This weekend, I took a ferry to one of the small islands off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina. The beach was scattered with enormous seashells - some spiraled to the right, some to the left. I picked up one, thinking it was a conch, but learned from the boat captain that it was a Lightning Whelk - because it opened to the left - one of the few sea snails whose shell opens to the left. He added that it looked EXACTLY like the Knobbed Whelk, which opens to the right. Honestly, if the Captain hadn't told me, I wouldn't have even thought twice about it, much less known they shells were from two separate creatures.

But it really stuck with me.

Why would evolution bother to create two identical creatures with different openings? If one spiraling direction were more efficient than the other, or became more useful than the other, wouldn't the less useful spiral have disappeared by now? Well, not if the entire body of sea snail life survives by having TWO variations. Then it makes absolute sense.

It made me think about how people carry around our own versions of left-handed and right-handed shells - strange, contradictory, and misunderstood contradictory behaviors that helped us survive something.

When a client sits across from me and says, "I know this behavior doesn't make sense, but I keep doing it anyway," I know we're close to something important.

Our minds aren't designed to be sleek, efficient machines. They're not engineered for logic, optimization, or even happiness. They're cobbled together by a variation of adaptive strategies to do one thing really well: keep us alive.

Just like evolution in the natural world, the evolution of our own psycho-emotional world doesn't aim for perfection. It doesn't scrap the blueprint and start over. It tinkers. It patches. It reuses old parts in new ways. It favors what works right now, not what makes sense long-term.

So, that anxious thought loop you can't shut off?

That freeze response in conflict?

That need to please, to hide, to overachieve?

These behaviors aren't flaws. They're strategies - tools your unconscious mind adapted to using because, at some point, they worked.

Maybe they helped you avoid punishment.

Maybe they kept you from feeling alone.

Maybe they made you feel just safe enough to survive.

But now, you're in a different environment. You're not five years old anymore. The threats have changed, but the strategies and tools haven’t.

This is where hypnotherapy comes in. Not to shame those old patterns, but to meet them with understanding. To update your system with conscious intention. To say: thank you for helping me survive, but I don’t need this anymore. Let’s find something that fits who I am now.

Because once you realize your mind is a workshop of quick fixes and clever improvisations, not a master-designed system, the question isn't "What's wrong with me?"

It's: "What was this trying to protect me from?"

And more importantly: "What do I want to build now?"

If you're carrying around patterns that no longer serve you, you're not broken - you're just overdue for an update. If you're ready to explore what that looks like, I’d love to help.