This week I had several first time hypnotherapy clients. Most people have some talk therapy under their belts by the time they try a modality like hypnotherapy, and this was true for each of my new clients.
The biggest difference between talk therapy modalities and hypnotherapy is that talk therapy operates in the conscious mind, while hypnotherapy operates in the subconscious mind. Your conscious mind only makes up 10% of your mind, while the remaining 90% is subconscious (the iceberg below the water’s surface). This is one of the main reasons why most people aren’t able to experience the relief they desire from talk therapy. The root cause of the presenting issue (anxiety, depression, eating disorder, addiction, etc) is in the subconscious mind, so it’s no wonder why your patterns take a long time to change (if at all) when only doing a modality like talk therapy that only remains in the 10% conscious mind. This is not to suggest that talk therapy doesn’t have value, but when it’s the egoic mind that is talking, it’s difficult to get very far at the pace most of us desire.
I tried talk therapy for years as a teen and young adult, seeking a non-medication treatment to my chronic anxiety and depression. I would often feel some sense of calm in the therapist’s office, but then I would leave and my mind would slip right back into its patterns. This is because nothing truly changed in my mind…yet.
I finally dove into hypnotherapy when I was at my wit’s end and willing to try any tool that might work. I had heard good things about this modality from my parents for years but was too afraid (who had been on hypnotherapy retreats and experienced significant growth) but was so miserable that I finally gave it a try.
This single session was more informative than the years of talk therapy I had been through. I experienced how the hypnosis was simply a tool for relaxation, not something for the therapist to exert control (high-school graduation stage hypnosis was my only context). It allows the conscious mind (ego) to relax enough so that we can access the root cause in the subconscious. Think of it like software in a computer – everything you’ve experienced is stored in your subconscious mind, whether you remember it or not. This is why many people are afraid. They worry about retraumatizing themselves with memories that they don’t consciously remember. I know now that this doesn’t happen. Your mind has built up so many defenses that it won’t even let you go there if you aren’t ready (at least in this setting). The point of having a trained therapist there with you is to create a container of safety so that the walls can come down, at your pace, and we can shine light on the old, abandoned parts of your psyche that are driving the suffering you are likely experiencing today (the anxiety, chronic stress, self-consciousness, etc). The exciting thing is that just like software of a computer, we can reprogram or rewire the underlying belief systems that were created in those traumatic moments early on.
Here’s an example of how it works:
I have a client who has been a chiropractor for 24 years and came to me to work on her inner self-saboteur. She said that since Covid hit her adult children are home and she’s finding how she’s constantly putting everyone’s needs before her own, which means she misses workouts and doesn’t eat the way she wants to. Sound familiar?
The session begins with getting in touch with the intention and the current experience of the presenting issue. Ie. I wake up nauseated with anxiety, I have super low self-esteem and am constantly judging myself, or in this case, I don’t exercise enough and feel shame in my gut and tightness in my chest.
Once that’s clear we then begin the hypnosis portion of the session where I walk you through a visualization exercise that takes you into a deep state of relaxation. Once you’re there we then bring in resources. This is part of that container I was talking about. We build that with YOUR resources. We’ll anchor into your nervous system the experience of a safe/favorite place (through more guided visualization) – this will then be a tool you can use inside and outside of the session to relax (to bring you out of fight or flight mode into a parasympathetic state).
We will also connect with any spiritual connection you might have, or if this is new, work on nurturing that relationship with any spiritual connection you have but haven’t spent much time with (the Universe, love, nature, God, etc). This is what you connect to in prayer, meditation, or even walking in nature and is an incredibly powerful way to ground yourself daily – something I like to refer to as spiritual hygiene.
The last resource we connect to is your higher self – that wise adult that lives within all of us and makes healthy choices for us as we walk down our life path (one that we don’t tune into enough!). They’re the one who speaks through intuition, or that gut feeling. The one who we have access to always, but we first must learn to quiet the noise of our conscious mind (ie. Spiritual hygiene!) We’ll make sure you feel connected to that higher self before we do any deeper work.
Once you have your resources gathered, then we bring up the emotional experience you want to work on. In the example of my chiropractor client, we brought her back to the most recent time she had that strong sense of her self-saboteur. It was earlier that week when she chose to make hotdogs and burgers for her boys instead of a plant-based meal she was craving. We begin to tune into the body and the experience it has (because usually we’re so stuck in the head we miss vital information). She could feel loneliness inside, and a sense of shame in her lower half.
This is when I guide you in an age regression, back to one of the earliest moments in your life when you had a similar experience of emotion and physical experience. My client went back to being 7 to the first time her uncle molested her. Now, to be clear, this is not re-experiencing the trauma, it’s going back to gather information and diffuse any of the suppressed emotion that’s made it so it feels unsafe to be in your body. My client knew she was safe, but was able to connect with the inner 7 year old who created some core belief system during this memory, which is the information we’re looking for. She felt a numbness all over her body (which is dissociation, something most people learn as a result of abuse) and an inability to think clearly. This is a state of shock that we can clear in session, and needs to happen before the healing can happen. The way we did it in this session was by disconnecting her uncle’s toxic energy from her 7 year old, and then bringing in any parts of herself that she felt had been lost her. Some cultures call this soul retrieval. With the help of her spiritual connection (which in this case was Archangel Michael), and my reiki/subtle energy training, we were able to cut the energetic cord connecting her to her uncle. She began to feel more in her body when this happened as the shock began to clear. She then saw that her innocence and joy had been lost in this terrible situation. But because we’re working with energy here, we were able to bring those parts back. She visualized the soul pieces as a sunshiney yellow light coming back into her chest and gut, and I could visibly see a difference (even though Zoom!) as she brightened up. This is my favorite moment of every session. When I can witness this level of transformation in less than 75 minutes, I can’t help but feel like anything is possible.
Once she had her joy and innocence back in her body, we were able to tune into the belief she took away from this situation, and then resulting decision about how to behave. This is the gold that we hope to get from sessions, because this is the wiring that is the driving force behind the current suffering.
Her 7-yr old self had concluded that she wasn’t important and had to put others first. And because of this that she wouldn’t use her voice or take care of herself fully. I mean, WOW. How many women have this core belief system? I know I’ve had to change it in session!
With her tuned fully into her higher self, spiritual connection, and little girl, she then changed the belief to: I’m important, will love myself and put myself first. In the subconscious state you’re in during hypnotherapy, this new belief system becomes a new neural pathway (ie. Software!) and the more you reaffirm it out of session (during your spiritual hygiene) the stronger that belief systems become, and therefore, the smaller the struggle becomes.
This client was so grateful and said she had never experienced anything like what we did. I hear this from almost everyone. When they say it with brightness in their eyes that wasn’t there before, I know we’re doing big work.
There is collective trauma going on right now compounded onto your normal human trauma (that we all have to different degrees). It seems more important than ever to start working on the shadows that keep us in perpetual states of fight or flight, doesn’t it? Doesn’t this seem like an opportunity to do something amazing in our communities and world? The divisiveness we witness and feel socially is simply a symptom of the inner disconnection and division we have with ourselves. It seems that the only way to truly heal this problem, we need to heal the root cause – our own pain. And to do that you need support. We all need help. Why not use this time to be intentional with your personal experience, rather than continue to suffer and complain about the lack of control you feel socially?
If you’re interested in hypnotherapy you can read more here, or if you’re ready to jump into your personal-growth book a session here.