My kids have been saying some pretty amazing things lately. Today my son said “Mommy, I don’t get Scooby Doo. Every episode they are afraid of monsters but then they always find out it’s just a person wearing a mask. Why are they still scared?”
At first, I just looked at him, trying to process what he just said. Then I chuckled at the comment but at the same time, I realized he had just said something way more profound than he had realized.
Each and everyone of us is just like the characters on Scooby Doo. There is something that we fear, something we do, or something that we think that we have been shown time after time is just not true.
I have a confession to make. I am scared of snakes. I seriously can’t stand them. The other day I saw a baby snake. It was the size of a worm. In fact, I had to really look to see if it was a worm or a snake. As soon as I realized it was a snake, I felt my body change. Immediately I paid close attention to where it was and where it went. I walk past that spot in my yard now and I feel tense. My husband laughed at me and said “It’s too small to even bite you.” I told him it is not being bit by a snake that I am afraid of. I hate the slithering mostly. I can’t explain it but the way they move just really freaks me out. I think it is because we had a lot of snakes when I was growing up and they would startle me when I was walking. That probably is where my fear stems from but why do I still have it? I have seen plenty of snakes in my life and they have never harmed me. Even if they did bite me, the snakes we have around here are not poisonous and really don’t hurt all that much. Time and time again, the snakes have left me alone, probably being more afraid of me than I am of them. Yet, I am still scared.
When you look at any behavior that a person might want to change, you can see the same Scooby Doo problem. Why does the person wanting to lose weight stop eating right and exercising? Ask someone who wants to lose weight and they will tell you what they need to do. They will tell you that they “shouldn’t” be eating a doughnut. They know these things yet continue to make the same choices and not reach their goals. Same can be said for the smoker who goes and buys cigarettes, the person who wants to get out of a bad relationship yet keeps talking to the same person, the person who hates their job yet doesn’t look for a new one. The examples are endless but it all comes back to the same Scooby Doo ending.
The truth is, on our conscious level, we do know a lot of things. We do know that certain behaviors are not the best, we do know that the snakes won’t hurt us, and monsters aren’t real. The reason we keep acting the same way is because we have programmed our subconscious minds for a long time. Ous subconscious minds are really stubborn. Once they start running a certain program, they don’t change easily.
With hypnosis, we can change that stubborn mind and create real change. Imagine if Scooby and gang had experienced hypnosis (and not the Hollywood mind control version that was probably featured on a few episodes). If they could have gotten their subconscious minds on board…well I guess there wouldn’t have been much of a show then.
