What keeps you up at night?
“Fire!”
Penny’s brain screamed at her.
Was she dreaming?
No! That smell was unmistakable. Something was on fire!
Penny woke up to her new house snapping to life in the most frightening display of dancing light. That smell was undeniable.
How had she slept through it?
This was scary.
The house wasn’t brand-new ‘new,’ it was “just new to me”. As she liked to say, when she would gush to anyone who would listen about the old Victorian she purchased on the edge of town.
She was going to fix it up and spend the rest of her life loving the house.
She absolutely knew it.
Until that night. The night it caught fire and tried to evict her.
She hadn’t even been living there a month, something in the wiring gave out. She felt lucky to be alive, though she hadn’t been burned. She hadn’t even lost as much of the house as she assumed, the night it woke her up.
But it had scared her, and rightly so.
Who wouldn’t be scared?
This would keep anybody from sleeping soundly!
Any one of us would be scared to wake up with the house we are sleeping soundly within burning down around us!
Penny was plucky and determined and truly the most positive and hopeful human.
Penny faced the destruction head on and rebuilt, “just as was always the plan”. She still liked to share with anyone willing to listen about her home and the garden she had begun to plant.
You see, Penny got over the fire. Quickly. She was a survivor after all.
Penny had survived so much in her life.
Right before the fire, Penny survived the most heartbreaking loss of her husband.
He had died, heroically, saving his team in a firefight oversees, before the wars had finally come to an end.
But Penny didn’t actually choose to see me about the fire or her grieving process.
No. Penny called about a decade later, because she couldn’t sleep.
“My mom was a bad sleeper.” She explained during her consultation. “And her mom, an even worse sleeper. My uncles always complained they couldn’t sleep, too.” she laughed... ”it just runs in our family, I guess.”
She shrugged and a smile lit up her side of our computer hosted initial meeting.
“I’ve honestly tried everything. My doctor wanted to prescribe me a new medication, since the first stopped working...I’d just rather not...” she sipped from her mug. ...”get in that habit.”
“Does your doctor know you called a hypnotist?”
“Yes. My doctor is cool. In fact, they even suggested gummies, at one point.” She looked down, seeming uncomfortable. This distinguished officer’s widow would get more than a sideways glance if any one of her friends or family knew about that, I found out much later in our work together.
“I was digging in the garden the other day and wondered if it might be because of Andy.” A tear began to slip down her cheek. “We may not have had as perfect of a marriage as everyone likes to make it seem, but I miss him.” She wiped the tear and put a half smile back where the beaming one had previously been. “Even now.”
She shrugged.
I made note. It was a possibility after all.
Hereditary and emotional reasons, this seemed to be a pretty straight forward situation. I felt confident I could help her sleep better, knowing nothing yet of the fire.
I always find it interesting how the mind works through its reasons and the ‘becauses’ it chooses to believe.
What’s ironic is how helpful the brain thinks it is being.
During Penny’s first official session, about two weeks after that consultation conversation, she mentioned how a friend had asked her the day before, “do you think it could be the fire?”
“Honestly, I don’t though.” She clarified to me before we began hypnosis. “I mean...maybe?”
She only told me about it because a friend brought it up to her. She never really expected the fire to be an issue, this long past that night.
That’s the funny thing about our minds and the way they process through information.
She had worked though all she needed to, until...
Penny, like many clients, didn’t realize she was technically hypnotizing herself. Her focus had become fixated on her inability to sleep. And what the brain focuses upon with conviction, the brain gameplans.
(Sidenote: The brain is an amazing people pleaser. Which is how and why learning to communicate more clearly with it creates more personally desired outcomes.)
When Penny first began waking up in the middle of the night, 3-4 nights a week, unable to go back to sleep, she quickly provided herself the reason:
“Because I come from a long line of bad sleepers, this was bound to happen to me, eventually.”
The more it happened, the more she believed it would keep happening, therefore the more she focused on it being her problem.
The neatest thing about the subconscious mind is it typically knows all the answers it needs.
As her hypnotist, I didn’t have to go chasing which of the three main possibilities of stressors she consciously provided, to figure out what had thrown off the daily balance of stressors she previously handled seemingly so well.
“I guess I’m just a restless sleeper now.”
She would repeat whenever asked about it. Her friends had gotten concerned about her sleep months before. The dark circles tattled on her, even when she claimed she was sleeping “enough.”
During this first official session, she admitted her frustration at them, now as much as herself.
“Why does everyone get so nosey about how much I’m sleeping?” She almost snapped without any humor before we began. “I don’t ask about their bowel movements or sex-life, do I? And those are as important as sleep, I hear.” A bit of humor returning.
Once Penny and I stopped talking with our conscious minds we began discovering the truth with our subconscious ones. Her subconscious made it clear, there was smoke at night and it needed to be addressed before sleeping soundly would be allowed to continue.
“It’s a safety issue.” Penny proclaimed, emerging from her first session. “Who knew, I smell smoke. Is it, in my dreams?” She looked at me puzzled.
“I honestly don’t know.” I replied. I was feeling concerned to be honest. Is it appropriate to make her unconscious and subconscious minds agree to her being allowed to sleep through the night, if I cannot confirm she is actually safe enough to do so?
And, everyone’s solution is personal.
“When was the last time you changed the batteries in your smoke detectors?” I began to troubleshoot.
“You’re joking, right?” she laughed. “I have a professional service monitoring the house at all times. The system runs without issue because it receives monthly maintenance.” Looking me straight through the screen, “I take fire prevention very seriously.”
“That makes sense. So, the smoke you are smelling cannot be coming from the house. Is that safe to assume?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s true.”
And she thought for a long moment.
“There are some neighbors down the road a little ways away. I think I have seen them burning leaves during the day. I will check on that. I can’t have a carelessly left burn pile taking out all the work I’ve put into my home.” Her eyes scanned around the part of the room hidden to me from my side of her computer. But the dancing prism of light that always lit up the wall behind her let me know there was magic all around her. Even if she wanted to claim, it was just a wind-chime in the picture window across from the chair she sat in whenever we spoke.
Before our next session Penny had agreed to introduce herself to her neighbors to investigate if their burn-pile could be the source of her nighttime disturbances. Even though she swore she wasn’t aware of any smokey smells, all those nights lying awake unable to sleep until daybreak.
~~~
When I saw her for our next session, she was practically a different person - already.
“I danced all night, Jen. I haven’t done that in decades...” the skin in her cheeks was rosier than I remembered it being during either of our first two conversations. “...since way before Andy deployed.”
Her smile was certainly bigger than the last time she spoke about her husband.
“Oh?” hoping she’d share more.
“Like the energizer bunny, there was no stopping me. It was so much fun.”
She was definitely glowing now. “My friend Sabrina had been asking me to go line-dancing with her for sooooo long.” Her shoulders bounced almost as happily as the tone in her voice. “I figured, why not?” a much bigger shrug this time, as the bouncing moved up to her eyebrows.
Subtly, she was already looking younger and more positive than the week before.
“I went by my neighbors that afternoon, Jen. After our session. I barely did a thing other than put shoes on first. I was determined to find if they’re the reason I smell smoke in my dreams.”
“How did it go?” desperately hoping she hadn’t led with, ‘hi, I smell smoke in my dreams’ when she knocked on their door unannounced.
“Where to begin? It was amazing. They are probably the reason I decided to go dancing, after all this time. Funny. I didn’t put that together until now.” She laughed.
“They are the sweetest couple I have ever met. So nice. They invited me in and offered me sweat tea. They are originally from the south. The deeeep south.” She laughed again and touched her throat.
“They moved here after retiring about a year ago. She was Airforce. He was infantry.” And her voice trailed off a bit.
“They offered me lunch after about an hour of talking. We all had so much in common.” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t take them up on it. At the time, I felt I had imposed long enough. Buut...” A sly grin was beginning to spread as she continued, “I accepted their invitation to attend a BBQ they are having this weekend.
“I don’t know why I thought they were to blame for the smell of smoke in my dreams. Will we find more about that in today’s session?” She looked at me hopefully.
“It may be.” I said aloud as I set the intention, internally, may it be.
Her session that day focused on releasing fear and connecting with her strength.
That is what her subconscious told us she needed that day.
Releasing fear and connecting with her faith in herself.
She plugged into a resource state she’d only ever dreamed of before and we both felt lighter.
I love what I do!
“I am here to enjoy my life.”
Was the insight Penny solidified during her session that day.
It was with joyful anticipation that I awaited celebrating Penny’s wins the next week.
~~~
“Jen, I wasn’t nervous at all. You know I haven’t been that social since losing Andy. But, there’s this new calm within me. I guess that’s what sleeping soundly every night does?”
“Anyway, I was feeling goooood. I was feeling excited even. It was nice. I was milling around and chatting with folks when I smelled it. Smoke. It was there. But it wasn’t scary. I wasn’t scared at all. I was so curious. Was I going to figure it all out, finally?
“So, I walked back towards the back of their property and noticed there was an actual smoker set up...on a trailer, next to their garage. And there was a man poking around it, kinda checking on things. I guess.
“I felt like I was floating, like smoke on the wind, I floated right up to him. And he looked at me like he had been waiting for me. Not to sound weird.
“Don’t laugh. Please. It was like he looked up at me, like he’d been waiting...and he just said, ‘wanna taste?’ And he held out a little bit of meat on the tip of a big knife. Barely a bite. I just ate it, right off the knife...and I immediately knew. I tasted the smoke from my dreams.
“Jen. It’s been my neighbor’s brother all along. He’s starting a food truck. And to drum up business...he drives this trailer thing around downtown, outside the bars, from around midnight to 2am with Authentic Southern BBQ. He can’t park the trailer at his apartment after, so he leaves it at his brother’s...
“I have been smelling him, 2-3 nights a week. By the time I’m awake, he’s gone and so is the smoke...but in my dreams. For the last year, I have been smelling smoked meats drive by me while I sleep.”
“Isn’t that unbelievable?”
“And you know what. I think I’m ready. I think I am ready to get over my grief. Can you help me with that too?”
If it is time to heal your past so you can enjoy your now, hypnosis helps with that too.
If you are ready to connect with your #FutureSelf to co-create the life of your dreams, hypnosis is your key.
How long do you want to wait to live (more) happily ever after?
This is part of what the real person who inspired this client story said after her 4 sessions.
Jen literally gave me my life back.
I've had insomnia for several years. I just accepted it as the "norm" until I realized the havoc it was creating. Jen gave me the strength and wisdom to learn to change this.
With several virtual sessions she brought me from a dark feeling of exhaustion to a bright and positive step forward.
I no longer "fear" what the night ahead will be - her coping mechanisms have relieved me of my anxieties. Jen is a caring professional with a unique gift.
Thank you!
Cheryl L
From a dark feeling of exhaustion to a bright and positive step forward.