I don’t know how many people are familiar with the concept of secondary gain, but behaviors associated with it are often discussed in the Hypnotherapy and NLP Coaching work that I do with my clients. It’s kind of like both winning and losing simultaneously.

It has to do with the fact that people will behave in ways to have what they seemingly don’t want in their life and they can’t understand why. “Why do I continue to eat a big slice of chocolate cake every night when I know I’m about to get diabetes? I know it only makes me sick and overweight, so I can’t figure out why I do it.”

In the hypnosis sessions with my clients, we reveal the hidden benefits from these behaviors… otherwise known as the secondary gain. If you truly derived no benefit from them at all, you would cease to do them. 

The conscious mind sees no benefit, but the conscious mind is only 5% of your total mindpower. The other 95%… the subconscious mind… has some very valid reasons for these patterns of behavior. Remember that the subconscious mind retains beliefs, thoughts, values and behavior patterns that get created in childhood. 

For example, in working with a woman who came to me to lose weight, we unearthed the fact that she was molested as a child. We further revealed that she felt safer when she was overweight so that men would not find her as attractive. Her subconscious mind had solved a problem for her and found a way to “protect” her as a child. Her behaviors and thought patterns created a “winning” outcome for her when she was very young.

However, as she grew up and wanted to lose weight, her subconscious program was so ingrained that she couldn’t manage to shed a pound. Her behaviors and subconscious thought patterns that originally “saved” her as a child, were now creating a “losing” situation in her life.

That is… until they were surfaced and revealed. 

Then, my client could clearly see how this pattern got created and also that she no longer needed it to be safe. That old negative program could not blindside her anymore, so it no longer controlled her. She went on to achieve her goal weight.

Dig beneath the surface to really see the programs that are running you. The concept of benefitting from adversity seems counter intuitive, but if you examine it… it actually makes a lot of sense. 

If you are stuck in behavior patterns that make no sense to you… yet prevent you from moving forward… just reach out.

Jayne Goldman, MBA, C.Ht., Founder and Principal of Best Life Hypnotherapy in Los Angeles, is a Certified Hypnotherapist and NLP Master NLP Practitioner and Coach.