Amy Whitford, CHT

I have always been drawn to helping others.  I started my adult life out as a cosmetologist helping others to feel better about their appearance.  I still enjoy helping others in that sense; it's important to be happy with the way you look. 

 

Over the years I've found jobs that serve others.  I've been a school secretary, substitute teacher, and school aide for children that needed a little extra help.  I even served on school boards to help make sure our children were getting the best education possible.  

 

We then decided to do treatment foster care for a few years.  We would get the harder to deal with children.  Most of the foster children we had were usually about to age out of the system.  Those teenagers were in desperate need of love and care from someone that only wanted good for them.  Because we specialized in treatment foster care, we got a lot of training that helped us to help these children that were desperately looking for love, acceptance, and someone to take care of them.  

 

Having 5 children allows you to learn how to parent in multiple ways.  Our oldest 3 children are adults and are making amazing choices and strides in their lives.  We are very proud of them.  Our youngest 2 are 13 year old twins, boy/girl.  We are finding that we need to not let ourselves get too lazy in our middle age so that we provide the same opportunities for those two precious children of ours.  They are growing into their own wonderful personalities and it will be so fun to see who they decide to become.​

 

I was first introduced to hypnotherapy by some dear friends that were leaders to my husband as a youth and the parents of some of our good friends growing up.  They had started taking the courses to become certified at the Certified Hypnotherapy Training School and offered to do sessions with my husband and I as they were going to school and learning.  We received so much benefit from those sessions that I began to look to become certified myself.

 

During this time I was diagnosed with two types of arthritis and Sjogren's Syndrome.  I had been dealing with the pain and effects of these diseases for quite some time but hadn't been properly diagnosed until then.  As I began to research these diagnoses I started to become concerned about damaging my body even more.  I was feeling that I needed to take better care of my body, since it is the only one I get.  I was working at Target and really pushing myself hard at work, walking upwards of 10 miles a day at a fast pace.   My pain levels seemed to rise even higher after I received this diagnosis and started doing research into it.

 

Quitting my job and babying my body seemed to be the answer at the time, so that's what I did.  I took a leave of absence, hoping that I could figure out how to control the pain during that 3 month period.  I tried a few things that helped for a temporary amount of time but nothing that got rid of the pain or allowed me to feel that I wasn't damaging my body more by pushing it to do much of anything. 

 

I was still doing hypnotherapy sessions with our friends and dealing with some of my other issues and limiting and false beliefs.  I was doing so much better emotionally.  When I was in my early 20's I had been diagnosed with bipolar, depression, and anxiety.  These had only seemed to worsen as I aged, causing me to seek stronger and stronger medications to seek some relief from their effects.  Hypnotherapy allowed me to see that the symptoms were getting worse because I was allowing my imagination, emotions, and misunderstood perceptions take control of my mind.  Hypnotherapy was teaching me how to control my own mind and pick and choose what I chose to believe as truth and accept into my mind.

 

As I was dealing with all of this I was also struggling with some of the worst depression of my life.  I felt useless and as if I didn't have much left to live for.  We were struggling financially because our income was cut in half without me working.  I was being tricked into thinking that my family would be better without me because I wasn't doing much for them anyways and I was only causing them more stress.  I now know that the adversary was whispering those words in my ear and they weren't even the least bit true. 

 

My in-laws remembered how excited I was just months before with the prospect of figuring out how to afford going to school to become a hypnotherapist.  It was right up my alley with helping others and I loved that I could teach others the amazing skills that I was learning through doing hypnotherapy myself.  They offered to help with the financial side so that I could get out of my funk and have a way to make an income that I could do with everything that I had been diagnosed with.  Their generosity was an answer to many prayers.

 

As I began taking classes I was able to work on myself even more, since the philosophy of the school is to take care of ourselves first so that we can help others even more.  I was still dealing with my high pain levels and still feeling the frustration and worry that it would only get worse the older I got.  I was then given the opportunity to do a session with the director of the school, W. Dennis Parker. 

 

Dennis asked me what I wanted to work on the most and my pain levels were the obvious answer.  He looked up in a book about emotions and found that those dealing with my kind of pain often were self critical.  I could instantly confirm that yes, I was extremely critical of myself.  He had me list all the critical things I said to myself.  We then reversed each of them and made sure I believed the reverse side of what I had been saying to myself.  My pain levels started to decrease the more I got rid of those false beliefs about myself.  By the end of my session I wasn't feeling any pain for the first time in about 35 years!

 

I have been able to keep the pain away since, as long as I say my affirmations and do some self hypnosis every few days.  If I start to feel a pain in a part of my body I am now able to do some self hypnosis and find the limiting or false belief that is causing the pain so that I can go back to pain free again.  I no longer allow myself to feel pain needlessly.  My inflammation levels are way down and I can hold my husband's hand again without it hurting.  I haven't been able to hold his hand for longer than a few seconds for almost 20 years!  Hypnotherapy has been the miracle I needed in my life in order to get my life back!  I love helping others and teaching them these amazing skills that have been life changing for me.