What is Hypnotherapy?

You might be surprised to learn that many people have utilized hypnosis. To help improve their game, the sports realm, Nolan Ryan, Tiger Woods, George Brett, Mary Lou Retton, and others. In celebrity circles, people like Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Orlando Bloom, Sylvester Stallone, Kevon Costner, and others. A few more well-known people who have used hypnosis to overcome issues include Mozart, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Edison, Aldous Huxley, Rachmaninov, and Sir Winston Churchill as well. Hypnotherapy has been engaged for everything from performance enhancement to nausea and seasickness, smoking, trauma, and quite a list of other issues. Hypnosis is an adjunctive technique to counseling in many ways and can complement therapy or can be used outside of therapy as a focused service.

There are quite a few elements of misinformation regarding hypnotherapy, especially clinical hypnotherapy. One of the easiest analogies is that of daydreaming, the use of imagery and active imagination to stimulate subjective thinking. The elements of the mind, as it ethereally sits on top of our brain with its elements of conscious, unconscious, and subconscious thought are quite intricate. This form of the process is teaching clients to utilize relaxation to get to subjective thought, a place where the subconscious is engaged, where objective thinking learns to take a back seat to the potentials of allowing ourselves to engage active imagination.

During such subjective states, we allow deductive reasoning to fade and much like a dream state, only inductive reasoning is prominent, just like in a dream, we are presented with a situation and we engage it, not denying the implausible potential but rather moving through it by accepting the suggestion. This is a very simple explanation of the process, but the use of hypnotherapy has been a technique that we continue to look to for its inherent possibilities. Think of some of the greatest athletes in the world, and how they envisioned themselves winning. The subconscious took hold of the suggestion, moving them to perform better, to refine their skills with the knowledge that they would win someday. How about when we perhaps do something we regret and say out loud, “I am so stupid!” The subconscious is listening and so our sense of self-efficacy and confidence insidiously diminishes because of the negative self-talk. There have been some fascinating psychiatric insights gained from research on hypnotherapy and the brain.

If you have problems with issues like weight loss, smoking, sports performance issues, self-esteem issues, anxiety, panic attacks then perhaps hypnotherapy could be a possibility. Please feel free to contact me with questions you may have or schedule your session with me. Hypnotherapy usually consists of 3-4 sessions. Clients are then given a special audio recording to use to continue to practice and reinforce concepts.