I Did Hypnotherapy To Try To Get Over A Heartbreak
People say it takes time to heal a broken heart but what happens when your broken heart is killing you?
(To skip to the hypnotherapy part, scroll to “I Wasn’t Me” subheader.)
“I’m fine,” I said. I always say this to everyone no matter how horrible I’ve been feeling. It’s almost like an automatic answer whenever somebody asks if you’re okay. Think about it – has anybody said “I’ve been horrible” when you ask them how they’ve been? Highly unlikely.
Heartbreaks are a part of life. Everybody goes through it. I’ve been through a couple too. But this time, this time it hurt differently for me.
Before any of you think “Yea yea, it’s just a heartbreak. It’s not the end of your life. Just focus on yourself and forget about it”, know that everybody works differently. I have friends who can move on with another person shortly after a break up; I’ve seen a couple of people who glow immensely and welcomed abundance after splitting with their partner; I’ve also witnessed some people slumped into a horrible state and struggled to move on.
Heartbreaks are normal but no matter how many times you’ve experienced it, it’s still going to hurt painfully. And what I realised this time, is that there’s really a limit on how much pain a person can endure.
The amount of love and effort you poured into someone will one day become the amount of pain you suffer.
Everyone loves differently. Some are great at finding the balance between loving themselves and their partner, some not that great. For me, I’m the latter. I used to fall in love easily and start giving my all to that person even before we’re official. I used to think that as long as I give my true heart and loyalty, that person will appreciate and love me. I was so wrong.
The problem with modern dating is that… It’s fucked up. How shall I explain it?
There are:
- People who are just looking for some fun a.k.a fuckboys and fuckgirls
- People who are always on the hunt for someone better (thanks to the rise of dating apps & social media)
- People who hurt other people because they don’t know what they want
- People who date someone merely for benefits (money, reputation etc)
- People who can’t be single and need a rebound whenever they go through a break up
- People who have been hurt in the past and have trust issues
And the list goes on and on.
I used to be a risk taker when it comes to love. While some of my friends admit that they never think of marriage when they first get together with someone, I’m someone who only date a man if I can imagine myself marrying him in the future. And because of that, I fall hard. I give my all when I fall in love.
When this heartbreak happened, I couldn’t understand why I was hurting so much. I lost 7kg in just a few days, my colleagues said my skin looked so pale, and when I bumped into an old friend in the supermarket, she said I looked so frail like I’d break if she touches me. These have never happened to me in the past no matter how horrible the break up was. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t work, I gave up on myself, I cried every night and I tried to end things (if you know, you know).
Every day, I’d cry to my friends. And every day, they’d tell me the same thing: Time will heal everything. One of my friends has a very good explanation to why I was feeling this way. She said,
“You’re hurting so much this time because your cup is full. In the past, when guys did you wrong, your Cup of Pain keeps getting filled. But the problem is, before you healed yourself and emptied the cup, you moved on to the next person, who ended up hurting you as well. This time, whatever this man did was the worst thing ever so your cup overspilt. You couldn’t contain the pain inside the cup. That’s why this situation is overwhelming you.”
She was right.
Whatever this guy did to me surpassed the limit of pain I could endure and every day, I woke up looking as though I was barely living. After a failed attempted suicide, I turned to therapy to fix myself. It was absolutely useless.
It’s easy to advice somebody to seek help and see a therapist if they’re struggling with mental health issues, but if you’ve never been through it yourself, you wouldn’t know how things actually work.
I decided to get some help from a professional therapist after my attempted suicide and panic attacks. The heartbreak was so horrible that it left me traumatised with my own name and the city I lived in. I’d start shaking whenever I hear someone calling my name and I struggled to head outdoors due to a fear I developed from the heartbreak.
Therapy is not a magical treatment. It doesn’t work for everybody.
I started therapy feeling so hopeful that it’d help me feel better. My therapist used to praise me for being brave by opening up to her but the truth is, going for therapy didn’t make me feel better at all. If anything, it made me feel worse because whenever I share about my feelings to my therapist, I felt as though I had to pry open the wound in my heart and soul again. And every week, my therapist would say the same old thing: “Your feelings are valid” and “You’re braver and stronger than you think you are”.
Hell yeah, I know I’m strong and that my feelings are valid. If I wanted someone to remind me that every time, I’d turn to a friend, not a therapist who charges me $100 per hour.
After 10 sessions, I decided that therapy was definitely not for me. My money was draining dry, I wasn’t improving, and I still had suicidal thoughts. I relied on workouts and cooking to keep me sane, but the thought of him and the incident were still stuck in my head.
Then it happened. All the pain I hid inside of me bottled up to the extent where I couldn’t take it anymore. Some nights, I had to down a glass or two of wine to fall asleep; Other nights, I just lay in bed till the sun rises. I was crying almost every night to the point I couldn’t breathe. All I could think about was him, the incident, and my suicide plan.
I wasn’t me.
I tried hinting my friends to save me but none of them did much. I don’t blame them. There’s only so much someone can do. Everything else is on your own. You have to fight for yourself. You have to save yourself.
I was at the start of bidding goodbye to my friends when one of them suggested me to try hypnotherapy. Her aunt is a certified hypnotherapist who has helped countless of people recover from their issues. I had little knowledge about hypnotherapy but decided to give it a try. As much as I wanted to die, I wanted to live too.
I attended my first hypnotherapy session without much confidence it would work for me. In case you don’t know, hypnotherapy is where a hypnotherapist uses hypnosis to guide you into a trance state where your subconscious is still awake to help you overcome a mental or physical condition.
I’m not the best at explaining exactly what hypnotherapy is but from my understanding, the hypnotherapist guides you into a trance state (where you’re not asleep yet not awake) where your subconscious mind is open. Your subconscious mind is where all the repressed memories are — things that you thought you had forgotten are actually buried in here, like a dusty folder you haven’t touched in 20 years. Most of the time, it contains the foundation to the changes in our behaviour. With hypnotherapy, the professionals can reignite those memories hidden in your subconscious to find the root of the problem so that you know exactly what the REAL trigger is.
I had little to no confidence in hypnotherapy because my first session was a failure.
In my first session, I didn’t know what to expect from hypnotherapy. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to feel. My therapist guided me to close my eyes and imagine some scenes in my head. While I did manage to follow at the beginning, my mind got lost after 10 minutes when the thought of him started appearing. I was 100% awake as well throughout the whole process so I was convinced I was one of the few people on earth who can’t be hypnotised.
I went home feeling shitty as usual and my sleep didn’t improve throughout the rest of the week. Nope, hypnotherapy didn’t work at all but I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt.
In my second session, the guidance was slightly different. As my therapist counted down the numbers to put me into trance state, I was told to open my eyes and tell her what I saw in an image, which scarily looked like something in my memories with him. I closed my eyes and the next thing I know, I could hear my therapist saying, “When I count to 8, you will open your eyes.”. And yes, I opened my eyes when she counted to 8 as instructed.
I was so confused. SO DAMN CONFUSED. I told my therapist I think I fell asleep but she said I didn’t. Honestly, up until today, I still have no recollection on what she said to me while I “took a nap”. But after that session, I had the urge to do something I’d been afraid to do — logging in to my Facebook account. It’s something I did every day but stopped after the incident because it was triggering me so badly. I would sometimes log into it due to work, but every time I do so, I had to take a 10 mins break to calm myself down because it would trigger my panic attack. Pathetic huh? I finally logged into my profile and realised I didn’t panic as much as I used to, and it was a huge improvement to be able to do that.
My third hypnotherapy session was not any easier even though I was familiar with the process. Once again, I was adamant I could be put into a trance state as I was still wide awake (at number 5) when my therapist was counting down from 10 to 1. The next thing I knew, I was woken up by the sound of me talking. I didn’t realise I was talking until it woke me up, and for the very first time, I knew clearly that I had indeed fallen into the trance state.
After my third hypnotherapy session, my therapist and I agreed to put a hold on my regular sessions and return as and when needed.
Did I recover from my heartbreak?
Short answer: No.
I still think about him and the incident every day, but those thoughts no longer pull me down. I started living for myself, worrying more about work, getting frustrated for what to eat for lunch… I still cry in the middle of the night, but not as often as before. I could finally fall asleep, although I still wake up at odd hours sometimes. Beyond all this, I started seeing my worth. I started valuing myself more and work hard to improve myself every day.
The pain is still there and I doubt it’ll fade away any time soon. But it’s as though I’ve gotten used to the pain, or that my pain tolerance has increased. Maybe the water in my cup is starting to evaporate, or maybe the universe is finally delivering the things I’ve been manifesting. Regardless, it’s been a bumpy journey and I’m glad I made it through until today.
