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An Unexpected Journey
Steven Fidler's Story

If I had to give a title to my life, it would be “An Unexpected Journey.” I was born into a middle class family, with all of the standard problems and promises of that middle class life. I didn’t, however, have any real idea how life doesn’t care about where you start or where you think you are going. Life has its own plans.

A photo of Steven Fidler, facing the camera and smiling

I had no idea that I would unexpectedly go blind. I had just graduated college. I finished up, expanding what I thought was the natural progression of my family. Each generation does a little better than the one before. I was the first on my father’s side to graduate from college with a four year degree. I also managed to graduate with honors. I was going to make a solid, middle class life for myself, just like I had been raised.

 

I was diagnosed early on, around the age of four, with night blindness. I could never understand how other people just walked around at night. I always had difficulty seeing anything at all when the sun went down. This was just the beginning of many unexpected twists and turns for me as time went on.

 

I was diagnosed with an eye disorder called Retinitis Pigmentosa, which routinely results in tunnel vision and later in life, blindness. The doctors told me that I would be blind somewhere in my 60s, most likely. For me, it happened just after college graduation.

 

All of my middle class hopes and dreams vanished on that unexpected day when I woke up and could no longer focus. I loved the Christmas holiday and I always woke up, looking at the Christmas lights I had strung around the four corners of my bedroom ceiling. It just gave me that Christmas spirit feeling and started each day with that sense of magic. I never made it out of bed that day. I cried all day.

 

Suddenly, my 60s had come early and taken from me what seemed like everything at the time. A clearly mapped out future was gone, and I experienced things I would never have thought possible before then. People stopped seeing me for who I was, and saw me as something less. Something broken.

 

I really didn’t take it well. I went through a spiral of anxiety and panic attacks which were so severe that I would pass out. My fear of those attacks had me constantly anxious. I distracted myself with food and got up to over 300 pounds. All of my ideas about the life I would grow up to have were devoured by the loss of my eyesight, while I was devouring everything else, to try to find some way to feel enjoyment instead of anxiety.

 

I struggled with depression when I wasn’t anxious. Things seemed pretty dark for a long time. Every lifetime is a long story, but what really changed everything for me was when I had my fortunate accident to find hypnotherapy. I had never intended on becoming a hypnotherapist. I had no real idea of what it actually was. Through all of my meanderings, attempting to rebuild myself and to build a bigger life than I was living, I found not only that hypnotherapy works, I found that it is the key to everything. Happiness, connection, a true-hearted, genuine life, and all of the possibilities that anyone can have.

 

How could I not want to share all that I have been through and the way that everyone can be free of their struggles? I became a hypnotherapist and dove deeply into it. Finding the understandings of how the mind truly works. How it connects to the heart and how that alignment is the key to unlocking everything. I am proud and excited to share it with anyone who wants their lives and relationships transformed and their choices and possibilities to be unlimited.

 

All of my suffering led me to the answer. Without it, I could not recognize that even the blindness was a gift. Without it, I would never have found the keys to true freedom. That the mind is limitless once we stop putting the limits on ourselves, and that all of this, the blindness, the struggles, and the joys, are all a gift.

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