A Very Gentle Way to Retrain Your Mind
As I settle back into my work, I am reminded of something I talk about often in hypnotherapy sessions: hypnotherapy is not about fixing a broken mind. It is about retraining a perfectly normal one. The mind is always learning, adapting and predicting – that’s its job, and it’s doing it beneath the surface every second of the day.
At the root of this learning and predicting is what we often call the primitive mind. This is the oldest part of our brain in evolutionary terms, designed purely to keep us alive (without giving a monkeys whether we’re happy!) Its sole job is to scan for danger, anticipate what might go wrong and prepare us for the worst case scenario. Thousands of years ago, this was incredibly useful. In modern life, where most of us aren’t beset by lions, fires or avalanches day to day, it can be a little overreactive.
This is why negative thoughts are often automatic. The mind is biased towards what could go wrong, and we often mistake this for realism or preparedness. But over time, this bias shapes our expectations. What we expect, we tend to notice more of, and so a negative outlook is shaped.
To counter this absolutely natural but negative pattern, one of the simplest questions I use in my work, and in my own life, is this: what is the best possible light I can see this in?
This isn’t about forcing positivity, ignoring difficulty or naivety. It’s about widening the lens to allow for a more balanced view. When the mind is only allowed one story, it clings tightly to it. When we offer an alternative, gently but consistently, the nervous system is allowed to soften out of high alert.
If you read my last couple of emails, you’ll know I wasn’t keen on the idea of a big 2025 reflective, but I was encouraged to do it recently in a group supervision session, and now I’m eating my words. We were asked to write down twenty things we had changed for the better over the last year. I’ll be honest, my initial reaction was resistance, twenty felt like a lot for one thing.
But once the first few were down, the rest began to flow more easily. I noticed my mindset changing as I wrote, as I focused on the evidence that I can bring about positive change. The exercise then asked us to list five strengths that had enabled those changes to come about - not achievements, not outcomes, but qualities of mine.
What struck me most was how different I felt afterwards, despite nothing externally having changed. The mind had simply been guided to look in a different direction for a few minutes.
I’ll This experience made me humbly eat my words about reflection! Not because reflection is always necessary, but because sometimes the right question, asked at the right time, can gently open up the mind towards safety rather than threat.
This is the essence of retraining the mind. What we repeatedly ask it to notice, it gets better at finding. When we tip our expectations, even slightly, towards growth and possibility, the nervous system responds.
If you are open to it, I would love to invite you to try a version of this yourself. You might choose ten things you changed for the better last year, or even five. Then perhaps three strengths that helped those changes come about. Notice how it feels to do the exercise, rather than judging the answers you come up with.
If you’d like to work with me through this process, whether as a refresher or as your first dive into therapy, please don’t hesitate to book a free Discovery Call to touch base.
