Reinventing Self

Hi! I'm Jarisa. In this blog, I explore how my own childhood led me to hypnotherapy.

To understand why I can help you using hypnotherapy, let me walk you through who I am.

I find that many of my clients have backgrounds and problems similar to past versions of myself. The feeling is isolating and feels as though no one gets you. You've tried everything, but the past always feels like it's looming over you. It feels like a curse and that you’re doomed with for the rest of your life because you don't know how to feel differently.

The truth is that you're not cursed. You are not your past and your brain isn't working against you on purpose. You just need someone skilled who has walked through the fire themself.

What makes me an incredible hypnotherapist is that I have overcome many of the exact issues my clients struggle with. Client issues usually stem from layers of Complex PTSD and unintentional subconscious behavior training regardless of whether whether we’re working through business or interpersonal relationships.

In the beginning of my own journey, I had no idea that I was working through my own layers of complex PTSD. The name “Complex PTSD” wasn’t widely talked about and it wasn’t until later I realized I was helping my clients with their own layers of Complex PTSD.

Disclaimer: This isn’t to say I should replace a license therapist. I just have a skillset that has the potential to go deeper if you’ve already tried everything and there is a place for both kinds of work in the world.

All I knew was I had felt like shit and what I was doing for myself, was working. And surprisingly fast.

It felt like my mind could never shut up. I was either activated anxious or shut down depressed. I wanted to build a beautiful life. I wanted to experience this feeling called relaxation people talked about, but I couldn’t even stand to be in my own body, much less my own life. Life just always felt like it was constricting between relationships, money, and the idea of adulting.

The PreBirth Of My Hypnotherapy Career

Well one day, I was contemplating getting serious about starting a career of some sort. I believed I needed to become a real adult, whatever that meant. In my mind, real adults had careers and worked their way up in jobs.

It’d been 5 or 6 years since college and I only had a Bachelor’s in Psychology. My only experiences were waitressing and sales, so I went back to school again for nursing.

Studying had always been exhilarating for me. Not the actual studying itself, but the feeling of like I was doing something with my life. I felt like I had a purpose, even if I was procrastinating the actual studying part.

I blew threw statistics and microbiology like they were nothing. A’s across the board until organic chemistry. Now mind you, as I am in organic chemistry, I am studying for my CNA certificate. CNA school was super boring and super easy. At least I thought so until I learned I had extreme test anxiety.

It’d been years since I went to school. I forgot about the fear based anxiety that overcame me in my last university semester. I was terrified to graduate because one, of the test pressure, but two, the pressure to be someone after college.

When I graduated college the first time, I thought the test anxiety was behind me. Well, I was taking my final CNA test that I knew like the back of my hand, and my mind went blank. It felt like I did not know what I was doing because I was overcome with that same feeling I had when I was finishing college.

What made this anxiety much worse was that someone was standing there with a clip board, judging if what I was doing was good enough to pass. For most of my life, I had only had tests that were paper. I could be in my own lane, focus, and be done. But here I was being watched.

In my anxiety, I wrote my blood pressure numbers backwards and failed the course. I took the test again and struggled with the same anxiety, except it was worse the second time. It felt like I forgot the parts of the last test I aced, so I failed again. Organic chemistry seemed to twist the knife in with feeling like a failure so I dropped it with the intention of taking it again next semester.

I assumed I wasn’t cut out for CNA work so I tried my hand at phlebotomy the following semester. I was going to restart my life which included retrying organic chemistry.

But yet again, organic chemistry was extremely frustrating. I was so good at school, yet this class was kicking my ass. Not to mention the end of phlebotomy school was near.

I felt so confident in everything I learned in my class. I was the best in my little class of 6 people and aced drawing blood in my training at a drug testing facility.

Around the last class for phlebotomy, the teacher mentioned that on the state test, there would most likely be a test for butterfly needs. “What do you mean butterfly needles, we didn’t learn butterfly needs?” “Oh well we didn’t have any or we would have trained you”, she responded. I was pissed because I was already humiliated twice taking skill based tests. I thought, “ you expect me to get humiliated again?! Except it is literally due to a facilitator error?!”

I’m deep in my feelings and feeling defeated. I was still struggling in organic chemistry and with the news about phlebotomy, I dropped organic chemistry a second time.

Every time I thought about organic chemistry I felt so repelled. I was doing better than the previous semester, but I could not focus in that class for the life of me, I assumed the medical field was not for me. So there I was once again, with the same feeling I had after college. Lost. Alone. Feeling defeated in life.

She’s Born

I’m feeling down and complaining to a friend, “I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to put my life together, but I don’t want to be in sales and I don’t want to waitress for the rest of my life.”

She responds, “What about hypnotherapy? My boyfriend’s mom does it and it seems pretty cool.”

I looked it up and felt hesitant. “Another training I have to study and test for?”, I thought. “well, it doesn’t require a masters.” I could not bear the thought of another possible fail, but I couldn’t not try. My future was on the line.

“Alright, I’ll give it a try”, I told my friend.

The next day I signed up for a hypnotherapy session to see what exactly a hypnotherapy session was like. I walked in her office, she asked me a bunch of questions and we started our session.

I knew from the moment I walked in the door, I was exactly where I needed to be. Something about hypnotherapy and working with the subconscious mind felt right. I felt excited.

But, I won’t lie, my session was mid. There wasn’t much depth to the experience. I felt relaxed which was a first. But, I had signed up for a future pacing with no real goal of what I wanted to imagine. Looking back now as a more seasoned hypnotherapist, you don’t just offer a future pacing by itself if you’re trying to make lasting change.

But during the session, I had intentionally used my imagination more than I ever had and that felt interesting. I had never considered connecting with my imagination in the way I did that day. So when the session ended, she mentioned she trains hypnotherapists and that she had a class coming up. I told her I would consider it.

Well, I signed up, became certified, and started my business. I was on my way to my future success.

The Discovery of Connection To Self

I was feeling on top of the world. I was to be someone. My friends were even asking me to help them with specific issues. I was going to be “the hypnotherapist”.

Feeling on top ended when I actually had to put myself out there to bring in business. I had no experience in business and barely any experience in the field of hypnotherapy. The more research I did on hypnosis, the less confident I felt about my skillset.

Clients seemed to be enjoying their sessions, but something still felt off. Looking back, intuitively I knew my hypnotherapy training sucked, my skills sucked, and there was no way I was going to be able to grow a business where I was at.

I was receiving new information, but wasn’t understanding how to apply the information. My scripts felt empty and I didn’t feel like I was really connecting with client’s. I had so many questions that my trainer could not answer.

I was doing the pre-talk, but I would be in the middle of a session and I wouldn’t know where to lead the session. Now, I understand that I didn’t really know where the client was in their experience at the time.

Around the time of this realization, I had a couple of challenging sessions where I felt embarrassed. They probably got what they needed, but I prayed they didn’t leave a negative review on my new google business page.

I knew I needed something and I decided to train with a trainer out of Bali who specialized in emotions and trauma. “I could use some more training in emotions and trauma”, I thought. Her posts had appeared on my instagram feed and just like the feeling I had in my hypnotherapy session, I knew that I needed to work with her.

At the beginning of our virtual training, she made it mandatory that I have 4 sessions so I knew what it would be like as a client under the type of hypnotherapy she does. “Valid, but I don’t even know what I would even work through” I thought.

I can’t remember exactly what I chose to work on, but I was not prepared for what actually came up. I felt anger, shame, confusion, emotions that I had been suppressing. I had felt numb and disconnected to self so I did not consciously understand what exactly was happening.

I just knew that I was feeling intense and I wanted to hide, but my hypnotherapist thankfully would not let me. She sniffed out the emotions that needed to come up based on what stories and ideas were coming up and even when I tried to deflect, she skillfully navigated my defenses.

After experiencing intense anger and shame in the second session, I felt hungover for a couple of days. I was angry and it felt like I just had emotions continually coming up.

Day 3 after session 2, I felt like a new person. I felt lighter. I could tell there was still baggage, but I was actually aware of it and became curious about it.

The following client sessions were much easier. I was more skilled in navigating the emotional experiences clients were having, something I wasn’t previously equipped for. I was more confident in my ability as a hypnotherapist, but life would have me look even deeper within myself.

When Business and Personal Collide

Outside of business, I was pursuing my own growth. I was going through an awakening where I was taking accountability for my choices in my relationships. A friend who specialized in somatics invited me to her women’s event, suggesting that this would help me connect deeper to my body.

I trusted her advice and explored what she had to offer. My experience with her is what really catalyzed the rest of my journey toward wholness. I had released some with my hypnotherapy trainer, but I went deeper as I learned about somatics. In my friends process, I was to actively and intuitively move my body and pay attention to how I was feeling as I was doing it.

I could feel emotions surfacing, but I had felt too limited in the group setting to really release what was coming up. So I made a decision to try at home. For 3 months a few times a week, I actively moved my body and observed the emotions that were coming up in my office late into the night.

And what I noticed was that they weren’t just emotions, they were entire experiences. The history I tried to suppress began to surface, memory by memory, and I chose to sit with them.

It turns out I was carrying a lot. It was no wonder I felt disconnected most of my life. I had never allowed myself to truly sit with anger, frustration, or any discomfort for that matter.

Every day in my car, I took time to just be with myself. So much so, I began to notice when I would ruminate. I would follow that rumination into my body and noticed that the ideas were coming up were connected to much deeper stories within myself! It was never about the actual event. It was about how I was perceiving the event.

This realization led me deeper into exploring triggers, blocks, and feelings even deeper. I was starting to put together how specific emotions responded and interacted with each other because I was simply witnessing them. I was noticing experiences connect and disconnect from each other.

As I was noticing these experiences, I began to incorporate neurolinguistic programming studies and found my anxieties, attachments to limiting behaviors, and worries about life began to fall away.

I was no longer triggered by specific people, events, or ideas. Ex’s weren’t popping in my mind, I wasn’t angry at my mother, I wasn’t having flashback of my past at the most random times. The voices in my brain became quieter and my helplessness turned to curiosity.

I Was No Longer Defined By This Story:

My Childhood...

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina most of my life. My mom had kids way too early (19 years old) and had no tools in emotional regulation, no support, no money, and no understanding how to be a mother other than making sure a roof was over her children's head.

My childhood was spent wishing for a mother or someone who cared. I attached myself to anyone who would give me attention because I wanted to mean something to someone.

Even after my mom married my step father, she was too busy chasing him emotionally to have space for my sister and I. He was an absent presence in the house. My sister and I were not to develop a relationship with him on any level because my mother would assume the worst. He was to only love her and have nothing to do with her daughters. Understandable, considering my mother’s childhood.

My little sister and I were close in age, but vastly different. I had always felt in competition with my sister for my mom's love so we argued. Honestly, I was really mean to her because I was an unhappy child.

Mom was always in a shitty mood, especially after she had my youngest sister when I turned 12. Everything triggered my mom. She was always yelling at my sister and I to shut up, clean the house, or find something to do. There were to be no problems at school or home. So life at home was like walking on eggshells. My existence was burdensome, for me and felt like everyone around me.

I was to never have an opinion of my own. I could never be upset about anything mom believed. According to my mom, she knew everything, was the adult, and owned everything about me until I was 18.

I was to only feel how mom thought you were to feel and if I tried to tell my side of the story, I was a liar. If I tried to have an opinion or speak up for myself, my mother resorted to her belt as a means to gain control back.

With no autonomy, no voice, no personal power, I felt shame for existing that would follow me into adulthood until I finally did the work to let it go.

My Childhood Eating Disorder

Some of the earliest memories I have with coping with the stress of home was food. The stress would make my stomach really sick so I would not eat. I didn't have the tools to articulate my emotions so all I knew was that my stomach hurt and I was not hungry.

This made my mother angry because she thought I was being ungrateful. We were poor, so you ate what was in front of you. She went as far as to ground me for an entire summer when I was 7 and tried to scare me into eating by showing me pictures of people deep in anorexia.

During this time, groundings meant you laid in your bed and were not allowed to do anything. No reading. No talking. Nothing, for weeks.

Even into adulthood, controlling how much food I ate gave me an outlet to find control in my life. I didn't ask for seconds at the dinner table. I didn't have the extra snack through out the day. Sometimes, I wouldn't eat at all during school lunch. Those were the only ways I could say no.

So Before We Continue:

Let's address the limiting beliefs I developed from just this small part of my life.

For a long time, I believed:

✨ I am not important.
✨ I have to earn love and attention.
✨ Love is conditional.
✨ I’m only valuable when someone else chooses me.
✨ There’s no room for my emotions.
✨ If I express myself, I will be punished.
✨ My needs are a burden.
✨ I am not safe to be myself.
✨ My voice doesn’t matter.
✨ I have to stay small to avoid conflict.
✨ If I upset someone, I’ll be rejected.
✨ I can’t trust others to care for me.
✨ I must always be “good” or perfect to be accepted.
✨ I am responsible for other people’s emotions.
✨ I am always in competition for love.
✨ I’m not allowed to have boundaries.
✨ It’s not safe to tell the truth.
✨ I am too much and not enough at the same time.
✨ I will only be loved if I don’t have problems.
✨ I don’t have a right to choose.
✨ Being seen is dangerous.
✨I should feel shame for simply existing.

Emotionally I struggled with:

⚠️ Anger ⚠️ Shame ⚠️ Guilt ⚠️ Resentment ⚠️ Rage ⚠️ Loneliness ⚠️ Fear ⚠️ Sadness ⚠️ Jealousy ⚠️ Rejection ⚠️ Abandonment ⚠️ Confusion⚠️ Powerlessness ⚠️ Anxiety ⚠️ Numbness ⚠️ Hopelessness⚠️ Frustration⚠️ Embarrassment ⚠️ Despair ⚠️ Insecurity⚠️ Distrust

Because of what I believed about myself and what I struggled with emotionally,

Early Adulthood was Fucking Hard

I was so excited to be 18 and on my own. I could finally be me. But who was that? I went to college to find out.

I had no skillsets to build connection, much less maintain it. I had "friends" in college, but I was the odd one out that others felt pity for because I spent a lot of time alone. I spent my free time chasing dopamine highs from emotionally unavailable men because I thought that's all I was worth. A little attention was better than no attention and no friends were better than toxic friends. It wasn't until many years later that I would realize I was the toxic friend.

I was neck deep in depression and assignments with no sight of a real future. I dreamed of getting run over by the local college bus, the Appalcart, so frequently I decided to visit my campus therapist.

It was enough to help me not actually go through my fantasy, but it didn't alleviate the discomfort I felt in my own skin 24/7. I just assumed I was broken and would be like this for the rest of my life.

I thought I would have some sense of direction in my life when I got my psychology degree whether a career or having figured myself out through my studies. But I was left with more unanswered questions because therapy still left me lost.

I didn't need to talk about my childhood, I knew it was fucked up. I wanted to not be haunted by it. I wanted to want to have a human experience without struggling with my emotions. I was always somewhere between avoidant, numb, and disassociated.

I wanted to know what it meant to have a fucking human connection. Surely that wasn't too much to ask.

So I made it my mission to find a way out.

I knew who I didn’t want to be and used that as my guide to navigate my life until my healing journey fell into my lap. I made decisions that would refine my skillsets, as not only a hypnotherapist, but as a person. Because of my own curiosity and determination to create a solution, I now help clients connect to themself so they can intentionally lead their life in a direction they want to go.

Yeah it’s not traditional. But it is efficient and effective.

Plus, it helps I love what I do. My passion keeps me looking for ways to improve my techniques and skillsets as a hypnotherapists so I can navigate just about any subconscious challenge thrown my way.

After all, not all of my client’s problems stem from trauma. Some things are learned behavior. But if you can learn it, you can unlearn it.

In fact you can unlearn your entire history behaviorally which is super helpful for accomplishing goals and creating life on your terms. You know, the life of love, pleasure, and connection. You can experience something new and for good if you choose to.

Here’s How I know:

I live a life that early adult me could never fathom. I feel grounded, safe, in my body, and in touch with my emotions everyday. My intuition is stronger and my choices are intentional. I can sit with triggers and explore them to their depth so I am not projecting baggage onto others.

Because of this, I am in a healthy committed secure attachment style relationship with a partner who I can emotionally connect with. I can think about my mom and not feel activated. I can experience relational conflict with friends and stay grounded and communicative without shutting down. I can put myself out into the world and be ready to receive because I believe I am worthy. I can experience rejection and disappointment, knowing that I don’t have to internalize shame.

I still consider myself a work in progress, not because I believe I am broken, but because I still have so many things to learn and experiences to have. There comes a point in this journey where you feel so grounded and assured with self that you just want to stretch your capacity to experience life. You no longer have to hide or defend yourself.

You can objectively observe experiences and remain grounded, connected, and in your power, even if it’s uncomfortable.

The feeling of connectedness and power I have built within myself is the exact experience I help others curate within themself. The only requirements are:

1. That you want it, like really want it

2. You’re okay with taking a risk into the unknown.