"Five-Minutes Strong" and other Self-Love Musings of a Hypnotist
- Jun 4
- 8 min read
Trigger Warning:
This blog post pertains to a story of mental health struggles and going into some deeply mentally-taxing topics. (NOTE: I am fine now! This is not current. This poem is from years ago, thankfully.)
These include Self-Harm (SH), Suicidal Ideation (SI), and intrusive and ruminative thoughts.
Be aware of this before you read further.
Take care of yourself first,
Lady Harleen
P.s. I have included a small note about My recent absence from content creation and My community at the end of this post.
I initially wanted to open this blog post with the poem that is a bit further down, and let it speak for itself.
However, there is necessary context before we get into it, since the first two lines are a reference to a sort of personal mantra that I came up with in November of 2013.
When I sat down and told Myself that I was quitting self-harm for good, I didn't research tips on how to quit, I didn't make Myself promises about success bringing rewards...
I just set a timer.
Five minutes. I could last five minutes. Five minutes until I would give Myself "permission" to self-harm again.
So I set the timer, I sat down on the sofa and waited.
Five minutes.
I was anxious.
I was overwhelmed.
I was depressed I was tempted I was aching.
But I made it through those five minutes.
And when the timer went off, I was confronted with a choice: Should I reset the timer? Or did the urge feel so unbearable that I felt I couldn't last another five minutes?
I thought.
Really thought.
And I reset the timer.
It went off.
I reset it. It went off.
I reset it again.
Again, and again, and again.
A while into the pattern, I started believing in Myself: I could do this without the timer.
And so I did.
Since then, it's been almost thirteen years.
Those are a hell of a lot of five minutes.
So, I started calling myself "Five-minutes strong" as a reference to how I beat SH by allowing myself space to quit with forgiveness and permission.
That's where this poem starts.
Well, it starts within that span of time, an indeterminate number of years ago, though.
It starts one night when I was feeling overwhelmed with urges.
Please be aware that this poem relates to ruminative thoughts regarding SH and SI. It does not make any specific triggering references, but it refers to the temptation and intrusive thoughts.
Poet's note: I am, by nature, an auditory person.
I enjoy making things through sound.
I wrote this poem with the intention of it being heard.
I think you'll understand, then, why I'm including a raw clip of Me reading this poem, and then the text below it.
P.s. Please do not mind the audio quality, I am traveling and away from My usual equipment.
You’re five minutes strong, and that keeps them at bay.
But how many five minutes would you throw away?
-
Now you know you really are five minutes strong.
But now five are feeling a bit just too long.
-
So you write. And you read.
And you play. And you plead.
To avoid all those thoughts that keep making you need.
-
So you sit. And you think.
As your brain starts to sink.
And keep doing your best in avoiding the brink.
-
But sometimes your mind simply likes to obsess.
Sometimes it gets stuck in the muck and the mess.
Sometimes you feel that you can’t help but think
That if you think more, you might just find the link
The thing that you know that you need to address,
The magical fix that you feel you possess.
-
So now we are finding our way back to this
The part you don't want to admit that you miss
That sings you that sweet song that beats and berates
The one that you know will give constant debates
To whether you'll cave to that nightmarish bliss.
The one that feels just like a soothing abyss.
-
You do all you need, and you keep yourself clean
From that old behavior that feels so obscene.
-
You started this po-em to try some self-care.
To keep your brain busy and keep your mind clear.
-
Did it work? Are you good?
Do you think like you should?
Can you truthfully tell them you feel understood?
-
Can you go on and say
That you're truly okay?
When it's clear that your brain has a loud stowaway?
-
Or are you just lying to them and yourself?
Putting all of those feelings way back on the shelf?
-
Put them in a box in the back of your mind
A place that you know that nobody will find
-
So you can play dumb
And feel nothing, feel numb
And so you can hide from the pain that you’re from.
-
You've been through some stuff
It’s really been rough
And you're out in the world and not feeling enough
-
You find it so easy to be nice and kind
to help those around you who've fallen behind
You tell them you’re there and that they’re okay
You make sure they’re fine, and you tell them you’ll stay
-
but when it is you who has hurt on your mind
You feel it's too hard and you feel so resigned.
-
But what is self-care? And how can you address
yourself in those moments of deep dark distress?
-
When you are in pain and you feel so alone,
and feel like you push through it all on your own.
how can you take care when your mind will obsess
on all of your flaws and how you feel far less?
-
do you think you can care
for yourself and beware
of those times that your mind isn't really so clear?
-
Can you back up and see
that your mind isn’t free
of those thoughts and those patterns that feel like debris?
-
It's hard to keep going on this painful track
it's hard to keep pushing when your mind feels so black
-
but somehow you'll make it, one day you will see
one day you'll realize that somehow you're free
I don't remember where I was or what I was doing when this specific video came across My feed, but I do remember the video itself crystal clearly.
While filming a vlog, this content creator was struck by a moment of beauty in Nature.
While sitting and capturing herself working on self-care through skills mastery, she noticed that it had started to snow.
She had the camera facing her, and instead of us as the audience missing the moment of beauty... The moment of beauty was intensified tenfold by her immediate response and subsequent reaction to herself.
Watching her realize that she was healing, she was doing the thing, she was feeling more competent and healthy...
And then awe.
Seeing someone discover that they are healing is an incredible moment.
Seeing yourself healing is incredible.
A lot of people glorify the path to healing.
"Of course they glorify it," you're thinking. "It's a glorifiable thing, healing and getting better." Yes.
Let Me explain.
Healing is beautiful, yes. Healing is incredibly beautiful.
But healing is ugly too. Healing isn't just "getting better", healing is unlearning behaviors and thought patterns that are deeply ingrained by our environment and survival instincts.
Healing isn't just "getting better", it's sitting up at 3 am, your chest aching, your headphones blasting, and your soul just so exhausted, believing in yourself that you can hold on through the pain, that there is a way to see yourself through, even if it is so very painful.
Healing is believing that you can love yourself, will love yourself, even if you don't right now.
When it comes to being a subject, I've never really had much results from hypnosis before, and I think that as I write this, I am realizing why.
As is obvious from the poem above, I have been through some "stuff".
There is lots of trauma work still to be done, but I think... I think I finally have reached the point in My journey that is able to hold "Shadow Work". (By "Shadow Work" in this case, I mean addressing things about the personality/history/unconscious mind and experiences that are kept in the "dark" and "shadow", repressed from conscious awareness by either denial or willful ignorance - and so much more.)
And, of course, as a writer, a hypnotist, and as a witch, I had to engage with this dive into My subconscious/unconscious mind through metaphor, hypnosis, and deep meditation.
I won't share the exact methods of My exploration into My mind, but I will share an experience I had last night.
An experience that... while I haven't put it into direct "x experience must mean y meaning", oh, it has been so very healing.
I honestly have no idea when the final threshold was crossed into being able to hold shadow healing.
I have no idea, but it was definitely within the last few days, when I finally sat down to "dive into" My mind without fear. I finally felt ready to go into spaces about which I had no idea. Not the gravity of the meaning, nor the gravity of the space.
I was ready to visualize.
Or at least sense out the "reality" of the metaphor. Sense out what was going on through a story, through characters, through feeling a space and knowing the "facts" of what was "in front of" Me. So I sat and explored, with My open mind approaching open-ended questions.
I've been "spelunking" these last few days, taking time between writing and trying to catch up on admin work to learn more about My subconscious mind.
Yeah, you'd think that a hypnotist would know their subconscious mind by now, creating content for 5 years plus...
But these things...
These things are difficult.
Trauma is difficult.
Healing from trauma is difficult.
I saw a little girl with a sort-of bowl haircut.
I saw her from behind as she was there, by a closed window shade, and I knew that somehow, she knew something that I didn't. That she was wiser than I was in this one moment. And suddenly I realized...
She loved Me.
She loved Me.
I had spent so much time afraid of and mourning the "fact" that younger-me would judge and hate Me for "how I turned out".
I'd spent so much time in therapy preparing to reparent Myself and comfort My inner child when I finally met her.
I'd not once considered that she wouldn't be the one who needed the comforting first.
It was an intense experience. It was intense.
I encountered My inner child, and I realized that she didn't necessarily need the healing and holding; I did.
Holding that space and realizing that My capacity for self-love was already there.
I didn't need to conjure something from nothing; I didn't have to create self-love. I had already put in so much work into loving Myself... and then I realized... I always did.
I had figured out how to survive for five minutes.
I had figured out how to appreciate beauty and how to witness other people's journeys of self-love.
I had figured out how to talk gently to the child inside, and in that learned how to talk gently with Myself.
And now...
Now I'm figuring out that it never was as hard as it felt, to love Myself.
I was doing it the whole time.
Now... I want to address the elephant in the room. In the last video, the exciting face reveal, I made some pretty exciting announcements. Where are they?
Unfortunately, shortly after announcing all of them, some things in My personal life blew up, including a loss in the family, experiencing fallout from coming out as OTD* and queer to deeply religious family, and honestly, so much more. I have a few exciting projects on my desk right now, some really neat scripts. I also am in the middle of re-tooling the website and forms (and hypnocoaching; it's not just for feedees!~ It's for pets, too~).
I look forward to getting back into things, look out for new content coming up.
Lady Harleen
*OTD (Off-the-Derech) is a term within the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community to indicate someone who has left the religious and/or community fold in one way or another.
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