Clinical Hypnotherapy

What in the world is clinical hypnotherapy?

Buckle up! You’re about to find out.

Hypnotherapy is a therapeutic practice using guided hypnosis to reach a state of heightened suggestibility. In plain old English, it’s a tool we can use to help you gain greater control of your physical and psychological responses.

Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation and focused attention much like the one you’re in when completely absorbed in a book, movie, or meditation. Outside distractions are ignored and your conscious, analytical mind is quieted.

This means you are more open to suggestions for making healthful changes in your perceptions, emotions, thoughts, sensations, or behaviors that are subconsciously held.

Typically, therapists use hypnotherapy alongside other forms of psychological or medical treatment rather than as a standalone treatment.

Hypnosis is NOT mind control!

The first thing most people think of when they hear hypnosis is ‘mind control.’ You might picture watching a pendant swinging back and forth while repeating incantations you won’t remember once you come out of a trance. Envisioning such an experience feels deeply unsettling, and for good reason. It’s a misconception that being in hypnosis gives someone else control over your mind.

A hypnotherapist cannot make you do or say anything against your will. Hypnosis is not a truth serum, so you won’t be revealing information you wish to remain secret (like the recipe to your grandmother’s famous chocolate chip cookies)!

Hypnotherapy is NOT for retrieving forgotten or repressed memories.

Here’s the thing; many studies have shown that memories can be unreliable. I won’t go into the details here, but it’s important to understand that remembering something from the past doesn’t necessarily solve anything. Instead, let’s focus on the symptoms you are experiencing and the hypnotic suggestions that can help to improve those symptoms.

Studies also show that false memories can be implanted in our minds. I have serious concerns about this. I follow an ethical code of conduct as a Licensed Professional Counselor to act in the best interest of my clients. It would not be in your best interest for me accidentally to implant false memories while digging around in the deep recesses of your unconscious mind.

If you have always had a memory that bothers you, I can help you process that memory with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). But if you’re looking to dig up forgotten or repressed memories to explain why you feel the way you do, please understand I won’t attempt to do that. I focus hypnotherapy treatment on helping you improve symptoms that bring you into therapy; not on linking symptoms to a repressed event.

How does the mind function?

It’s essential to know a little bit about how your mind functions to understand how hypnosis can help you.

Your conscious mind is the analytical, rational, and critical thinking part that makes up about 5-10% of your mind. Short-term memories live in this finite part of your mind. It only holds about 7-9 bits of information at any given time (about the number of binkies my third-born carted around as a baby.)

When you are aware of your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings, you are using the conscious part of your mind.

The subconscious and unconscious comprise 90-95% of your mind. If your conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg, these are the submerged parts of the iceberg (yes, the parts that sank the Titanic).

Your subconscious holds beliefs, emotions, habits, and long-term memories that create your personality. It’s believed to function like a vast computer database, storing everything you experience and learn. You have your subconscious to thank for those limiting beliefs and unwanted behaviors that are so difficult to let go of.

The unconscious mind is thought to contain memories, thoughts, and desires you are unaware of that influence your actions and decisions. Experiences your brain does not need or want to remember reside here. This is also where automatic responses like fight or flight and bodily functions like breathing and digestion occur.

For the sake of ease, I’m going to refer to both the subconscious and unconscious minds as simply the subconscious.

The subconscious mind has power.

Let’s look at an example of the power of your subconscious. As a kid, your dad often came home from work angry and yelling at you and your siblings to go to your rooms. As an adult, you realize he was constantly stressed and couldn’t tolerate the noise level. In your younger years, though, your subconscious mind assigned meaning to this experience; it decided that you are in the way.

That meaning helped keep you safe by changing your behavior. Being yelled at didn’t feel good, so you retreated to your room before Dad’s expected arrival. This way, you weren’t getting yelled at and feeling bad. However, you sat alone in your room feeling disconnected and sad. And how could you not? Believing that you are in the way of such a meaningful relationship in your young life would understandably produce such feelings.

Years later, you have a pattern in relationships of staying out of the way. It’s to the point where your partner complains that you aren’t there for them or involved emotionally in the relationship. So, you consciously decide to show up differently. You learn skills to manage conflict and to be more emotionally supportive.

Despite your best efforts to change, you continually revert back to old habits of isolating and staying out of the way. It’s not that you don’t want to show up for your partner. Your subconscious programming keeps pulling you back into old habits. It just needs to be updated to serve you better in your current relationship.

How hypnotherapy can help.

In hypnotherapy, we will work together to craft hypnotic suggestions tailored to your treatment goals with my guidance on specific language that speaks directly to your subconscious mind.

A hypnotherapy session will start with an induction where I help you begin to relax and focus your attention. Then, I will use specific techniques to help deepen your physical and mental relaxation to increase the openness of your subconscious mind to hypnotic suggestions.

Once you’re in a deep state of hypnosis, I will say the hypnotic suggestion you helped to write. Then, I will bring you out of hypnosis using a reverse deepening technique.

When you come out of hypnosis, you are not “waking up” since you were never asleep. Even if I left the room and forgot about you after helping you get into a trance, you would eventually open your eyes and come out of hypnosis naturally.

If you like, I can make a recording of the session so you can practice at home. Of course, you should never go into hypnosis when driving or doing any activity which requires your conscious attention for safety reasons.

Hypnotherapy can be a great tool to use in addition to other forms of therapy to help you make desired, healthful changes in your life. If you suspect there are subconscious beliefs or behaviors holding you back in life, give clinical hypnotherapy a try!

Contact me today if you’re ready to update old beliefs and change unwanted behaviors.