[My thoughts on hypnosis were] hopeful. I believe that a lot of our issues and problems originate from the subconscious beliefs and attitudes handed down to us by our parents in our early years of life and that this programming affects our perceptions and how we interpret, react and deal with the experiences we call into our lives and indeed, what we call into our lives is the direct result of that early programming which is much stronger than simply saying, I don't believe that or this isn't my truth. Our lives have been built on these foundations whether we think we believe it or not… I do believe though, that it is possible to reprogram our subconscious thoughts, but I didn't know how to go about it, how long it would take to ensure success and especially, what program would affect positive change. I mean, I'm sure my parents were doing and saying what they thought was best for my well-being and yet it is very obvious to me how their beliefs have impacted on my self worth and success. So whilst I was hopeful, I was also very conscious that what I replace the old programming with had to be right.
Anxiety [was the first issue I wanted to fix with hypnosis]. I believe that our health issues are the direct result of our emotional experiences. I first developed asthma and the breathlessness triggers of anxiety which in turn escalates the asthma and [causes] more anxiety. Life was becoming difficult and unenjoyable and an incident with my daughter escalated these effects to panic responses. In order to begin healing, I needed to get control over the anxiety. [Secondly, I wanted to address] abundance. Asthma is related to self-worth and grief and the incident with my daughter stripped me of all worth. I raised my children on my own and having felt so little self-esteem as a young adult myself, I had done so much work on self-improvement, had studied early childhood and was always so conscious of what I said to my kids, how I responded to them, what I was teaching them – my kids are everything to me and I lived for them. I'm not talking “helicopter parenting” – I am talking about teaching them assertive behaviour and considering the effects of their life choices, teaching them about compassion and kindness and communication and love. We didn't have a lot when they were growing up and I usually put my needs last in order for them to have what other kids had. I really thought I was a great mother – this was the one thing that I got absolutely right. So when my adult daughters, both now with children of their own, suddenly turned on me; I was devastated. 3 days earlier I was the best mother in the world. My eldest said things that had never happened and she blocked me out of her life for 9 months. My youngest blocked me for 3 weeks and then came back because she needed money. When my eldest did agree to talk with me, she again said things that hadn't happened and if I tried to say otherwise she would scream and threaten to cut me out again. During this time, my heart broke and I felt absolute despair (much worse than grief) but both emotions affect the lungs. Everything that I had worked on becoming as a person, everything that I believed about myself, all my self-worth and self-esteem was stripped away and I could feel my life slipping away. I was dying, being smothered, breathing was something I had to force myself to do and the asthma and growing anxiety were making it harder. I still don't understand what happened but I can see a few of my failures – in putting myself last all the time, I taught them that I don't matter as much as they do; in helping them (because I never wanted their lives to be as hard as mine had been), they saw it as buying their love because I had made their childhoods hard; by not telling them why I had left their father, he had room to tell them lies; because I was so busy I had to choose my battles so it wouldn't be at their expense, they saw it as me bowing out because I must have been wrong; and now if I try to share how hard it was to raise kids alone, they say “plenty of other people do it” and they don't get that the other people they are talking about have financial help from their “ex” where I didn't – but that's just another lie their father tells them. When you have spent a lifetime of deliberately choosing not to engage in mudslinging, how do you come back from that. Their father is a bully, they had begun spending a lot of time with him and overnight my children became bullies. I found it hard to deal with. I can't take anxiety drugs and don't want to. Often the symptoms would escalate in places where it wasn't convenient or possible to stop and meditate and the 20+ years of self-development had crumbled after the incident with my daughter. So hypnosis seemed like my last hope to hang on to life, a miracle that could enable me to begin healing and it offered the possibility of a lifelong solution. I had been looking around locally but the programs offered where quit smoking and weight loss. None of them felt right. I kept asking the universe for peace and God's grace – “by the grace of God go I”… There came a day when I felt like “this isn't living, it isn't fun” and that day I cried and prayed. I said I didn't want to live like this, take me or send me the help that I need. The next day, God sent me grace – literally! I opened facebook and right at the top of my feed was Grace Smith-Feitosa offering a FREE ANXIETY hypnosis challenge! I had never seen Grace's previous works, or come across anything about hypnosis on facebook and yet here she was, with a free challenge perfectly designed for the immediate help I needed to enable me with enough healing to begin working on healing all of me. This could not be a coincidence! With hope, I clicked on her first video and Grace sprang to life – with all her inner beauty and sincerity and contagious enthusiasm. I felt inspired and overwhelmed. I had prayed for God's “Grace” and here she was! In that moment I felt so grateful and loved and that was the beginning of my journey and my introduction to hypnosis.
One of the biggest causes of my health problems has been that I see the world through ‘rose coloured glasses' because I get so hurt by the things that people do and say and no matter how many times I get hurt, no matter how many lessons I have learned, I am never prepared for the next one. I feel things so deeply. I give my all. I believe and have passion. Although I know how strong I am because of the challenges I have had to overcome throughout my life, sometimes I feel so tired and feel that I really am “too soft” for this world. I can literally feel the hurt that others feel or how something affects someone. My body is also very affected by my emotional state and it aligns with what I am feeling. That means that western medicine doesn't always work well for me because I need to heal the cause of my emotional state before the symptoms will disappear. This is why hypnosis works so well. It isn't a quick fix and I know that I have work still to do but by healing the thoughts that created the symptoms, I know it is possible. My first challenge was anxiety. Anxiety and asthma go hand in hand. The worse the asthma is, the worse the anxiety is, the harder it is to breathe at all. As you can imagine, it was a vicious circle. I am still not completely healed from anxiety because I still have asthma but the challenge stopped me from panicking when it occurred and that was enough to allow me to begin to heal some of the many misaligned thoughts that eventually resulted in asthma. Some of these are low self-worth, feeling less than, feeling like you can't be yourself, you must be perfect in order to be loved, feeling you lack something, feeling deprived, feeling smothered and stifled… Some of these thoughts are addressed in the abundance challenge and yes, I am manifesting money from known and unknown sources, but my ultimate goal is to manifest good health so that I can live an enjoyable life. Other thoughts that impact health will be addressed in various other challenges. I have been reluctant to admit that I also developed nodules on my lungs and esophagus and the lung specialist is waiting to see if it will become lung cancer. Lungs are related to grief and of course, nodules and cancer are basically from unexpressed feelings, regret, unworthiness, bubbling up or eating away at you or both. I am in my early 50's and I refuse to let this become my story. I know that my body is capable of healing itself. For me, that means healing the thoughts that created these symptoms. I have spent years in self-development, trying to become my best version, I have studied and grown from the teachings of Deepak Chopra, Louise Hays, Wayne Dyer, Maryanne Williamson, Ekhart Tollie, Abraham, Doreen Virtue, Bruce Lipton, Dr Emoti, Stephen Hawkins and the celebrity list goes on and on… Honestly, I would go so far as to say that I probably have one of the largest book libraries of self help, spiritual leaders, quantum science, healers and innovators covering every topic known to man that many of you have ever seen! And they are all fantastic and complement each other and make perfect sense but for me, all of my years of study was still stripped away in an instant, by the only 2 people on earth that could ever do that – my children! The child of my body, my kiss from God…. I have done the groundwork. This time I need permanent healing. The only way I can see to do that is to reprogram my programming, to overwrite that early “software” with new, sustainable scripts. I know that hypnosis is the way to do that because from that first challenge, even when I have been in circumstances that have made me anxious, I have never again wished for death to take me. I am healing. I am on a healing journey and by the “Grace Smith-Feitosa” of God, go I…. Thank you Grace, my saving Grace. I love you, I'm taking baby steps but I am moving. I will always be eternally grateful to God and the universe for sending Grace to me and as I heal, I am excited to know that my true purpose is unfolding.