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Does listening to subliminal tapes work? How about recording affirmations onto a tape and listening to them while sleeping? That’s what I had decided to find out for myself.

Subliminal messages on a tape or cd

A method that has been around for a long time now is using tapes with subliminal messages on them. A lot of people swear by them. There are literally tons of tapes and cds being sold (with subliminal messages) for just about every area of your life.

Basically, the tape contains some music and positive affirmations. All you can consciously hear is the music and not the messages. But your subconscious mind is supposedly able to listen to the hidden messages.

In theory this works because your conscious mind is busy listening to the music and the messages/affirmations bypass it and get directly imbedded in your subconscious mind.

Audio Affirmations

I had heard that a very effective method for using affirmations is recording them onto a tape or cd and listening to them while sleeping. To make it more effective you can actually listen to them while you’re falling asleep, through out the night while you’re sleeping and wake up listening to them.

These are the times that the conscious mind is dormant and you have direct access to subconscious mind without much resistance. You can theoretically bypass your analytical and self-limiting beliefs.

That’s briefly how they work. I’m assuming everyone has a basic understanding of them.

If not then there are probably many places online that can describe them in much greater detail than me, for anyone interested.

I wanted to find out for myself if they did indeed work. If they did then that would be simply awesome as both of these methods were very simple and easy to apply.

So, this is was my plan:

1. Listen to tapes while I fell asleep, through out the night while I was sleeping, and wake up listening to them
2. Do it consistently for at least 30-60 days
3. If no change then same as #1 but also listen to them through out the day
4. Do it consistently for at least 30-60 days again
5. If desired change not there then record baroke music along with the affirmations
6. Listen to them again for at least 30-60 days
7. Listen to subliminal tapes while I fell asleep, through out the night while I was sleeping and wake up listening to them
8. Do it consistently for at least 60 days
9. Same as #7 but also listen to them through out the day
10. Do it consistently for at least 60 days

How to measure results?

First of all I really wanted it to work. I had read how this had helped so many people so I was actually very motivated and very much looking forward to them working.

So how exactly would I know if either of these methods worked?

I was looking for any difference in my attitude. I also wanted to see if I was acting in accordance with the new messages or if I was still acting the same.

If a situation presented itself I would notice what thoughts came to my mind and what actions I took. I was not necessarily looking for a total change in my thinking but even a little reminder or a nudge in the right direction.

For example:

I was afraid of roller coasters, every time I got close to them I would start panicking and mind would be filled with fearful thoughts.

After applying these processes, even if I could feel myself thinking that even though it roller coasters were something I’d been afraid of I could actually take steps to overcome this fear, that would have been considered successful for me.

Basically, I was looking any, even a tiniest change in my thinking and attitude.

Results:

I did not notice any change.

The subliminal tapes also provided manuals with written affirmations that were recorded on the tapes so I actually would read through those affirmations as well to make sure I knew what was being programmed in my mind.

For the example of roller coaster above, I noticed if I was still acting out of fear or not. But in the moment of fear I could not even remember any affirmations that were being programmed in my mind through subliminal tapes or while sleeping via tapes I had created.

I had several affirmations regarding many different issues but I did not notice any change whatsoever in any of those areas nor in my attitude in those areas. That was very disappointing.

I had a lot of limiting beliefs toward these processes though. Even though I had really wanted them to work and was willing to put in the work required to make them work, I was also not very optimistic about them.

It’s quite possible they might have worked with a different attitude. But the whole point of these processes was to develop a different attitude. It was catch 22.

Even though both of these processes have apparently worked for a lot of people, for me neither the subliminal tapes, nor audio affirmations worked.

What exactly is depression? You can read my previous post for the symptoms of depression. But what is the cause of depression?

Let’s remember one thing! You were not born depressed. Therefore, your depression is not permanent.

Please keep in mind that I’m not talking about some disability though, which is different all together. I am talking about people who’re born healthy otherwise but fall into depression due to the circumstances in their lives.

Also, there are a lot of people who’ve cured their depression without medication so we know it is possible. This is a very good start.

You have a bad experience in your life. Now every time you think about it, it causes you to feel some kind of negative emotion. Not only that, but negative feelings get associated to anything that reminds you of that experience, or even anything that’s a little similar in nature.

What if you have many different negative events in your life? For example, what if you grew up in extreme poverty, experienced racism, had poor health, and grew up without real friends and so on?

Now, almost everything you look at might put you in a negative state.

You’re feeling sad all the time. More you feel sad, more you reinforce your current state and harder it gets to get out of sadness.

In a law of attraction term, you are always in a vibration of sadness. And since you attract in your life what you’re vibrating, you keep attracting other people, circumstances, and things that keep you in your current vibration, which is sadness. You’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

You stop to think about why you’re feeling sad but there is no answer since it’s been going on for quite some time now. It might have been a simple new gadget that someone bought that you didn’t have. Even though you might be able to afford it now but subconsciously it took you to a time when you were unable to afford anything. Or it might just be the way someone looked at you on the road, or way someone was dressed, or certain smell, or certain tone of voice, or people of certain religion/culture and so on.

It can be anything at all. It all depends what was around you when you had your negative experience(s) in your life. If in your negative state you focused in on a certain person then everytime that person’s around you, you might feel the same negative emotion. Actually, this is called a negative anchor in NLP. That same negative feeling gets anchored to that person.

So, how do you deal with it now? What do you do when you can’t even pin point the cause of your depression, of your sadness?

Take your attention away

One way is to take your attention away from sadness and by deliberately placing it on something that you like, something that makes you feel good.

If even for one moment you change your focus to something positive, at least for that moment your depression is no longer there. For that one moment you are feeling good.

You could try focusing on your breath. Focus on one complete breath, inhaling and exhaling. For that one breath your attention was taken away from depression to peace and tranquility. For that one breath you were at peace.

When I experimented like this, that’s when I realized that I did not need medication but needed to deliberately focus on things that brought joy to my life, things that made me feel good.

So, even if I couldn’t pin point the root cause of my depression but if I could feel good for just one moment then there there is hope that I could feel good for a whole day. It is just a matter of being in that state for longer periods of time daily.

This again is encouraging!

I have so much I want to write about but just don’t have the energy or the desire to start writing. I wanted to write about depression, what it is, what therapies I’ve tried, my current plan of action and so on.

I have no desire to stay in this state any longer. It really is not a pleasant way to spend my day. It’s an awesome feeling to be happy! I want to stay in that positive state all the time!

When I’m happy, not only do I feel good but everyone I come in contact with feels good around me.

I just feel so down that can’t seem to write what I really want to write so I thought I might just start by writing this simple post.

But soon…

This is similar to the post I’d written previously about me getting sick every single month. I don’t get sick that often but for as long as I can remember I have been tired. Every single day is a big struggle for me. For the longest time I just thought it was my diet or lack of exercise. I would try experimenting with different food and exercise routines but nothing changed

Here are my symptoms

• I have no energy to do anything at all
• I feel a little better when I’m among other people
• I feel extremely lonely when I’m by myself
• I can’t wait to leave my house in the morning
• After work all I want to do is lie on sofa and watch tv
• Feels like someone is sucking energy out of me
• Eating a lot of fruits and vegetables give me different type of energy. I feel fresh and clear minded but that feeling of fatigue, of energy being sucked out is still there
• I feel very sad all the time
• Feels like I can’t breathe
• Feels like someone is choking me
• Feel chained down because just can’t seem to get up when I am by myself
• I can’t concentrate on simplest of tasks
• I forget really simple stuff
• I want to do so much stuff but when I’m by myself I just can’t even get up from sofa or bed
• I have constant body pains
• I get irritated over smallest things
• I can’t seem to decide over simplest matters
• I experience strong feelings of guilty, unworthiness and hopelessness
• I constantly feel overwhelmed
• Whenever I am stressed I get sick
• Just feel like crying for some reason. I don’t cry but still the feeling is there

Depression

Recently it’s gotten much worse. And I figured out that it’s got nothing to do with my diet or exercise. I’m depressed. I used to be severely depressed when I was younger and I thought I had gotten out of it. I worked hard to get myself out of depression and in some ways I was quite successful. Even at my worse I don’t feel suicidal now.

So, that’s good news!

Looks like I hadn’t really recovered from depression. I sort of distracted myself from it. All the time I just kept myself busy with either watching tv, or hanging out with friends.

When I get home no wonder nothing gets done. On the way home when I’m amongst people on the subway I feel quite good and full of energy. I feel like going home and doing this and doing that and even feel like going out for a run. But as soon as I open the door to my condo and sit down I feel really drained. Feels like a vacuum is attached to me and my energy gets drained/sucked out of me. I just fall on the sofa unable to move around.

I don’t even have the energy to get up and get a glass of water or turn tv on or off or go on the computer.

I feel extremely lonely and loneliness eats away at me. But I am actually not lonely. But I just feel lonely. I’m afraid to be alone and now that cable tv is gone I don’t have the television to distract me. I watch some dvds but it’s not like before when the television used to be on all the time and I would hear it in the background no matter what I was doing.

Few days ago after I got home from work, I couldn’t even get up from the sofa. No matter what I did I was just unable to get up. So, I decided to meditate and see if that would help. I wanted to get up and set the timer for meditating but I just was totally unable to get up. It wasn’t until I had an intense need to go to the washroom that I was able to get up.

Meditating while lying down seemed like the only thing I could do but still was a step in the positive direction. Since I couldn’t get up, I just laid there and relaxed. I relaxed and concentrated on my breathing for about 15-20 minutes.

After meditating I felt a little better. Enough for me to pick up the laptop behind me and go to youtube and start watching music videos. Literally, that’s all the energy I had but it was enough. I had saved a few songs that I really liked. I had enough energy now to get them started.

But after listening to the first song I was feeling a little better, so I actually got up. Then I listened to more songs and kept this up for at least one hour. During that time I got out of sadness and was totally with the music and was feeling great.

That’s when I knew for sure that diet has nothing to do with the way I was feeling. I was only able to get myself to feel better by focusing on good thoughts and good songs in this case.:-)

I have been experimenting with various forms of self-talk in the past little while. One form that I find very effective is called self-conversation.

Self-conversation

Basically, you start talking out loud with yourself and have a conversation with yourself just like you would if you were talking to your best friend. I’ve found this to be the most effective method of getting any answers that I might need, any advice, or just getting myself to feel better when I might be feeling down.

Example

I ask myself “Ricky, how are you?” and then I reply to myself “I’m feeling a little sad!” Then I might ask “but why are you feeling sad?” To which I might reply “I feel like I should be progressing at a much faster rate but I’m not, I feel that I’m lazy!” And then I listen to the guidance from with in. If I ask myself or talk to myself in such a way and actually listen to what I’m talking about, I am often amazed how I have all the answers with in myself. I give myself amazing advice and I often feel much better by the end of the conversation and usually am back on track.

I’ve used this method to motivate myself, to stop beating up on myself, to stop constant self-doubt, stop self-defeating thoughts, bring myself back on track, and come out of guilt and a whole bunch of other negative thoughts that can occupy my mind.

The trick I found is to talk out loud and actually listen to yourself as if you would listen to your closest and best friend. If I just do it mentally it doesn’t seem to work as well. I think it’s because when talking out loud, your attention is all there and it’s hard to ignore your words. But if you’re doing it mentally it’s so easy for other thoughts to interfere and thus losing your focus.

Also, never, ever, ever put yourself down. You can have a tough love sort of talk with yourself but never put yourself down, never criticize yourself. Your answers should always be from love.

You can say stuff like “Ricky you know that you can do this! Reason you’re feeling like this is because of this but you know that you can do this, you have done it before many times!”

Try self-conversation and you may be amazed at the results!