Alright, so we’ve cleared up “Where we are headed” and what one of the “first steps” is. On to the next layer of self exploration.

Our self perceptions. Hold up, you may be saying, didn’t we kind of do that when we went over self love? Not quite. Loving ourselves can happen without looking at our associations towards the roles that we are subconsciously acting out.

What the heck am I talking about?

We live in a culture that carries, generally, norms of action based on the gender we were assigned at birth. This is something that is shifting, and I find most folks don’t act exclusively based on these roles. Yet, many times our associations towards these roles is still holding us back and we may even carry guilt, shame or other baggage because of them.

So gender roles. That is the next place to explore. How do they impact you, and why do they? As well, what were your models for those roles like? Oftentimes we pick up a lot of our ideas of what gender roles mean from our parental figures, whether they were there or not, and meant to teach them or not.

This means someone in a male formed body may have an association towards not expressing their emotions due to how their Masculine role model was like growing up. This is of course a very broad statement made for the sake of clarity. It can be much more subtle than that. Female bodied persons can end up feeling anxious about taking the lead, ect.

Even the whole spectrum of those whom identify outside of the binary, may find themselves trying to fit into a system that does not acknowledge them. The goal in this area is to unpack those roles and release the “shoulds” and “have to’s. ” Thereby the actions the client is making are motivated out of what the client wants to do regardless of gender and ensuring that the shame and guilt spiral is getting weaned off.

In my approach I address the Masculine side of things first. This is not because one is better than the other or any such hierarchy. It’s because generally, the current culture that I am a part of and usually my clients are familiar with associate the masculine energies with action, and change, and activity. In working with clients, usually this is the sort of stuff that creates motivation, new direction in life and feeling like they are accomplishing things. As well, being that humans get pretty motivated when they notice things shifting, it’s quite nice to work on an area that can create a drastic shift quickly, and create the motivation to work on the others areas as well.

Working with the masculine energy can look like a few different things, it can be separating the concept that we are our masculine role models or have to act like them. It can be introducing the idea of what we consider balanced or healthy masculine energies. It can be completely releasing the idea of masculine energies entirely and absolving it into the simplicity of “being”.

Generally a few steps need to be involved though. Releasing the old association, and introducing the new association that the client wants present, as well as integrating that concept and playing out what that looks like for the client in the mind’s eye. It’s done in this format because to make room for the new we need to release the old, and we need to introduce the new in the space that the old associations left, lest the subconscious just fills it up with somewhat random or not desired associations.

I opened this newsletter talking about self perceptions, and the shame and guilt we can carry because of them. I’m going to elaborate on that some more, and connect it to the Masculine. Let’s say we have someone whom has some conflicted beliefs about leadership. They want to take the lead, but feel scared that they may lead people to some form of disaster or that they are not doing it “right.”  Put this person in a job where they are responsible for others, and all of a sudden they get panic attacks, self doubt or loathing. Maybe just underlying anxiety and an inability to follow through with their decisions.

This person’s perception of themselves would have them think they cannot lead, and are plagued with some form of anxiety issue. Looking into this persons past perhaps there were a few times where the masculine role model was taking the lead in the family, they were planning a vacation, or a move, and something didn’t work out right, hotel was booked up and the family was left scrambling, or the moving truck didn’t show up on time and the whole situation got really stressful and difficult, perhaps even some very loud “conversations” among the parents ensued. Now this person has witnessed firsthand what happens when that leadership role is not done “correctly” and their subconscious mind has interpreted failure to take the lead with being out of a place to sleep one way or another.

It may seem innocuous but this person has internalized failure with a very severe situation, and not only failure, but failure based on masculine energies, taking actions, taking the lead, planning, and organizing. When these energies are shifted and the subconscious mind gets updated on what we would rather it did when it takes the lead, ie, be proactive, resourceful, collaborative (whatever the clients is desiring) then the shift that comes can be quite dramatic. In this example the client could be less anxious, take the lead at work just fine, perhaps even cultivating a new direction in life.

As you can see, our associations to these energies are not necessarily gender related. It’s more so that we sort them into these categories for simplicity sake. They do not need to stay in those categories by any means, just as our associations towards those energies can be shifted as well. In taking this approach with Hypnotherapy it can have a multifaceted impact on the results for the client as these associations shift to what the client actually wants to have.

Interested in shifting your associations towards your masculine energies? If you’re just looking to focus on the one areas I recommend the personal growth package.

Thank you for reading!