I stopped going to therapy when the pandemic hit, mostly because I didn’t feel like I had enough privacy to do effective phone sessions from home. But it’s not as if the issues I typically struggle with just magically went away. In fact, as anyone who has lived through the last seven months will attest, they became even more intense.
So when a friend reached out, looking for people to work with for his new hypnotherapy practice, via Zoom, I was game.
I was looking for two things — a deeper sense of calm in these tumultuous, uncertain times; and some creative confidence. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.
There’s no right or wrong way to be hypnotized
We start each session talking about goals and progress, and then, just using his voice, my hypnotherapist eases me into a deeply relaxed, dreamy, trance-like state — one in which, the idea goes, I’m more open to suggestions.
It doesn’t always feel the same, session to session. Sometimes I’ve gone far out there — almost dissociated. Sometimes I’ve struggled hard to focus on my therapist’s voice. Sometimes it’s very visual. Sometimes it’s more about feelings and memories. One time, I cried. It’s all part of the process.
It’s not mind control
If your primary reference to hypnotherapy comes from Charlie’s Angels (as mine did), you should know this isn’t some insidious form of mind control. Your hypnotherapist can’t make you do anything you don’t actually choose to do. You aren’t being brainwashed. And there’s no swaying pocket watch.
It’s about accessing your unconscious mind
In a way, the trance-like state disarms the brain’s usual protective systems.
“It’s about bypassing the critical factor, which is the gateway between the conscious and unconscious mind,” says Jordan Schatz, the Los Angeles-based certified hypnotherapist I’ve been working with. “It’s the thing that protects and defends the things you have in your subconscious mind — your beliefs, habits, patterns.”
“That critical part of the brain is useful most of the time,” he says. “But it can get in the way of change.”
It’s great for all the things that COVID has messed up: sleep, diet, stress
Hypnosis is great for treating insomnia and anxiety, as well as for weight loss, quitting smoking, and pain management. Also, hypnobirthing: “Essentially, hypnobirthing aims to ‘release fears’ in the mind that tell a woman that labor is painful; instead, it teaches a positive view of birth with deep relaxation, visualization, and self-hypnosis.”
It’s not great for everything, though
“I can’t diagnose or treat medical illness or severe psychological disorder,” says Schatz. “It’s also not a good fit if the person doesn’t really want to change.”
It works in mysterious ways
Len Milling, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Hartford, put it this way, in an interview for Time: “If you asked 10 hypnosis experts how hypnosis works, you would probably get 10 different explanations.”
Even if the how is a little murky, the data is pretty clear: Hypnotherapy works, especially in conjunction with other tools such as cognitive behavioral therapy.
How you know it’s working
Some people might come in to quit smoking, have one session, and their craving is gone. That’s a pretty clear indication. For others, change is more subtle, more incremental.
I’ve been doing this for a couple months now. And it’s not like I woke up one morning more confident as a writer and less anxious as a person. But I feel small, open spaces that weren’t there before, where I can make choices that are different than my choices in the past. And as far as personal change goes, that feels a lot like progress.
