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Hypnotherapy and Self-Suggestion
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've recently been entertaining the notion of undergoing hypnotherapy. I've visited more conventional psychiatrists in the past, but I feel that they haven't helped me very much. Are there any of you here that have personally experienced hypnotherapy or self-suggestion? Does it work?
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That's really all self-hypnosis is, is putting one's self in a state where the higher functions override the instinctive responses. Clinical hypnosis is something slightly different, but works on the same principle, where a person learns how to override their 'natural' programming to accomplish something different.
It is proven to be effective, much in the same way placebos have been proven to be effective- but its an odds game at best, and may not work out for you personally. Some people are very responsive to this kind of treatment.
Hypnosis is more of a gimmick than something that can change your life. If you're open to suggestion, it will allow someone else to suggest you do activities, while hypnotized. You cannot do something you wouldn't normally do, though -- for example, a hypnotist would be unable to cause a woman to undress (unless she actually has a problem with keeping her clothes on).
It's not like the movies where you hear a whistle, suddenly perk up, and delve into a hypnotized state. Most pschiatric hypnosis is more to get you to talk about things in an uninhibited way. If psychiatry isn't working for you, hypnosis won't either.
These parts are wrong. Hypnosis can help you quit smoking for good. And "participating" in therapy is significantly different from "participating" in hypnosis, so one might not work for you and the other could. The general sentiment of your post however, I agree with.
skate, halo 3
I have obsessive compulsive disorder: Not the "Wash my hands three times while counting back from 100" kind, but the "What if something bad happens? How do I know if it will?"
I'm not sure when it started, but the first time I began to seriously notice it was when I was constantly afraid that I would have a heart attack for some reason. I think I was around 11 then. Since then I've obsessed about such things as:
- Fainting
- Heart trouble again (I was taking Anatomy and Physiology in High School)
- Awful thoughts (I'd rather keep the details to myself)
- And so on...
To give an example of the severity of my case, during the times when I've obsessed over my heart I couldn't sleep because I was too preoccupied with the feeling of my heart beat as I laid on my stomach.
I've read comments on the Internet over the past few days from people who claim that hypnotherapy was very effective for them, with some even claiming to have been relieved of anxiety after one visit. However, when looking up hypnotherapy I got a vibe of quackery from most of the websites (it didn't help that most of the websites either didn't look professional or talked about spirituality).
Because the conventional therapists I've visited haven't been able to cure me of my OCD (although most of the time it does lessen the severity of my obsession for a few months), I was hoping that hypnotherapy could teach me a way to block obsessive thoughts.
I know that our thoughts and memories are associated with each other, which is why recalling one piece of information leads us to think of something else. My hope is that hypnotherapy could enable me to sever the associative links that make my thoughts turn to obsession, fear, and hopelessness.
Is this a realistic expectation?
I don't mean as far as suppressing memories; I'm talking about ways to keep obsession and fear from forming.
In fact it sounds pretty ideal, really. Self-hypnosis often involves step by step mantras and rituals, followed to the letter, repeated over and over again. Which you would be naturally adept at, one would think.
Quite a few coping mechanisms with OCD revolve around changing the focus of obsession, rather than the nature of it. Sort of along the lines of if you feel the urge to repeat a phrase a thousand times, that phrase might as well be 'I'm a good person, and people like me.' etc.
Ooh! Or this one, because its a favorite of mine:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.
My fiancee has a terrible fear of thunderstorms and it just so happened that one of her ex's had written down that very same passage onto a card quite a few years ago and she never even realized what it was. So one night I found the card when she was worrying and had her read it to herself as she laid in bed. She said that after she repeated it a few times she started to feel better because she was getting her mind into a state where she wasn't focusing on the storm so much as herself and that fear and just letting it go. She keeps the card next to the bed now in case she wakes up and hears a storm. She didn't even know it was from Dune which is funny because I had just read the first trilogy a couple weeks prior.
Given the symptoms you've described, I don't think hypnotherapy is going to help. I'm not sure what approach the conventional therapists took, but I think your best bet is to investigate Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It basically works by figuring out what thoughts trigger your obsessions, and then works out a way to stop them progessing to an obsessive stage. It's practical, it's effective, it has clearly defined tasks and goals that you work on between sessions, and it aims to get results within a couple of months at the most, so you don't end up spending years on a couch paying to talk about your feelings.
A lot of time therapy fails with OCD because therapists rely on methods like relaxation or distraction techniques. Those are good to get you through a panic crisis, but they're not a cure. Instead, your brain figures out you're using the techniques to escape something, and you end up in a situation where it gets less effective until it stops working all together.
So yeah, my vote is for CBT. Check it out.
I'm sure there are many other legitimate options out there for you.