I didn’t know quite what to expect but it wasn’t exactly this: Reclined on a couch, tucked beneath a fluffy blanket, I’m visualising myself in a place that fills me with joy. It’s not that I was expecting clock swinging or party tricks but this feels more like I’m drifting off for a power nap in the presence of a stranger – a little awkward at first but, as I listen to her voice and focus on the details of my daydream, I get swept up in the moment in much the same way I might get lost in a good book or film.
Essentially, I’m slipping into a flow state, which is really an induction process that serves a specific purpose: To silence the conscious, thinking mind – the brain babble, as hypnotherapist Lyn Macpherson likes to call it – so that you become absorbed in the moment.
The more immersed you become in the visualisation, the more real it seems. This state of deep relaxation is important because it’s when your brain is more open to suggestion, whether that is letting go of a past experience or visualising a solution to a problem.
“You are the boss of your own mind, I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to,” says Lyn, who has a government-accredited Diploma of Clinical Hypnotherapy and is founder of Harmony Hypnotherapy in Sydney’s Mosman.
“But if people want change they can generate just about anything if they learn to drive the powerhouse that is their unconscious mind … that part of you that speaks to you in feelings, metaphors, pictures, dreams and other forms of language.”
All hypnotherapy requires from patients is a reasonable level of suggestibility (which around two-thirds of adults have). That doesn’t equate to being gullible, but it does require imagination.
“If you are able to imagine something viscerally at a sensory level it becomes more real than reality,” says Lyn. “Hypnotherapy doesn’t wipe out trauma, but it creates a different visceral response to a trigger so that your body and mind react in a different way. You can’t talk your way through that process, you have to delve into the unconscious mind.”
Could hypnotherapy help you?
Most commonly clients turn to hypnotherapy to help overcome addiction, stuttering, phobias, chronic back pain and anxiety. Lyn gives the example of stage fright, something that commonly triggers anxiety. Hypnotherapy, she says, can help the brain recalibrate the emotion attached to the thought of public speaking.
“You might feel anxious, you might even get palpitations or dizziness. It’s your unconscious mind trying to tell you that this is something that matters to you. But instead of feeling stress or anxiety, you can teach your brain to interpret those sensory cues as enabling and exciting rather than paralysing.”
What does the research say?
There is some science to back up the effectiveness of hypnotherapy as an anti-anxiety strategy. A 2017 meta-analysis of 20 studies found that it had a significant effect on anxiety in cancer patients (particularly paediatric patients who experienced procedure-related stress). Numerous studies have shown it to be effective for physical pain too, particularly irritable bowel syndrome, migraines and headaches.
A 2018 study found that hypnotherapy is an effective way to treat back pain. It has even been shown to effectively manage pain and anxiety associated with colonoscopies and some types of surgery.
A Macquarie University study found that hypnosis can help patients overcome ingrained behaviour that is usually outside of conscious control, something that surprised even the researchers.
How does hypnotherapy work?
Whether you are dealing with a physical or emotional pain, the process of retraining the brain not to respond negatively to old triggers is much the same.
Lyn explains it like this: “Imagine a pathway through dense bush that is well worn as it has been walked many times – you’re likely to always take the existing path rather than go to the effort to forge a new one. Your brain does this with neurological pathways too. What we need to do is generate a pattern interrupt and create a new neurological pathway … Once you stop walking down the old path it grows over. But it does require the client to be consciously invested in the process.”
That means you can likely expect to walk out with some homework to do, such as breathing exercises or visualisations. Your mind, it turns out, needs regular maintenance as much as your body does.
