The Power of Hypnotherapy!
Photo by Benoit Beaumatin on Unsplash
Hypnotherapy works for a very simple reason: all emotional healing comes from vulnerability — from being honest about our needs and feelings. People go to great lengths to avoid this truth and will focus instead on quick fixes. How many times have you heard “I don’t need therapy, I have good friends to talk to?” Confiding in trusted friends feels comfortable and safe but will not address deeper issues. Healing is possible when we step out of our comfort zone and admit what’s really in our hearts and minds.
I avoided vulnerability when I was younger. I wanted to act as if everything was okay in my life, “fake it till you make it.” Even when becoming a therapist, I wanted to bring that same positivity to others. But I was selling positivity based on the foundation of avoidance. There were some personal limiting beliefs I needed to address. One was that being needy was not the same as being vulnerable. The other was that being vulnerable didn't mean I'd be hurt, exposed and abandoned. The path to vulnerability required a lot of self honesty.
In 2005, I saw an ad in the National Association of Social Workers magazine about hypnotherapy training. It was open to social workers, psychologists, and other mental-health professionals. I had just graduated with an MSW that year and wanted to develop my clinical skills further. In particular, I wanted to help trauma survivors, and especially those who had been abused as children.
As soon as I got to the training, I realized something that probably should have been obvious: I, myself, was going to undergo hypnotherapy as part of my training! I was terrified. I was afraid that if they saw my truth they would judge me. My colleagues were kind, older therapists who seemed to have no trouble speaking honestly about their experiences with domestic violence, alcoholism, and incest. They chose me to be their guinea pig, and the whole class circled around me as I lay down to be induced.
Photo by MK Hamilton on Unsplash
As the guiding hypnotherapist led me through a relaxation technique, I realized that I was going to have to make a choice. In my mind, I could see a series of rooms with locked doors. It was up to me whether I wanted to open those doors and see what lay beyond them. I knew that scary, difficult, and ugly things were behind those doors, but I also felt the weight and exhaustion of having carried those things on my own for so long, and so I allowed the twenty therapists around me to accompany me into those hidden spaces.
What I experienced that day was the power of remembering a trauma rather than reliving it. The first thing I saw was my four-year old self tied to a bed. For a moment, this memory made me panic, but slowly, I realized that, in this safe space of hypnosis, I also had the power to go over to the bed, untie the child, and hug her. All of a sudden, the story and the feelings had changed, permanently.
Most people have heard about the power of the subconscious, but unfortunately, many people go to therapy expecting to see their subconscious without taking any risks — as though the subconscious were something you could see with an X-ray.
Particularly in talk therapy, there can be this idea that the therapist is going to show you your subconscious. What makes hypnotherapy so powerful is that it gives you choices: you can stay guarded and leave the locked rooms locked, or you can open the doors and make the changes you want to make.
Hypnotherapy is just one of the practices I use in my work to help clients come to terms with trauma, and it is especially powerful in combination with other modalities I practice, such as psychotherapy and reiki. It is quite common to experience all three within a single session with me!