Earlier today, the news broadcast a story about a firestorm
surrounding Spanish matador, Francisco
Rivera Ordóñez, who was photographed holding his infant daughter while
fighting a bull. He defended his demonstration explaining how it was a family
tradition for a matador to hold his child while fighting a bull. He even showed
a picture of his father, also a matador, holding him in a very similar position
when Ordóñez was a very young boy. Apparently, that tradition extended back several
generations and he had no intention of doing anything differently. He had been
previously photographed holding his older daughter this exact same way.
Is this (and other) behaviors passed down between generations an example
of a cultural family tradition or, more simply, sharing subconscious “knowns”?
Consider the following examples. It is a popular romantic (albeit dated)
tradition for a man to get down on bended knee to propose marriage to his
sweetheart. While less common in the 21st Century, there was a time
when this was considered the only legitimate and acceptable way to ask someone
to marry you. Or, when looking at family photographs you notice that you are holding
your brand-new baby the exact same way your parents held you and grandparents
held your mother or father. In some families, members of subsequent generations
enter the same vocation that a parent, grandparent and great-grandparent chose,
such as fire-fighting, joining the police force or armed services, becoming a
physician, etc. At some point this career choice seems to be less of an option
and more of a predetermined destiny. And even that observation is too
simplistic.
As I explained in a previous blog titled Traditions:
It’s All in the Family, the subconscious part of the mind likes and wants
to do what is familiar (known), because this sense of familiarity represents
“safety” and comfort. Hypnosis Motivation
Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.
proposed that human behavior is based on the subconscious mental scripts that
we create during early childhood, at which time the subconscious mind is
accumulating and storing various message units that will ultimately comprise
the subconscious life script. Each message is ultimately categorized as a
positive (pleasure) or negative (pain) experience, and anything that the
subconscious mind does not recognize falls under the category of “pain.” Even
if the conscious mind questions the behavior, its logic/reasoning/will-power/decision-making
faculties will be no match for the unspoken acceptance of that action, in the
subconscious mind.
Furthermore, the subconscious mind typically resists doing anything new
or different (e.g., not hold a child during a bull-fight) even when the logic,
reason, will-power/free-will and reasoning faculties of the conscious mind says
that it’s okay (safe) to do so. These behaviors are the basis of Dr. Kappas’s
Theory of Mind. The more times these behaviors are (and have been) repeated,
the “safer” and more comfortable they feel. Consequently, people tend to repeat
certain behaviors and/or continue to hold particular beliefs that they already
know or recognize, simply because these actions are familiar, comfortable, convenient
and even expected of them to
perpetuate.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified
hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors
from the Hypnosis Motivation
Institute in 2005. For more information
about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2016
