It’s odd being a hypnotherapist.
The practice itself is backed up by reams of studies and data proving it to be of value, but a lot of people still think it’s a pseudoscience.
It’s recognised as one of the most effective ways to treat anxiety-related conditions and quit smoking, but when I introduce myself as a hypnotherapist, people sometimes wiggle their fingers at me and go ‘woooooooo’.
The history of hypnotherapy is riddled with very serious scientists trying to discredit it only to realise later that it was real all along.
Still, despite this rigorous scientific backing, I have encountered people who have told me ‘oh I don’t believe in hypnotherapy, sorry!”
And all of this makes sense. Thoughts and feelings are nebulous creatures. We humans know about how the brain is made up of chemicals and neurons. We have words like ‘neuro-transmitters’ and ‘bio-electric impulse’, and that can make it sound down-to-earth and straightforward. But what you’ve got to bear in mind is this:
A chemical and electrical change in your brain can result in you seeing an image of an old friend you haven’t seen in years, hearing their voice, smelling their deodorant, feeling that lightness of being inside that their presence evokes. You see them without your eyes getting involved. Hear them without the sound of their voice being present. It might be fleeting, it might be vivid, it depends on who you are and how you create the memory of that person in your mind.
We call this ‘thinking of someone’. When you break it down like this, it sounds like it could almost be a hallucination. But we do this all the time and think nothing of it.
Naturally, when we turn our attention to how this works, it starts to feel mysterious, and that’s where hypnosis crops up. It’s the job of the hypnotherapist to help people speak their own internal language, and it’s a language they understand intuitively without ever having formally learnt it.
So lets try and really demystify this and step away from the metaphors for a second. What is hypnosis? And can everyone be hypnotised?
First of all, I define hypnosis as ‘any conscious use of trance’. And ‘trance’ is, quite simply, where deep thought occurs.
The trope of trance in movies is a state where someone is ‘zonked out’. Their eyes are staring as if they aren’t really there, or their eyes are shut tight and it’s like they’re going into a type of sleep where they’re still able to communicate in complete sentences. There is some truth to that. People can ‘think’ or ‘imagine’ so hard that they become distracted from their physical surroundings Ever go into a room and immediately forget why you went in there? Ever look at the clock and realise that two hours have passed, but it felt like five minutes? We write these experiences off as something that ‘happens to everyone’, and they do. Everyone’s brain has the ability to get so caught up in an experience or a thought process that it loses track of the wider context.
But this doesn’t HAVE to involve waving a pocketwatch in front of someones eyes.
Lets say you have a complicated problem that you need to try and fix. You furrow your brow, and say ‘hmmmm’. Here, thought happens. The way it happens is going to be different for everyone. Some people might try and create mental images of the possible solutions. Others might have a dialogue inside their own mind, where they talk themselves through various approaches. Some people might just ‘feel’ like one choice is a better option than the others. This process may take mere seconds, it may take minutes, but regardless of length, this is a moment of trance. Just like the example of the ‘old friend’ above, you see things that aren’t there, hear things that aren’t said. But you are in complete control of those sounds and images. It’s how you understand the problem and its possible solutions.
That’s trance. Hypnosis occurs when someone says ‘think of that really complicated problem.’ On their suggestion, you create those images and sounds in your head.
You’re still in control, but its directed by someone else.
Now lets approach the ‘therapy’ part; if you experience anxiety, at least a part of it is going to come from your thoughts. The difference here is that these thoughts are involuntary. No-one chooses to have anxiety, it comes unbidden either from environment, past trauma, or a mix of both. But however it comes, it causes you to dip into trance. Your thoughts create a story in your head, mental images, self-talk, feelings you experience in your body, and all of this amounts to what you call ‘anxiety’.
If someone comes to me with anxiety, it’s my job to figure out how best to help them permanently change those series of thoughts that are occurring. This is where the therapists toolbox comes in; and for my younger clients, I call this ‘imagination exercises’. Sometimes it involves remembering when the anxiety started and changing certain subtle details. Sometimes it involves helping them create a metaphor that would increase their understanding of the situation. Honestly, if I had to list all the possible tactics at a hypnotherapists command, this would be a very long blog. Suffice to say, all of it involves helping the person access their own deep thoughts and make changes to them.
But is there anyone hypnosis CAN’T work on?
In a word, no. Hypnosis works on everyone, but everyone goes into hypnosis differently. Just like how we don’t all think the exact same way. I’ve encountered people who have no inner-monologue. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have a way of communicating with themselves, they just did it their own personal way. I’ve encountered people who swore blind they couldn’t visualise. They still had some kind of thought mechanism that allowed them to understand visual ideas, if they had to describe what their best friend looked like they wouldn’t just shrug their shoulders and say ‘I don’t know’, their brain would give them the information… Just in a way that was unique to them.
And I think this is why hypnosis can be misunderstood and feel mysterious. It’s not that it’s some other-worldly power. It’s that it’s….unbelievably normal. We all think all of the time. Thinking about thinking is like breathing to understand your breath. It’s SUPPOSED to be a background action. Bringing it forward changes the dynamic. But if things are going wrong, and your emotions are becoming dysregulated, it becomes your best option to heal.