How Neutralizing Triggers Help Regain a Promising Life

Chase the reason, not the symptom, and watch change happen.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Something tripped their trigger”. We all have emotional triggers from our history. An event, personal conflict, or a false perception of something bad, is like a big wind for a small boat. It gets knocked off course.

The subconscious mind is always listening to thoughts and feelings, then storing a response deep inside your library of potential actions. For more details on this, read my article below:

As a leadership, success and stress coach, I help my clients create and reach their goals. I’m also a Board Certified Hypnotherapist. For confidence, fear or emotional triggers, I use a direct route to the subconscious mind.

This article describes details of a serious abuse client that needed to clear a path to regain her life.

I know many hypnotists that built their entire careers on addressing habits. It makes sense that many follow this approach. I believe it makes for a good business decision as there no shortage of people doing bad things to themselves. I’m not suggesting that practitioners are only about the money. My peers in the profession care about their clients, and it allows them longevity as their clients require fewer sessions.

I operate differently. I’m interested in helping people get past themselves and create healthy, happy lives. I also help my clients get past the effects of what someone else did to them.

Abused, fearful and stressed clients develop habits from their negative situations. I interact with the subconscious mind at a deeper level than most practitioners and the resolution is faster.

As you’ll see in this article, my client had significant habits. My approach was to work on the triggers so the client could resolve her habits on her own. I believe the value added is that I am helping them to regain their life.

When they resolve their own habits, it builds their confidence and sends the message that they are more capable than they thought they were. They can then create greater levels of success throughout all parts of their life. That’s my aim — a full body/mind approach where nothing holds them back.

We know that habits come from underlying emotional triggers. In his book, “The Secret Language of Feelings”, Cal Banyan, a man I trained with, refers in his book to a “Feel Bad — Distract” situation. Some conditions cause us to feel bad. Then, to make the discomfort fade, we replace it with something else.

Sometimes that “something else” is a negative thing that pulls from our life, rather than add to it. As a hypnotherapist, I neutralize habits by working to create positive alternative behaviors.

I work on the triggers that constantly tell clients they are not enough. Without belief in themselves, their confidence fades, and self-perception of success is lacking.

This is where I differ from many other therapists out there. I found through testing and practical application that my approach works. Sure, I can work on the habits and they’ll stop. But if another life event occurs that sets off a trigger, their habit could restart. I don’t see that as a success, and it doesn’t empower my clients to overcome challenges, so I approach the triggers first.

My primary work was helping women with decades of abuse. They believed their life was in a hole that’s too deep to escape. I also work with law enforcement, first responders, military and their families for confidence and stress issues. The work deals with deep-seated emotional triggers, and it can be challenging, but that is the nature of the work.

In-person sessions are not possible with the pandemic, so we work remotely to address the triggers that lead to habits. Where there’s stress or abuse, there’s a habit.

In most sessions, I address the habit, but only briefly enough to place a suggestion of success. For the deeper, long-term life work, my clients know to expect at least five sessions, possibly more depending on their needs and progress. Each person is unique and while there are key issues and processes to do, we personalize everything for the person.

Case Study

For this case study, my client’s name is Laura. She was born into a wealthy family and had a good life and education in her childhood years. When her mother died, her father married an abusive, controlling woman. During those early years, she lost all sense of independence and was victim to abuses by boyfriends of the new mother. When opportunity came to get out of the home, she married her way out by connecting to someone with similar abuse tendencies.

This is a common situation where a person flees abuse, then connects to another abuser. I’ve seen this repeatedly. I believe this results from the internal belief that this is their “normal” and a belief that they are not worthy of anything better.

For my abuse clients that went through our work, I’ve watched them release the false beliefs and live new lives in healthy, successful relationships. The difference between the before and after, is the work with the subconscious.

Laura endured over 30-years of abuse when she came to see me. Prior to our work, frequent beatings landed her in the hospital. During this time there was an eight-year period where her husband forced her into human trafficking. I’ll spare you the details; you get the picture.

Here was a woman with plenty of reasons to feel shame, live in fear, distrust and had negative habits. When she arrived for her first visit, she looked timid and yet hopeful. Before that visit, we spoke frequently by phone, text and email for two weeks building rapport, answering questions, and helping her feel safe.

When she arrived, she struggled to breathe a full breath without coughing. Because of lung damage, she was in the early stages of emphysema and smoked three packs a day for the last 10-years.

A month prior, she was so stressed that they hospitalized her after smoking 13-packs of cigarettes in three days. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that many cigarettes.

That wasn’t a typo: 13 packs in three days.

During our first meeting, she was emotional as she shared details of physical ailments being addressed by her doctor. She refused medication and her doctor was at wits’ end, suggesting that she see me. She told me how she only slept three hours a night for a decade, and nightmares often interrupted those hours.

Here was a frail, 50-yr old woman, with the health of a sickly 75-yr old. Each day she endured discomfort throughout her body from the years of abuse. I immediately had her get into the recliner as I wanted her comfortable. She described how her back always hurt after being broken from a beating.

I’ve had many abuse cases, but I honestly struggled with this one.

I walked her through the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a process I show all my clients for self care. Within a couple minutes, it relaxed the discomfort in her back and we began our work.

As we worked our way through the sessions, we addressed self confidence, neutralized fears, worries and false perceptions. In the work I do with abuse and emotional distress clients, significant results appear later in the forgiveness work. Throughout each session, I addressed her ability to make healthy choices, “Anything that goes into your body has to be healthy.” That was the extent of addressing habits.

At the end of the fourth session, I asked her about her progress with smoking. Previously, she smoked 3-packs a day (60 cigarettes). She proudly stated that she was down to only 3 cigarettes a day. I told her how proud I was of her choice to step up and be an active part of the work.

She showed her ability to be in control of negative habits. It’s important to note that I took no credit for her successes.

It was critical to let her know that she was allowing herself to create the change.

This wasn’t a word game with her; it was true. A person in hypnosis is always the person in control. Through their willingness or resistance, success will come… or not.

My job is to build rapport with them through trust and show them they are worthy of happiness in life. That message, when compounded in suggestion through our sessions, helps break down false beliefs that held them back. Once we reach that level where we are on the same page working together, it is exciting to watch lives shift in front of me.

In our fifth session, the evidence of her new life was exciting to see. She was happy, looking healthy, and the frequent coughs disappeared. This example shows that addressing the underlying reasons for emotional triggers first allowed her confidence growth. Her new perspective helped her to stop the habit on her own.

I’ve successfully used this process hundreds of times. When we resolve triggers first, new doors open for exciting areas of success.

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⭐️ About Anthony M. Davis

Anthony M. Davis is a Leadership, Success & Stress Coach, Board Certified Therapist, and Top-100 International Travel Photographer. His free book, “Keys to Your Success” is available. Get your copy now.