Hypnosis is a very important and interesting therapeutic method that is extremely useful in helping people overcome both physical and emotional difficulties.
The origins of hypnosis go back to ancient religious rituals. It was first used therapeutically by Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th century Viennese physician, to cure a wide variety of medical and emotional ills. However, it was not used extensively again until World War II, when doctors found it helpful in dealing with pain. In the 1950s, after pioneering work by Milton Erickson and others, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association recognized its usefulness.
The general public holds many misperceptions about hypnosis that are important to look at. It is not a magical, mystical phenomenon. Rather it is a common, everyday state of consciousness that people enter into all the time, often without knowing they are doing this, and without knowing how to use it to advantage.
Hypnosis is an altered state of attention where a person focuses attention on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. It is similar to what happens when you daydream, or find yourself absorbed in watching a movie or TV show, or reading a book.
When your mind is focused, several things happen. First, you relax. Second, your suggestibility increases. Third, the state of concentration strengthens your unconscious healing capacities, similar to what happens during meditation. It also provides an opportunity to use a variety of imaginative methods, such as guided imagery.
All these factors make it easier for a person to change. It is helpful for stress reduction, performance enhancement, the management of pain and medical problems, weight loss and smoking cessation, phobias, anxiety and depression, to name a few.
Hypnosis is not sleep, which is a periodic suspension of consciousness. Rather, because of the concentration, the patient is very aware of what is happening. Almost everyone can be hypnotized.
Many people fear the hypnotist will take charge of your mind and cause them to do foolish, dangerous things. They worry that they will “cluck like a chicken,” as happens during stage hypnosis. But the therapeutic hypnotic trance is under the patient’s full control. Stage hypnosis is done for entertainment purposes. The stage hypnotist chooses very susceptible people who want to be exhibitionistic, excluding those who show they will resist him. Hypnotherapy is done only to benefit the patient’s personal needs. The patient and the hypnotherapist decide together what to get out of hypnosis and what words will be used in trance. The patient will come out of the hypnotic trance if the therapist asks him or her to do something objectionable.
In a therapeutic situation, hypnosis develops as part of a close rapport between patient and therapist. The relaxed and soothing state of mind experienced during hypnosis facilitates response to suggestion, access to insights and memories, and a capacity to use a whole variety of imaginative techniques.
Our minds are a storehouse of information and possibility. However, researchers note we all use far less of our brain potential than is available to us. Therapy works in part because the therapist adds his or her expertise to that of the patient’s and stimulates the person’s own ability to change. Hypnosis, with its freeing and facilitating capacities, greatly expands our ability to use ourselves to our fullest potential.