Experiencing Your Future Self: The Self You Want to Become

Many people begin psychotherapy because they're not happy with some aspect of their life. 

By the time they come to therapy, they have often experienced months (and sometimes many years) of being dissatisfied. 

Experiencing Your Future Self

Many of them find it hard to imagine that their life could be different in the future.  So, when I introduce the idea of the Future Self, some clients find this concept to be unbelievable.

So, the concept of "The Future Self" needs a little explaining.

What is the Future Self?
The Future Self is a concept in clinical hypnosis (also known as hypnotherapy) and in other types of Experiential Therapy (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective Than Traditional Psychotherapy?).

In a relaxed state you have greater access to the richness of your unconscious mind and you can experience yourself as you want to be.  

In a safe and relaxing hypnotic state, you have access to an inner world that you're usually not aware of during ordinary states of consciousness.

Experiencing Your Future Self

Experiencing your Future Self isn't just about visualizing yourself as the person that you want to be.  It's also having the internal experience of the person that you want to be in your mind and in your body because of the mind-body connection.  

Most people experience this as very exciting and empowering.  They're also surprised that they can have this experience because, in their ordinary states of consciousness, this experience isn't available to them.  

Quite to the contrary, in their ordinary states of consciousness, they're giving themselves negative messages, like "I'm not good enough" or "Life will never change."

Experiencing Your Future Self

When you've experienced your Future Self, in clinical hypnosis, as how you want to be, you gain a sense of confidence that will often enable you to pursue a more satisfying and enriching life.

In clinical hypnosis there is a concept of "anchoring" where you can "anchor" this experience in your body so that it remains accessible to you.  You can "anchor" the experience either visually in your body or as a feeling state or both.  "Anchoring" can be done with images or colors.  The idea is to make the experience as vivid as possible so you can re-experience it in your ordinary state of consciousness.

This might sound "out there" and "woo-woo," but when you're in a state of dual awareness (the awareness of the here-and-now as well as the awareness of the hypnotic state), this often happens very naturally.  

As adults, we often forget that many of us, as children, were able to use our imagination to experience ourselves as being whatever we wanted to be.  And although it might be surprising for many adults to experience the Future Self, it's also relaxing, refreshing and very satisfying emotionally.

What if You're Not Able to Experience Your Future Self in Hypnosis?
Everyone is different. Some people, despite years of misfortune and disappointments, can access the experience of the Future Self in hypnosis without a problem.  And, as I've said, this is often a surprise to them because it's so different from what they normally experience.

Others, for whatever reason, have more difficulty experiencing a Future Self, but they often know someone, whom they admire, that is close to what they would like to be.  

In those cases, I work with these clients in hypnosis to help them to feel into or "embody" the experience of this person.  As they "embody" this experience, they can feel what it's like to be calmer, happier, more confident--or whatever this person represents for them.

Even if you don't know someone personally, there might be someone from a movie, a book or someone who is famous in history that you can imagine during a hypnotic state where you can use your imagination to "embody" his or her experience.

Isn't it wonderful that these states of consciousness are naturally available to us and that we can "anchor" them so that we can access them at any time?

About Me
I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.