Valentine’s Day was NOT my favorite and for good reason. I have some disturbing memories from childhood mixed with February 14th.
However, I really never realized consciously why I despised it so.
Of course, there is the obviously marketing madness issue, and then the pressure it puts on couples to show (buy) their love. But my hatred for this day was much deeper than that, deep in my subconscious mind.
In the present, when there is a strong feeling about something that consciously you know you should be okay with, it is usually an indicator of an past event and the emotion around the past event.
For example, having a bad airline flight tends to project the fear of that happening again on the next flight. Even though consciously you can look at stats that prove air travel is safer than car travel. Or, if you were hit by a fly ball in baseball, you would tend have bad memories of the game. Whereas someone who scored home runs without injury would have great memories of baseball.
The event and the meaning we attach to it at that time sticks. If you spilled milk at age 3 and your mom said “bad girl”, that 3 year old brain takes in that information literally, concretely. And the child processes and accepts the idea, “I am bad.” Even though mom was just trying convey, “don’t do that again, I don’t want to clean it up.” These are examples of Associations and Identifications.
So if a child got slapped in the face while making an innocent comment about Valentine candy, the unconscious mind can’t help but put those two together. This + That = “That Response”. Or for me, Valentine’s Day and those candy hearts with messages, are not a safe thing.
But it is more than that.
My father continuously made me an example to my two younger sisters. So when I did something “wrong” in my dad’s opinion, I was punished. This was the typical punishment in the 1960s that included Dad’s belt. So the pain of that got reinforced even more deeply with February 14, candy hearts with words and being misunderstood.
Uncomfortable memories about Valentine’s Day
I am sure there are many uncomfortable memories about Valentine’s Day, such as not getting a card from your favorite crush and then letting that crush you. And many other disappointments about what your lover did or didn’t do on that day. All of those messages (message units) get sent to the subconscious mind and are held there and triggered by a date, a color, a person, or a piece of candy. That is how the brain works.
How hypnosis breaks associations and identifications.
But as an adult, I didn’t consciously put the two together. I just knew I hated Valentine’s Day. Hypnosis breaks those associations in this way: in a hypnotized state of mind, the hypnotist leads the client back to the initial event and has them change it in some way, like a re-frame (to put it simply). In the new imagine they see themselves as powerful and in control, getting what they needed (in my case, I needed understanding, dad misunderstood my comment about the candy and thought of me as ungrateful). Since I have worked through that past event in hypnosis, I can once again view Valentine’s Day as a day to express love (even though I can do that everyday). I don’t go all out…but I am looking forward to showing my love for my friends and my guy by mailing valentine’s day cards (like the ones kids use). I guess the kid in me is finally ready for that excitement of getting a card and maybe even with some candy word hearts, although I think we shouldn’t press it, maybe some chocolate covered strawberries instead.
If you are triggered by the holidays, or a baseball game or an upcoming flight, contact me for a no fee consultation to see how hypnosis can help you overcome a past emotion connected to a past event.
