How Hypnosis Cured My Depression
Stumbling into a journey in the subconscious became my lifeline
I’d known I was depressed for a long time. But when I finally went to the psychologist and got a box of pills for it, it suddenly felt like a very real, very devastating diagnosis. I couldn’t even speak to her in my own language in my small town in Serbia so I brought my ex boyfriend along to translate me telling her, “I just don’t enjoy things I used to love to do anymore.”
Back home, I collapsed into my bed and released body-wrenching sobs, over what felt like defeat after working so hard in therapy every week for two years.
The depression had been there as long as I could remember, although I didn’t have a name for it because growing up millennial, I hadn’t been exposed to the same level of mental health information people have on hand nowadays. It really reared its head after I left the best-paying job of my life to travel for two years through Europe. “This is my chance to finally be the kid I never got to be,” I told myself.
But the anxiety and depression followed me across the ocean and through the next continent, stealing a great deal of joy and fun. It had me constantly worrying about my rapidly draining savings, revealing the hard truth that this was the last thing I had left to try, to see if I could be happy in this life. The money hadn’t done it, romance and sex certainly hadn’t, and neither had education, fitness, nor now, even adventure.
After I lost all my friends due to such a long time on the road, broke up with my boyfriend and then struggled through poverty while getting my freelancing business off the ground, I considered it rock bottom.
Then some random online shaman, a white lady from London, reached my algorithm with an ad and I signed up for her remote meditation.
I relaxed my mind and followed her into a big, dark cave, crawling through the tunnel behind it to the light at the end. There, under the great light was a big stone table. I climbed up on it and lay on my back, the light shining so bright, it consumed me. A distant voice asked a seemingly simple question, yet it was one my therapist had asked many times through my tears and I’d never been able to answer.
“What do you need to feel better?”
I felt the light surge through me with an electric charge that sent the word SAFETY out of me with a burst.
All of a sudden, the light was gone and I was left on the table feeling warm and solid. “I want to feel safe,” I said again to myself, feeling the words as if they came from inside me instead of floating in space like most words usually did. Maybe it seems like a simple statement to an outside eye, but even the simplest insights, when coming from the subconscious mind, feel very profound. It was the first time I knew that my words were my own. The first time I was certain that something I said was true.
I began to travel within my subconscious every day after that. I found I didn’t need the shaman to go to this place, so I took myself on my own adventures, visiting a forest where I met a ram named Elizabeth, who taught me how to feel safe when I was afraid.
I met a wise queen in a dusty library who instructed me on daily tasks that would make me happy again, and they started to work.
Suddenly, I knew this was my lifeline. This was the answer to my happiness, and I dedicated everything to experiencing the journeys better. When I landed a big client, I used every penny to pay the shaman to teach me how to do it (she was very expensive). I studied with her devotedly for eight months. I spent hours every day practicing. Writing down what I’d seen.
I starting adding elements from nature to enhance my experience, visiting a forest outside my city for hours every day. I found plants that seemed like useless weeds to the untrained eye - dandelion, mugwort, nettle and many others - and developed relationships with them. They became my guides, each one directing me to important aspects of life and big questions I’d always asked but hadn’t gotten answers to.
One day, I realized I wasn’t sad anymore. I quit the meds; I didn’t need them. At that point, my freelancing had become successful, and I was teaching others how to market, consulting entrepreneurs on scaling their businesses. I began taking my clients on subconscious journeys. They got exciting, out-of-the-box ideas for things to write about and say that made them more money.
I made a course called Deep Marketing, which combined magic rituals with subconscious journeys and marketing strategies. Many already-experienced spiritual people - meditation teachers, energy workers, shamans, etc. - said how surprised they were at the depth of the insights they had.
Then I got tired of staying in one place doing rituals and teaching marketing. That’s when I rid myself of all my possessions and left to travel again. This time, with my ability to be present, connect with nature and my general state of happiness, travel was as fun and exciting as I’d hoped it would be the first time. There were severe challenges that stressed me out, but overall I loved every minute of it.
There is an ancient tradition of transformation through travel. We humans cling to iconic stories about a beloved character searching for something sacred through a pilgrimage. The Alchemist. Pilgrim’s Progress. The Odyssey. Lord of the Rings. Don Quixote. The Wizard of Oz.
Well, as I followed the road through raining forests to dry deserts to tropical beaches, meeting pivotal characters who gave me clues and directions along the way, I got closer and closer to what I was seeking (although I didn’t even know what I hoped to find). Things I’d been fighting for in my work fell away and rendered themselves unimportant and uninteresting. I loosened my grip on people I’d entwined myself to and let them fall away. I weaved in and out of grasping on to others for help and support, then letting go and finding my own strength. With each unknown that I allowed to envelop me, I found a new piece to add to the puzzle I was solving in my mind, alongside the physical, material experiences.
When it became clear that my physical journey had come to an end, the opportunity arose to become a certified hypnotist. The timing worked out perfectly; I was in a strange neighborhood in Sai Gon, where everything was quiet and people minded their own business. I had two weeks to kill before my flight back to Serbia. So I hunkered down started the training, which would last through the summer. This felt like the missing piece from the journeys I’d been doing, because it goes beyond insights and guidance and actually changes the brain’s neural patterns so a person can change their behavior, habits and thoughts. It merges the spiritual with the material.
As soon as I finished it, I loosened my grip on my marketing business, deciding the desires I’d opened up to on the road needed to be brought to life.
It’s been almost a year since then, and I’ve been plugging away at it, but with an ever-nagging feeling that I’m introducing characters and scenes without showing how they fit into the story. I’m cutting plot pieces, saying they’re “not part of this,” when they are essential moments that move the story forward. Life, success and art are not about isolating and cutting events, throwing them away and moving onto new ones. We must constantly add new layers on top of what we’ve already laid down to show the depth and the shadows, and to draw the eye to so many different places while looking at everything all at once.
What do I see when I layer the experiences and skills on top of each other? What new thing is created? Or what does it look like when they’re all in one place? If it’s a tree with different branches, what is the tree? If it’s a painting with many layers, what is the picture? If it’s a movie with different scenes and characters, what is the story?
These are the questions I’m attempting to answer by sharing this story with you. The journeys into the subconscious haven’t been mere fun experiences or facilitated one-off habit changes for me. They were, and continue to be my lifeline. So I thought you should know.
And if you need it, I’d love to share it with you. You can book a session with me here.