When one mentions the term ‘hypnosis,’ it’s immediately related to magic or doing sorcery tricks on stage or in movies. After all, that’s how hypnosis is often portrayed in TV shows and the media. But scientifically, it plays a crucial role in promoting your overall health in the form of hypnotherapy.
What Is Hypnotherapy?
In healthcare, hypnotherapy is a type of psychological treatment that puts a person in a relaxing and trance-like state, heightening the focus and eventually becoming more open and welcoming to suggestions. This is done by a professional and licensed psychologist or physician. They can perform hypnotherapy on their patient in a clinical setting or the comfort of their home.
With hypnotherapy, you become more aware of your thoughts, perceptions, and sensations during the session of hypnosis. While in this state, your psychologist will tell you instructions and other verbal cues to help you in whatever purpose. It may be to fight off an addiction, relieve pain and anxiety, or achieve other personal goals. Through hypnotherapy, you’ll have deeper access to the root causes of your bad habits or behaviors before making the necessary changes needed.
So, how do you benefit from hypnotherapy? Here are a few ways hypnotherapy can improve your mental health:
1. Manage Your Existing Phobias And Fears
One of the most popular uses of hypnotherapy is to manage phobias and fears. Perhaps you had a traumatic experience with objects or situations like getting bitten by spiders during your childhood years. Since then, seeing even a picture of a spider already causes you to panic, feel anxious, sweat, and experience heavy breathing. Another instance is your constant fear of large crowds due to an awful experience you had in the past.
While these phobias and fears may sound harmless, they can hinder you from achieving your goals. Through hypnotherapy, your psychologist will help you rewire those past experiences, alter your perceptions, and eventually recover from that fear or trauma. Meanwhile, if you wish to go deeper such as reliving your past life, you can try the quantum healing hypnosis technique, which is the deepest level of the hypnotherapy method. Through this hypnosis, you can be liberated from your emotional and psychological baggage.
2. Recover From Sleep Disturbances And Disorders
Are you struggling to get a good sleep quality every night? Or perhaps, you’re constantly caught sleepwalking or suffering from insomnia for consecutive nights. All these can lead to sleep deprivation, which can cause severe health issues such as obesity, heart diseases, impaired memory skills, and depression. While numerous remedies help you improve your sleep, it’s not always easy to talk yourself into actually doing it, especially since sleep is controlled by the subconscious.
Through hypnotherapy, your psychologist will access your subconscious mind and use verbal or nonverbal cues to relax your mind and help you sleep easier. For people who sleepwalk, your hypnotherapist will train your mind to wake up as soon as your feet touch the ground. This is to prevent you from more sleepwalking escapades in the future.
For people who only wish to enhance their sleep quality, you may not need to call for a hypnotherapist every now and then. Instead, you can learn self-hypnosis techniques by taking live training or reading tutorials. Then, you can do this as part of your nighttime routine before bed to help you get a good sleep and wake up feeling energized and refreshed.
3. Reduce Anxiety And Calm Your Nerves
It’s common to feel anxious, especially if you’re under pressure from work, school, or responsibilities at home. Letting this anxiousness take over your mental health can lead to dizziness, shaking, physical fatigue, heart palpitations, and breathing problems. One of the relaxation techniques that can help you ease anxiety is hypnosis.
Your hypnotherapist will encourage your body to automatically activate its natural relaxation response once you do these nonverbal cues like slowing your breathing, repeating positive affirmations, or doing a quick meditation.
4. Alleviate Depression Symptoms
One of the most dominating mental issues that most people experience is depression. Some of the leading causes of depression may include:
- Any type of abuse
- Certain medications
- Personal problems
- Substance misuse
- Aging
- Serious illnesses
- Major events (e.g., death or loss)
Through hypnotherapy, your therapist will help you manage your depression symptoms and teach you techniques to control your emotions and thoughts as well as put you in a relaxed state. Some methods they’ll teach you may include deep breathing techniques whenever depression attacks you during difficult situations. Overall, you’ll become more self-aware on how to deal and cope with depression symptoms healthily.
5. Mend Self-Esteem And Relationship Issues
One of the underrated implementations of hypnotherapy is its effectiveness in boosting your self-esteem and improving interpersonal relationship issues. For people with low self-confidence, hypnotherapy is one of the best tools to bring healing. As you’re put in a trance-like state, you can dig deeper into your thoughts and emotions and identify the reasons behind your mindset.
From there, your hypnotherapist will suggest some techniques to change your self-talk methods positively and encourage you to see life events and social interactions from an optimistic perspective. Suppose you’re having trouble with your personal relationships. In that case, you and your family members can also attend hypnotherapy sessions to work on your issues and fix the negative attitudes hindering the growth of your relationships.
6. Avoid Addiction And Substance Abuse
Giving up an addiction to substances or smoking will never be an easy feat. This addiction has been wired in your daily routine for years. As much as you try to quit it, sooner or later, you’ll find your way back into doing that addiction again. Thus, a lot of methods have been created to help people quit. It may include several medications or a safer alternative. While the research may still be ongoing, many people claim hypnotherapy has helped them kick out addiction and strengthen their willpower to overcome cravings.
As mentioned, when you’re under hypnosis, you’ll become more open to suggestions and treatments. And so, your psychologist may start suggesting methods and techniques on how to overcome your addiction while you’re hypnotized. They’ll also help in rewiring your current routine and replace the old habit with something healthier. For instance, instead of pulling out a cigarette when you’re stressed, they’ll teach your mind to chew gum or take a walk instead. If you wish to consider hypnotherapy for your addiction treatment, make sure to consult your doctor first.
Bottom Line
Hypnotherapy does good things for your mental health. So, this is the time for you to consult a psychologist and try it for yourself. Soon enough, when you’re ready, you may start learning self-hypnosis techniques and incorporate them into your daily routine.