerpt from ‘Licking Honey Off a Razor Blade’ by Valerie Grimes, CHt

A book on alcohol dependency and alcohol addiction and hypnosis

Available on Amazon and Medium

In the practice of hypnosis there is no such thing as willpower.

Willpower is viewed as function of the conscious mind. The harder one tries to consciously do something that is the function of the subconscious, the more the opposite the effect. Similarly, a person ‘tries’ to remember the name of an actor in a movie and can’t, but when he stops ‘trying’ and changes focus, the answer comes to mind effortlessly, because the subconscious naturally delivers the message without effort.

One’s behavior, and therefore one’s ability to control a behavior, comes naturally by way of the subconscious, so whether you are self-controlled about a particular thing or not is how you are currently wired. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for most people to ‘try’ and change a pattern of behavior by just deciding to do so.

There are some people that can easily stop a pattern, but most people exhaustedly repeat the cycle of failed attempts. There is a subconscious urge that is giving power to a need, and the answer to the need is usually not healthy. So in spite of consciously knowing the behavior has negative consequences, the perceived benefit of the action to the subconscious wins out. It is impossible it seems to control that part of ourselves. And this is usually why one ends up just trying to control others in an attempt to reach balance.

Even when we stop to consider the fact that we have full access to ourselves and not to others, it still seems easier to try to control other’s behaviors.

But this is not how I felt. Getting him to move away helped me control my behavior, but as I cried myself to sleep that night, there was something stirring within. Who would now fill my need for male attention? I was not aware of this, and at this moment I had the opportunity to go down the same path (finding another man just like Salvador), or to stop and give myself the attention and love I needed.

To control my feelings and resulting behaviors—when they were coming from subconscious memories and the emotions attached to them, under my conscious awareness–was why I needed to see a hypnotist. But as with most people, I was used to struggling through something, and comfortable repeating the same patterns. Even after doing so for more then 20 years.

There was an aspect of me that needed a connection to my father who drank most of my childhood. In regression sessions, I recalled he used to take me into bars, even as early as three months old. And of course being a baby in a bar, I received a lot of attention. And now, craving that attention, I was drawn to bars and to men that drank in an attempt to re-gain attention and admiration because ‘being in a bar with men fussing over me was huge rush.’ However, the type of men I found in bars were not my natural opposite so the relationships were always uphill struggles. Because I was used to relationships being a struggle, to me it felt normal.