Worriers Are Over-Thinkers and Self-Hypnotists

Ever notice how silly someone else’s worry seems to you? How many times have you told someone to stop making mountains out of molehills? Unfortunately, if worry has become your reflex, mountain-making is what you do best. And when you’re making mountains, the strangest things can seem very real. Insecurity is, first and foremost, opportunistic. Give it an opening and it will take you for a ride.

A few years back, I used to teach abnormal psychology. As was always the case, after my lecture on neurosis and psychosis, I would receive urgent requests from students who had inexplicably “come down” with neurotic or psychotic symptoms. These were the worriers, the over-thinkers who were susceptible to taking a suggestion, implanting it in their minds–“I could be paranoid. I do feel persecuted!” –and then opening the floodgates to worry, anxiety, and panic.

If you’re prone to over-thinking and generating worry and anxiety in your life, then it’s imperative for you to recognize the enormous power of the mind. When I was studying hypnosis in graduate school, I remember seeing a training film where a subject was induced into a deep state of hypnosis. While the subject was in this state, the hypnotist told him that he was going to burn his hand with a cigarette. The hypnotist touched the subject’s hand with an ice cube. The subject winced, as if actually touched by a cigarette, but what was remarkable was that the spot where the ice cube touched formed a welt! What we tell ourselves and what we believe make all the difference. If you implant a bit of suggestion (self-hypnosis) in your mind and you believe it, you will live that suggestion.