Feeling Trapped? Running An Old Program?

How Hypnotherapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Past-Life Regression Free You From a Life, and a Loop, That Were Never Yours

Do you feel trapped in a life you didn’t choose? Replaying the same nightmare, the same argument, the same shame spiral, night after night, and calling it just how your brain works?

It isn’t. It’s a loop. And loops can be broken.

Here’s a story about a man who was trapped, depressed, and drugged into accepting a life that was killing him. With help, he found a door in his own past that opened him to freedom, and a bit of fame.

Five years ago, Nathan, a shy 40-year-old engineer on five different anxiety medications, came to see me. He was miserable and desperate to change.

He’d been born in the Pacific Islands and came to the United States at eleven with his father. Kids here were cruel about his facial deformity. He joined the Navy and served through Desert Storm, then got lured into a destructive Christian cult, whose charismatic leader drained his bank account and hypnotized him into hating his own body and despising his sexuality.

Before I could help him see who he really was, I had to support him as he titrated off the mind-deadening meds, then help him reframe and heal the trauma of his past.

Maybe your cage doesn’t look like Nathan’s. Maybe it’s a marriage you outgrew years ago, a career you fell into instead of chose, a body you were taught to be ashamed of, a family script you never agreed to but have been performing since childhood. The shape is different. The mechanism is the same: somewhere along the way, you were handed a version of yourself that isn’t actually yours, and your nervous system has been defending it like it’s the only one you’re allowed to have.

It took time and hard work, but Nathan was determined to heal. After his abusive childhood and teen years were seen from a different perspective, we could begin to dive deeper into his subconscious mind and discover who he was at a soul level. Some souls set up ridiculous challenges, like ancient obstacle courses to test the spirit. Unfortunately, sometimes it destroys the person instead.

In our first past-life regression, Nathan saw himself as a famous female Venetian navigator who died in a shipwreck in the 1700s. He saw a World War I soldier, a womanizer and a chain smoker, a life he wasn’t proud of. Then he experienced himself as an Irish mother who died in the potato famine of the late 1800s. Across every life, one thread kept surfacing: he was an adventurous soul. Always had been.

That thread mattered more than it looks like on paper. When a pattern repeats across enough lives or enough nights, it stops being a coincidence and becomes information your subconscious is trying to hand you. This is the same mechanism behind the nightmare you can’t stop having, or the argument you keep replaying in your head at 3 a.m. Your nervous system can’t tell the difference between a memory it’s protecting you from and one it’s trapping you inside of. It just knows what you keep rehearsing, and it builds toward more of it. The good news is your brain isn’t fixed. Neuroplasticity means it can rewire around a different ending than the one it keeps handing you. The nightmare doesn’t repeat because you’re weak. It repeats because nobody has shown your subconscious mind a different ending yet.

So I told Nathan that to heal, he had to start acting like the adventurous soul he already was. He had to embrace his courage by doing something that genuinely frightened him.

He’d never had any real experience with women. The shame ran too deep. I suggested something simple: get comfortable being around them. Take a pole dancing class.

He signed up. The facial deformity that surgery couldn’t fix didn’t matter to the women in that room. They thought he was courageous. They welcomed him in, and somewhere in that room he found a talent he never knew he had, and a passion for something that gave him joy.

Over the years he’s sent me photos of the awards he’s won as one of the only male pole dancers competing today. Last week, he sent me an invitation to a local theater, where he’s now part of a new cosplay pole-dancing company.

This is what happens when you stop believing what a cult, a childhood full of bullies, or three major religions told you about your own body. Cognitive work and past-life regression aren’t separate paths. Together they let you see the loop and the soul underneath it at the same time. You see the cage. Then you find the key that opens the door to your freedom.

Nathan will have a fabulous future, because he knows, on a soul level, that he chose the challenges he has successfully overcome. And he knows the nightmare was never the whole story. It was just the part he hadn’t looked at yet.

Sessions available in person in Los Angeles and worldwide via Zoom.

If you’re ready to stop replaying a life, or a loop, that was never actually yours, and start living the one that is, please give me a call at (323) 933-4377 to schedule a FREE CONSULTATION.

Sending hope,

Stephanie