We’ve had several requests for a hypnosis session on homesickness, and decided it was time to create a session to help alleviate this distressing experience.
Over the years as a hypnotherapist I’ve worked with many adults – professionals as well as private individuals – who’ve suffered painfully from homesickness.
Many of them told me that their first experience of it was in childhood – maybe when they left home for the first time, or perhaps had to be away from home for extended periods, such as at boarding school. They consistently described the feeling of homesickness as a sense of sadness, emptiness, loneliness, loss and lowered confidence.
Homesickness is nostalgiaÂ
Homesickness makes people feel nostalgia for the simplest things in their home environment. Things like friends, family, pets, house and neighbourhood. One guy I worked with told me that every time he went away on a business trip he’d have sob if he so much as thought about his back yard.Â
The roots of homesickness
The puzzle was why so many of these clients continued to experience homesickness as adults, when often their outward lives appeared successful, assured, and confident. It was as if the homesickness had become a kind of psychological habit. They often come to me because the homesickness and the feelings of helplessness it engenders don’t sit comfortably with the rest of their more confident personalities.
Overcoming homesickness
The thinking behind this new hypnosis session on homesickness is two fold. Firstly, I aim to use hypnosis to get the person relaxed and focused on feeling calm about leaving home. Then I direct people towards the hypnotic experience of re-visiting ‘home’ anytime they want wherever they happen to be in the world. I then use hypnotic rehearsal to allow them to experience being away from home in the future feeling calm, relaxed and confident.
I myself recall the awful pangs of homesickness as a child, and I think this session is going to help a lot of people.
Well, that’s it from me. I’m off ‘home’ now.
Mark
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