Inner Coach Imagery

Having anxiety & panic disorder can be frightening & so it's important to know that one is not alone. Inside each of us is a Higher Self.....an Inner Coach of sorts. Let me help you locate yours... Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht

I'm no different from anyone else. Part of me has always fantasized about having my own private coach, someone who would lift me up and out, and then tell me exactly what I should do to achieve my goals, motivate me, taking me down the Goal-den path to high achievement of some sort. The kind, loving coach was always a part of a multitude of glorious images that I designed through the years, leading to everything I desired at the end of the rainbow. But as in all dreams, somewhere in the distance sounds could be heard, "Be careful what you wish for....." my Mother's always far too realistic way of breaking my fantasy.

I got my wish when I was about fifteen. I joined the roller skating club and Phil Pinto was assigned to be my coach. He was nothing I imagined and there were no rainbows, at least not then. His job was to take my focus away from my bruised knees in order to keep me skating , when what I really wanted to do was to give up and go home. It was years before I really liked him, much less admired him. I don't think I fully appreciated his attempts at teaching me self-discipline until I was a mature adult.

As life would have it, I now find myself being a coach and mentor to hundreds of people, but my main focus is assisting each individual to find their own coach within. We are all the same in this regard. Nursing is just another form of coaching, getting patients to follow doctors orders and to be self-responsible in their health practices. In my work as a lifestyle change educator and clinical medical, personal development and sports hypnotherapist, I work with people who want to experience functioning at their optimum levels. Many are managing anxiety & panic disorder, along with problems such as sugar addiction or eating disorder in addition to working on other goals.

I can certainly commissurate with my patients on many levels. Often as not, my anxiety attacks & my accompanying addiction, that of sugar addiction & disorderly eating had been blocking my path to these goals, sometimes for years on end, for it is very difficult to have what it takes to reach goals when blood sugars are dipping and rising like roller coasters in a giant theme park. My inner coach needed to be primed with the necessary background and suggestions to get on track & to work to stay there, as well as to find myr way back when I fell off the track.

Any lifestyle change and especially addiction management needs a super-coach, someone who is highly attentive, motivated and understands how to get into the moments and to open them up for assessment and possible editing or change. In my experience, the only coach up to this job is the "Inner Coach". That Coach resides inside our selves, in the subconscious mind. Our job here is to contact that part of ourselves and begin the learning process.

In this special work you will begin the process of re-communicating with your Inner Coach on a regular basis. The Coach will help you in disciplining all parts of yourself to turn towards what you really want on your goal-den path and to move past what you don't want. You will be keeping up the energy with a plan designed specifically to meet your own specific needs and desires.

Your "Inner Coach" has tremendous advantages in assisting you towards optimum performance. First , this coach knows you best and there is no hiding behind fantasy of any sort. You already know that you live most of your waking hours on automatic pilot or lost in fantasy. Individuals lost in thought, either hang out in the past, or in the future, usually staying involved in replaying old negative tapes, or fantasy adventures of the future that have little to do with planned goals.

Being able to face the truth is a vital force in licking sugar addiction and in all aspects of optimum performance. Your Coach will be asking you to be willing to see the negatives as well as the positives. For many of us this is the most difficult part of our work because we simply do not want to see these things and most certainly do not want to feel them. One of the reasons for this is that we tend to lack the knowledge that negatives are simply doorways to improved outcomes. They are like flags waving for attention. "Look over here! Correct this and find a better way." This is the heart and soul of inner creativity.

Lucky for us our Inner Coach is ever present. No need for meetings, conferences, cell phones or emails. Your Coach is not only ready at less than a moments notice, but has access to all the inner resources you have been accumulating since birth, making those available at any time. Your Coach will be showing you how to reframe them, making them even more useful and powerful.

Your Inner Coach is aware of self-imposed roadblocks, old stale beliefs, thought patterns and automated emotional responses that keep you side-lined and off the goal-den path. The Coach knows all about how many times you've failed at nutritional change, how imbalanced your emotions can be and how many of your goals have been left sitting on the table of the subconscious mind library for so long. Once it's clear that that you are ready to move through those blocks, your Coach will present doable plans for this part of your work, while placing you right in the middle of the needed action. Wow!

Most of us have been very out of touch with this part of ourselves. You will probably need some up front time for re-communicating, designing clear cut goals and giving the Coach what's needed for his or her part of the job. Like any other Coach or servo-mechanism, it needs care and attention. The next mini-chapters will remind you of those things forgotten, or perhaps introduce you to them for the first time. As you work through these daily exercises, you will begin to notice the path is not as difficult as you thought it would be. Don't be surprised if you feel a kind hand on your shoulder, motivating and urging you towards all you can be. The hand will belong to your deepest and Highest Self, known here as your Inner Coach.

Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, President & Program Designer for Sarasota Medical & Sports Hypnosis Institute, Sarasota, FL & online at http://www.hypnosis-audio.com & http://sugar-addiction.com She is the author of Sugar....the Hidden Eating Disorder & How to Lick It, Beyond Disorderly Eating....The Truth About Sugar Addiction & Bingeing & How to Stop & the MindBody Fitness Boot Camp...Lifestyle Change Made Easy. She has written & produced +350 audio CD & mp3 programs written in original "interactive self-hypnosis." Her educational websites moderated discussion groups, ezines, library & over 800 pages of learning tools. Visit each month & download a complimentary mp3 program.