Ever zoned out in a boring meeting, blinked, and found yourself in the driveway? That gentle drift is the same brain state hypnotherapists use to help us change stubborn patterns—without gimmicks, fear, or loss of control. We sit down with hypnotherapist Craig Meriwether to demystify hypnosis, break down brainwaves in plain English, and explore how the subconscious stores “files” that shape our reactions to stress, grief, and anxiety.
Craig explains why the alpha state is where the real work happens: you’re relaxed yet responsive, able to surface root beliefs and reframe them safely. We explore powerful case studies, including a 70-year belief—“I don’t matter”—traced back to an early moment of fear and resolved by meeting it with compassion and clarity. You’ll hear how metaphor and symbolism can translate body sensations into something you can move, lighten, and release, because the brain responds to vivid imagination as if it were real.
If you’ve tried talk therapy and coaching but still feel stuck, this conversation offers a clear path: meet your subconscious with respect, use the states you already enter every day, and choose a new story. Subscribe, share with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to tell us what limiting belief you’re ready to release.
If you wish to connect with Craig go to his website: www.arizonaintegrativehypnotherapy.com
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey light bringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Released Out Reveal Purpose. And today is Craig Merriweather. He’s a hypnotherapist. And he and I were supposed to have a podcast interview months and months and months ago. So I have a little bit of a different relationship with Craig now because we’ve gone back and forth on PodMatch, and that’s where we met. And I was really intrigued to have him on my podcast because I’ve always been intrigued with hypnotherapy. Never tried it myself. I always kind of wasn’t wanting to try. Maybe I’m not a true candidate for it, but I’ve had different disciplines. I’ve gone through therapy, I’ve done coaching. Um, but hypnotherapy is something that I’m like, ah, I don’t know that I can like really relax into it to actually have it have some power to it. And I know Craig, like I said, he was supposed to be on the podcast and he had a difficult chapter occur, you know, and something that pulled on my heartstrings. Um, his father passed away, and I my father had just in the month I was interviewing Craig, um, was when my father’s first anniversary came up. So when he posted that, I was like, my heart strings pulled because I was like, I know what that’s like, and I know how hard that is. And the brain fog and everything that follows, a major loss like that. And so when he said, No, no, I didn’t mean to like not show up for the podcast, but this happened. And I was like, you know, I totally understand, I totally get it why. So without further ado, thank you so much, Craig, for rescheduling with me and for wanting to appeal or at least that was real purpose.
Yeah. Well, thank you, Sylvia. I appreciate your patience and your your uh kindness, your compassion. And um, yeah, it was it’s one of those things, uh a bunch of bunch of things kind of fell through the cracks that week. And um, one of them was was you, and I appreciate how kind you were when I reached out. And um, but uh, you know, it’s wasn’t unexpected, I guess you would say. Um he lived a nice long life. So um how old was your dad? 92. Oh my goodness.
Holy morning! You have that to look forward to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a last year, but uh nice longevity, but you know, you got to hell hell uh hold two of his great grandchildren, and and uh he was um I think it’s one of those things where he just he kind of hit all the markers and his health wasn’t uh so great there. So it was again kind of frustrating and sad, but not again, not not a head scratcher or unexpected, but uh just it’s still a loss, Craig.
You know, and and I’m a life coach and we can tough it out. But the truth is, it’s like one of the biggest fears out there is to lose a parent. I mean, ever since we’re like little kids, it’s the thing that kind of like scares us the most. And as I grew older, I knew the time was coming. And I had older parents, like I mentioned to you before we started recording. Um, so I knew my time with them was going to be limited. And um, and when my father received his terminal diagnosis, it was a tough time. It was very dark. And and I had my faith that sustained me through it because I was forced to release all my anxieties, all my words to God every single day, or I was going to fall apart. And I had what was known as anticipatory grief. So I had time to kind of prepare for that loss. When it happened suddenly, I think it really it’s a different kind of loss. You you kind of are prepared for it, but you really aren’t, and it just hits you and it hits you hard. And then brain fog is always like a classic sign of grief, and we forget things that we signed up for, and and we just, oh my goodness, I was supposed to be on this thing, you know, and and you feel awful. And then I knew what you were feeling. So when you came forward and said, hey, this is what happened, I’m like, oh my goodness, like of course my compassion’s gonna step in. You know, I’m a human being, I love human beings because you are a child of God. I’m gonna love you from the abundance of the love I receive from him. And so immediately I was like, of course, Greg, like your time, like whenever you’re good with it, I’m I’m gonna interview you. So I know you have like an enormous story of transformation to share with us because hypnotherapy is not, you know, a discipline that most people fall into. There’s gotta be some purpose behind this.
Yeah, we’re uh we’re often uh the last on the list. Uh and it’s unfortunate because there’s a lot of misconceptions and myths out there, especially from Hollywood and the movies and TV shows. And even you you started off with one. It’s like I’m not a good candidate, or I don’t believe myself to be a good candidate. There’s no such thing as you can or cannot be, or you’re a good candidate or not a good candidate. It’s all about the subconscious mind and whether you are able to influence your own subconscious mind. There is no uh snapping of the fingers or a waving of a watch, and somebody you know gets up and starts dancing like Michael Jackson or singing like Elvis Presley, like you see in the shows. That’s not a thing. There are shows out there like you see in Las Vegas or comedy clubs and things, but understand that every single person up on that stage volunteered to be up there, assuming they’re not faking it out of embarrassment for not being hypnotized. Uh they’re being influenced by their own want to be star of the show and be a part of the show. And so whole hypnotherapy is is the biology of the brain and the brain wave states, the famous ones we learned about in school, or beta, alpha, theta, and delta. And if you remember back in high school, or maybe at work, you’ve been in a meeting recently, and it was boring, and you just started kind of daydreaming out the window, and you see, yep, your mind flutters away. Welcome to hypnosis. That is all it is. If you can do that, if you can be bored in a meeting, if you can be bored in high school math class, if you’re driving home and all of a sudden you’re thinking, oh, wait, I got people coming over this weekend, and I gotta get the shopping done, I gotta get home. Oh, wait, the PowerPoint presentation for the big meeting that work is due on Thursday. And all of a sudden you’re in your driveway, you’re in your garage, or in your parking spot, you don’t remember the last five blocks. You just find yourself in the hypnagogic trance state. You can do it. Literally watching TV puts you in the hypnagogic trans state. It’s the slowing down, the literal biology of it is the slowing down of how fast your brain is working. And so when in the beta brainwave state, what what you and I are in right now, Sylvia, is uh a being in the present moment. We’re having a conversation, we’re listening to each other, we’re having a discussion, and so our brain cells are communicating to each other, firing their little electrical pulses. If you go on YouTube and find videos of neurons firing, it looks like the electrical storm in the brain. Well, that’s happening at about 18 cycles per second. A wave moves from the back to the front to the back again. That’s one wave, 18 of those per second. Let’s say I’m back in high school math class, and I gotta do well, it’s gonna be on the final, so I’m taking notes, I’m trying to figure out what the teacher’s talking about, and it’s so boring for me. But I’m concentrating, I’m doing really well, and because I gotta get this next test, I gotta do well. And so I’m firing about 18 cycles per second. It’s so boring for me, and after about four or five minutes, I’m just like, and I just start staring out the window, and now I’m thinking about the weekend and you know what I’m gonna do with my friends, we’re gonna go out and go to the movies and we’re gonna have fun. And uh it may remind me of a vacation I took a couple years ago and we were at the beach, and uh really gotta maybe figure out how to learn surfing, and maybe I should move to the beach. All of a sudden, my mind’s somewhere else. I’ve altered my state of consciousness, just sitting there in high school math class, and I’ve slowed down because I’ve fluttered my mind away to the future or started remembering something of the past. I’ve slowed down how fast my brain is working. I’m now in the alpha brainwave state. And then pretty soon I’m just kind of nodding off, my head’s lowering, my eyes are closing. Not really asleep, certainly not awake. So I’m now down the theta brainwave state. Now really luscious, where you know, when you get to sleep in on a Saturday morning, and again, you’re not really asleep, or you’re not really awake either in that hazy, dreamy state. That’s the theta brainwave state. You’re firing about six cycles per second. In a moment, I might be asleep. One cycle, half cycle per second. But instead, the teacher sees me and says, Hey Craig, why don’t you come up here and do the problem on the board? Now I jolt away, I’m looking around, everybody’s staring at me. I’m I’m embarrassed, everybody’s staring at me. I don’t know how to do the problem on the board. Now my stress levels are going up. I’m firing about 25 cycles per second because now I’m the stress response. I’m in high beta. And so just in that, you know, five, six, seven minutes, I’ve altered my state of consciousness three or four times. I’ve moved myself in and out of the hypnosis trance state. And just sitting there in high school math class under fluorescent lights, 20 other people talking and carrying on and answering questions. So this is something we do all day long. We’re not in the conscious beta brainwave state for more than a handful of minutes at a time, and our mind drifts off something, we bring it back. Our mind drifts off something and we bring it back. That’s what meditation is all about. When you do sitting meditation or stivasna and yoga or something like that, and you’re focusing on the breath, bringing your attention back to this moment, to this breath, to this beat of your heart, to the temperature of the room, to the mantra or the chant you’re doing. You want to be in this present moment. Why? Because our brain, our mind flutters away all the time. Well, we take advantage of that. And you are more inclined to want to make changes when in that alpha and even theta brainwave state. We generally want you in the alpha brainwave state because then you can communicate. When you’re kind of that trancey theta brainwave state, it’s nice and it’s wonderful, and you certainly make some healing changes there. But the big work and the deep healing work happens in that alpha brainwave state when you’re just fluttered away a little bit, just like watching a movie on TV. TV puts you in the hypnosis state. So if you can watch TV, if you can be bored in a meeting, if you can remember the past or think about something that’s going to happen in the future, you can do this. We’re not doing anything unusual, we’re not doing anything different. We’re using how the mind and the brain and the body actually works and using it to your advantage because you’re doing it already. A lot of people come to hypnosis and uh therapeutic hypnosis because they may be struggling with anxiety or maybe overwhelming grief or anger at a situation, or maybe even physical pain or something else. Maybe they’ve experienced deep hurt in their lives, maybe they grew up in a traumatic environment, maybe their home was unsafe, and they’ve been holding on to that trauma and it’s causing problems. Their heart is palpitating, they’re constantly in the fight or flight response, or they’re angry and annoyed and snap at people. They’re already hypnotized. They’ve hypnotized themselves to react to triggers in their environment automatically. They’ve already hypnotized themselves, so what a lot of the work we do is de-hypnotizing people because they know it’s a problem, they know it’s an issue, and what we do, we just reverse engineer it. We don’t do anything somebody hasn’t done already. But what’s empowering about this, and you know, some people have grown up in homes that have been unsafe and have had traumatic experiences, and they’ve been holding on to that, and it’s not to say it was their fault, certainly not, and it’s not to blame the victim, but the way they hold on to that hurt and that pain, they’ve decided to do that, yeah, unconsciously, and through deep trauma, but they’re the ones holding on to it, which means they can undo that. It becomes very empowering because if you realize that you are in control, then you can do something about it. And this is and this is the great the greatest myth that’s been perpetrated is that hypnotherapy takes control away from you. You’re already out of control. That’s why you’re calling. Because you’ve gotten to a point of years and years of talk therapy, or doctors, or just enough of the hurting pain, enough of the anxiety, enough of the overwhelming worry and blame and embarrassment, and you’re ready to do something about it because you’re out of control.
Okay, so so tell me, tell me, like, I’m very, very curious on this topic because I’ve coached some of these people, you know, that nothing has really worked. I’m like, ugh, I don’t think coaching is gonna help you either. I think you’re candidate for something more that is really going to undo or uproot what actually occurred, you know, to get to the deeper parts of the subconscious mind, which talk therapy can get you there if you’re willing to go there. See, that’s that’s the key because you can go to therapy and check off those boxes. I did for many years when I was a kid. Um I didn’t realize why I was so angry at my father until he made a comment when I was 21. And the trauma had occurred when I was seven. And at the time I was doing EMDR in Dallas, Texas with my therapist, and I had gone because my parents were like, you need to figure out what’s going on. Like, why are you so angry? Always at your father. And I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know why. But I had started to my mind, you know, my EMDR, the the repetitive nature of it that synthesizes it, right? Um, but there was a block, and it can’t I kept hitting that block. And I was like, what in the world is blocking the truth? Like, what is at the root of this anger? And then he made a comment and it just unlocked it. In one moment, everything rushed back to me. Um tell me of a time without obviously we we understand HIPAA, I understand HIPAA, I’ve got you know taking courses in that. Without doing meetings, what was your what was a case that you were very proud of that you could help through hypnotherapy?
Um there was there was a woman I was I was working with, and um it was I often work with a lot of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s. Uh yeah, I do work with people younger. It’s very rare that somebody has the insight to know, like yourself, you know, that at a very young age that there’s some some issue going on. But that is often often the case is we store this stuff in the subconscious mind. And you know, subconscious mind is there, you know, if we have a cut on a finger, we don’t have to think about it. The subconscious mind sends all the white blood cells and all the things and and starts healing because you don’t have to think about it. Oftentimes you don’t even know it’s there. Uh the scrape on the knee until somebody points it out, but it’s already starting to scab over, and new tissue is being formed, the white blood cells are there, and and new skin formed, then afterwards you don’t remember it’s there. Subconscious mind taking care of that, digesting your food, beating your heart. It’s holding on to those little habits that we have, like um tying our shoes and walking down the street and riding on a bicycle. But its main job is to keep us safe and protected. And it does this kind of like by having a filing cabinet with all these files of all the hurt and pain we’ve been through. And it’s not against you, your subconscious mind is not against you. It may seem like that sometimes, but it’s not against you, it’s for you, and it’s trying to protect you, it’s trying to keep you safe. This is for survival, which doesn’t necessarily mean your happiness and your success. It wants to keep you safe by avoiding and trying to stay away from something that has caused deep hurt and pain or embarrassment or humiliation in the past. And whether that happened yesterday, last week, or 50 years ago, it wants to keep you from experiencing that even as a little kid. And so we’ll create these files, store them in a finally cabinet, and as we go through our day, all the information that’s coming through the five senses, what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is being filtered through that filing cabinet. If anything looks like one of those files, even slightly, whether we hear something somebody says to us, or we see something, we’ll get the warning signals. Now, when somebody pulls a fire alarm in a building, the sirens go off, the lights go off, warning everybody’s a danger. Well, we also have a warning system, but it’s feeling states, the feeling state of anxiety, the feeling state of worry and overwhelming, anger and fear. That’s the body’s alarm system to us, or our minds denoting some sort of it’s picking up some sort of danger, triggering some sort of um uh it’s being triggered and creating chemistry within the brain to create this feeling state in the body. And and we get warning. Unfortunately, something uh that’s uh wonderful in humans but uh can also be an issue is what we practice we get better at. So it’s great if you want to learn the piano or dance or martial arts or learning to walk as a child, learning to ride a bicycle. But if we’re practicing anxiety, we’re practicing anger, practicing fear over and over again, we’re gonna get really good at it. And you may not know why, because it’s in that subconscious part of mind behind the veil in the unconscious. So the subconscious is a very emotionalized uh part of mind. Yes, it’s running the immune system and the digestive system, all that, but it’s a very emotionalized part of mind trying to keep you safe and protected. The conscious mind, that’s the part of mind that uh it’s the logical mind, the analytical mind, the part of mind that you use to go for your goals. You know, this is a life coach, you use this part of mind to establish goals and the plans to achieve those goals and the willpower to get up early and go to the gym before work and all that. Well, what neuroscience says is that conscious mind only makes up five percent of mind. Subconscious mind makes up 95% of mind. So when there’s conflict between the logical mind and the emotional mind, the emotional mind wins every time. That’s why this doesn’t have to make any sense. It doesn’t have to make sense that there’s a block to moving forward until that trigger releases a bunch more information. And so the healing can happen. Talk therapy is important and can be very useful, but you’re oftentimes just using that five percent of mind, and a lot of that stuff’s kind of locked behind the veil, behind the safe, uh, the bank vault in the subconscious mind because it’s trying to protect you, but it doesn’t want you to constantly have to be reminded of it. Unfortunately, it creates these warning systems because the mind can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined, and so we end up practicing being anxious. And I was working with somebody, I was doing these classes for the cancer support community of of Arizona, and um these were online classes, uh, and so people could join around. I guess anybody could join around the country, and there were these series of classes of of um learning to relax the body, but also pain control and healing acceleration and boosting your immune system. And we’d meet for you know an hour once a week online, and uh at one point, I think it was a uh the third class in, uh, I was early to the Zoom classes over Zoom, and where I do most of my sessions nowadays because it works well. Uh people relaxing in their own homes. And she’s already in the class, I was ready to class, she’s about uh you know 70-year-old woman, and we’re just chit-chatting, waiting for everybody else to show up. And she asked me if uh hypnotherapy can help with procrastination. I said, Oh, yeah, that’s a mindset issue. You know, you’re avoiding something and you may not understand why, and so you have hypnotized yourself in this certain area of life, whether it’s work or relationships or health or something else, to block yourself, to keep yourself from moving forward. You have hypnotized yourself. So, again, a lot of this work is de-hypnotizing you from that. So it works really well. And so I just happened to have uh an appointment the next day at the same time as this class was happening, so I said, Why don’t we do it tomorrow? And 24 hours later, shows up on the Zoom call and she says, You know, I told you I wanted to work on procrastination, but what I really want to work on is why I don’t matter in life. This is a 70-year-old woman who thinks she doesn’t matter, thinks she’s worthless. And this is what is interesting, is the subconscious mind starts looking at this situation that’s coming up. Some healing work is going to be done. We start right away. There’s no get to know you period. Because you’re gonna fix yourself. I don’t fix anybody. And hypnotherapy in itself doesn’t fix anybody. You’re gonna fix yourself using these tools and these techniques. And so the subconscious mind, okay, well, we got hypnotherapy coming up, we can work on a problem, or we can work on the problem. And so she showed up at the Zoom call and said, Yeah, let’s uh I just don’t feel like I matter. Anything I do is is is worthwhile. And so that’s a feeling state in the body. You can feel that somewhere, and that is linked to the brain changing chemistry to make that feeling state, which is changed by the mind having thought. So there’s a direct connection between the feeling in the body and the thought that is creating it, so we can follow that back, and so we we Did one of the healing processes we did that day is we follow that feeling state of not feeling worthy back to the first time she ever felt it. So we did a regression. I’m counting down from ten to one. And I get to one. And one, I want you to be at the very first time you ever felt that feeling of being worthless, of not mattering in life. And so we do this uh it’s very safe and it’s very gentle, but it’s a way to get clarity on what needs to be healed. And so this feeling state on one be there now, where are you? And she says, A seven-year-old woman says, I’m standing up in my crib and my father’s screaming at me because I won’t stop crying. And so at this when we did the session uh some years ago, um somewhere around seven years old, this is somewhere in like the early 1960s, maybe, maybe like late 1950s. And men maybe are not so uh trained in how to deal with little children in that time and and place. And maybe mom’s out of the house and the baby’s crying and dad doesn’t know what to do, and maybe dad’s having a bad day or a bad week or a bad life, or maybe he’s just not a very nice person. Whatever the scenario is, the baby won’t stop crying for whatever reason, and he comes in there, and this person who’s supposed to nurture her and love her and protect her starts screaming at her louder than yelled louder than the baby and tell the baby to shut up. Well, in that instant, the child has to justify why this is happening. There’s this person supposed to love her and and uh nurture her. And so what the child came up with in that moment, what’s the what’s standing up in your crib? Twelve months old, fourteen months old? What this year-old child came up with in that moment was I guess I don’t matter. This person is screaming at me, and I’m hurting, I’m paining, I’m whatever this is, and I’m hungry, and then you won’t help me. I must not matter in life. And she held on to that for some 70 years until one day she decided it was time to let it go. And that’s the problem with those these issues that get stuck, if you will, blocked in the subconscious mind, is that one oftentimes you don’t know what what they’re about or what where they started, what what happened. But your subconscious mind does. It’s holding on to it in that filing cabinet. But guess what? You’re the one who put it in the filing cabinet. In in in a different scenario, the baby could have laughed it off and thought it was funny and that dad’s face was getting red. But in this issue, it was frightening to the child. The child’s in control of the filing cabinet. The adult is in charge of the filing cabinet. You can take it out. You can shred it, you can get rid of it, you can take the wisdom you need from it, and then get rid of it. Put it behind you. And that’s what we did. We did some deep healing work that day. And um you know, I I saw her one more time. And that was it. That that’s the power of your own subconscious mind, because again, I’m not healing anybody. I’m not fixing anybody. You’re gonna fix yourself. And just as now I’m not saying everything’s a one and done and everything takes two sessions or whatever, but as instantaneously as as that child or anyone can install some sort of trauma or fear or anxiety or worry or overwhelm due to the situation, as instantaneously as that person can install it, why wouldn’t you be able to uninstall it instantaneously?
That’s such an awesome point to make.
Who said you couldn’t? And was the benefit that you it takes 80-90 sessions?
It doesn’t. It doesn’t take 80-90 sessions. And I think that’s the the reason people don’t want to move through the fear is they think it’s gonna take a long time. Yeah, uh, talk therapy might, because it depends on how willing.
You’re using five percent to try to figure out the 95, and and uh and that’s why we’re always bottom of the list. Yeah, because people do do the years and years of of talk therapy. I I one of my most favorite testimonials is uh a woman who who uh did some deep healing work during her second session and said this one session was more healing than six years of cognitive behavioral therapy. And that’s that’s on my website. It’s just like and again, it’s not it’s not that I’m you know I’m specifically fixing them, it’s that I’m giving them the tools and the the safe environment to do it. And it’s not you have to relive it, uh in that certain instance it seemed appropriate to figure out exactly why she’d been feeling this anxiety and the stress and this procrastination, why she didn’t matter in life. Um but it you know, I did it once with uh also in her in her seventies, and it was kind of done non-contextually in that um the subconscious mind will show you through metaphor, through symbolism, where the hurt and pain is. Sigmund Freud, Carl Young, Milton Erickson were always saying that the subconscious mind speaks in symbolism, speaks in metaphor, so we can speak back to it. And all she said, she came to a session and said the only problem was anxiety. That’s all she wrote on her intake form. Some people write eight very detailed parac paragraphs. All she wro wrote was one word, anxiety. So I asked her at this session, it’s like, how long has this been going on? She says since she was 19. She’s in her 70s. Like, okay, let’s work on the anxiety because she knows what that means. She knows all that that word encompasses. Where is it? Where does it get held in? And she said, her head. And she uh and what color is it? Well, it’s red or it’s black or it’s some of the does it take on shape or form. Is it heavy? Is it light? Is it rough? Is it smooth? Let’s put some context around what this feeling state is through symbolism and metaphor, and now I want you to take it out. And that’s part of the process. Take it out. Yes, this is not talk therapy. This is symbolism metaphor. Your mind can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined. That’s why a nightmare being chased by a cheeseburger is very scary. And you’ll turn on the stress response, so change your physiology through a ridiculous thought. So let’s make it ridiculous. Pull out that red anxiety from your head. She pulled it out for 48 minutes. So it’s usually 10 minutes, people are working on their stuff.
Well, OCD, OCD, OCD therapists do the same thing. The fun of that what if statement that is messing with them and will reverse. Like you just take the power away from it.
Yeah.
Take the fear away from it. The other thing that popped up is I love that you can come in and address it for those that continuously go back, revert. Have you had a case where they revert back? Because sometimes with talk therapy, what I’ve learned, and I was trained by a cognitive behavioral therapist to become a life coach over at the church just recently, was once you identify the truth or the root cause of what’s ailing you, like at the belief system that’s like propelling the thought and the feeling, and that’s the result in life, is then to use that that truth and your present moment and dispel it. Like because the mind needs proof, right? It’s like, okay, you want proof? Fine. Let’s look at the proof that you’re not worthy. Let’s see evidence of that. And that’s where cognitive behavioral therapy can help. Life coaching can help. Like if you have certain habits that you’ve already formed over time, it’s going to take some time for you to reverse that habit, you know, just like you’ve, you know, you know to brush your teeth every morning. We know that the subconscious mind stores that, right? Then we stack it with that habit that you’re already comfortable with, that you’re happy and it’s joyful for you to do. We stack something new so that it becomes a little less hard for you to adopt that new habit, right? So I do think all the modalities have their place, but just don’t all have the answers all the time. Sometimes, um, you know, I thought of a couple of people, like my own son, he suffers from anxiety and from OCD. I do too. So it’s a genetic thing, um, also. And I’m unfortunately, I modeled it to him without realizing. And my own uh anxiety was triggered. It had already been genetically inside of me, but it got triggered when I nearly died uh in 2012. And it um I just started to, you know, model it more. And he was a little boy at the time. And so the trauma of seeing his mom in the hospital also didn’t help. You know, hooked up to machines and stuff and then disappearing for two weeks. He had to fly back from Houston to South Texas, which is where we were, um, where we lived at the time. And we happened to be in Houston because we were supposed to be going on Easter weekend with my boyfriend who ended up becoming my second husband. So that was that trip did not happen because I had pulmonary embolisms and bud carry syndrome that carried an 80% chance of death. And so that’s always fun. Um, so I do think there is going back to the original thing. I thought of people like, would this help someone like my boy who has been um the talk therapy hasn’t worked, the coaching hasn’t worked, you know, psych he’s been seen by a psychiatrist, you know, all these things, and I’m just thinking, like, could this be an avenue for him? Why not? Right? Like you said, why not try it and see if it works for him? And he loves working with men. I’m gonna actually um refer him to you, you know. I mean, because he’s now 20 years old, he’s considered an adult, but you know, he’s still my child. And so he’s gonna be like, who’s this person? I’m like, you know, I would try it. Why not? You know, I mean, you’ve tried everything else. Why not try this and see if this will help you? And at least start to uncover like what’s at the root cause and just dispel it. Now you have the tools. You can make fun of it, you can do all these crazy things, you know?
Yeah. And what’s fascinating, he knows what the problem is. Yeah. Maybe behind the veil and maybe locked in the finally cabinet or in the bing fault. But he has the combination and he knows how to he actually know what to do with it, just like the cut on the finger. Body, mind knows what the problem is and it knows what to do about it. It’s just in in the cases of being hurt emotionally and uh uh and those mindset issues, it’s holding on to it for protection. Yeah. So when given permission and knowing that this isn’t helping and this is not protection, we need to do something else. Like, okay, we’ll do something else. Yeah. It’s just like a computer code, it’s just something, okay, we’ll let it go then. But it’s also that thing of what you practice, you get better at, and you can have all the joint happiness. And you know, according to the University College of London, it takes about 66 days to create a habit, and it’s been shown. You can start rewiring your brain in about five, six days. So, yeah, it doesn’t take years and years and decades and decades.
We’re talking months, if not weeks, but for me, it’s been like 40, 40 days is is what it’s been ideal for me. And I find that interesting. The 40, you know, the number 40, so such a powerful number in the Bible, and I’m very faith-based. So I’m like, I’ll do that, you know. 40 days of just rewiring those normal pathways, which are ingrained in us. Let’s put it that way. We’ve been ingraining them for years. Like she from like the time she was standing on the crib to like 72. Well, that’s all that time that you’ve been programming that mind to react in a certain way. So it’s the same thing that kind of addresses with people. They want the quick fix. I’m like, you can have a quick fix. You also have to have the intentionality of moving forward in that fix because not everything’s gonna be this automatic response. You know, you gotta kind of like show up to the meeting and show up to the hypnosis session, right? You gotta do some action to this if you don’t change in your life. Um we’ve I’ve heard a ton of pearl wisdom that you’ve uh thrown in this interview. If if I do you think this is your purpose?
Like, how did you know this the love to do or three-hour conversation? Um, and I know we gotta get going here, but uh yeah, this is kind of a pivot in my life, uh, a late, late, you know, right-hand turn uh and uh later in life because of my own healing I went through, my own anxiety and depression I’ve been struggling with since I was a kid. And hypnotherapy is very helpful in that. And just I got so fascinated by consciousness and mind and you know the work the neurolinguistic programming and the work of Tony Robbins, you know, back in the 90s, and and it fascinated me so that you could change your mindset and if if you work on yourself and you create those new habits and you practice those new habits and uh sorry, one of those one thing led to another, and uh got the opportunity to train at a wonderful uh school for hypnotherapy, and uh just kind of never looked back. It’s this extraordinary way of helping people, and there’s lots of so many different modalities.
This is just the one that kind of like resonated with you and me and and and I love working with and um but um and I love I love how God uses our brokenness, like what we deem broken within us anxiety, depression, you know, people look at it and they’re like, Oh, you you’re broken. Mike, I’ve I used to view that anxiety as like a shameful thing. I come from the Mexican culture, so it’s like you don’t talk about it, you don’t even mention it. And so, and that that’s hard to grow up in that when you feel so different on the inside, right? So to have come to that realization and to how what freedom for you, you know. But I find how God uses our broken pieces to bring us back to that place where we deemed ourselves to be broken and and does and transforms it. And now it becomes our purpose because we have been there. We know what it feels like to be anxious, we know what it feels like to be depressed, and and to be able to use that knowledge, that inner knowledge, to then guide others and have that compassion to help others in this in this chapter, that that’s what’s necessary in this world, right? For us to use that skill set. In my case, you know, I in my book in Faith I Thrive, I had to relive some of the most painful chapters of my life because he he was like, I need you to relive this, I need you to reflect on this because we’re gonna get to the root cause of why you just cannot, you need to hear your relationship with your father. And I didn’t know it. I mean, I’m not God, I don’t see what’s coming, right? But he did. He knew that he was gonna pass away in four years, and he knew that he knows my heart, and he knows that if I didn’t reconcile with him, I would have carried that that regret, and that would have impacted my purpose in life, and that would have impacted my mission, which is very faith-based, you know, through this podcast and through the books that I write and all that. So the first go around was mostly for my own healing. So I sat with it and I reflected and I invited him into this space with me, and he revealed a ton of stuff to me. And when I saw the truth of that trauma and how my mind had just blocked all of it and all the lies I believed that were not that I believed to be true, that were not true, because the truth is she was worthy just because she was a little baby, you know, sitting up. She’s worthy. She’s worthy just because she’s the child of God. She’s already worthy, you know. But her mind wants to hold on to that negativity, you know, it focuses so much on the negative aspects of what happens to us. And it just, like you said, it archives. I think of the movie Inside Out. Um, it’s a children’s film, and you see all the joy, you know, and you see like the collection of it in the brain of the child, you know, like all these joyful moments, and they’re all archived, and all of a sudden moments, and they’re all archived. But that’s the subconscious mind, it is so powerful. And people don’t realize you cannot think your way through this. It’s dangerous to do that because the belief and the traumatic events are the ones feeding those thoughts, and the thought is propelling and making that feeling bigger and bigger inside of you. And we don’t usually not react to those things, we usually react to them and form habits and patterns of behavior. And this thing keeps going in cyclic emotion until we decide we’ve had enough and we want to get to the root cause of it. And that’s why I think your modality is probably going to be a very good modality for someone like my kid, or even for someone like me, who sometimes has like gone through um the talk therapy, and I’m I’m just kind of done. I just kind of want to be over it. You know, it’s been a while. Um, so I’m glad that we started the conversation and I made that statement that that helped me understand what hypnosis is and who’s a prime candidate. And it sounds like anybody really that just wants to have change and get this over with, you know, and and do it now. Um so life can be joyful. We can live in the present moment, but once in our life, right? Um, if I wanted to work with you, how do I get in touch with you, Craig?
Sure. The the best way of I’m I live in Flagstaff here, Arizona, though probably most of my sessions nowadays are over Zoom, uh virtual sessions. So I work with people around the country, uh around the world, uh technically. And so uh I titled a name to my business Arizona Integrative Hypnotherapy, because I thought I’d just be working Flagstaff and Phoenix. But uh if you uh I know that’s a mouthful, but if you look up Flagstaff Hypnosis, if you just Google that, you will find me. Oh Arizona Integrative Hypnotherapy. I’m right there.
All right, well, that’s wonderful. Um any last words of encouragement before we sign off?
Yeah, I I think that this um we have the power to heal. And a lot of the issues come from what is strongest within your mind is what you do over and over again. And so if you’ve been holding on to that hurt and pain, if you’ve been maybe blocking yourself from healing because you’re not sure of what the core issues are, root issues, you can heal because that’s being stored within the subconscious mind. Um but you’re allowed to heal. And again, psychic, it’s not to say it was your fault, certainly it was not, it was certainly not fair, and it should not have happened, and it’s not to blame the victim, but you’re the one who put all those files in the filing cabinet, which becomes very empowering when you realize, well, then you’re the one who can take them out. You don’t have to look outside of yourself. So you have the ability to heal. Your subconscious mind knows what to do to heal and knows what the problem is and knows what to do to fix it. So it’s really powerful modality.
Thank you so much, Craig. I have really enjoyed having you on the show. I learned a lot. And thank you for the review on the beta and the theta and all because I had forgotten. So be told, I’ll be honest with the listeners. Um, and for those, you know how I always sign off to remember Matthew 5.14 to always be the light, because without your big bright light, we wouldn’t know of the skill sets that you were born with that you’re meant to share with the world, with humanity, so that we can all heal. Like much like Craig has shared with his you know wonderful story of overcoming anxiety and depression through hypnosis. And that’s that’s a wonderful gift to be able to share with humanity. And that’s his light. And that’s why we always want to be that light and step into it as confidently as possible because it’s very much needed. So thank you, Craig, once again for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose. And to everyone else, have a wonderful and blessed week. Love you. Bye now.
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