Why do I keep talking myself out of the things that would grow my business?
At 9.40 on a Tuesday morning, a potential client’s number sits open on your screen. Your coffee has gone cold beside the keyboard. For several minutes, your thumb hovers over the call button, long enough for the screen to dim twice. Then a reasonable thought arrives: they are probably in meetings this morning, so after lunch is the better option. Many of the business owners who come to me for solution-focused hypnotherapy for avoidance in Edinburgh know this moment well. The call feels important. It also feels oddly impossible to make.
You know exactly what needs to happen. The commercial opportunity is obvious. In fact, you even know how to approach it. Somehow, the call still doesn’t happen. Meanwhile, the proposal waits in your drafts folder for another week.
You are the lawyer and the defendant.
Imagine walking into a courtroom where you play both roles. The charge is failing to do something that would move your business forward. Fortunately, you have hired an excellent lawyer. That lawyer is you.
Your defense is impressive. Based on your opening argument, the potential client probably isn’t ready yet. Next, you point out that the proposal needs one more review. Your new service needs a little more work before anyone hears about it. As for making that phone call today, the timing could hardly be worse.
Each argument sounds reasonable, because most of them contain some truth. The judge agrees with you. Not guilty.
You leave the courtroom rather pleased with yourself. However, one small problem remains. The call remains unmade. Nobody has heard about your new service either. Tomorrow the court will be back in session.
For many business owners, the trial runs in small, respectable ways. You reorganise your website instead of pitching. Before raising your prices, you sign up for another course. Over time, a whole quarter can pass as you carefully prepare for a move that never happens.
Avoidance becomes particularly convincing in intelligent, experienced people. Explaining decisions well is part of your job. Unsurprisingly, you are equally good at explaining them to yourself.
What is happening underneath: relief works as a reward
Most tasks that would grow your business carry an element of judgment from another person. A client might say no. A colleague might think your new service is a mistake. As a result, your brain treats the task as a possible social threat. Threat-detection systems, including the amygdala, respond within moments, long before your reasoning has finished weighing the commercial case.
You may feel this as chest tightness or a sudden urge to check email. Very often it shows up as a vague reluctance you cannot quite name.
Notice what happens the moment you decide to postpone. The tension drops. Within seconds, relief arrives. In learning terms, removing an unpleasant state acts as a reward. Psychologists call this negative reinforcement: a behavior becomes more likely when it ends something unpleasant.
In other words, the brain learns a simple rule. Postponing brings relief now. By contrast, making the call might bring a new client in six weeks. Next to an immediate drop in discomfort, a possible gain that far away carries very little weight in the moment of choosing.
This also explains the lawyer. Reluctance usually arrives first. Afterward, the thinking mind supplies sensible reasons to follow it. Psychologists have observed this tendency for decades. Much of your defense is a summary written after the verdict.
Why knowing better does not close the case
Most of the people I work with have already spotted this pattern. Yet insight on its own rarely changes it.
Timing is the reason. The relief loop runs fast and largely outside conscious deliberation. Your understanding of the pattern lives in slower, effortful thinking, which tends to arrive after the decision is made. By the time you notice the defence, the judge has already ruled.
Put simply, the part of you that knows better is usually sitting in the public gallery. It can watch the whole trial. It rarely gets a vote.
Every postponement also retrains the loop. Over time, avoidance can start to feel like good judgment. If this sounds close to procrastination, the two are closely related. Why intelligent people procrastinate looks at that side of the pattern. You have plenty of knowledge and ambition. What keeps losing is the moment of action. That is why my work in solution-focused hypnotherapy for avoidance in Edinburgh focuses on that moment.
How solution-focused hypnotherapy for avoidance in Edinburgh helps
Arguing with the lawyer rarely works, because the lawyer is very good at arguing. Solution-focused hypnotherapy works with the part of the process that decides the case: the threat response and the relief that rewards escaping it.
In sessions, we start with what you want your business to look like, in concrete detail. We focus most of our attention on the version of you who picks up the phone. We also look for the small signs that this version already exists, because it usually does.
Hypnosis is a state of focused, relaxed attention. In that calmer state, the threat response settles. As a result, you can think about the uncomfortable task with more perspective and less alarm. You can also rehearse it, from the opening sentence of the call to the moment the client asks about price. Rehearsal in a calm state makes the action familiar. For the brain, familiar actions carry less threat.
Over a few sessions, clients often notice that the defense gets shorter. The reasons still appear. However, they carry less weight. More often than before, the call gets made before the case has been fully argued.
If you’re looking for the best hypnotherapist in Edinburgh, you’re right to check credentials first. I’m Eteri McKenzie, a clinical hypnotherapist in Edinburgh’s West End. My work draws on clinical hypnotherapy training, registration with the NCH and CNHC, membership of the ASFH, and my current MSc studies in Human Cognitive Neuropsychology at the University of Edinburgh. For busy business owners, solution-focused hypnotherapy for avoidance in Edinburgh offers a practical way to change the verdict where it is actually decided.
What you can try this week
- Put the defense in writing. When you catch yourself postponing a growth task, write down your reasons. The following morning, read them back and mark which ones are facts and which ones are forecasts.
- Commit to the first ninety seconds. Agree only to dial the number or write the first line of the proposal. Starting is usually the most threatening part. Once the action has begun, the anticipated threat often turns out to be larger than the real one.
- Name the relief. The next time you postpone, pause and notice the drop in tension. Saying “that was relief” to yourself makes the loop visible while it is running.
- Settle your body before the task. Before a call you have been avoiding, spend two minutes breathing slowly with a longer out-breath than in-breath. Slow exhalation supports the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps the body calm down.
Questions people often ask.
Can hypnotherapy help with avoidance at work?
For many people, yes. Solution-focused hypnotherapy lowers the threat response linked to the avoided task. It also lets you rehearse that task in a calm state until it feels familiar. Results vary from person to person, so a first consultation helps you judge whether it suits you.
How is avoidance different from procrastination?
Procrastination describes delaying a task. Avoidance describes the protective pattern underneath, where the brain learns that postponing brings relief. In everyday life the two overlap a great deal.
Where can I find a clinical hypnotherapist in Edinburgh?
Eteri McKenzie is a clinical hypnotherapist based in Edinburgh’s West End, registered with the NCH and CNHC. She works with busy professionals and business owners on avoidance, anxiety, burnout, and self-sabotage.
Do I need to understand my avoidance before starting therapy?
No. Most clients already understand the pattern well. Sessions focus on what you want to happen next and on making the action itself feel safer.
The verdict you keep reaching.
Tomorrow, your defense will probably sound as reasonable as it does today. Your business will also be waiting in exactly the same place. If you recognise yourself in this courtroom, solution-focused hypnotherapy for avoidance in Edinburgh can help you act before the trial begins.
Next time you catch yourself preparing a brilliant case, ask yourself one question. Am I protecting my business, or am I protecting myself from discomfort?
Author bio
Eteri McKenzie is a clinical hypnotherapist offering solution-focused hypnotherapy in Edinburgh’s West End. She is registered with the NCH and CNHC, a member of the ASFH, and is completing an MSc in Human Cognitive Neuropsychology at the University of Edinburgh. Her work helps busy professionals close the gap between knowing what to do and doing it.
If you’re in Edinburgh
If you’re ready to understand how your mind and body can reconnect through neuroscience and Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy, I’d be happy to guide you.
I work with clients both in Edinburgh and online, helping them move from a state of freeze and procrastination to one of calmness, motivation, and self-trust.
Learn more about how solution-focused hypnotherapy works
📍Based in Edinburgh | Specialist in Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy for Anxiety
📩 Book a consultation or explore more at https://www.eterimckenziehypnotherapy.co.uk/booking/
