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Using Self Hypnosis To Overcome a Fear of the Dark


Most people, when they grow up, lose the fear of the dark when they're in a safe environment like their home or some other indoor environment.

But, just imagine for a moment, that you're in a shack in the middle of the forest, miles and miles away from the first road to civilization. It's pitch dark outside and you're just getting ready to go to bed.

You turn off the lights and lie down in your bed. Now it begins...

The sounds of twigs falling of the trees, night birds making sounds, perhaps an animal is making a racket somewhere in the vicinity of the shack.

Now, some people don't mind this and they fall asleep without a problem, but most would get an uncomfortable feeling.

Here we'll look at a simple yet extremely effective way to get rid of the fear of the dark, whether you're a child or an adult suffering from this uncomfortable issue.

The technique is called self hypnosis.

Self hypnosis is easy to do. The easiest way, if you don't want to buy a CD or download an MP3 from someone else, is to record your own session.

To effectively do self hypnosis, you'll need to do these four steps:

1.) Relax your mind to achieve at least a light trance
2.) Give yourself a suggestion to keep in this state throughout the session and reinforce this suggestion every now and again
3.) At a certain point give a suggestion that from now on everything you say will be acted upon immediately and taken as 100% truth by your unconscious
4.) Repeat your suggestions for ten to twenty minutes per session

Progressive relaxation technique

During this stage you can simply name the parts of your body from head to toes and suggest to relax every muscle in the region. You can add an imagery of a bright, warm, white light that slowly travels down your body and relaxes your muscles while doing so.

When you come to your toes, you can suggest two or three more times to relax your whole body even more, perhaps 100x times more each time.

When you've relaxed your body, you begin relaxing your mind. This is much easier to do when you're completely relaxed than when you're not (if you don't have the proper training before. Otherwise the relaxation itself isn't necessary for trance induction at all).

You relax your mind by suggesting to focus on your voice and to allow all other thoughts to melt away during the session.

You can proceed by deepening the trance by suggesting to breathe in deeply and as you take in your breath, you're waking up. Then hold your breath for a few seconds and as you release, you go hundreds if not thousands times deeper into trance than before.

This is called fractionation in hypnosis. Every time you go out of the trance and back in, you will go deeper every successive time.

Now that you've done this three to six times, it's time for the next step...

Suggest yourself to keep this state throughout the session

This is pretty self explanatory. Simply say something like: "Now, keep this wonderful state of trance throughout this session".

If you think it's necessary, you can also reinforce this by sliding this suggestion in every now and again (perhaps once or twice more per session).

Suggest that everything you say during this session immediately becomes 100% truth for you and your unconscious will act on it immediately

This is an important step that most of the self hypnosis books and courses forget to mention. Although without this step it will still work, this simple step makes the session much more powerful.

Deliver your suggestions

Now it's time to deliver your suggestions. I suggest you say something like this: "Now please repeat each of these positive suggestions after me" and then deliver them in the "I am" form instead of the "you are". You can do both if you want (make two sessions and see which one works best for you).

Make sure your suggestions are positive and don't use negatives.

For example, don't say: "I am not afraid of the dark any more" but rather say: "Every day my fear of the dark is getting smaller and smaller".

I also suggest you make about ten similar but different suggestions so that you don't get too bored. You can then loop the ten suggestions ten times to make the session approximately 20 minutes long.

Other suggestions might be something like this: "Every day I find night time more and more relaxing" or "Every day I feel more and more at ease when it's dark". Use your imagination.

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