The Creative Imagination & Hypnotherapy
"The (television) business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” Hunter S Thompson
No wonder it drives you round the bend.
Finding funding, carrying the can, cashing in on the outcome; trusting to the rap-sheet of your reputation; your future in the frying pan.
The desire, no more than that, the need to prove yourself is huge in the creative industries. You need to show yourself to be a talented, creative, insightful person, and earn some respect from the hoard of headstrong egos you have gathered around you to make your film, performance, music, or other world-changing event.
Kazimierz Dabrowski, (1902-1980), a Polish Psychiatrist and Psychologist developed an idea that “overexcitability” or OE is often combined with intelligence and creativity, and the potential to develop as an individual to a high degree.
He identified five different OEs: Psychomotor overexciteability, Sensual overexciteability, Intellectual overexciteability, Imaginational overexciteability and Emotional overexciteability.
He observed that gifted and talented people are more prone to these excitabilities, and can often experience dissatisfaction with the self, depression, feelings of inferiority, inhibitions and ambivalences.
That desire for acceptance, the need to be noticed, the desire to do something that makes you feel deserving is painful monkey to have on your back.
No wonder then that many creative people seek solace in many rather self-destructive ways. "Yeah - in rehab you’re an addict; on a sound stage you’re a tortured genius."
Before training as a hypnotherapist I worked in the video / film industry, and I have observed (and yes - experienced) many of the stresses and stains of that world. Usually these days I do camera and lighting where you have to get everything right first time, and keep going. In the past I’ve been an editor, and the edit suite can be a horrid dark hole of pressure where time and control come down hard because there is nowhere else to shift the problems on to.
I also used to train people to work in the broadcast industry, and I had to find ways to explain sometime complex ideas in a simple, clear and engaging way. So I often made up stories as a vehicle for the information. It’s so much easier to listen to a story than learn from a manual.
In 2009 my guttering entrails went seriously wrong and I had to face a lot poking and prodding which I did not enjoy, followed by the prospect of surgery which I loathed and feared. It was this experience that took me to the door of a hypnotherapist looking for hope and help.
At the time I would have said that she calmed me. Now I understand that she helped me calm myself. It wasn’t a magic bullet, and I was till fearful, and it still hurt. What had changed was that I could deal with it better.
Since then I have trained as a hypnotherapist myself, hoping to provide something positive and useful to others.
I’ve found that my previous experience as a film maker and in teaching in fact have, perhaps surprisingly, quite a lot of overlap with hypnotherapy. In hypnotherapy I use stories, and guided imagery a lot. These journeys or stories often have encoded within them aspects of the self, or the challenge you are trying to resolve. I work with the imagination and their creativity of my clients.
Recently I had a client who felt very negative about life. He works in the creative world and is therefore used to using his imagination and creativity.
The journey I made for him involved him going down some deeply carpeted red cinema stairs and through a door into a hushed and comfortable auditorium, where the lights were low and the music soft. Here, when the lights dimmed he could watch himself in a film in a variety of scenes. Every journey started the same comforting and familiar way, but he would see a different film each time, based on what we had been talking about.
In one scenario he chose new clothes from a dressing up box, which changed his character and script. He chose a wizard’s outfit, and in the cinema of his mind he put it on; so that in his mind he actually experienced wearing it; the colour the weight the texture. It was a garment that gave him certain positive attitudes of calmness and wisdom.
This was a journey that was conjured from earlier more ordinary conversations that we had had. Conversations that were about the challenge he was trying to resolve. I had transformed the thoughts from these conversations into a journey involving a symbolism that was personal and particular to him.
I believe that everyone has a creative imagination, and that in a relaxed state it is possible to find solutions that are inventive, unexpected, and powerful.
By the way you can download a free mp3 of guided imagery relaxation from http://hypnottik.com/downloads/download.html
Copyright 2011 by Roger Knott-Fayle,Hypnotherapy in Nottingham - All Rights Reserved.