My Patient Guide
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Alternative Therapy 101
Hypnotherapy
What is Hypnosis?
The brain operates in four general states determined by the frequency of the electricity generated by the exchange of chemicals in the neural pathways. The four states include Full Conscious Awareness, the Hypnotic State, the Dream State, and the Sleep State.
These four states correspond to electrical activity in the brain and are defined by frequency ranges on an EEG. Full Conscious Awareness occurs when the majority of the electrical activity in the brain is in the beta range (14-35 Hz). The Hypnotic State occurs when brain activity is in the alpha range (8-13 Hz). The Dream State occurs when brain activity is in the theta range (4-7 Hz), and the Sleep State occurs when brain activity is in the delta range (.5-3 Hz).
Full Conscious Awareness is where which we spend most of our waking hours. In this state, our mind is attentive and uses logic to reason, evaluate, assess, judge, and make decisions. Unfortunately, when making life changes, the conscious mind often gets in the way.
In the Hypnotic State, the doorway between the conscious and the subconscious is opened, memories become easily accessible, and new information is stored. In the Hypnotic State, you are not really "thinking" in the traditional sense. You are "experiencing" without questioning, without critical judgment or analysis, like when you watch a movie, and the hypnotherapist can make suggestions that are very likely to "stick" - precisely because your conscious mind is not getting in the way. You are not "judging" or being "critical" of the suggestions.
We pass through all four bands sequentially as the electrical activity decreases on our way to sleep and as it increases up on our way to total wakefulness. Regardless of whether we are on our way to sleep or to wakefulness, when we pass through the upper theta/lower alpha range we go into hypnosis automatically. There is no power on earth that can stop it from happening but likewise, there is no person or power on earth that can force you into it; you must want to go into hypnosis and follow the hypnotist's direction to the letter.
A less technical definition of hypnosis is: A naturally occurring altered state of consciousness in which the critical faculty is bypassed (mind in the conscious mode) and acceptable selective thinking established.
This simply means that the reasoning, evaluating, judging part of your mind (conscious) is bypassed. While we wonder how this could possibly happen, we are subject to it all the time. The advertising industry is dedicated to bypassing our critical judgment all the time in order to influence our buying behavior.
We suspend our critical judgment other times when an authority figure makes some sort of comment; doctors, clergy, professors, and many more fall into this category.
Children suspend their critical judgment frequently in games of "let's pretend". Actors do it in playing a part; they have to suspend their critical faculty, and they ask the audience to suspend theirs to accept them as being someone else.
With the critical faculty bypassed, specific thoughts/suggestions can be lodged in the subconscious where they can propel the client toward a desired goal or change behavior in a positive, permanent way. Any such suggestions must be acceptable to the client, of course. They would have no effect otherwise.
This focus on a specific goal or behavior is done with laser-like precision and intensity in hypnosis. It's a little like looking through a telescope from the wrong end. You see just one tiny spec of the environment in focus though you may be aware of everything around it.
Choosing a Hypnotherapist
Finding a skillful and experienced hypnotherapist can be a challenging if not daunting and complicated task. This is due largely to the fact that hypnotherapy is an unregulated field. Forty nine of our fifty states have no licensing of hypnotherapists. Indiana has made efforts at licensing hypnotherapists, but at this writing, is still embroiled in political struggles to implement licensing. Hopefully when in place, Indiana's system of licensing will provide a model for the rest of the states.
To begin your search for a hypnotherapist, you need to decide whether you want to work with a physician or mental health practitioner who includes hypnosis as a part of a broader practice, or if you want a hypnotherapist who does nothing but hypnotherapy. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
Physicians and mental health practitioners at times use hypnosis in treating patients, particularly in psychiatry, however certified hypnotherapists have much more in-depth training. The physician or mental health practitioner may have attended a weekend workshop and learned how to induce hypnosis but may have virtually no experience in communicating with the mind in its subconscious mode.
The hypnotherapist who has extensive training in working with the mind in its subconscious mode may have little or no training in other specialty areas.
The first question to ask anyone with whom you consider working is "Are you a certified hypnotherapist and by whom?" The National Guild of Hypnotists is the oldest and largest worldwide non-profit certifying organization cited by Congress in the Congressional Record of May 11th, 1993 as the foremost hypnosis organization in the country.
Whomever you choose, s/he should be certified by the Guild or some other institution or organization recognized by it and have had a minimum of 100 hours of training - not just a weekend seminar.
Another area to explore is how much experience the prospective therapist has had in your area of need. How long have they been in full-time practice? What are their specialties? Do they have experience in addressing the problem you want to address or in attaining the goal you want to achieve? How many clients for this have they treated? How many successfully?
Another question particularly helpful with ‘lay hypnotherapists' (that is, hypnotherapists not practicing hypnosis in a licensed field such as medicine or mental health) is "What is the law regarding the practice of hypnotherapy in your state?" In Illinois, it is PA473.
The reason it is important that any prospective hypnotherapist know the law is because hypnotherapy must be practiced in strict conformity with it. Be suspicious of anyone who doesn't know the limits of their practice.
Finally, if you are satisfied with the responses to all other questions, ask yourself one final question. "Am I comfortable with this person?" Attempting to work with someone who maybe highly qualified but with whom you have no rapport or with someone you don't feel you can trust will only serve to interfere with your progress.
Why Does Hypnotherapy Work?
"Alright," we may say, "Now that I know what hypnosis is and I'm in it, what good is it?!"
The ways in which the mind operates in its subconscious mode provide the answer.
It is instructive to note that our autonomic system is in the subconscious. That's the system which tells our hearts to beat and our lungs to breathe. It is because of this we don't have to think (conscious mind), "Oops! Gotta take a breath now!" or "Time for another heart beat!" Fortunately this is all taken care of by our subconscious----- automatically. Everything that is done for our benefit, originates here. Therefore should a hypnotist make an inappropriate suggestion of any kind, it would be rejected by the client.
A colleague of mine explains to his clients that if he should ask them in hypnosis to rob every bank in town and bring the money back to him, they wouldn't do it. He points out that if this would work, he'd be a very wealthy hypnotherapist! Which he isn't! Our subconscious always has our best interest as its main concern.
It does other things for us, too. We are bombarded by 60,000 stimuli per second every minute of our lives. In one minute we receive 3,600,000! One can only speculate what would happen if they would flood our consciousness! Especially when we know that our conscious mind can only be aware of five to seven pieces of information or "clumps" of information at a time. When it works with one of them that's all it can handle-one thing at a time.
Emotions and the imagination reside in the subconscious. In an emotional state, we are motivated to proceed in the direction of what we are imagining. Emotion is the fuel of the subconscious while imagination is the language.
Habits by definition are those repetitive behaviors that you do "without thinking." Thinking is a function of the conscious; everything else is in the subconscious. A habit is usually eliminated by replacing it with another. Some habits are easier to eliminate than others and if they are firmly held in the subconscious may require finding the causes and remove them.
The subconscious doesn't "think" in the usual way; it reacts. And it can't distinguish between reality and unreality; it absorbs all the information received through the senses as true - as real.
Generally speaking, if two or more emotions are in conflict, the dominate one wins out over the weaker; imagination wins out over will power; emotions win out over logic; the subconscious wins out over the conscious.
The subconscious can be your master or your greatest ally in your quest for success and self-improvement.
Hypnosis and Human Memory
Even in a tranquil environment, we are bombarded by 60,000 stimuli per second! Every second of every minute of every hour of every day the barrage continues - unrelentingly.
The biggest barrier to recalling information or memories is stress. Stress is the static or white noise of the mind and makes recall
difficult or impossible.
Since the mind operating in its conscious mode can only hold 4-7 clusters of information at a time, it falls to the mind in its subconscious mode to store each and every one of them permanently. This process begins en utero when the fetus is about 14 weeks old and continues until death. All memories are permanent, and can be recalled whenever needed.
Because the subconscious is the repository of memories and hypnosis is the most direct way of accessing it, hypnotherapy is an effective way to recall information thought to be forgotten. This is accomplished by lessening the stress and using some techniques of association along with appropriate post-hypnotic suggestions.
These techniques can be used for everything from locating lost items like keys, glasses or concert tickets to maximizing recall for students studying or preparing to take an exam.
Other highly charged memories deeply buried in the subconscious such as memories of abuse or other childhood trauma can also be elicited. This uncovering needs to be done by a specialist in forensic hypnosis trained to interview the client in such a way as not to inadvertantly plant false memories.
Forensic hypnotists work principally for police departments to elicit details about crime scenes and alleged perpetrators from victims.
Pain Management Through Hypnosis
Pain management can only be taught on the strength of a doctor's referral and frequently in consultation with and supervision by him/her. There is good reason for this: pain is a symptom of something wrong in body and/or mind.
If the primary cause of the pain is physical, the client can be taught to induce analgesia or anesthesia in the painful area. In these situations it is usually adviseable to reduce the pain but not eliminate it. The residual discomfort reminds the client that there is a physical condition which needs to be or is being treated and warns him/her not to over do.
A football player may have and injured knee which causes intolerable pain. If it is eliminated with steroids, he can play as if there is nothing wrong and without medical intervention damage the knee irreparably. The same risk is involved in eliminating the pain hypnotically.
Pain may result from a number of non-medical or non-physical causes. Sometimes a person feeling the weight of intolerable guilt from a real or imagined experience will inflict pain on oneself to get rid of the guilt or avoid punishment from a higher authority.
In this situation the objective is to help the client forgive him or herself and to internalize the release from real or imagined mistakes. Once the client truly experiences the forgiveness and release, supportive suggestions can be made which help the client with new subconscious understanding. Often verbalizing is all that is needed for effective relearning.
If there is resistance to self-forgiveness and to release the self-punishment, regression therapy or parts therapy is frequently helpful.
Regression therapy is possible thanks to the storage capacity of the subconscious to store our life-long experiences. A client is guided backward in time to prior events. The client can either "see" them from a distance (such as on a tv screen) taking with him his present level of maturity to understand them or re-experience them and release the associated emotions.
Sometimes there is a part of us that holds on to a symptom or a behavior in spite of our desire to be rid of it.
The client can be guided to become of aware of this part and the hypnotherapist can talk to it and negotiate a trade-off in which it can trade off its unyielding hold on the behavior or symptom and have its need met in an alternative way. The hypnotherapist becomes not only a negotiator with the particular part but an arbiter between conflicting parts.
Objectification & Identification
One of the techniques found to be successful in diminshing pain is objectification and identification. In hypnosis, the client is asked to see a large circle in front of them. If they can't actually "see" it they can imagine they see it, the same thing is accomplished. They are asked to let this represent their pain. Then, they are asked what color it is. They usually see their pain as red or white hot etc.
If the client is successful in objectifying the pain (by letting it become an object or in this instance the circle) and identifying the pain with the circle, it can be controlled by using the imagination to change the circle. At first, the client is asked to imagine the circle coming nearer and therefore larger as the color becomes more intense and then asked what they are feeling. If they've been successful with the objectifying and identifying, the pain increases. This demonstrates to them that 1) they have control over the pain and 2) that they can diminish the pain be reversing the process. We then have them visualize the circle move away from them, shrink in size as the color becomes less intense, gradually descending the spectrum into the cool colors. The client experiences the pain diminishing.
These techniques and others, practiced in daily self-hypnosis, allow the client to control the pain whenever they find it necessary.
There are some other pain management techniques which bear noting:
Pain displacement or Pain Transference: the pain can be moved from its site to an insignificant place in the body like an earlobe where it can be modified and reduced.
Glove anesthesia: one of the hands is made numb and then that numbness is applied to the painful site as it leaves the hand. The numbness may be induced by the suggestion that the hand is submerged in a bucket of ice water or injected with lidocaine or novocaine. This is particularly useful for dental work.
Ideomotor exploration & turning pain off at unconscious level: the source of the pain can be discovered with questions to be answered by ideomotor signals (the movement of a finger perhaps). Then an "on/off" switch can be imagined which when moved to the "off" position in hypnosis turns off the pain.
The inner advisor: The client imagines an inner advisor who will modify or release the pain.
The Protective Shield: Here, the client imagines a protectivedorce around the body shielding the body from pain and/or unpleasant feelings.
Time and body dissociation: Escape to the enjoyment of a pleasant past event while healthy and pain free and/or escape to a peaceful place.
Please visit http://www.findcounseling.com/journal/hypnosis-hypnotherapy/ for the full article on hypnotherapy
"Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, and Hypnotherapists" was written by G. Edward Riley, M.Div., CH, Certified Master Hypnotherapist, and C. J. Newton, MA, and published in the Find Counseling.com (formerly TherapistFinder.net) Mental Health Journal in April, 2001
Alternative Therapy
Alternative Therapy
