Hypnotherapy is a type of therapy that uses hypnosis to help people change behaviors, feelings, or attitudes. In simple terms, it’s when a trained therapist guides you into a deeply relaxed state (called a trance) to help you focus and make positive changes in your life. This trance-like state is similar to being really absorbed in a book or movie — you're not asleep, but you're highly focused and more open to suggestions.

How does it work?

When you're in this relaxed state, your mind becomes more open to suggestions for new thoughts and behaviours. This allows the therapist to help you address certain issues, like bad habits or emotional problems. It's like your brain becomes more receptive in relaxed brain-wave states, which can make it easier to change patterns of thinking or behavior that you might be struggling with.

The therapist is trained to use different methods to make your brain go into a relaxed state quite rapidly and look for signs that your brain state has changed, and it is ready to receive new suggestions. The behaviours you want to change are patterns or stories that are stuck in your mind, and the therapist is trained to introduce new suggestions and remove the old ones.

What does it do to your brain?

During hypnosis, your brain waves shift. Normally, when you’re awake and alert, your brain operates in beta waves. Under hypnosis, your brain shifts to a more relaxed state, like alpha waves or even theta waves (which is closer to the deep relaxation of sleep). This relaxed state allows you to access deeper parts of your mind that influence habits and emotions, which is why hypnotherapy can be effective for some people.

Is it scientifically proven to work?

Yes, hypnotherapy has been studied scientifically, and research shows that it can be effective for certain issues, though it doesn't work for everyone. The science behind it is still developing, but there is evidence that hypnotherapy can help with things like pain management, anxiety, and stress.

Problems hypnotherapy has been proven to help with:

1. Anxiety and stress: It can help reduce feelings of anxiety and promote relaxation.

2. Pain management: Hypnotherapy is often used for chronic pain, including conditions like arthritis or even pain during medical procedures.

3. Smoking cessation: Some studies show that hypnotherapy can help people quit smoking.

4. Phobias: It’s been used to help people overcome irrational fears, like fear of flying or spiders.

5. Sleep problems: It can help improve sleep quality, especially for those with insomnia.

6. Weight loss: While more research is needed, some studies suggest that hypnotherapy may help with weight loss by addressing emotional eating.

In conclusion:

Hypnotherapy works by helping you relax and focus your mind in a way that makes it easier to change unwanted behaviors or thoughts. It has been scientifically shown to help with specific problems like anxiety, pain, and quitting smoking, though more research is needed to fully understand all its benefits. It’s not a magical fix, and it doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s a tool that can be helpful for certain people. It is not scary, if the hypnotherapist makes a suggestion to your brain that it disagrees with it will immediately reject it, this is why it takes a skilled therapist to have an understanding of your unique brain and what she needs to do and say to make your brain adopt the changes you want.

What happens in a Hypnotherapy session?

In a hypnotherapy session, the therapist guides you into a relaxed state and helps you address specific issues you're seeking to work on, like stress, anxiety, or bad habits. Here's a breakdown of what typically happens:

1. Initial Discussion

The session usually begins with a conversation between you and the therapist. They’ll ask about the issues you're experiencing, your goals for therapy, and your overall health. This is where you’ll talk about the specific change you want to make (e.g., quitting smoking, reducing anxiety, etc.).

2. Induction (Relaxation Phase)

The therapist will then help you relax and get comfortable. This is called induction. They may guide you through deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, or visualization techniques to calm your body and mind. You may be asked to focus on a specific point or imagine a peaceful scene. The goal is to reach a deeply relaxed, focused state where your mind is more receptive to positive suggestions.

3. Deepening the Trance

Once you’re in a relaxed state, the therapist may deepen the trance. This could involve visualizing yourself sinking deeper into relaxation, or focusing on your breathing. This helps you enter a state of heightened focus and concentration. It’s often described as being somewhere between being awake and asleep—like being in a daydream or absorbed in a good book.

4. Therapeutic Work (Suggestion Phase)

While you’re in this relaxed, focused state, the therapist will provide suggestions to help you change negative behaviors or thoughts. For example, if you’re trying to quit smoking, they may suggest that the smell of cigarettes becomes unpleasant or that you feel motivated to live a healthier lifestyle. If you're working on anxiety, the therapist might suggest calmness and confidence when you encounter stressful situations. These suggestions are tailored to your specific goals.

5. Reinforcement

The therapist might reinforce the positive changes by repeating key suggestions or guiding you through exercises that help strengthen the new mindset or behavior. This part is designed to make the changes stick even after the session ends.

6. Gradual Awakening (Emerging from Trance)

At the end of the session, the therapist will guide you out of the relaxed state. This is called emergence. They’ll gradually bring you back to full awareness by counting up or using other techniques to ensure you feel alert and refreshed.

7. Post-Session Discussion

After the session, there will often be a brief discussion where you can talk about your experience. The therapist may check in to see how you’re feeling and if you experienced any significant changes during the session. You may also discuss any thoughts or emotions that came up.

Further information

Imagine your mind like a TV screen. Your eyes watch what is playing out in life and reflect it back to your brain. Some events have no impact on you whatsoever, you watch something happen, it doesn’t generate any thoughts or emotions and you carry on with your day completely unaffected by that particular scenario However, some events - for many reasons - your mind decides it really likes and tries to cling on to that nice feeling. Say a beautiful butterfly sits on your hand. You mind says, wow this is so beautiful, I must be really special for a butterfly to feel comfortable sitting on my hand, I’m special and important. Instead of allowing that experience to simply pass through your mind with a brief acknowledgment of the beauty of that moment, your mind focuses on it, and stores the emotions of that event. You try and cling to those happy feelings long after the butterfly is gone, and then try and bring them back over and over again. The problem is, you can’t recreate that moment; it is that past and it has gone but because you clung to it, your mind created resistance to that feeling passing through and will now try and recreate how you felt in that moment. It can also happen the other way around. Say you are out for a walk and see a rattlesnake. Your mind get scared and starts talking about all the bad things that could happen to you in that moment. Once again, instead of that moment passing by without any particular thoughts or feelings of the event, you mind has resisted the uncomfortable feeling of fear in that moment and tried to avoid it. Just like you tried to avoid losing the happy feeling in the butterfly situation by clinging to the feeling, you are now resisting the event passing smoothly through your mind again by focusing on the event, having fearful thoughts, and not allowing that moment to be as it is - you are reacting to it. When we resist something, it creates an imprint on our mind, like leaving a shadow of the original event behind long after the moment has passed.

The subconscious mind is where the resisted emotions - or shadows sit. They are referred to as blocked energy - because thoughts have an energy frequency like a little electrical charge - and that energy will try and come out again and again and again throughout the course of your life until you allow that energy to be free and dissipate instead of clinging to it or resisting it by holding it at bay with food, drugs, alcohol, habits, phobias - there are many ways.

Take the rattlesnake for example. You clung on to the fear when you saw the snake by thinking about the slow painful death it could cause, and feeling the emotion of fear. A shadow of that event was shoved down into your subconscious mind. You are out for a walk 5 years later and see a piece of rope on the path. All the thoughts from the rattlesnake event come back up and fears of death. Or, you hear a baby playing with a rattle and are filled with all the negative emotions from the rattlesnake event. You now hate babies, and don’t know why. Especially if the rattlesnake event happened when you were 3 years old and don’t have a conscious memory of it, instead you have an irrational fear of babies at 32 years old.

The issue with these shadows is that they compound over the years. The rattlesnake fear is added to by the baby fear, and the rope fear and over the years you become a complete mess with all the shadows piled on top of one another in your subconscious mind. So, you try and compensate for them by replicating the butterfly feeling. But that moment has passed so you use what is at your disposal, like sugar for example, to recreate that happiness. The endorphins released in the brain by eating sugar is similar to the effect the butterfly had on you all those years ago. Now your health is suffering because of trying to replicate the happy feelings over the years in order to hold down the fear or anger or whatever negative emotional shadows and their energies are sitting in the subconscious and haven’t been released.

Here’s where therapy comes in. I guide you using various techniques, to process those shadows safely, and teach you techniques to help you accept future events just as they our without clinging or resisting and consequently creating more shadows. This is where pure happiness lies. Not the false happiness that comes from trying to replicate past happy moments with whatever temporary fix you can find, or the happiness that comes from blocking painful memories, but true happiness in each moment. The key to happiness, then, is to learn to allow events to happen without the mind commentating on them, “I like this I want to keep this feeling, or “I hate this I want it to stop”. Instead, the mind is quiet, it appreciates each moment for what it is without labelling it good or bad and allows it to pass by.

Hypnotherapy can be a deeply relaxing process, and feels like a dream, although you are awake. I cannot make you do anything against your will or make you tell your secrets. Most people feel peaceful after a Hypnotherapy session, much like they have had a good night’s sleep. In the first session we spend time discussing your issue and using techniques to shift some of the blocked emotions that are causing you the most distress at the moment. In future sessions we spend more time in trance. The most common thing people say to me when I “emerge” then from trance is that they don’t want to come out of it!

If you think hypnotherapy could be useful for you for irrational fears, physical illness, emotional dysregulation, PTSD, addiction, anxiety, depression, weight-loss, stress or something else. Contact me at my clinic in Greytown via the contact form for book a free consultation.