So You're a High Achiever Who Suspects Your Past Is Holding You Back
As a hypnotherapist who has worked with many high performers, I hear time and time again, "I desire x,y,z, but I self-sabotage and I think it's because of my past trauma." And they are right! Their past is holding them back. So Let's discuss the HOW and WHY your past is holding your back.
Normally when someone thinks of their past, they are going to associate it with their central nervous system or the neural networks in charge of memory. These are necessary conversations, but for this topic, I think we need to look in a different direction. We need to talk about values.
Values
A value is a deeply held belief, principle, or standard that guides your behavior, choices, and judgment. It's what you consider important, desirable, or worthwhile in life. Values are personal and subjective, reflecting what truly matters to you. They act as your internal compass, guiding you toward what you find meaningful and fulfilling.
Our earliest values often stem from family, culture, and religious upbringing, where we internalize the beliefs and behaviors modeled by caregivers and those around us. Values are not simply inherited but are actively constructed and continuously evolving as we navigate life and consciously choose what we believe holds true meaning and significance for us as individuals.
Examples of Values:
Integrity
Kindness
Creativity
Courage
Freedom
Compassion
Justice
Honesty
Family
Health
Loyalty
Learning
Service
Excellence
Responsibility
Respect
Growth
You'll hear companies talk about their values for their customers to stand out. In my experience, business or branding coaches who are helping you build your business will tell you to align yourself with your values so you stand out from the crowd. Meaning people who align with your values will want to work with you because the identify with you through their own similar values.
But as a high performer, you're going to find that your values dictate more than just your identity from an outside perspective.
Why Values Are Essential for Pursuing Your Goals:
Provide Direction & Purpose: Values give your goals a deeper meaning. When your goals align with your values, you're not just chasing achievements; you're acting in accordance with what you believe is truly important. This creates a sense of purpose and direction in your life.
Enhance Motivation & Perseverance: When a goal aligns with your values, it becomes inherently more motivating. You're more likely to stay focused and driven, even when faced with obstacles or setbacks, because you believe what you're working towards is worthwhile. If the opposite occurs, and your work does not reinforce your values, you may find that "the shine wears off the apple."
Guide Decision-Making: Values act as a framework for making choices. When faced with difficult decisions, you can refer to your values to guide your actions. This helps you make choices that are authentic and aligned with your true self.
Promote Authenticity & Fulfillment: Pursuing goals that align with your values leads to a greater sense of authenticity and fulfillment. You're living in accordance with your beliefs, which fosters a sense of congruence and inner peace.
Increase Resilience : When setbacks occur, grounding yourself in your values can help you stay resilient. Knowing why your goals matter to you can provide renewed motivation to keep going and overcome obstacles.
Prioritization : Values can help you determine which goals are most important to pursue. They create a hierarchy, helping you allocate your time, energy, and resources effectively.
Create Meaningful Measurement: When goals support values, measurement is automatically adjusted towards how your current achievement meets the values, not just how big the metric is.
Better Goal Choice: High achievers pick some very audacious goals. When it comes down to it, goals are a proxy for what you really seek in those achievements. Values help you decide what a valuable goal to measure that pursuit should be based on the things that matter most to you.
So you've identified your value and you know what you stand for, so why do you keep self-sabotaging?
There are two types of values: Healed and Unhealed
Unhealed Value (Reactive Avoidance): This stems from a past trauma, pain, or unmet need. The individual's pursuit of the value is driven by a strong desire to avoid something unpleasant or recreate a past negative experience. It is often rooted in fear or deficiency.
This person may desire freedom because they came from a childhood where they weren't able to express themself authentically. Maybe their expression was punished, ignored, or misunderstood. So they become business owners or high performers to find this feeling of freedom they craved when they were younger. They want to avoid feeling controlled like they did in their past and achieving this feeling of freedom may help them feel more relaxed in their expression and feel closer to self.Healed Value (Proactive Empowerment): This is rooted in a genuine belief, internal strength, and a sense of inherent worthiness. The individual is drawn towards the value out of intrinsic desire and a sense of abundance, not from avoidance.
This person sets goals aligned with intrinsic passions and values, seeing freedom as an enabler to pursue their authentic purpose. Prioritizes goals that offer genuine expansion and growth, not just the illusion of breaking free. Driven by creativity and new learning to expand.
Why having unhealed values are holding you back:
The core problem with operating from unhealed values, as opposed to healed ones, is that they create a fundamental disconnect between your actions and your authentic self, leading to a life that, despite external success, often feels hollow, unfulfilling, and ultimately unsustainable. Unhealed values drive a cycle of chasing external solutions (achievements, validation, etc.) to fill an internal void that can never truly be satisfied in that way.
Imagine that inside, you’re an exceptionally gifted and driven individual, BUT you’re subconsciously carrying a lot of baggage stemming from past experiences – pressure to achieve, fear of inadequacy, or a constant need for validation. These ingrained beliefs, or "unhealed values," are like invisible governors on your potential, subconsciously dictating your choices and behaviors.
They might manifest as chronic overworking, debilitating perfectionism, or an inability to delegate, ultimately sabotaging your well-being and hindering your path towards genuine fulfillment. It's like capping the speed of a race car, limiting peak performance and undermining long-term success.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of the problem:
Lack of Authenticity: unhealed values often manifest as a nagging feeling of being a fraud or imposter, driving them to relentlessly pursue externally validated achievements that never truly satisfy their longing for genuine connection with their true selves. This means being more busy proving something than being congruent with what is inside of them.
Unsustainable Motivation: While fear, the desire to prove oneself, or other negative emotions can provide a powerful initial push, they are ultimately unsustainable sources of motivation. They lead to burnout, exhaustion, and a constant feeling of needing to do more to avoid slipping back into the negative state.
Inability to Find Lasting Fulfillment: Because unhealed values are about filling a void or escaping something negative, achieving goals driven by them rarely brings lasting satisfaction. There's always a lingering sense of "what's next?", or the fear that the satisfaction will be taken away.
Compromised Relationships: Unhealed values often lead to unhealthy relationship patterns, such as using relationships for validation, fear of intimacy, or difficulty setting healthy boundaries. This can strain or damage relationships and undermine your overall well-being.
Increased Vulnerability to Setbacks: When your sense of self-worth is tied to external achievements (driven by unhealed values), setbacks become devastating. They reinforce negative self-beliefs and can lead to self-sabotage.
Diminished Capacity for Joy and Peace: Living from a place of fear, insecurity, or the need to prove oneself makes it difficult to experience genuine joy and inner peace. There's always a sense of underlying anxiety and a constant need to be "on guard."
Missed Opportunities for Growth: Unhealed values often limit your openness to new experiences and perspectives. You may be so focused on avoiding past pain or proving yourself that you miss opportunities for genuine growth and self-discovery that lie outside your comfort zone.
How Does Hypnotherapy Address this?
Hypnotherapy helps you shift how you identify with your past. Meaning your past is no longer personal. It can be something that you know that happened, but you are not basing your identity on it. This is not to say your past shouldn't help shape your identity, but you will get to decide what you carry forward in your identity. This is especially important for people who have experiences from their past that have disempowered them.
If you have not let disempowering experiences from your past go, then you'll typically struggle with imposter syndrome or self sabotage because on some level, a part of you does not really believe you are empowered because their belief systems are stuck in the past. So this is where you change them.
Hypnotherapy helps you associate and disassociate to what matters by helping you put yourself in the driver seat of how you experience your past. So instead of being a helpless child who no one listened to, you become someone who is fully supported and heard because you took time to shift how you perceive that experience.
What does shifting from having unhealed values to healed values using hypnotherapy look like?
Hypnotherapy provides a strategic framework for examining and reprogramming these subconscious patterns. A skilled therapist acts as a guide, helping you identify the root causes of these unhealed values and challenging the limiting beliefs that perpetuate them. You'll learn to process and release pent-up emotions associated with past experiences, replacing them with empowering perspectives and reinforcing a stronger sense of self-worth that is independent of external validation.
The transformation unlocks your truest potential on your terms. As you re-align with "healed values," you gain a heightened sense of authenticity, allowing you to align your actions with your genuine aspirations rather than being driven by a need to compensate for past experiences. Increased emotional intelligence enables you to navigate challenges with greater resilience, manage stress effectively, and cultivate healthier, more meaningful relationships. Ultimately, you cultivate a sustainable and fulfilling path to success, one that prioritizes both achievement and well-being, unlocking a more resonant and empowered version of yourself.
Authentic Potential: Break free from subconscious limitations to pursue goals fueled by genuine passion.
Build Resilience: Navigate setbacks with increased emotional intelligence and adapt strategically to challenges.
Strengthen Relationships: Foster healthier connections based on mutual respect and trust, not a need for validation.
Improve Decision-Making: Make confident choices aligned with authentic values, leading to greater fulfillment.
Cultivate Self-Worth: Develop a strong sense of self-acceptance, free from the need for external validation.
Increased Creativity: Unlock innovative thinking and problem-solving by releasing anxieties and self-doubt.
Reduce Stress and Anxiety: Cultivate inner peace and manage stress more effectively, leading to improved mental and physical health.
Promote Long-Term Success: Build a foundation for sustainable achievement and a life that reflects your true values.
Boost Self-Awareness : Gain the high level of self awareness that all very high performance individuals must attain
How long does this process take?
You'd be surprised at how much lighter you feel in one session. But considering this is an identity issue and many past experiences make up your identity, especially if you have never had the proper space to release the past, you will most likely need multiple sessions. This is dependent on the complexity and severity of this issue.
Think of it like building a house, but you are working with an old house that has some wear and tear. This isn't new construction; it's a renovation project where the foundations have cracks, there's some water damage in the walls, and the wiring is outdated. Single family homes need different things to make good safe structures that suit them, so will everyone's past trauma be unique. Hypnotherapy works similarly to a structural engineer and skilled contractor team coming in to assess and fix up this old house – your subconscious mind.
Not only are we moving through the past, we are shifting how we understand and experience the present. This requires specific techniques that help anchor in the identity you actually want to identify with. Yes we want to get to the root, but sometimes getting to the root requires us to move backwards through experiences before it is willing to appear. So, there is a lot happening in a 90 minute session.
The transformative power of hypnotherapy often provides lasting results, yet it's crucial to recognize that personal growth is an ongoing journey, not a destination . While hypnotherapy can help resolve past issues, life inevitably presents new challenges and experiences that may require continued self-reflection and adjustment. The goal is not to erase the potential for future struggles, but to equip you with the tools and resilience to navigate them from a healed perspective, fostering a lifelong process of self-discovery and growth.