You Can Reprogram Resistance By Meeting Your Inner Protector

We explore how resistance rises when you try to change and show how self-hypnosis can turn your inner protector into an ally. We share a simple regression protocol, parts work basics, and practical steps that make progress feel safer and more natural.

• winter mood as a cue for reflection
• self-hypnosis statements and daily practice
• resistance as protection not failure
• body sensations as signals to explore
• panic before action and neural grit
• procrastination disguised as preparation
• activating resistance to work with it
• parts work and comforting the younger self
• reprogramming roles and updating meaning
• step-by-step self-guided regression
• normalizing setbacks and seeking support
• upcoming Seventh Path course details

Chapters

• 0:07 Framing The Deep Winter Mood
• 1:18 Listener Ideas And Series Continuation
• 1:44 Self‑Hypnosis Basics And Resistance
• 3:20 How The Subconscious Protects You
• 4:17 Body Sensations As Early Signals
• 6:06 Panic, ACC, And Building Grit
• 9:19 Procrastination And The Writer Example
• 12:20 Activating Resistance To Work With It
• 14:20 Parts Work And Protective Roles
• 18:41 Regressing To Origins And Repair
• 22:08 A Self‑Guided Protocol In Trance
• 25:16 Normalizing Resistance In Daily Life
• 27:13 Course Outline And Recognitions
• 31:42 Resources, Schedule, And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:07

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_02: 0:09

In the middle of winter. This is the time that I call the mental the middle of winter.

SPEAKER_03: 0:14

Is it?

SPEAKER_02: 0:15

Middle of winter.

SPEAKER_03: 0:16

Trademark.

SPEAKER_02: 0:17

The last three weeks have been wintered. The next three weeks are gonna be wintered. We're just in the middle of winter. And it's a time for I think winter optimally for me would be a time of sleeping, reading, writing, hiding, hiding. I just don't think that when the days get this short and it gets that cold outside, that we're meant to it's meant to be reflective time. So we're in the middle of winter.

SPEAKER_03: 0:52

Yeah. And today, if you're joining us, we are apparently in the coldest spot on earth today. Colder than Siberia in some parts of Ontario. I don't know if it was gonna happen, but I'll go out for a moment and just just to say I sniffed the air and felt like those air spring.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14

It's pretty cool. It's pretty cold out there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17

Yeah. Yeah. So today, again, I kind of like these continuations, you know, when it gives us because sometimes we sit here and we're going, what in the world? After like a hundred and I don't even know now, 170 plus episodes. It's like, what do we talk about?

SPEAKER_02: 1:35

That's why we love it when you guys have ideas. So when you guys have ideas, please speak up.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40

We love that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41

Yeah. Gets our minds rolling. So yeah, today's a continuation of our self-hypnosis sort of series, I guess, now. And so yesterday we went over how to put together a self-hypnosis saying.

SPEAKER_02: 1:57

Reprogram.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58

Reprogram for yourself. And now we're sort of diving into well, what what happens if I'm saying this saying to myself in hypnosis, and I have a little feeling in the body that's not so nice, right? It catches my breath, or I get some feeling in my gut, or my my heart hurts, or or something, right? Something comes up that is signifying resistance. Resistance to the change.

SPEAKER_02: 2:31

Resistance is the key word. I was waiting for you to say it. That's resistance. So is forgetting to do your self-hypnosis.

SPEAKER_03: 2:38

Yes. So is sometimes falling asleep.

SPEAKER_02: 2:42

Falling asleep in your self-hypnosis. When you go down to theta, sometimes the fastest way your subconscious mind can get you to stop doing this is to just push you down a little bit into deltrendular sleep. Because you're already down there. And if you just fall asleep now, we can stop all this pressure on me, the subconscious mind, and trying to make a change of some kind. Because the subconscious mind, as much as it's aware that life is not the way you want it, it's really comfortable.

SPEAKER_03: 3:10

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:11

It's comfortable with the way things are. Subconscious mind, imagine it being a person whose primary purpose is to keep you safe, right? Their primary purpose is to keep you safe. And if they could, they would make you stay in your house all winter. If they could, they'd get you to sit and do nothing but watch cat videos.

SPEAKER_03: 3:38

It's working for me.

SPEAKER_02: 3:41

If they could, if that subconscious mind could, it would keep you from taking anything that looked like a risk or felt scary or involved other people, right? The subconscious mind would like you to be, you know, a hermit that has visitors. That's that's what the subconscious mind would like.

SPEAKER_01: 3:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:59

Subconscious mind is constantly thinking about how to protect you from you.

SPEAKER_03: 4:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 4:06

So that's that's resistance. It's an easy word to use all the time. And it's not just like the big stuff that you might find scary. Like I'm having one of my resistances was I used to have a when I'd say a particular line in my self-hypnosis practice, I would get pain, actual pain in my neck, right in the front of my throat.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 4:30

And it was like, it was like, oh, this hurts. Like I'd keep saying it and it would still hurt. And then the response is always just to say it right to that that discomfort, right? You just keep saying whatever it is you're saying in self-hypnosis right to that discomfort. You're trying to convince it, basically. Then it just feels like it's becoming an argument with inside you, and you're suffering it. And this can be extreme. Like you're you know you're really on to something when you have that kind of experience. And and that's the way you should look at it. You should look at it as you are uncovering something that's going to make an enormous difference in the way you feel and operate in the world.

SPEAKER_03: 5:12

Yeah, like if you release it, like if you go through the is that what you mean?

SPEAKER_02: 5:16

Yeah. But the point is you found something. Just stop there and just say, okay, I've found something. But sometimes resistance is really, really subtle. You know, it just makes you itch.

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:27

Right? You got a little bit of itch in the middle of your back, and there's nothing you can do about it because now you're thinking about that itch. And now you're going to get up and go find the back scratcher, and you're going to scratch your back. And in that process, you're going to stop all this silly self-hypnosis stuff that the subconscious mind just wants you to quit because, you know, everything's okay. Nothing's perfect. Right? How many times do you say that to yourself? Nothing's perfect. That's your subconscious mind calming you down.

SPEAKER_03: 5:54

Do you think what I experienced the other day when I I told you uh so I so I did a past life regression group thing in a private community last week. And right before I went into the community, you know, right as I had my hand on the button, my cursor on the button to click the Zoom link, I I went into like I I can pretend I'm sick. It'll ruin my career, but I can just pretend I'm sick. Like like I can maybe I can get out of this. Maybe like, and the panic, the panic was like ridiculous. I never feel I shouldn't say never. I I I felt it a couple times in my life, that kind of panic. But it's funny because as soon as I clicked the Zoom link and I started talking, I mean, everyone was so nice and all that went away within a second. But it was the buildup to it. And what would that be? I sort of know the answer, I think, to this, but like, would you say that kind of thing is resistance?

SPEAKER_02: 6:58

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a this is we've talked about this a f a month ago, maybe the anterior cingulate cortex part of the brain. It can actually grow and expand when you do things you don't want to do.

SPEAKER_00: 7:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:16

You can convince yourself that something is unpleasant when it's absolutely neutral, taking vitamins or you know, the taste of your medicine. You you can convince yourself that somehow this is just bad and awful, and then you resist doing it, going to the gym, doing push-ups. The point is that when you work against that impulse, you actually physically build the neurons in that part of your brain. And they've done the uh the studies, and as a result, you know, people like you know, military people, soldiers, they have a particularly uh pronounced difference in that part of their brain because they've spent time professionally learning to do things they don't want to do. And in their case, it's really stuff nobody wants to do. So it's it's really something else. Extreme athletes have that part of their brain more developed through training. And so there are, you know, there are physiological correlates to this thing that's going on in your mind. And then using your mind can change your physiology. But I I really want to just to say resistance. It's a huge word. I'll get a client and I'll be teaching them self-hypnosis, and I'll send them away with homework, and I'll say, We're not gonna meet next week. We're gonna take two weeks for you to do this three times a day. Are you prepared to commit to do that? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Okay, you're gonna do this three times a day, and you're going to come back and we're gonna look at some of the results from that. And then they come back two weeks later, and I say, So how did it go? And they say, Well, you know, I just really didn't have time. And I smile and I laugh, just like I did, and I say, You know what we call that? And they say, What? I say, resistance. And they say, No, no, I was just really busy. They need to justify it now. And it's a really great learning opportunity because when we start to be aware of how subtly we are programmed and how sneaky the subconscious mind is to sort of dodge around things and to avoid and to resist, right? You know, let's use that classic example of the person who wants to write a book and they can't seem to sit and write. And when they can't seem to sit and write, they'll tell you they don't have time or it doesn't fit in their life well, or they're just trying to get organized and they spend a lot of time in organization. They go and buy a new computer, they get some software, they get some things that are going to help them, they buy some notebooks, right? They get all this stuff, they're all they got it all together, and they're still not doing it. And it's just subconscious resistance. The subconscious mind wants you to dream about writing that book, but for hidden reasons that probably came about when you were young, and your subconscious mind is afraid of it. It might be afraid that it can't do it, it might be afraid that people will laugh, it might be afraid that they'll do it badly, it might be afraid that you can't handle success. It might be afraid of any number of things that could happen or all of those things that could happen. Because just saying to somebody, I'm writing a book is really putting yourself out there. And people will people will respond, people will react, and some will react supportively and some will react unsupportively. And that alone, knowing that someday somebody's going to ask you, what are you up to? And you're going to have to say, I'm writing a book, is a reason for you not to get started in the subconscious mind. Resistance is a subtle, sneaky thing, and the more you take it on, the more it comes forward. And the stronger it comes forward, the easier it is to get rid of it.

SPEAKER_03: 11:38

Yeah. Like in hypnosis, it's you know, we're we're very good at activating resistance. I think as hypnotists, we are resistance activators. And yeah, I think the uh letting the dog in. Yeah, I think when when we activate it, which we want to activate it, because there's no point in doing hypnosis if we can't activate it, really. And I think when we activate it, it comes up stronger, and then that's when we work with it.

SPEAKER_02: 12:14

Yeah, I often use the the analogy of the the mansion of the mind. You know, people have uh this imaginary house that is their mind. And up in the attic or down in the basement are these things that we don't know about. And the attic is dark, and the the basement is dark, and we don't know what's in there until we go looking. And so when we can say really provocative things, like some people find this phrase really provocative, I say it just to see the reaction I get from the client. You can have, do, or be anything you want, and that's like so provocative to some people, right? They don't know why they react so strongly to it, but we push and then we find out that there's something in the basement, and then we push harder and we go down in the basement, and then that thing shows itself. And when the thing shows itself, we can look at it and we can talk to it, and we can find out where it came from. And more importantly, we can find out what it's trying to do. What's it, what's its purpose? How is it trying to help you? And then we can reprogram it, we can convince it that the best way to help you is to shift to this perspective and be supportive in this way.

SPEAKER_03: 13:37

Yeah, because it wasn't it. Like the client has many parts, right? Usually it's a part and it's protecting. And it wasn't born protecting, right? It wasn't born with so-and-so protecting them from the moment they're born. Now, some parts like your your basic security, safety, absolutely, those parts are into protection. But when it crosses lines where the protection stops you from doing things that are not, you know, life-threatening or or you know, you know, we're not running from lions any longer. We're paying bills, we're wanting to write books, we're wanting to hold regression for people, you know? And so when it when it gets in the way of doing those things, when we go into freeze and we or we back out of things, whatever they are, that's when that safety and security and protection part is just maybe not looking at the situation exactly how it m should. I don't want to say should, but you know what I mean. And and absolutely when the person was younger and had that protective part sort of rear its head, chances are it did need that in that scenario, right? It did need that, but it doesn't need to hold on to that any longer. And so I've found it helpful when uh we're talking to the part to say things like, you weren't born this way. So let's look at the situation where it happened, where where you sort of, you know, it was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. And let's look at it differently and let's create a new narrative. Like, what would you want to do now? What do you want to do now? Let's make a little list of new things that you can do for said client. And then, you know, we just keep trying to help that part get on board with that. And sometimes they're scared and sometimes they're untrustful, and sometimes they're excited. Uh, but no matter what, we shouldn't be mad at the part because you know they they are and and and wanting to abolish the part because it it is a part of the client, it is a part of us, and it's important for that part to know that it's lovable and is is part of your life, and it often, I mean, there's hardly any cases that I've come across personally where the part doesn't want to change at some point, right? Through our discussion.

SPEAKER_02: 16:23

But yeah, like we're we're going deep into the idea of parts, and parts are come in varying degrees. Sometimes a part is an aspect, sometimes a part is an idea, sometimes a part is just a single experience. Other times a part is a complex, and it's come to be because of a number of experiences and the interpretation of them. Sometimes parts are big and clear and obvious, and sometimes parts are just a sneaky little thought that keeps coming back. The, you know, the family systems therapy and all the therapies that have evolved since then, they've really come to focus on the part and they look at roles that we play. And that's really great stuff, and it's really helpful, I think, to see yourself as a whole bunch of systems, a whole bunch of uh relationships, a whole bunch of patterns, dances, as I think Harriet Lerner calls them, a whole bunch of ways of being with others. And they become habits, they become thought habits, they become so habitual that they become overwhelming sometimes. They have take on a life of their own. Always, always, I'm saying it again, always with the intention of taking care of you, never trying to hurt you, but could be trying to keep you keep you sitting still, keep you from moving forward, keep you from taking risks, keep you from doing the kinds of things that make life joyful and fun. And those parts, as subtle as they might be or as big as they might be, are going to come to the table when you start putting yourself in a theta state and imagining yourself doing the thing you've always wanted to do. Imagining yourself doing the thing you know you really want to do, that would be really good for you. And that's the whole idea of that self-hypnosis reprogramming. And this is, well, this is, I suppose, it almost always turns out to be part of every client's journey at some point or another. And in hypnosis with a hypnotist, generally what we will do is we will regress. We will do everything we can to get that part to show itself and explain itself. We've used all kinds of metaphors and techniques to isolate the thought pattern that's giving life to this part. And it might be a couple of thoughts that are have come together and strengthening each other. But no matter what, we find it and then we regress to where it began. And it's almost always a misinterpretation by a child of something that was said to them with intensity or that they experienced with a high level of emotion and reveals itself as a child interpreting a circumstance mistakenly and inaccurately. More often than not, it all it takes is to bring the adult self together with that child self. And that alone often creates resolve.

SPEAKER_03: 19:50

There might be another word that we can use along with this. So, this idea of going back and and seeing how maybe the little one, the word that came up was misinterpreted the situation. What do what might be a better word for people instead of the word misinterpreting, what might be a better word for people that have gone through like some deep traumas?

SPEAKER_02: 20:17

I know it's a hard, it's a hard question to put out there, but I think it's important because well I I just want to say if if if in your process something like that gets revealed to you, don't do that alone. That's that's that's important to gently and caringly and lovingly and slowly take your time through that. My I think more what I was talking about, what I think more is that you know when mom snaps at us and says something nasty. Those things that are really more about mom than they were ever about you. As a as a hypnotist I know that although I can reframe a lot of things for clients and I have lots of really fun ideas and powerful ideas, in the end, the only one that can really understand what that little one was thinking is the adult self. So the one who really has the best opportunity to explain to the little self, the little part, how they're mistaken, how they're not understanding is the adult self. But first you have to allow the little self to make itself clear this is what's going on for me. And then the adult self can come to bear. Now I've done this, but I did it after years of self-hypnosis and years of my own hypnosis with my hypnotist. And since I've become you know a hypnotist and an instructor it's easier and it's faster to do this. I still think sometimes we are best served by handing over control of that hypnosis to a hypnotist who will guide us through. But you can do it for yourself. And so often what I've done when I have kicked up some resistance and I'm in a trance and I get myself into a trance state, I'll simply take a deep breath and ask myself I want to see where this began. And then imagery will come to me. The magic then is not in putting yourself back in that situation. The magic is immediately seeing yourself beside this younger version of yourself. Put yourself right there with them immediately. Hold them embrace them tell them you're there tell them you care tell them you can help them with this right your very existence is calming when the little one in your imagination in your subconscious mind sees the adult one in your imagination and your subconscious mind the little one knows that it survived and that it's okay and that it's lovable and that it's going to do this and it's it can get through this. It's amazing what we can do in our own minds. So you're you've written out your thing and you're doing your thing and as much as you don't want to do your self-hypnosis you're still trying to get it done every day and you're still using the the suggestions that you wrote for yourself that nice long statement about what you want to do, why you want to do it, what you're going to get out of it and how that's going to feel and you're doing it and you're doing it and you just feel emotion any kind of emotion probably more often than not fear but some kind of emotion. You can take a deep breath and say I want to see where this began and then you can take the place of the the adult that the little one needed at the time and play that out in your imagination and don't worry about what's real and what isn't real because the subconscious mind doesn't care what's real. Subconscious mind is influenced by things that aren't real. Subconscious mind can imagine and program. And that's why this technique of self-hypnosis works so darn well is because the mind can't tell the difference. The brain can't tell the difference between what's real and what isn't real imagination and actuality. So you sit there and you tell them that you love them and that you're going to take care of them and that you're going to do this thing and you're going to be okay because you know how to take care of the situation. You know how to navigate through these things that you're afraid of you've been taking care of them all this time and you always will that you love them and there's nothing wrong with them and you understand what they're doing was trying to protect you, but it's time for us to add to our life add to our adventure and get going. And you can have this kind of lovely chat with yourself inside your own mind. It actually only takes seconds sometimes minutes sometimes and then you can give the little one a hug imaginarily in a in your imaginary hug and pull them right into yourself as they're now part of you in a new way and they're going to support you now through this journey through this adventure there's lots of words you can use with yourself but I think there's there's truth in what uh what um Carl Jung said right just by making the unconscious conscious we shift we don't we don't have to spend a lot of time just being aware that there's this unconscious idea is going to make an enormous shift inside you. Anyway and then you continue on your your beautiful self-hypnosis journey of telling yourself you know what you want to do why you want to do it how it's going to be allow yourself to visualize it allow yourself to feel the emotions and you're going to find that that programming really kicks in in high gear then and I just want to say again you know that's why Hillary and I are here because sometimes you want to do that with somebody to guide you through. And that's what a hypnotist does and we're here and we love watching people make these massive shifts inside themselves.

SPEAKER_03: 26:19

So how are you guys feeling are you do you find you have resistances that come up for anything that you want to be doing? Oh yeah yeah it's very normal right to have resistance come up I think it's just part of being human. Yes cleaning the house before getting work projects done like you have resistance to cleaning the house or resistance it's the distraction oh avoiding the work product yeah it's amazing how clean the house can get when you have something born to do isn't it oh my gosh yes yeah how organized your desk can be yes yeah I've been another one I've been using my hypnosis to ask what's happening. Oh that's perfect. That's perfect. I remember this was back when I had the office in town I I wanted to do videos and I thought well I can't do YouTube videos until I have like the perfect backdrop right it has to be perfect. And so I went months and months and months just thinking about the perfect backdrop and how and putting off doing YouTube videos and making the excuse and then I and then I spent like a weekend or something I don't even know uh making the perfect backdrop. And then I still didn't do YouTube videos and so I I thought well what is what is really holding me back here because the backdrop was a good excuse right I gotta do I gotta do that before I can do this. But anyway yeah it's funny how resistance works. So yeah thank you for hanging out today guys and I hope you have a beautiful weekend and if you're in Ontario stay warm stay safe maybe don't go driving on Sunday I don't know and stay warm today for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 28:15

Well I just before we go because I felt like we came down really hard there yeah we're here and it's our our role and it's our blessing to be able to be helpful. And so if in trying to do some self-hypnosis you find yourself in uh in a hard place uh please reject yeah and let us help and if in doing self-hypnosis you start discovering little things about yourself and the way you think well that's what that's for and that's a wonderful thing. And just realizing those things about yourself are going to create shifts inside you that are wonderful. And yes that it when all you've got to do is be an internally focused state can be an alpha state state state is optimal you can just address it and say I don't want to do that anymore. I want to do this and I want whatever part of me is causing me to spend all my time cleaning instead of doing I want you to now be the part of me that makes me do things gets me to get right into the project. And all of this is an exploration of our own mind and it's in doing that that we're going to find our way through into the kind of life of our dreams which is the phrase I use all the time. So I just wanted to say that you know resistance is very very normal it's very very human. It's very very common. Everybody's got some and there's nothing wrong with you because you do too.

SPEAKER_03: 29:44

Yeah yesterday excuse me I don't know I'm gonna say something about your your self-hypnosis outline and then maybe we can just quickly bring up seventh path. If you go into the preschool right at the top there there's a self-hypnosis outline that Les put together yesterday it's really good just walks you through how to make your self-hypnosis sentences and just really simple sentences even that you can use to get things moving. And then again we've got the theta brainwave audio there for you to listen to if you want to use that at the same time.

SPEAKER_02: 30:20

But yeah we do have seventh path coming up did you want to talk about that for a moment we're gonna do a seventh path self-hypnosis course February February 3rd 10th no wait I'm looking at March February 3rd 10th and 17th it'll take uh three nights of practice a couple of hours we'll just talk hypnosis and then we'll go into trance and we'll spend time taking ourselves in and out of trance and we'll spend time learning what's called the recognitions which are just statements you make to yourself that are going to be for some people and sometimes in some ways kind of provocative to their subconscious mind. It's going to serve as a kind of it's it's referred to as the antivirus of the mind. So it's a really good way to deal with sort of the fundamentals of who you are and accepting yourself and moving forward in your life. There's five recognitions that we'll learn over three nights and the last night we will talk about this kind of stuff reprogramming yourself to do the things you want to do. The cost and all of that is laid out there but it'd be wonderful if you join the school, join with the free membership if you prefer and then come in and examine the stuff I'll be loading it up there. But the course is going to start on February 3rd. And if you have already done this with me that that's great. So treat this as a refresher and it's a much reduced price because I don't have to send you a book or anything else. But it comes with a book it comes with resources it comes with we'll be recording these things so that you'll have access to them later so you can replay them and go through the meditations with me till you get good at doing it for yourself. It's it's a system it's it's an all inclusive process that you're gonna find really effective so I'm gonna teach that maybe for the last time because we've been working on our own system but it's a it's a great system and I've been doing it myself for 20 years.

SPEAKER_03: 32:27

Yeah it it certainly when I learned it in hypnosis training it yeah I had an amazing movement in my mind and changed my life so definitely worth it okay so have a good weekend thanks for hanging out and we will see you later