Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #512 Use HYPNOSIS to Unlock Deeper Confidence and Uncover Hidden Subconscious Blocks with Todd and Gina Goodwin

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Get ready for an unforgettable deep dive into the subconscious with my longtime friend and board-certified hypnotist, Todd and Gina Goodwin. In this episode, Todd and I reveal the behind-the-scenes of how he helped me overcome deeply rooted fears — including the time I suddenly developed driving anxiety during COVID — and how his unique blend of hypnosis and NLP unearths the real cause behind stubborn habits. Todd shares how rewriting our subconscious programming is faster and more effective than trying to muscle your way through problems with willpower or years of talk therapy. We dig into the “why” behind your habits, fears, and even people-pleasing, so you’ll walk away with clarity and fresh tools to elevate your confidence, dissolve anxiety, and break through whatever’s holding you back. And don’t miss the exclusive bonus at the end — an easy, real-time resource that will set you up for immediate wins. This is one conversation that just might spark the quantum leap you’ve been waiting for! In This Episode You Will Learn Uncover hidden subconscious blocks undermining your goals. Acquire rapid, lasting relief from deep-seated anxiety. Discover powerful self-hypnosis methods for immediate mindset shifts. Transform past traumas into forward-moving fuel. Elevate confidence, authenticity, and aligned personal growth. Resources + Links Find out if hypnosis is a good fit for you - take the 62 second survey at goodwinhypnosis.com/survey Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic? Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout at jennikayne.com. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553!  Visit heathermonahan.com Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/  Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Follow Heather on Instagram & LinkedIn

What is it you really want? Is the person who is very driven, let's say, are they doing it out of a compulsive need to satisfy low self-worth? Are they doing it to prove to their parents, dead or alive, that they can do it, or to prove to themselves, or to prove to their community or whoever? And are they doing it from a place of weakness and insecurity, or are they doing it because they're truly inspired and fulfilled by that work,

and that's why they have so much energy they love doing it? If what you're doing is compulsive and it's not coming from a place of inspiration, then you may lose the drive to do that. Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my closer. Hi and welcome back.

I'm so glad you're back here with us this week. Okay, today we've got a duo. We know we never do a duo. That's exciting. Todd and Gina Goodwin, they've helped thousands to overcome unwanted emotions, habits, and trauma in a way that's faster than talk therapy, more effective than willpower, and safer than medication, including your girl right here. Todd is one of the few hypnotists, one in 500 to earn the title of board certified fellow by the National Guild of Hypnitus. Pretty big deal. He founded Goodwin

Hypnotice in 2007 was joined in 2015 by Gina, also a board certified hypnotist, and she resolved her own grief and trauma through hypnosis. There's certified master practitioners of NLP, blending neuroscience, behavioral science to create lasting change. It's remarkable. Todd and Gina have found that healing can be both powerful and surprisingly enjoyable, even for people who struggle with anxiety, overwhelm, low self-confidence, or a traumatic task, including your girl right here. They know that transformation happens more easily and naturally when you address the

subconscious causes, not just the obvious surface symptoms. They've also got a great takeaway for you at the end of the episode that I can't wait to share with you that's going to help you in real time. So stay tuned in. You need to hear this talk. We're going to get into the backstory of how I work with the Goodwins and the change that has been massive in my life as a result. And some, I mean, the thousands of people and stories that you're going to hear about transformation, overcoming subconscious issues that have been holding people back for a lifetime. So thank you, Gina and Todd, for both being here today.

Thanks, Heather. It's great to be here. Thank you. All right. So let's get to it. If you haven't been with the show long, you don't know my backstory. I got divorced back 15, 16 years ago. And I had a one-year-old son, single mom.

I was traveling every week for work. And my life was super stressful. I went to yoga one day, ran into this girl, and she said, you need to go to this hypnotist. He's going to change your life. He just changed mine. And as you know, word of mouth is so powerful. So when she had this conviction that I needed a hypnotist,

I had never thought of working with a hypnotist. cut to he has a chapter in my first book, Confidence Creator, that's how much of an advocate I am now for hypnosis, as long as you see the right practitioner. I met Todd right after this woman told me I had to see him. And truly within just a few appointments, we had some massive transition unlocks of things that I didn't even know we're holding me back in life.

It was wild. And Todd, I'm still to this day so grateful the work that you have done for me with me and for all the people that I've referred to you because, I mean, I'm just such an advocate for the work that you do. It's literally nothing short of miraculous. Well, it was my pleasure and you've done quite a lot with yourself. I can't take more than partial credit, but, you know, a chef is only as good as his ingredients. So you did a lot of great work yourself. Well, let's cut to how it works for people because a lot of people listening right now are like hypnotists. What? Do they make you like cluck like a chicken? Truly a lot of people

don't, and I was one of those people too. I didn't understand why would you go to a hypnotist unless you have a smoking problem? Like I didn't even understand that. And now having gone through this work with you, and it actually unlocked and uncovered for me that I had been sexually abused as a child and some of the work that you did with me to separate those horrible memories, create space between me and them so they weren't, I mean, just consuming my life any longer. Again, It's so unbelievable the impact in a positive way that this work can have on someone. How do you start working with people and what does it look like when you first meet someone when they're coming with problems? So one, we always do an initial consultation with someone because we need to know what we're dealing with in terms of the individual person's challenges and what their goals are.

So some people are aware of what is really causing their symptoms, as Gina and I refer to what people usually say, oh, this is my problem. Anxiety is my problem, or procrastination is my problem, or drinking a little too much wine, that's my problem. Fear of public speaking, that's my problem. In all of these cases, those are just symptoms. And so what we do constantly is we're always asking ourselves, what is causing that particular issue. So someone doesn't have to understand how their mind works before they reach out to us. The whole point of working with us, as opposed to other occasionally useful and appropriate methods like, you know, talk therapy or using just sheer willpower is that we're not operating at a conscious level. See, what you think logically about your situation

at the surface is probably not what's really happening in the mind. So if someone understands what their challenges are at a symptom level, we can usually within that very first meeting of talking with the person by Zoom because we see all our clients from coast to coast by Zoom, we can get a pretty good beat on what the underlying cause is. And to put it real simply, a behavior is a symptom of an emotion, an emotion is a symptom of a thought. And that could be a belief, an image someone puts in their mind, a perception about something, the meaning to give to something. But it's those underlying subconscious thoughts, which are things that someone learned in their life, so they weren't born with that issue. They learned it, like you mentioned through

trauma, which is one of our specialties, is resolving that quickly. That's an unrecognized cause of the vast majority of emotional and behavioral issues people have. And it doesn't mean PTSD. It just means some emotionally upsetting experience. And most traumas are what we would consider relatively minor, but they have big impact. Someone's trying to build a business or they're trying to have a healthy relationship or to get fit and need health. healthier or whatever it might be, when they feel a part of them is constantly getting in the way and stopping them, that's their subconscious. So if we can, if we fight with our subconscious constantly, which is what happens when you try to use willpower and white-knuckle it or force yourself into doing something, that's only going to usually make it more stressful and it doesn't usually work because the subconscious is much more powerful.

So we need to make friends with the subconscious and communicate in a way that it will hear the message. that we at a conscious level wanted to understand. We wanted to stop becoming anxious, to stop worrying so much, to make healthier choices, to feel more confident, all of those things, and to let go of whatever baggage is causing someone to ruminate constantly. So hypnosis and NLP and the other methods that Gina and I use are simply what we found to be some of the most effective ways of changing the underlying subconscious beliefs, thought patterns, perceptions so that after we finish the work we're doing with this person in a collaborative sense, then they don't need to remind themselves constantly to be confident. They don't have to

practice taking deep breaths, you know, to be calm. They don't have to slap themselves on the wrist when they think about eating a cookie, you know. It just tends to happen automatically. So the subconscious is the source from which all desirable and undesirable behavior. behaviors stem. And if we can make the change at that level, which is really what we as hypnotists do, then everything that stems from that changes. One of the things I find so interesting about the work you guys do is it's not just the hypnosis, though. And that was surprising for me. I remember during COVID, I started suffering from anxiety that came out of nowhere and I didn't understand why it was happening. And I started having problems driving, which is so crazy because I'm a great driver.

Like I drive all, like there's never been an issue with driving for me. And suddenly during COVID, I would get anxiety if I knew I had to go over a highway. It was the wildest thing ever. I had no idea what to do. And I made an appointment with you over Zoom. And I'll never forget how quickly that was resolved. And I remember, I don't remember the entire thing now because it's five years ago, but I remember one portion of it was you taking me on visualization.

And now even if I'm just driving and I get anxiety because the traffic is so bad, I just start visualizing like, everything's going to go fine. I can see myself, you know, making my way no problem. And still to this day it helps, even though it's nowhere near as intense. So what is something like that with visualization? So visualization in a general sense, and I mean this in an automatic sense. So for example, someone who is experiencing elevated stress in general, which most of us experience during COVID because we were in a situation where the economy, we're health,

where a lot of things, social interactions were all really different kind of out of our control, and we didn't know how much the world was going to change. So that elevates stress level in general. And when that happens, sometimes there are little fears, phobias, and examples of where anxiety just shows up as a symptom of an overwhelm. So those are just manifestations of elevated level of stress in general. Now, as far as visualization goes, when people are in overwhelm, ruminating, worrying, feeling anxious for whatever reason, and people with intrusive thoughts from traumatic past experiences are a perfect example of this, what they're doing is they're unconsciously, unintentionally visualizing negative outcomes. So the person might

imagine the car crash. The person might imagine or remember the upsetting experience that they had even decades ago. And it comes out of nowhere sometimes. It can be triggered or it can just be, you know, they might not even intend to think about it. So what happens is when we run something through our mind, visually, auditory, self-talk, any of that, usually it's images primarily.

That in a subliminal way, in like a split second, that image runs through your mind. You may not even be aware of it consciously, and then it changes your emotional state. So what we did, I don't remember specifically what we did other than the driving issue, is by practicing, visualizing, by consciously intending to visualize an empowering scenario, it doesn't mean just being positive for being positive sake, because that can be just as imbalanced or delusional as being overly negative.

But something where you felt like you had enough control as much as you could have and that you could trust yourself to be on that highway, whatever it was, you're consciously interacting with your subconscious mind. You're specifically constructing a visualization or a scenario that is telling your subconscious, this is the way I'm rehearsing how I'm going to think and feel. So it's like a mental rehearsal, and by practicing it, you're essentially giving your subconscious evidence that that's what you are capable of doing. It's the same thing as if you're trying to pick up a new behavior like, you know,

speaking in front of a large crowd or going to a restaurant and being able to avoid the basket of bread or the dessert menu. If you rehearse it in your mind and there's certain ways that we can do this that makes it especially effective, then when you're actually there, in that situation, you innately feel like, oh, wait, I've done this before, even if you never have. What is a better way for someone to visualize something in order to help them have a better outcome? Well, the first would be to try to bring some awareness to when the person might be negatively rehearsing something or throwing up catastrophic scenarios in their mind. And it could be a form of self-talk. I might say, oh my God, this is never going to work out, or this is going to be so awful,

or I'm going to be late, or I'm going to, whatever. And sometimes negative self-talk is useful, but in this case, if someone is overly doing that, they're going to create an emotional reaction to their own self-talk. And then they're going to physiologically react and they're going to start sweating and their heart's going to beat faster and they're going to have a shortness of breath and they're going to, you know, sometimes just want to get the hell out of there or avoid the situation altogether. And that's where, you know, phobias and panic kind of come in. So one, the first thing I would say is figure out where you're doing harm. And it's not your fault. This is an automatic process, but you can figure out where you're doing it, what might be triggering it,

and then ask yourself, what would a more constructive or empowering alternative way of thinking about it be? And then you just practice doing that in your mind, especially if you're in situations which previously triggered the opposite. I mean, that's one way of doing it. I think it also helps to bring up a feeling, too, you know, when you're picturing the goal you want and the outcome you want, Instead of just picturing it, trying to make it as real as you can, you know, including how you would feel once you're there, you know. So bringing up that feeling is a good way to like connect the thought and the feeling together so that when you're actually there and that experience that was troublesome before, it feels like you've already done it. Meaning bring up the feeling of the fear

or bring up the feeling of the positive feeling of the way that you want to go. The positive feeling, like how you'd feel once you get there and make it strong. and make it real because the mind doesn't know the difference between something real and something imagined. So the more you can make it real, including feeling how you would feel once you're there, the more convinced your mind can be that you've already accomplished it, which means it should be easy to do. Wait, now I just, this just triggered a memory for me, two things. One, you used to have me hold two fingers together and that was like the signal of that's the good feeling. That's the positive feeling and I can launch that feeling anytime that I want. That's one thing I just remembered when

you said that, Gina. And the other thing is I remember and don't cancel me for this one, guys, this is five years ago. There was a Kanye song that I loved and you said, okay, does it make you feel powerful? Does it make you feel great? Yes, it did. Okay, when you're driving in the car before you practice the visualization, you know you can launch the positive feeling that you're strong and powerful, also marry that to the music while you're driving. And these were just all different leverage. I could pull so that I had tools that I remember when I was in the car that could help me. In NLP, we call that an anchor, but a simple way of looking at it is it's basically a trigger or like a button, a push button for your mental computer or your whole neurology.

So basically, the way it works is that it's just associative learning. The reason why that usually works is because we have associations with a lot of things in our life that make us feel different feelings. So I'll put it really simply. There are certain sensory triggers that evoke a positive feeling and others that evoke a negative feeling. Quick example of that. If you were listening to a song at your, when you had your first kiss, let's assume it was a good one. And it was like a really emotionally charged positive feeling, then even if you haven't heard that song in decades, you can hear that song.

and a lot of those feelings come back, and even the memory comes back. Sound and smell are two of the strongest links to memory. But basically, it could be something you see. It could be a touch, like your fingers pressed together. But basically, there are natural anchors or associations that our mind makes just accidentally. And then there are negative ones.

Like if someone was at a funeral and they were really upset and there's a certain way people were touching them on their shoulder or a certain song that was playing, for example. When you hear that song, you might feel sad. It's not reality. It's not happening now, but it's just a reminder. So our subconscious has a lot of things to learn, and it's just often just presenting us with information for no reason other than just association. So in the case of what we did, I mean, there are ways we can neutralize the negative association. That's usually one of the first things. We probably did that too. But you want to figure out what is it you already really have a strong positive association. with that emotionally and physically makes you feel strong or empowered or confident, whatever the state you want. And in your case, it was that song. So then you just play that song, not in the car. You can do it in the car, but ahead of time, you can play it. And you can just

let yourself feel those empowering feelings or confidence or whatever it is build up within you. And then what you do is you choose some kind of cue or trigger or anchor, a gesture of some kind usually rubbing your fingers together making a fist tapping on your you know neck it doesn't matter as long as it's not something you do every day you do that when you're feeling that feeling as strongly as you can and then you just repeat that process for four or five minutes just to really condition yourself and then when you're in the car it helps to have the music again but even if you don't have it just when you get to the point where you might have otherwise started to feel uncomfortable you do that trigger or that gesture or whatever that is.

And usually that brings back some of those positive feelings that you had basically copied from the music and paste it onto that gesture. So it's kind of like a copy paste. And then what you're doing is you're creating in real time a more positive association with the environment that previously was nerve-wracking. So you're teaching your subconscious, oh, we can feel good when we're driving. And it works.

I mean, it's unbelievable. well it worked for me. And even like I said to this day, when I don't have a problem driving anymore, but if I start getting stressed in the car, I still use those same tools and it's unbelievable how quickly it works. All right, you just made me think of something. I'm interested to hear both of your take on this. I've learned about this concept, my movies. Have you guys heard of my movies before? I've heard of generically. I know that's something you're a big in to, yeah. Yes. Joe Dispenza teaches a lot about it. It's been around forever. But a billionaire came to a work event that I had back in November and he attributes all the success to these

my movies. The my movie essentially is a kaleidoscope, which is supposed to be unlocking your subconscious and putting you into some type of a state, you know, where your subconscious is access. Again, I'm not a scientist, so, you know, don't sue me. But you then move to these 20 images and or videos of what you want your life to be with a text overlay that says, I'm so thankful and grateful this materialized, you know, whatever it is that you're wishing for, wanting for your future. And then once you have these 20 images together, you marry it with a song that gives you goosebumps that you feel is so empowering, that you feel is incredible. It can only be two minutes in length. You're supposed to do it first thing when you wake up in the morning and last thing right

before you go to bed when they say you're in an altered state. And when I tell you, so I do this in November, everything in my mind movie has already happened. It is the wildest thing I've ever seen. I've taught it to probably 500,000 people at this point in time just through social media, through podcasts, whatever. I, every single day get messages. Oh, my gosh, my life change. There's got to be something because it's so similar. And again, I don't know all the science of it, but it's taking the emotion and the feeling

with the image, with the music, with this concept of unlocking your subconscious. I mean, this all still, it's different, but it seems to be like all of the same type of methodology. Am I way off here? I would say that it's really, really similar because I would see it as like feeding your unconscious or feeding your subconscious because right when you wake up, you're in a hypnotic state. So you're in that state of speed learning, you know, where your mind is more receptive. And right when you fall as break before you fall asleep, you're in that state as well. So you're doing this in a hypnotic state and you're visualizing, you're bringing up those

positive feelings, you're less than two minutes, you know, so your mind isn't wandering. You can focus on it. I would say it's extremely similar. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with luxe essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day. Quince has all the staples covered from soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like

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in your, you know, working with you guys on Zoom and this, to your point, I do think that there is similar. Like, there's got, there's something to all of this. And it goes back, I think, to what you were saying, Todd, have laws law. And for anyone who didn't study psychology or in school, the concept, this is a very well-known, proven concept that scientists did, I don't even know, probably hundreds of years ago,

where they trained dogs by putting food down, bringing a bell and whenever the dog would hear the bell, they'd come eat. It conditioned the dogs mentally to know that when you hear the bell you're going to eat. But more importantly, their body started responding ahead of time. So as soon as they would hear the bell, they would begin salivating. It didn't even matter if there was food there anymore. They were so conditioned by the bell. And then the researchers ended up ultimately untraining them as well to teach, I think humans. I hope I explained that correctly, but because this is, I took psychology in college in 1995, not to date myself, but basically teaching us and teaching anyone that anyone

can be conditioned or unconditioned from a certain response. Yeah, you explain that pretty well. I think it was actually late 1800s, but nonetheless, or even maybe later, whatever the case is, it's something that is built into all, actually, I think even down to the cellular level, I think even bacteria have been, can be conditioned with a shock or with some form of environmental negative stimulus, they'll move away from it. So even something at that level. So the point is that this is not something, that kind of conditioning is not a conscious level of conditioning, and it doesn't require intelligence, depending on how you define that.

Most people probably wouldn't say bacteria are particularly intelligent, but there are basic things that they can be conditioned to do. And if I'm wrong about bacteria, then, then, you know, very primitive animals certainly will, we'll do that. But I would say the emotional part is important, whether it's positive or negative, because when you're bringing up feelings of gratitude or it doesn't even be gratitude, but any, any empowering feeling, when an emotion is paired to a thought, it's more likely to become a memory. Now, if you have hungry dogs and you, you're you present meat, they're going to get emotional about it because they're very excited. So if there's no emotional level there at all, it's a lot harder to learn things. Think about

how long it took us to learn stuff in school. It was probably boring and repetitive and it wasn't particularly emotionally inspiring. And so we had to kind of drill it into our head by repeating it 100 times and studying cramming. But when you, when someone develops a phobia, let's say, or a trauma happens, traumatic experience. They only need one time to learn it. That's called single trial learning. So that's even faster than with the dog, the Pavlov dog. A very intense emotional experience can imprint a memory immediately.

One of the reasons why the work that Gina and I do tends to work so well is because the brain, the mind, you know, the mind is, a concept correlates to certain parts of the brain, but basically our mind learns things better quickly as trauma proves. And so it learns, it unlearns quickly better than in a slow, drawn-out analytical process, which is one reason why just talking about your problems again and again, while initially might be insightful, eventually is going to hit a wall because we don't learn that way. We learn better quickly and we learn at the subconscious mind. I do want to be insightful. I do want to say one thing, though, about the mind movie. There's a lot of pop psychology in the personal

development world. I mean, there's definitely some legitimacy and some value to the mind movies as you're talking about. It's just a lot of emphasis and marketing is put on promoting a positive thinking or, you know, oh, let's just, let's just make ourselves feel good while we think about something in order to get our mind to focus on it like you're talking about. What's missing a lot of cases is that if there's a subconscious belief based on some past experience about the individual or how they relate to the world that is strongly disempowering, such as a traumatic experience, upsetting experience, you know, low self-worth, anxiety, fear, whatever, just doing that kind of empowering exercise is going to have diminishing returns unless you remove the crap that's already there.

So what Gina and I often do is when we talk with someone and we determine what's really naturally holding them back from, which should be, ideally, a fairly natural flow towards their goals, but rarely is for people. We ask, okay, what's getting in the way of this? You know, just like the body naturally heals when we get rid of the toxins and the garbage and all that stuff. If it's not healing, we have to ask what's stopping it? So if we're not achieving our goals or we're constantly sabotaging our health or relationships

or money, whatever it is, it pays to ask what might be causing it. And it's probably a belief, self-worth or fear of some outcome, whatever it might be. There's other things too. And then that has to be dealt with. Once that is neutralized, once that disempowering perception is unlearned, then often you don't even need to do the mind-movie kind of thing. but if you do it, it will simply accelerate realization of the person's outcome or goal. Well, what about for the people that are listening?

They're like, yeah, well, he hasn't heard of the apt-up life that I have. Mine can't be removed because I know so many people believe that. And to your point, it's been drilled in everyone's head. Talk therapy is the right way to go. You should only go to talk therapy. And I'm speaking to this because that's how I was raised, right? But I've had firsthand experience working with you guys, so I know it does work. But how do you help people listening right now that are thinking, no, it couldn't work for me?

Well, you know, while Gina and I have not seen everything, I mean, she's been in practice nine years. For me, it's been 18. We've seen a lot. And we've seen, you know, we could rattle off all kinds of examples of people with really, as you said, effed up past experiences, like big T traumas. you know, crazy stuff, objectively. And that led to a lot of, you know, health issues and relationship issues and money issues and career issues and all these different things. They're just, they're just surface level bits of evidence that something is, is off at a subconscious level. It's not anyone's fault. But when shit happens, you have to know how to flush and move on.

And the problem is most people, the shit is just still sitting in the bowl. Sorry for the graphics, but it's just sitting there for a long time. And it doesn't matter how shitty it was. It doesn't matter how long ago it happened or how significant it was. Here's the proof right here. If someone feels that something that happened in the past is a contributor or a cause to why they're stuck

or whatever their problem might be today, then they have to realize that's something they learned. So they acquired a limitation. They acquired a limiting belief. They acquired an unhealthy or disempowering association or perception. They learned it, which means they can unlearn it. Because the brain is always remodeling itself based on how it's used. And if you're constantly using a poor me story or building your identity around your problems,

I'm an addict. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a cancer survivor. I was a victim of abuse. Whatever it might be, I feel bad. that people go through those things, but such is life. The reality is whatever happened is just what happened. Well, how someone responds to it and what they learn from it is an individualized thing. There are people who can go through identical traumatic experiences and one person comes out of

it fairly unscathed. That may be rare, but it happens. And then someone else can be driven to do drugs and suicide. Those are extremes. Most people are somewhere in between. But that means it's not what happened. So it doesn't matter how effed up the life was. It's what you learned. And if you learned to feel that you're not enough or that you can't trust anyone or that someone's just waiting to screw you or that you don't deserve to be successful or that if you do, someone's going to take it away or you get a lot of sympathy and support for being stuck as much as you think you want to change it, all of those things can interfere with someone moving on from those issues. The reason why talking about it doesn't usually fix it is because dialogue, analysis, all this conscious

level, you know, talking, like I said, it's appropriate for some people, it's useful for some people, it's just not an efficient way of dealing with subconscious issues. That's all conscious level dialogue. It's limiting. It's like the tip of the iceberg. The problem is the massive ice underneath the water that you can't see, but you know is there. So hypnotists, we just change how people think. We don't make them do anything different. We don't control their mind. We give them back control of their mind, which is what they would have had that effed up thing not

happened. Can you give us an example of one of the, you know, without naming one of the people you've worked with of how you guys did that for them? Gina, do you want to talk about the one who was trafficked by her mom? Yeah, I was thinking about her. So I had a client come to me with literally like two pages of symptoms. You know, she thought they were problems, but they were actually symptoms. And so in a consultation, she said, I'd love to improve all these things. And initially I was like, oh, oh, God. But when I really looked at it and I explained it to her, I said, these are all just symptoms, you know, like if we know what card or two,

to pull from the bottom, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down without having to go one by one, which also takes a lot of time. So she was apparently trafficked by her mother to a guru. You know, she was part Indian from India and her mother was seeking enlightenment and it was just like BS guru, right? That was just full of crap and, you know, she ended up giving him everything, like everything she had pretty much. And then one day she was like, well, I've given you everything. Where's my enlightenment? And he said, you haven't given me everything. You haven't given me your daughter. So that's how it started. And for a whole teenage years, she was being raped by this man, lost of virginity to this man. And so what's interesting is that like Todd was saying, it's not what happens. It's our

reaction to it. It's what our mind associates with that. So what's super fascinating, is that the trauma wasn't with the guru or him doing that to her. That was a little bit of it. And we worked on some of that. The real trauma was with her mother. And what she learned as a result of her mother doing that, because her mother was very disempowered and her mother was desperate. And I understand that, not defending what she did, but I get it on that level. And so when we worked on the beliefs that she had learned as a result of her own mother doing this, like, I really must not be worthy. she doesn't care about how I feel. I must be worthless.

I mean, she's giving me to this stranger and she knows I'm young. And so, you know, we worked on all those beliefs. And that was her real anxiety. And so she was overweight. She was this. She was having all these issues. She wanted to eat more fruits and not eat so much candy. And so all these symptoms got better.

And except she named, she had a fear of sharks. which I additionally told her, you know, that's like a totally different program. And, you know, I don't think that's going to improve with what we're doing. And she understood that. But, you know, her last session, she was, I went out to greet her in the, in the waiting area. And she was highlighting things. And I thought she was doing something for school or whatnot. And she comes in.

She highlighted everything that had gotten better, everything that had gotten better. And it was every single symptom. And she was just like, oh, my gosh, she was blown away. Like, that was one of the most fulfilling times I worked. work with someone because she was raped dozens and dozens of times. So you don't have to go to each and every one. It's what you learn from the experience, how you feel about it and shifting that at the subconscious level, because that's where the emotions are, that's where our beliefs are, that's where our imagination is, that's where our bad habits are. So when you approach it on that level,

change happens very quickly. And that was over the course of several weeks, right? So that was like he saw her less than like a month and a half, two months, something like that, right? Yeah. So the point is, some people say, well, if it happens too quickly, then it can't be real. I mean, some of the trauma work we do is, I mean, you know this, Heather, with some of the stuff we've done. I don't remember specifically any of it because I think we first met probably 15 years ago or something like that.

That's when we first started doing stuff. but there are certain techniques that we do that Gina and I do with really upsetting memories, whether they're childhood memories or something that just happened. Like I had a client who caught her husband in their bed having sex with her friend. So she was actually diagnosed with PTSD by a psychologist from that. So she couldn't, she wanted to reconcile with him. She couldn't because she couldn't forgive him because the images of him screwing another woman in her bed kept popping into her mind. I had another client who was cheating on her husband with this guy and she wanted to,

to stop consciously, but subconsciously the sex was really good. And she kept thinking of this guy as this amazing guy next to her boring husband. And, you know, and, you know, lots of examples. Someone whose brother died suddenly of cancer and the doctors missed it and then he died and she from that point on had years of not only grief, but terrifying fear that she would die or someone would die on her. All of these things may be irrational, but we can't just strong arm ourselves and force ourselves to change because if the subconscious wants it or believes it, it's going to get it. Otherwise, there wouldn't be addictions. No one would be smoking.

No one would be overweight. We would just say, oh, eat more kale, eat less cookies. That's easy. Let's do it. I'd still be a nutritionist if it were that easy because I did that in the late 90s and realized that all this great advice I was giving was not making any difference. But some of the traumatic memory work we do can be minutes. If your anxiety, depression, or ADHD are more than a rough patch, you don't need just another meditation app. Takayatry makes it easy to see a psychiatrist online using your insurance in days.

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You know, I don't know, I wasn't there in that session Gina had with that young lady who was trafficked by her mom. But, you know, I know we use the same, You know, she and I are equally capable. We use the same techniques and the same methods. And sometimes people will go from being visibly agitated when they remember something that happened. They might be crying.

They might, you know, have their heart rate increase, whatever. That's as painful as it gets. It's only for a couple minutes. And then very often two, three, five minutes later, the person's either laughing about it or just totally not even feeling anything. They still remember what happened. but the emotional evidence, the emotional symptom, the emotional effects of that memory just has changed. They still know it happened, but they just feel different about it.

And once that thorn is removed from their mind, basically, then it's much easier to change the underlying beliefs, like in the example Gina gave. Oh, I guess I am worthy. Because as long as she had those strong, you know, memories emotionally changed. charged memories, her subconscious had proof that she wasn't good enough or that she wasn't worthy of love or whatever beliefs she picked up. Once the emotional energy is drained from that memory, and this is just one of a number of tools we use, but once that happens, it's like the world is open to someone thinking differently. And that's where a lot of the hypnosis comes in at that point is helping to change their underlying belief. We do that through everything from

visualizations to hypnotic storytelling to, you know, all kinds of different things. And, you know, most of the time, the change sticks. And it's just, it's really amazing. And it's just wonderful that even though we wish we were people's, you know, their first option, we often see people after they've tried antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds, after they've been in months or years of therapy, after they've tried to force themselves to change. But we all have the ability to learn very quickly. We just have to use the right tools. So interesting that I worked on a variety of issues in my subconscious with you that have been resolved. But sitting here right now, I'm thinking to myself, I'm in a serious relationship right now for the first time in years.

And when I'm hearing you describe this, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I was so triggered by him a couple of weeks ago because of something so stupid had nothing to do with him. But I'm thinking about it. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I need to resolve that. Like, why did I? Why am I? I'm just, I ignored it. Like, oh, that was stupid. I won't do that again.

but now that I'm listening to this, obviously that's a result of something in my subconscious that's from a past relationship from something that was negative. I don't want to allow that into my life again now. So it makes sense to your point, especially when these things can be resolved so quickly. And I know one of the things that I had a lot of success with work, much for me that really helped condition my mind was a lot of these tracks that you put me on that I still use to this day. And I know that you actually have a track for everybody listening today. Yeah. Do I mention that now? Yeah, I'd love it if you can mention that.

Yeah, so the way we work, so Gina and I, during COVID, you know, we shifted out of necessity to seeing people by Zoom. And once we figured out how to compensate for whatever disadvantages there are of not being in the same room with people, there are also advantages. But we were able to neutralize those disadvantages for the most part. So now, you know, since then we see people exclusively by Zoom, you know, wherever they are, time zone permitting. and it's just as effective as it ever was in the same physical office space. But the way we do it, which is different from a lot of hypnotists, is that we meet with the person for, you know, however long, half hour, 40 minutes, just to figure out, you know, what's improved over the last week since the last session, whatever,

and then make sure we're on the same page about what we're going to address this time. And then we disconnect. We use our studio quality microphone. We record a customized hypnosis recording. So it could be, you know, over the course of working with someone over, you know, a month or two, there might be four, five, six unique audio recordings. And they're going to address specifically what that person needs in a way that's most effective for them. And then we email it to them and they ideally listen to it every day for, you know, a week.

And usually that's enough. So what we are offering to your listeners, I mean, assuming that what we've been talking about has, you know, sparked a little curiosity makes you wonder if i wonder if working with gina or todd by zoom could actually be helpful i would invite your listeners to go to goodwin hypnosis dot com slash survey and we have literally a 60 second survey that will ask you a few quick questions and that will help you decide if what we do might be a really good fit for you and if you make sure you mentioned um you know creating confidence or heather and we'll send you, you'll immediately get emailed a deeply relaxing a hypnosis audio called Go With the Flow.

So it's a really nice relaxing audio you can listen to as much as you want. And a video called 17 facts that you need to know about yourself before seeing a hypnotist or therapist. We'll also invite you to our next, you know, live Zoom Q&A that we do for education, you know, teaching some valuable insights about human behavior. and also taking live questions. So there's no pressure at all. It's just kind of a free and easy way to get started if you're curious.

It's goodwinhypnosis.com slash survey and, you know, benefit from it. What are some of the symptoms that you can just cover at a high level right now so people can understand, oh my gosh, this is something that could be resolved by hypnosis? Anxiety, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of success. Meaning like once I have it, what if I lose it or what are people going to think of me once I reach a certain level, right? People pleasing, you know, imposter syndrome, fear of public speaking, social anxiety, performance anxiety, not to mention, you know, unhealthy habits and panic attacks and ruminating. Someone has trouble getting over a breakup, for example. That's not, you know, business related necessarily.

But it can affect your ability to build your business or to get ahead. if you're constantly thinking about, you know, revisiting the past in your mind or worrying about the future. Also, sleep issues? 98% of the world. Yeah, I mean, you know, you could add grief, guilt, shame, regret, resentment, anger of any kind. You could add that. Fear, panic, anxiety, like Gina said, overwhelm.

I mean, basically, if you're thinking, feeling, or acting in a way that you're you wish you could change, but you can't seem to do it, that's something where we could help. We can help you feel and do better naturally. Percination is also a big one, procrastinating. So we've been conditioned as a society to think these are just normal things and a problem with your personality. It's not a personality thing at all. I mean, you know, there's the myth of the addictive personality.

People say, well, I like to drink and smoke and gamble, or I am obsessive about watching some show on Netflix, I have an addictive personality. That's not true at all. It's just an indication of how either overwhelmed or unfulfilled that individual is and their subconscious is telling them to engage in certain dopamine-producing or endorphin-producing behaviors to make themselves feel good to alleviate the emotional discomfort their feeling before they do that thing. So for example, people who have addictions, and I'll use that word very broadly, any what we call bad habits, or emotionally compulsive habit or behavior is usually driven from an uncomfortable emotional state. And so the subconscious, in a weird irony, creates the emotional discomfort.

You know, it could be loneliness, sadness, anger, stress, guilt, regret, shame, grief, all the things I mentioned. And it creates that. And then it also very nicely says, huh, I don't like how I feel. I know, let's go eat something. Let's have a drink. Let's smoke. let's gamble, let's use porn, let's, whatever it is, let's go shopping.

And social media, you know, TikTok, and that will temporarily make the person feel better. So mission accomplished. But because nothing's really changing, that's causing the emotional discomfort from coming up, right? That's actually nothing's changing at the, you know, underneath the surface. They have to keep doing it. And that's where they develop the habit or the addiction because the addiction is essentially an emotional dependency on that behavior or that, you know, temporary remedy to help themselves feel better. But if you can figure out why they're feeling shitty to begin with, to put it

simply, or even slightly uncomfortable, and you can change that thought process that's leading to that emotion, and they just feel different, they don't have an urge to go engage in that counterproductive behavior. Because all those also serve as a distraction, too. not only just to help yourself feel better, but just to, you know, not think about it for a while, like an escape, like a, you know, so you don't have to think about it and then feel bad about it. And so that part of us is just trying to help us. It's not trying to make us feel stuck or lost or anything. It's just trying to help.

It just has the wrong idea. What about the person listening right now is saying, okay, I hear this, but my whole light is going to unravel if I pulled this out. Because that just popped into my head that somebody might. think that. Do you ever have people think that, like, I'm afraid to do the work because who will I be without all of that? Can you give a little more color on what you're thinking in that regard? Like, why? I'm not sure. I mean, I have an idea, but I don't want to guess. Why would someone think their whole life would unravel? I'm thinking that, okay, I've learned to cope and live like this. Yes, it's not perfect, but I'm able to manage it in this regard. Pulling this out,

who am I going to be without it? What if I'm not driven? anymore what if the drive goes with this what if what if this is all become intertwinens into the person that i am now and i am succeeding in some levels if i pulled this one problem out what if all that goes away too okay yeah so that that comes to there's two issues there one is if someone identifies with their problem like i'm a type a personality i'm an overachiever i'm a you know whatever it might be then you got to be careful with what you identify with if you're your is going to dictate and drive and predict your behavior. So the person who says, I'm an alcoholic,

and they have that they've repeated that to themselves again and again, is going to have a lot of trouble quitting drinking, even through hypnosis, if that's all that they're trying to do is change their behavior because their identity has, you know, made it so that, well, what do alcoholics do? They drink alcohol a lot or they, you know, that's it. So what does a workaholic do? They overwork, they sacrifice their personal life or their health,

and they live that imbalance. So if someone has identified with their problem, we need to kind of disentangle that. And that's a subconscious thing that we can work on. But the other is asking, okay, what is it you really want? And is the person who is very driven, let's say, are they doing it out of a compulsive need to satisfy low self-worth? Are they doing it to prove to their parents, dead or alive,

that they can do it? or to prove to themselves or to prove to their community or whoever. And are they doing it from a place of weakness and insecurity? Or are they doing it because they're truly inspired and fulfilled by that work? And that's why they have so much energy. They love doing it. If it's the latter, then it's not going to change at all. They'll just have less stress and more success, most likely.

But if they're overworking and they're doing all those things as a way of making up for poor self-worth, or self-esteem or something to that effect, then we would be very clear with them. We'd say, now, by resolving the, you know, the self-worth deficits or whatever, by empowering you at a subconscious level about how you think about yourself, your life, your past, your future, if what you're doing is compulsive and it's not a true, it's not coming from a place of inspiration, you know, work, let's say,

your company, your business, whatever, then you may lose the drive to do that. I mean, I'll be totally honest with you. then the question is for that client, do you want to continue doing what you're doing? Maybe it serves you because you're making money. Maybe you're building a business, but you're also tearing down your health and relationships.

If that's a fair bargain for you, then we're not the person to work with because we're not going to take that away from you. You've got to decide. But if you say, I want to be able to be motivated, ideally from a place of inspiration and not because if I don't, I feel like I'm a loser,

then we can help with that. But just realize that if someone is, if their primary reason for engaging in that, you know, overwork, let's say, is coming from a place of weakness, then the rhetorical question is, why would you really want to continue that way? Because you could form an identity around something that gives you a sense of purpose and mission in your life and is not simply an overcompensation for a deficit. That's a philosophical answer. Well, again, to me, I think it sounds like 98% of people need an appointment, including this girl. I'm just hearing you go through this made me realize that I'm facing new challenge now, but I wasn't facing in my past that just came up. It can be resolved quickly.

So I'll be calling for an appointment. All right. How can everybody get a hold of you guys? So you can go to Goodwin Hypnosis.com slash survey. Goodwin Hypnosis.com, of course, is our website. We have tons of educational videos there and descriptions of a lot of. a lot of the different issues we work with that we mentioned here, as well as you can read, you know, countless reviews from clients and some video testimonials to hear from their mouth

about what their experience was. And it touches on a lot of the stuff we talked about trauma, the symptoms, the underlying issues. But if you go to goodwinhypnosis.com slash survey, and like I said, 60 second survey, fill it out, mention creating confidence, or mention Heather, put in your email address, and then you'll immediately get it. the go with the flow relaxation self hypnosis audio and the video you know the 17 facts you need to know about yourself before seeing a hypnotist or therapist so whether you work with us one-on-one by Zoom or you know it takes longer for you to figure out what you want to do in terms of personal development or if you're

working with anyone else these are things you really need to know about yourself and you can get that just from that that video and then like I said we also occasionally do educational Zoom sessions that are free to whome shows up. So we teach concepts like some of the stuff we're talking about here. And we take questions from attendees. And if you can't make it, you can always email it in ahead of time. Well, I will link everything in the show notes below. Check it out. Take the survey. Listen to the audio track. You will be really pleased with it. I can tell you with a lot of experience working with these guys. And the impact has had on my life has been profound and incredibly positive. And I'm back again.

So Gina and Todd, thank you so much for being here and thank you for all the work that you're doing to help everybody. Thank you. All right, guys, until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be. I'm on this journey with me.