Understanding the parts of yourself you've been fighting
People often go to see a therapist because they want to stop something. Perhaps stop smoking, or stop avoiding public speaking, or stop feeling a certain way.
And I get that.
When you're struggling, when something feels overwhelming, the natural response is to want it gone so you can be the version of yourself you want to be.
But the desire to stop something often becomes its own kind of struggle.
What if it isn’t about just stopping at all, but about understanding what’s keeping it going?
What if it’s not about stopping something?
Hypnotherapy can absolutely help people change behaviours and shift perspectives. But not because they get rid of something, rather because they look beyond what they’ve labelled as the problem.
Underneath anxiety, there's often something trying to protect us. Behind a habit, there’s usually a need trying to be met. When we look closely at a fear, we might find an old experience that taught us that part of our ‘world’ wasn't ‘safe’. And a part of us is still responding to that, even when it's no longer needed.
If we look at these expereinces as problems to get rid of, we miss the chance to understand them and to work with the parts of us that have actually been trying to help.
The problem with trying to fix our parts
When we decide we need fixing, something interesting happens: we start to see certain parts of ourselves as the problem. We talk about our “anxious part” or our “angry part”, but also the parts of us that are “joyful”, “happy” or “sad” - or the part that can’t let go or the part that overthinks everything. This language of “parts” is surprisingly common in everyday life.
You may know the movie Inside Out - a beautiful film that highlights why we need all our emotional parts, how each has its purpose and what happens when any one of them gets pushed aside. It follows Riley, a young girl, through five personified emotions that shape her actions and sense of self.
The instinct though is to see some parts as needing to be fixed, removed, or suppressed.
But just like trying to hold a beach ball underwater at the pool, the harder you push it down, the more force it takes to keep it there. And the moment your arms tire or your attention wavers, it pops straight back up.
But there's something else worth noticing about a beach ball: you can only ever see one part of it at a time. When you’re looking at the red stripe as it bobs on the water, the blue one is hidden beneath the surface. When you focus on the yellow panel, the red and the blue are out of view. Yet all those colours exist at the same time. They're all part of the same whole.
We also do this with ourselves.
When we're caught up in our own anxiety, that's all we can see - and we forget about our courage or our resilience. We lose sight of the thoughtfulness when we’re focused on the part that overthinks. And when we criticise ourselves for being too sensitive, we forget that the same quality makes us capable of deep empathy.
The work isn't to push any part of the ball underwater. It's to step back far enough to see the whole - and to recognise that all these parts belong to the same person. And unlike a beach ball, you can't hold them at arm's length indefinitely, because they are you.
When we try to 'fix' ourselves by suppressing these parts (by forcing ourselves to stop feeling anxious or to stop worrying so much), we just end up exhausted. Because those parts don't disappear when we fight them. They show up in other ways, or we spend all our energy keeping them down, never quite able to relax.
What therapy can offer instead
The anxiety and the pain we feel are real, but experiencing them doesn't mean we’re broken - rather, that we’ re human, and parts of us are still responding to what we’ve been through in the past.
As a therapist, I can be a guide - not someone who will do something to you, but someone who sits alongside you while you explore what's happening beneath the surface.
In our work together, we create the space to slow down and pay attention to what these different parts of you are actually trying to say. To get curious about why you are the way you are.
Hypnosis offers something particular here. It’s a state in which the conscious, analystical mind can quieten, allowing you to communicate more directly with the parts that have been pushed aside, even though they've been working hard to protect you.
A next step?
So, if you're ready to explore what lies beneath the struggle - if you're curious about why you are the way you are, and open to the possibility that even the difficult parts deserve understanding - then perhaps we can work together. Why not get in touch with me and let’s have a conversation?