Following on from my post What Is Trance, I wanted to discuss how Trance plays a part in unhelpful behaviours.
If, when driving along a route you know, you have had the experience of arriving at your destination without remembering the details of the journey – you have been in a trance. That is all trance is. So, you have driven “unconsciously”, which means that your driving abilities have reached the level of “Unconscious Competence”.
Unconscious Competence is the goal of all learning and, generally, a Good Thing.
So basically, whilst driving, you “zoned out” – you didn’t consciously control the car, your Unconscious Mind had the controls…
Now, if you are reading this blog, it is possible that you have experienced one (or more!) of the following:
- Felt nervous and awkward when meeting friends of friends.
- Smoked a cigarette even though you knew you didn’t really want it.
- Found yourself running trivial thoughts through your mind instead of drifting off to sleep.
- Despite feeling full, carried on eating your evening meal without even knowing why.
- Allowed memories of old mistakes to play through your mind repeatedly until you felt utterly desolate.
In each of these situations, it is possible that you’ve thought whilst “doing the problem” or, maybe, “after the event”: Why? Why am I nervous/smoking/obsessing/eating/etc? Why?!
Think about difficult behaviours you have in your life. You’ll probably notice that you ‘zone out’ whilst doing them. Makes sense? This is an unhelpful kind of trance. It can literally feel like something else takes over, that you’re ‘zoning out’, leaving you to beat yourself up about it afterwards.
In the middle of these trance behaviours, it can feel as if you have no control over it (or yourself). You might even argue with yourself before going on to do the thing you really don’t want to do. All of these things are a sign of “Emotional Hijacking”. An unhelpful kind of trance.
Trance has been characterised as something which “happens to a person”. The connection between this and the above examples, where a person is “taken over”, is obvious. The first, most important thing to do if you’re experiencing such episodes is:
Don’t beat yourself up over it afterwards! There is a reason that these episodes are happening. I’ll be discussing that reason in Part 2.
That’s all for now.
Warm regards,
Adrian
www.lastingchange.co.uk
