How many of you believe in the power of suggestion? Do you believe that words can hurt or help us? If you do, then you believe in the power of words and therefore have to admit that the power of suggestion is real. There is a difference between talking out your feelings with someone and the power of suggestion. Let’s take me, as an example. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling a heavy heart and I didn’t know why. I began trying to explain it to myself since I had no idea where it came from and immediately figured it had to do with adoption. I had recently read all about the primal wound theory and so I told myself maybe that was real and I was feeling sad from wounds experienced from adoption. I then started feeling even sadder! I worried that the reading I had done was acting as a power of suggestion to me that I should feel sad about being adopted when I had never felt that way before! I took a few steps back and really tried to get to the heart of the matter and why I was feeling down and I figured out that the message I had received about my biological grandmother thinking of me often in her life had actually turned me upside down (as I wrote in that blog post about being on a roller coaster). I started talking about the message and processing my feelings about it and after a few days, I felt like I was back to normal! I felt happy and upbeat again. I believe that if I had just decided to accept the sadness being from some wound I had experienced as a newborn then I would still be sad. Instead, I dug a little deeper and figured out the real reason for my heavy heart and resolved the real issue. I believe in the power of suggestion.
I found an article in the Association for Psychological Science about the power of suggestion and found that it made sense to me. This paragraph in particular stood out to me:
“But what can explain the powerful and pervasive effect that suggestion has in our lives? The answer lies in our ‘response expectancies,’ or the ways in which we anticipate our responses in various situations. These expectancies set us up for automatic responses that actively influence how we get to the outcome we expect. Once we anticipate a specific outcome will occur, our subsequent thoughts and behaviors will actually help to bring that outcome to fruition.”
I find that to be true. They give the example of someone expecting alcohol to lift their inhibitions and so they have a few glasses and indeed, their inhibitions are lifted. They believe that the alcohol did it, but they have relinquished themselves to the alcohol thereby lifting their inhibitions. Was it really just the alcohol that did it, or was it their expectation and relinquishment that did it?
What do you all think? Is it possible that the extent to which are sad, depressed, and mad about being adopted is the power of suggestion, or expectation by society, that we feel that way? I’m NOT DISCOUNTING the fact that some of us do feel those things but does the power of expectation make it WORSE? I’m also not discounting the primal wound theory, I think we are all different and maybe that exists for some people and maybe not for others. Or maybe we’ve all got it, but it doesn’t affect some of us. I think it’s a good point of debate, so let’s debate! Tell me what you think, as always, I’m open to changing my mind based on a good argument and I know a LOT of you have an opinion on this so ready…set… GO!