Overcoming Fear

Overcoming Fear as covered by Melissa Paluzzi

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi everybody, how are you all doing today? Good to see you again. Uh I wanted to talk today about fear as a messenger, a hypnotic pathway to healing. I know that we all have had clients come in and experiencing some form of fear. All of us have. Everyone's uh familiar with this experience. So I want to start this conversation out with a question. What if fear isn't the problem? What if fear is actually the messenger? We sit with this issue all the time. It comes into the room in many different forms. It could be a fear of flying, fear of the dentist, fear of public speaking, fear of driving, fear of snakes, spiders, you name it. Kelly's ice bug there. Rats. Rats. Yeah, so sometimes we've got this really obvious fear, but sometimes it's a little more hidden. It can show up like a procrastination, avoidance, overthinking, perfectionism, and people pleasing, and even self-sabotage.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I remember thinking is a big one.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah. Yeah. I've, you know, right away at the very beginning of my practice, I was able to really pick out the self-sabotage and these underlying fear issues. Those are always just easy for me to see. And what the client uh, you know, often believes is the issue is actually just fear wearing a different mask. So one of the most important uh reframes in this work is that fear is rarely the enemy. We know that when we do parts work, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. Fear is usually trying to help. Um, subconscious mind doesn't create fear randomly, it creates fear in service of protection. And I can't think of any case that that has ever not been true. Have you ladies ever encountered a situation where fear was not the protection mode?

SPEAKER_03 2:19

No, in fact, I had this a session today, and that's it was it was all about I'm scared or having surgery, I don't know how to get over it. I've had surgeries before, I've never been scared, but now I'm scared. And when we got into it, that that wasn't really the issue. There was many other things that were that were surfacing, and and yes, fear was absolutely the messenger in this case.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah. So even when it the response feels irrational in the present, there's almost always a part of the mind that believes it's doing something very important. It's keeping the client safe, protect um preventing them from pain, avoiding rejection, avoiding loss of control. We're protecting them from repeating something that once hurt them deeply. And sometimes fear is simply protecting the client from change itself. I I've been stuck in this loop before. Anybody recognize that loop protecting you from change, period? Because even positive change can feel unsafe to the nervous system. So when we begin to see fear in this way, our role shifts. We're not we're not trying to eliminate fear. I mean, I know that's what clients will come in with. I just want this to be gone. And it seems to me that the harder we try to push it away, the more it strengthens and just gets in its role stronger, more entrenched, even deeper. So I love when we do hypnosis for fear. Um, it just is the softer way. We don't want to try to eliminate it. We want to learn how to understand it and work with it and guide the subconscious towards something that feels safer. So, one of the most common protocols that we use is uh hypnotic desensitization. Uh, it's beautiful for situational fears like dental anxiety. I'm gonna have to put myself in hypnotize myself for a few weeks. I've got a dental process coming up, and that always fills me with some anxiety. Um, medical procedures, flying interviews, or any anticipated event that um causes fear or anxiety or nervousness or tension in the body. So we want to guide that client into a deeply relaxed state first, allowing the body to experience safety, and then we introduce the feared situation and manageable steps. Thinking about it, seeing themselves arrive there, moving through the experience successfully. And then what happens is the subconscious begins to form a new association. Instead of fear or alarm, it starts to pair the experience with calm and control. So who uses this method? I don't use this often. I I use other methods more often, but who uses desensitization?

SPEAKER_02 5:17

I haven't used it in years because I have other things that I I use way more often.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

I I have used that. You guys remember the good old-fashioned swish technique? I tend to use that and or art of deliberate focus, redirect.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

I find sending love to the fear is highly effective.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Also reminding yourself too, this is the redirect though, or the reframe, that there's usually growth on the other side of fear, is hearkening a growth moment.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

I'm gonna talk about that in a little while. You're right on track. Yeah. Exactly. So desensitization is a good method, uh, you know, to get people on the other side of a particular thing. So I'm gonna use this for my dental experience that I have coming up. I think this will just be easy for me to focus on in within my own mind. Another powerful approach that we can do is regression work. We can uh have the client go back to the original sensitizing event and use that affect bridge of emotions to bridge them back into their earlier life at a time they felt unsafe or somewhere in their childhood, sometime when they felt loss of control or had some rejection. And then once we find the origin, we can begin to reframe it and update the meaning that the subconscious has been holding on to. So I don't necessarily think somebody comes in and I think, oh, they're unsafe, let's do a regression, but regression does often eliminate a lot of fears. I know Kelly uses regression therapy quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Past life too, for fear. A lot of times you can uh do all these techniques and it's rooted in cellular memory, so you gotta go there to really clear it.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

We have so many beautiful techniques to available at our fingertips for these. It's sometimes hard to decide which one to start with. One of my favorite ways, really truly, to work through fear is doing parts work, parts therapy, because fear is so often the protective part. And instead of trying to override it, we become curious about what it's doing. What is it trying to protect? What does it need? What is what is it afraid of would happen if it stopped doing its job? And uh what's beautiful here is that those parts almost always have a positive intention. They are trying to help. And usually when they feel heard, they often will soften, and then we can guide them toward a safer, more supportive role in the client's life. And that parts work is just easy to flip into from anything that you're doing. I've I've found it's a good pivot.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

I just spent the last two weekends teaching parts therapy and strength-based parts. It's my favorite approach for so many things. Easy peasy.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

It's right to the the root of things, you know. And it's not easy. Bring in the part that makes you fear of X.

unknown 8:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Off to the races. That's that's it. Talk about cutting to the chase, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah, it is a it's a simple but profoundly changing process. Simple to do. And then if we have some fears around upcoming experiences, we can do future pacing. I use future pacing in every session no matter what, but you can specifically use it uh for things coming up, um, rehearsals in trance. So you you know, take them through this experience with calm, confidence, regulation, whatever it is that their goals would be, how they wish to feel in their uh future experience coming up. And then the subconscious will accept that version as familiar and possible, and just keep rehearsing that in your mind. You know, you can even do that just in regular thought. Doesn't even have to be in a state of hypnosis. You can just do that with regular thought. You keep programming that in. A long time ago, I took a self-defense class, my daughter and I both did, and uh the gentleman that was teaching the class said, You always, always, always, he said, I want you to run through these scenarios of being in a dangerous situation and you always escape because your inner mind needs to know you always get away. So I I've never forgotten that. And that was something I learned a really long time ago. You're just um, you know, the body will follow. The body will follow, and it's prepared to be able to move through any situation that you rehearse ahead of time. And then Kelly brought it up earlier, but this is something that feels really important for our association because fear can have a spiritual dimension. Sometimes fear shows up right at the very edge of expansion. That's what Kelly was talking about a little while ago, right before healing, right before visibility, right before you're stepping into your purpose. And in those moments, fear might not be telling us to stop, but it might be showing us exactly where growth is asking to happen. Sometimes fear isn't the barrier, it is the doorway. And when you ask it, what are you here to teach me? What are you protecting? What part of me is ready to heal? If you can develop a curiosity for it instead of trying to make it go away, you can have the ability to move into the next experience that you need to have. Kelly, you said it very well earlier.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Well, you know, I I what drove this point home for me was I was watching um Will Smith on Instagram, and he's a pretty motivational guy, you know, and accomplished a lot in his life. And he had a bucket list that he decided he was going to check do this this whole list of bucket list events before he exited this lifetime. And he was talking about how he was on a plane getting ready to jump out of a very perfectly good plane, parachuting out, you know, and he said he was scared out of his mind. And the count from three to one when you're jumping tandem with an instructor is you were at the peak of fear. Yet right when you cross over that threshold, you experience the greatest beauty, beautiful moment that you can ever imagine. Because teared down your fear. I did it.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

I don't feel that way.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Well, damn, you just you just ruined my little vision. Keep going, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Maybe I'll take it in and change my yeah, that wasn't true. Everybody's different. You know, everybody's different. But um, he was saying that the at the maximum amount of fear, and then just a split second later, it was just bliss. He crossed over bliss, and it was from having stared down his fear, and and the beauty that his whole message was the beauty that that lives on the other side of fear. And a lot of times that's why it's showing up so that you can appreciate the maximum beauty that life has to offer when you cross through that threshold.

unknown 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Sorry, that wasn't the case for you, Melissa.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

No, I still have PTSD. Never gonna skydive again.

unknown 13:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Maybe some past life stuff.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Maybe that's interesting. So you jumped out the plane, petrified the whole way down, and then got down and said, I will never do that again. Why did I do that? Yeah, okay, all right, that's real too.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

I shut off everything that I had that told me not to do that. Oh, and then you know, you can't tell from the pictures, I look like I'm having a great time.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

And then but you had warning signs the whole time I shouldn't be doing this, and you did it anyway, and then yeah. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Well, I just I just kind of dimmed all of my you know safety mechanisms.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

You can try to understand the fear, and you kind of said, Oh, I'm gonna ignore the fear.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah, we need to go do a parts work on what that was that you jumped out of that plane when you had all those red flags firing off.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

That's the parts work we're gonna do for you. One of my friends wanted to go for her birthday, and I was like, All right, I'll go with you. But you know, I could see her, she was starting to change her mind because you have to sign a hundred pieces of paper that you won't sue them if you die. Right, you know, you gotta sign your life away. All the bad things that could happen. So it's pretty in your face about what could go wrong here. And then she's starting to get all pale, and I can see her, she's gonna change her mind. And I was like, Oh, no, no, no, we're here, we're getting on the plane. So I think if I had just been there by myself, I would have been like, Oh, you know what? Never mind, but I was proving a point to somebody. I just shut down all of the things that said, don't do that. And then, you know, at some point it's just too late. You're out of the plane and you're in the air now. And then the shoot pulled, and I was like, Okay, good, that happened. And then I started to freak out.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

So because then you're thinking about all the things that could have gone wrong, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:35

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Well, this is this is a great example of how fear can show up for different reasons for different people. So there's not a one answer to it all, right? For some, this works, for others, that works, but it's a signal, it's a small signal for something. Right. What about what about Melissa, fear as it relates to the ego? Because a lot of times spiritually, what I get is that fear is not real, is produced by your ego, which lives from your past experience. Which, if we and we're gonna talk about mindfulness in another podcast episode, that you know, it only exists if you give it attention and focus. So, what do you think about the ego as it relates to fear?

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Well, it can really only go backwards, as you said, and it has to filter through all of your past experiences. Now, I didn't have any past experiences to jump out of an airplane. I do now. And I'm not doing it again. I learned my lesson.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

I meant though, generally about ego, ego being the responsible party for fear.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Well, sure, because if you were really following your inner self, you know, your soul guides everything, all of your experiences, and even the difficult ones are there for a purpose. And if you just listen to that inner guidance and that inner wisdom, nothing should be scary. It's all there for a reason, and you know you're gonna be okay. Right. So ego steps in to go, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Danger, but yeah, we don't want to change that.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

We're not, we don't want to expand. What if we lose everybody from our expansion? What if something too drastic changes? Yeah, so the ego does get in the way.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Well, I'll take ego stopping me from jumping out of a plane any day of the week. No, no, nor am I doing the uh fair as well at the fair. No, no, just take on the ground, staying on the ground.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Yeah, that's no, and I would think the whole time you're thinking, I voluntarily got up here.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

I did it once in high school, and that was enough of that.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Have you ever have they ever stopped it at the top, and you're like thinking which is probably why I made this horrible decision never again?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Well, you know, I think you know, I learned something that day, you know, that I was a first of all, I am able to squash down anything that I want to to accomplish something I want. That doesn't mean I didn't pay the price for it when I got back on the ground. I was I had a few days of PTSD. I would think about jumping out of that plane, and just my body would go, ha ha. That was a hard no for you. That was a hard no.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

What about as it relates to intuition, the difference between fear and intuition?

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Yeah, we have there's a difference, right? There's a huge difference. Um, most people recognize in their body they have a signal that says no. And I think most people understand when the signal says no and they do it anyway, there's a negative consequence almost always. Or they say, I wish I had listened to that. Yes. You always so the no is almost always recognizable to everybody. The yes is a little harder, but I'm gonna bring it up in case anybody wants to go look at it a little bit. I study human design, I teach human design, and there are ways that you can understand yourself that um offer a very much clearer way to hear your yeses. So that can be learned and that can be practiced, and that can be a little easier to understand. So once you get your yes and once you get your no, fear is a different sort of energy. Really, you only need your yes or your no. Fear is a signal that something is maybe being blocked or you're being, you know, there's something in the system that's not working well for you. I think when you feel that fear signal. What do you think about that, ladies?

SPEAKER_03 20:13

That makes sense. I think Tom Cruise must have really cleared his fear signals. It seems like he'll do just about anything.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

He does, yeah. We just watched him one of the Mission Impossibles last night. Yes, that guy will do anything.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Yes, love those movies, love them.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Yes, very exciting.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

He still does all of his stunts.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

He does. I think his recent one was he held his breath for like five minutes under one. I didn't know that was possible.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

You have to work up to it, but those free divers, they that's how they learn how to they build that up. Yep, with spear divers, free free diving, yeah. They build their lung capacity up to be able to do that. So I'm sure you run into some training for that.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

There's a difference. Let's talk about that too, because that's just sparked me to to this came in. Like your body is definitely gonna tell you when something is dangerous. So if you're not comfortable with being under the water and you're gonna try to go under there and hold your breath under the water, your body's gonna go, oh, no, no, no. Things like that. We can trust our body to get us out of dangerous situations where the body's gonna expire. We can trust it. We don't have to be scared of things, we can have great discernment of things instead. I think that's the ideal response is discernment. But the body isn't gonna let you do anything that it's gonna die. It'll get you out of that lickety split. So we don't have to listen to the ego fear. We've got mechanisms in place that will help us move through situations much more smoothly. If we know the signals and we can pay attention and we do what we're our best.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Well, there's the key right there if we're paying attention. And then acting on the information that's there. Every time I'm going to take a trip somewhere, I spend weeks thinking, you know, if you want going on this trip, you could just stay home with your books and your blanket. You could be doing your regular, normal, everyday things. And then the day of the trip, after I've done that to myself for weeks, the day of the trip, I will wake up and I'll think, I'm so glad I'm going somewhere. Really, really annoying.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

That's a real thing. You know, that's that's what I experience when I'm packing to go someplace. And I procrastinate in such a bad way. Like, why am I doing this? Why am I going? Why am I because this takes so much? And then I I have to decide because you can only bring X amount of things. And what if I'm making a mistake and I don't pack correctly? So that prolongs the whole process. And then my closet gets turned upside down, room gets turned upside down. It's just a whole bad, it's a whole bad scene.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

And then I overpack.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

I'm glad to know this before I head out with you ladies in Dakota, Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And so far out, I'm still not. I I'm not yet anxious and wondering why I said I would do this. But give me a couple more months and I'll get there.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

We're going to Hypno Thoughts Live, everybody. If y'all want to show up and support us, we're going to have a table. July. Um yeah, in July. It's going to be awesome.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

So yes, it is. We're all going to come with bags under our eyes. Exhausted by the time we get there because it's all it took to get ready.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Well, my little bugaboo about this particular trip was how I was going to get from the airport to the hotel. Because I didn't really want to do an Uber or a Lyft. I wanted to get a shuttle. That's what I had in my mind. I was going to get a shuttle, and the hotel is not offering a shuttle. So then I, you know, got to go to plan B. And I don't want the plans B, C, or D. I wanted my plan A. I don't know why that's what I needed to have, but that's that's what my little anxiety about the trip has been. And it's going to work out fine. It is. It is. Yep. Because you're a planner. Right. See, my brain is trying to solve my future problems for me. Nothing good happens when you get up here trying to solve your future problems.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

So, how about that you and Catherine are very uber organized? Is that a is that a byproduct of fear?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Well, as if you can at least, I mean, if you can prevent as many disasters from happening along the way.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Right, exactly, right? Isn't that an aspect of fear? So I have to exhaust all possibilities so that you don't, you're not left with the unexpected.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Well, I would be more likely to say I'm organized because I'm a Virgo. And with my personality, first I say it, and then I do it, and I'm going to do all of it because I said I was going to do it. I don't want to be maybe it is fear. I don't want to be embarrassed because we said you're going to do that. What do you mean you didn't do it? So I do all of those things too, Catherine. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah, she's a Scorpio. She's a Scorpio like me, and like Yvonne. So, but you very much have have Virgo tendencies. I do.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

I'm Catherine are very similar.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

I'm afraid of both of them. Well, we should no, we should look at her chart because her if her son's in the in the natural house of Virgo, then that would bring in an element of Virgo. Plus, you might have your progress son, might be Virgo. You might have a progressed moon in Virgo. It would be interesting to delve into that and see because that's what makes everything make sense to me is looking at for you, it's human design for astrology.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah, so we all have these little tiny degrees of fear.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

What comes to mind though is this you don't mind me sharing. I did a past life regression. No, I did a age regression on my best friend Deb, who's a Virgo, very uber organized. Again, I get very fascinated with the fact of all these Virgos. I'm a mag I attract very organized people, and I just fly by the seat of my pants. So it's a very interesting dynamic. But I took her into age regression, and it took her back to when she was like five years old, and her mother and brother were ganging up on her, and she said, I'm leaving. Her mother said, I'll help you pack your bag. And so she at five packed her bag and she walked down the street and got about halfway down the block. Now, this is a five-year-old and realized that she was not prepared for this decision. Because her mother told her, You can't come back. Of course, she was teaching her a lesson, right? And so that imprint that she made this decision without a plan B petrified her. And it drives all of her need to keep all the balls in the air. And I never forget the part that made her feel like she couldn't drop a ball, it was named Sunshine. It kept her up at night, drove her insomnia because she couldn't drop a ball. Sunshine was not gonna let her be unsafe and leave her without plan A, B, C, or D so that she could not get back to where she was she needs to be, so she can be safe. So that's an aspect of fear. That's why that's why I was asked. Different for everybody, though.

SPEAKER_04 28:04

It is a really good example though.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Well, fear is out there everywhere. A few cycles back, I talked about fear as thought forms and the fact that we have a lot of energy on this planet of fear, and we're very good at creating out of fear. So we're we're working. Most of a most people I know are working on how to switch out of that and move into their heart space and use the love energy more. So, but it's just something that we have to deal with, it's just part of our daily existence. But we're working our way out of that now. It's gonna take a little while, but we're on the way. We can do it, we can do it. We're doing it, we are doing it.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Well, thanks everybody for chatting with me about how fear shows up in your practice and what you do about it. Thank you, Melissa. There are many, many ways to deal with fear. You just heard a whole bundle of them. We'd love for people to comment about the best ways they their favorite ways and their practice, and what you've learned from fear as you overcome as you face it.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

That might be some interesting comments that that we can go through. So, yeah, that'd be great and welcome. Thank you, Melissa. Lots of good food for thought. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

See you next time.