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What even is Hypnotherapy??
161 Plays1 year ago
Julie is excited to share that she’s newly certified in Clinical Hypnotherapy! But what in the world does that mean? Here’s all the details you need to determine if this is something that could be of value on your healing journey.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Outside of Session'
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to outside of session. I'm your host, licensed clinical social worker and therapist BFF, Julie Hilton. We're going to cover all the things here, whether it's mental health, entrepreneurship, relationships, trauma, or just life. Nothing is off limits. Hopefully you'll laugh a little and learn a lot, but most importantly, feel encouraged on your journey to live empowered.
Impact of Weather on Mood
00:00:32
Speaker
Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of outside of session. I just have to say today that my heart is just so full because of the weather here in Atlanta, it is finally like warming up.
00:00:47
Speaker
And it's finally like sunny outside and not raining so much. And if you listen to the episode a couple of weeks ago on seasonal depression, I am here to tell you that I am like a new person when the weather this this way. Like I'm such a summer girl. I'm not happy until I'm sweating.
00:01:06
Speaker
like these 70 degree days are not enough for me. I need it to be 80 or 90 degrees. I need it to be like so uncomfortable when you get into your car in the afternoon that you can't breathe for a second because it's so hot. Like that is the kind of weather that I need in my life. That is what I thrive on and it's it's like right around the corner. I can feel it.
00:01:29
Speaker
And it just makes me so happy.
Clinical Hypnotherapy Certification
00:01:32
Speaker
Um, that's a little side note, but today I want to talk to you a little bit about hypnotherapy. So if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I just finished my certification to be a clinical hypnotherapist
00:01:45
Speaker
And I posted a little bit about it on my Instagram. And of course, people have a ton of questions about it. So I wanted to put together an episode where I can talk about my training and talk about what hypnotherapy is and what it's used for. So that even for my current clients, when I suggest it in therapy, obviously they have a lot of questions about what the process is like. So I wanted to have a resource together so that I can direct them here as well so that they can have it all in one place so that
00:02:11
Speaker
We don't use an entire session of me trying to explain it. Here's the thing that I want to start with.
Therapy Style and Techniques
00:02:20
Speaker
Every therapist has their own style of therapy. That has to do with personality-wise. I'm the type of therapist that I'm much more personable and I share more about my life.
00:02:35
Speaker
than some therapists do. And I'm not here to say like one is right and one is wrong, but that's just more my style. But it also has to do with what your training is. So like, you know how the saying is, if you go to six different doctors, you'll get six different opinions. Like, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that we all are coming from our place of our experiences and our trainings and
00:03:01
Speaker
Um, everything, all of that bundled together will give you a different type of like style. And it's the same thing with therapists. So when we're doing our education, like in our master's programs, there's certain things that we're all trained on, but where you go from there has a lot to do with the types of clients that you end up working with. Um,
00:03:22
Speaker
And also just kind of like what your interests are and what feels right for you. And so after grad school, you do all these different trainings on the different modalities of therapy. And hypnotherapy is just one modality. It's one approach to therapy.
Understanding EMDR Therapy
00:03:40
Speaker
So I have naturally been drawn towards learning the modalities that help release trauma from the body because the majority of the clients that I work with have some kind of trauma in their background.
00:03:52
Speaker
And so all of the different ways that I approach therapy really is
00:03:58
Speaker
more of like a somatic therapy versus a cognitive therapy. And what that means is, and I explained this a little bit in the episode that I did on anxiety, I think that was episode four on anxiety, we have these two different brains, we have a logical brain and we have an emotional brain. And when you get trained in certain type of therapies that are more of the cognitive therapies, like CBT, DBT, stuff like that, you're working on how to
00:04:26
Speaker
think about your situation, how to challenge your thoughts, how to even acknowledge the thoughts that go through your mind, and then how you go from negative thinking to positive thinking about stuff. You also learn a lot of skills for being able to recognize your emotions in the moment. And those therapies definitely have a time and a place and they can do a lot of good. But you're staying in the part of your brain where you are thinking about what you're feeling instead of feeling what you are feeling.
00:04:55
Speaker
So when I say the more somatic approaches, that's talking about being connected with your body and connected with that emotional part of your brain that houses your fight or flight response. Because that's where so much that's where your trauma is stored your trauma responses. That's where it's connected with your nervous system. So if you're having anxiety or panic or those kind of things like that is your
00:05:17
Speaker
body experiencing it, not just you're not just thinking about it like you are feeling it. So the types of therapies that I have really been trained in are these more somatic experiencing types of therapies. So the first big one that I did was when I got trained in EMDR.
00:05:34
Speaker
And a lot of people have heard of EMDR because it's really popular right now especially. But what I have found in my practice is that EMDR is really, really good if you have what we call a big T trauma or a discrete trauma.
00:05:49
Speaker
And those are the ones that are, um, the way I define big T trauma is number one, it has a beginning middle and end. Like you can say exactly when it started and exactly when it stopped. And with big T trauma, it's usually the type that you see on like,
00:06:07
Speaker
Criminal Minds or a show like that where it's some kind of like it's it's pretty life-threatening, right? And so with big T traumas, it's things like you get into a car wreck where there there is a beginning and there is an end or Like God forbid you are a part of a mass shooting or something like that those are big T traumas and EMDR is really good for helping to release what your body is holding on to and
00:06:35
Speaker
Because what happens is your your body and your brain has a hard time feeling like the event is over.
00:06:42
Speaker
Um, like when you, when you think back on it or when something triggers that feeling, your body is right back there, like it's still happening. And so that helps to release it so that, so that your body understands that you're not there anymore. Um, but what I have found though, is that for a lot of my clients, they don't necessarily have those big T traumas. They have more, what we call little T traumas and it's these more complex traumas that happen. The difference is, is that happens over a period of time.
00:07:11
Speaker
So it's more like some kind of abusive, neglectful, or emotionally unavailable relationship, especially if we're talking about childhood trauma. We're talking about parents that didn't meet your needs. And those are little traumas. It's like multiple paper cuts over your entire life. And you end up with these really big wounds by the time you get into adulthood. And the thing is with EMDR, we're thinking back on identifying particular times that it happened. And if you just grew up in these environments,
00:07:41
Speaker
especially like if it's something like you had an alcoholic mother, for example. So if I were trying to do EMDR and I said, you know, think of a time where you experienced trauma, a lot of my clients are like, well, pick a Tuesday. Like it was constant. It was always happening. And one doesn't necessarily one day doesn't necessarily stick out more than another. So it's not the EMDR can't work on complex trauma. But what I have found is that
00:08:09
Speaker
It works better if you've got like a big T, discrete trauma that's got like a beginning and an end. What I have found works better with complex trauma, which is again, the majority of the clients that I work with, I got trained in IFS, which is internal family systems.
Exploring IFS Therapy
00:08:25
Speaker
And that, oh my gosh, has been a game changer in my practice.
00:08:29
Speaker
IFS is the type of therapy that if you ever hear about like healing your inner child, or parts work or ego state therapy, those kind of all fall under the same umbrella. And that has just been my go to in my practice for the last couple of years. Because I feel like it's just a much more gentle approach. And it's much more like getting your younger self the nurture that he or she needed at the time.
00:08:55
Speaker
And yes, it very much is somatic too because you'll realize that your younger self is holding on to a lot of those feelings. So it's still connecting with the body and connecting with the emotional brain, just kind of like in a different way than a big T trauma.
00:09:11
Speaker
So one of the reasons why I wanted to do hypnotherapy training and get certified in that is because it's another modality that is kind of like IFS. It's a more like gentle approach for trauma. And so that's why I got really interested in it. And I actually did a few sessions of hypnotherapy with my therapist and I just, I thought it was just so interesting and it really helped. So that's why I got trained in it. And I just finished my training last weekend.
00:09:39
Speaker
And so I'm really excited to start using it in my practice.
Hypnotherapy: Science and Benefits
00:09:43
Speaker
So everybody's question is like, okay, well, what is hypnotherapy? Like, what is this session? What's it like to experience it, right? So a little bit of the science behind it, and I won't bore you with all the details of it that I probably am not the person to explain it anyways, but the theory behind it is that we have different
00:10:03
Speaker
um brain waves like if you've heard of alpha and beta and stuff like that are different brain waves like think about it like this when when you are at your highest activity level in your brain that is where you're having to use the the most attention so if you are driving on the highway and somebody is like swerving into your lane that's when you are most alert right
00:10:24
Speaker
Then there's kind of the waves of like when you're actively having a conversation with someone but it's not the most important conversation. Like it's not where you're having anxiety about it or you're like learning really heavy news or something. Like that's another level of concentration or another level of like how active your brain is. Then I want you to think about you're in a meeting and you
00:10:48
Speaker
It's a meeting that should have been an email and so the whole time you're just like kind of tuned out. And so if someone all of a sudden was just like, um, what are your thoughts on that? You kind of would like have to snap out of it to come back to be like, Oh gosh, like I gotta say something now. Um, so there's that lesser paying attention, right?
00:11:10
Speaker
And then there's the state like right before you fall asleep, you know, that feeling where you're not asleep, like you're still having some thoughts, but it's like you're going in and out. Um, that's when you potentially can have that feeling of like you're falling and it just like jolts you back awake. Um, if you think about that state right before you fall asleep, that's the one that we were trying to get you to during hypnotherapy sessions.
00:11:36
Speaker
And the reason for that is what's essentially happening is the deeper you go, the less your conscious mind is around.
00:11:49
Speaker
And what happens with our conscious mind is we typically overthink with our conscious mind, right? And our subconscious has so much information. It knows so much about you that it but it's in your subconscious, right? And so we want to be able to get the conscious mind to relax.
00:12:09
Speaker
and to not overthink things and to kind of like not get in the way of us being able to communicate with the subconscious mind. And the thing is, when we can get there, your subconscious mind can start to share more about what it knows. And it also, it puts you in a place of being able to learn more directly to your subconscious mind, if that makes sense. So hypnotherapy is essentially helping you tap into your subconscious.
00:12:38
Speaker
And another thing is that when you're in that state and the conscious is not so active, you become more easily, like you become more suggestible. And so when we're working on something specific in therapy, and I'll share a little bit more about this in a second,
00:12:57
Speaker
But it's more like when you're trying to change a habit or something like that, when you could connect directly with the subconscious without the conscious getting in the way, you become really open to suggestion. And so that's why when we start doing things like these positive affirmations and stuff in your hypnotherapy session, it sticks because it's going directly to the subconscious mind, which is open to learning new habits, which is really, really interesting.
00:13:22
Speaker
I will say that hypnosis and hypnotherapy gets a really bad rap because of the way that it has been used for entertainment.
Misconceptions about Hypnotherapy
00:13:32
Speaker
So when you think about a hypnotist in a magic show,
00:13:38
Speaker
Like, if that's what you're thinking about, that's not what this is. And I have a couple of thoughts about that. Like, number one, keep in mind that that is solely for entertainment purposes. So I have had people ask me in the last couple of days, like, are you gonna make me bark like a dog or cluck like a chicken? And the answer is no, that is not therapeutic and we are not going there. But the thing is, and I really, really wanna drive this point home, your subconscious will not let you go somewhere that you don't want to go.
00:14:09
Speaker
So in a hypnotherapy session, you will never feel out of control of what's happening because your subconscious mind is also protective of you. And so you're never going to be at a place of the session goes in a direction that you don't want it to go. You also will never be so like
00:14:29
Speaker
That's what we call it when you get down to this really, really relaxed state as your entrance. You will never be out of control when you're in trance to the point that you can't stop or pause or like wake up fully and say like, I don't feel comfortable with that. So you'll never be in a position of I'm leading you down this path towards really like painful things and you're just helpless and can't stop it. So that never, ever will happen. And I really want to make sure that I drive that point home.
00:14:58
Speaker
Um, again, like hypnotherapy is supposed to be a more gentle approach therapy. So absolutely not. It's not going to look like what you've seen at a carnival or on TV with a hypnotist. Like that's not what we're doing here. They also were not doing therapy. Keep that in mind too. Um, but that is a magic show and I would question the validity of any of that anyways. Um,
00:15:24
Speaker
So the next question would be like, okay, so what does that actually look like in therapy?
Structure of Hypnotherapy Sessions
00:15:29
Speaker
So step one would always be what we call like resourcing or a resource state. And what that means is that we do an entire session that is just devoted to getting you comfortable with the process. Like we will not jump into a hypnotherapy session without doing one of these, what's called a resourcing session.
00:15:52
Speaker
A resourcing session is going to be something like, if you've done any parts work or you've done any therapy and we talk about getting in touch with, sometimes it's called your why self. In IFS we call it just self when you are completely at the core of who you are.
00:16:12
Speaker
We do an entire session of getting you used to the process of going into trance so that you feel comfortable being either in my office or over telehealth, like just being in that state in front of me, like with your eyes closed. And we'll do a whole session on building up the feeling of like your inner strength. And I think that that's so beautiful because so many times
00:16:35
Speaker
With whatever level of trauma or dysfunctional families or just hurt that you've gone through in life, so many times a result of that is that we stop trusting ourselves. We stop trusting our judgment. We think that we are the problem and we lose complete touch with our inner strength or with ourself, right?
00:16:57
Speaker
And so this resourcing session that we do to begin with is all about building up that inner strength that you have everything that you need inside of you to be able to heal, that you have all the resources that you need, that you can count on yourself. And it really just builds up this feeling. And again, we're connecting with your subconscious so that you're more easily open to this suggestion of you deserve healing.
00:17:25
Speaker
And so at the beginning of each session, I'll take a few minutes to help you get really relaxed, get really comfortable. And we'll play like really relaxing music while this is happening. And you'll hear me use like my hypnotherapy voice, which is a lot
00:17:42
Speaker
calmer. It's a lot slower. It helps you to really go deeper into relaxation. Like that's the voice that I use during hypnotherapy. And what that's doing is just like giving you a few minutes to kind of tune out the day. Um, even like the guided meditation that I did a couple of weeks ago, that body scan of being able to say, let's be fully present in the moment, tune everything else out. And what we'll focus on is the here and now. So you take a few minutes just to tune everything out. And then we go into that, um,
00:18:12
Speaker
that kind of script that's talking about your inner strength. And you stay there for a few minutes and that first experience that you have with that resourcing script is not going to take very long, like probably 20 minutes maybe. You really just like marinate and soak up that feeling of, I do have this inner strength and I can heal and I deserve this experience.
00:18:37
Speaker
And then at the end, um, we just kind of like give you a second to wake up and we talk about like, you're going to be, when you come back to the room, you're going to be refreshed and you're going to be relaxed and you're going to be flooded with like energy and hope and ready to move forward with the day.
00:18:53
Speaker
So that will always be the first session that I do with anybody.
Applications of Hypnotherapy
00:18:57
Speaker
But then next we moved into what's called hypnotherapy and that's where we really incorporate therapy in it. And those are more of the like working sessions and how we go from there really depends on what your goals are and what you want to work on. And so depending on what that goal is or what you're like presenting concern is it
00:19:16
Speaker
Like the way that it plays out in session will be a little bit different. But I want you to know the different things that hypnotherapy is good for working on. So the first one is a discrete trauma like we were talking about before. That if we didn't want to use EMDR on it, we can use hypnotherapy for it.
00:19:35
Speaker
And it is to help again, like help the system know that it is over and that you're not there anymore. And so if, um, if you have tried EMDR before and it just felt too intense and you weren't able to release it, you might want to try hypnotherapy. And I was trained in, um, a specific kind for this. It's called hypno counting. Um,
00:19:59
Speaker
And it's to really help you process through those emotions and be able to release them because your brain gets the message that finally that there was an end to this and that you did survive it. The second thing that it's really good for is what I've been talking about, which is complex trauma. So you have hard things that have happened over many years that have built up negative beliefs about yourself that you're dealing with today.
00:20:25
Speaker
And that's where I really actually like to weave into a hypnotherapy session, the, the principles of that parts work that I was talking about earlier, so that we can, um, go through and help heal the inner child and give them the nurturing or, or whatever your inner child needs to be able to release those. Um, a lot of times it's like, I am statements that you developed about yourself. Like.
00:20:50
Speaker
I am worthless. I am a failure. I'm not safe, those kind of things.
Mind-Body Connection in Hypnotherapy
00:20:55
Speaker
So we're working to relieve some of those beliefs that you have adopted about yourself through hypnotherapy. And again, like if you have complex trauma where it happened quite frequently with different people over many years,
00:21:09
Speaker
It's going to take several sessions and I want to make sure that people understand that this is not you under you do a hypnotherapy session and all your childhood trauma is just cleared in one session like that's really unrealistic to think about. But we do it as many times as we need to and slowly over time it just gets better. So another one is if you have a somatic complaint.
00:21:33
Speaker
And what that means is your your body is holding on to something. So it could be something like back pain or like numbness or tingling. Like your body is telling you that something's wrong. It could be a cough. And
00:21:48
Speaker
The thing is like our mind and our body is so connected that yes, there may be a physical thing going on as well. And any good therapist will tell you you still need to see a doctor, you still need to rule out any medical issues that are going on. But that doesn't mean that hypnotherapy can also help to get you some relief from it. Here's an example that I want to share that I thought was so fascinating. Our instructor last weekend, who is teaching the training course was saying that she
00:22:18
Speaker
For a really long time she was getting sore throats really bad and she didn't have allergies and she wasn't getting sick or anything like that but she kept getting these sore throats and she was working with her own therapist and they did a hypnotherapy session on this somatic complaint that she had these sore throats and she was able to realize that for so long she was not
00:22:39
Speaker
able to speak up for herself, that her subconscious was saying I was like giving her these sore throats every time she wasn't speaking up for herself as an adult. And so she was able to realize like, I'm denying myself like I'm not meeting my own needs. I'm not sticking up for myself. And so she started practicing being like really intentional about speaking up for herself and her sore throats went away. Now that's like a pretty
00:23:06
Speaker
In my opinion, like a freaking awesome example of how the mind and the body are connected and how if you do therapy and get connected with your body and understand yourself better, there can be a lot of physical release with this too.
00:23:21
Speaker
I'm also always cautious on overselling something because I wouldn't want someone to come in with like a chronic pain and then they don't get any relief for it. But the thing is, you will be able to release other things along the way of like the beliefs that you have adopted about yourself because you have this chronic pain. Like if you have adopted this belief of I'm broken, or I'm, I'm not worthy because I have this pain,
00:23:46
Speaker
Because a lot of people that deal with chronic pain have started to believe those things about themselves Even if hypnotherapy couldn't help with the physical aspect of it It can help you to start to sort through and release and heal from all of those negative messages that you've learned to give yourself along the way
00:24:02
Speaker
So if you're having some kind of somatic experience, somatic complaint, hypnotherapy might be good for it. Another thing is future fears.
Behavior Change through Hypnotherapy
00:24:11
Speaker
So if you have some kind of like phobia or a fear about something specific in the future, there's a whole different way to do hypnotherapy that can help you with that.
00:24:25
Speaker
It's kind of like exposure therapy, but you're just thinking about it. We're not actually forcing you to be around the thing or try the thing that you're fearful of, but we just talk a little bit about how do we get you comfortable with that just in your thoughts and be able to release those fears. So it's really good for working on fears.
00:24:44
Speaker
And then the final one that I think it's really good for is a behavior change. And so I have heard for years that so many people have been able to quit smoking because of hypnotherapy.
00:24:57
Speaker
And I think that that is just like incredibly powerful. People also use it a lot for weight loss. So I'm really interested in figuring out how to incorporate that into my practice as well, which as a therapist, there's always like, that's a fine line to walk because you want to make sure that people are doing it.
00:25:16
Speaker
in a way that also honors actually healing their body image issues that they might be having to have. So weight loss is not always a solution for everyone.
00:25:29
Speaker
And if that's something that you're interested in, we probably would do a lot of sessions ahead of time on working through some of those other issues that surround with weight loss. But still, hypnotherapy can be used to help with things like weight loss or any other kind of behavior change. I'm trying to think of some of the other examples that we had this past weekend.
00:25:50
Speaker
Oh, I had someone that was, he was very reactive with his children. He would find himself getting really irritated in the moment with his children, and so that was a behavior that he wanted to change. I had another person that
00:26:09
Speaker
She wanted to get out of the habit of like scrolling on her phone too much, like overusing social media. So if you've got some kind of like habit that you want to change again, when we lessen the conscious mind and can tap into the subconscious mind, it is more open to new learning and habit change.
Reinforcement through Recorded Sessions
00:26:28
Speaker
And one of the really cool things about hypnotherapy is that we also record the part of your session that is helping to get to the positive part of it, like after you do the work to release a lot of the trauma or the pain or whatever it is that we're working on.
00:26:45
Speaker
We really work on building up in your own words what life would be like if you didn't have this concern. And we record that part of the session and you get that recording with the music and you can listen to it. And the more you listen to it when you're in that state, so like you recommend, I would recommend that you fall asleep to this recording or if you're, if you have time in like the day to do some kind of meditation, you listen to it.
00:27:13
Speaker
And every time you're subconscious, here's that same message over again with the the positive of like what life will be like without this concern, it becomes more and more imprinted that that is your new habit, whether it's like a logistic habit of like not smoking or whether it's a new belief of like, I am worthy or I am good enough, you know, whatever it is, the more you listen to it, the more it sticks. And if you're having
00:27:42
Speaker
if like in the future if it kind of flares back up and you're in another instance where somebody different is making you feel like you're not good enough, you pull out your old recording and you start listening to it again or you come back in for a different session on that specific instance that's going on and you get a new recording that's more like tailored to that experience. And so I think that that's another cool piece of it too is that you have something tangible to take with you after session.
00:28:08
Speaker
Um, but another thing is that we will always go at your pace.
Ensuring Comfort and Safety in Sessions
00:28:12
Speaker
And so if you want to try a session, we do the work to get you comfortable with it. Again, like I want to reiterate, like even if we're working on some of these big T or little T traumas, we're never going to go at a pace that doesn't feel comfortable for you. So even when you're in trance and we're in the thick of it, if at any point you start to feel a little bit uncomfortable, I probably will be able to notice that.
00:28:34
Speaker
because you'll make some kind of facial expression or I'm paying attention to like your breathing throughout it. So if you start to look like your breathing has changed, I'll check in and say like, how are we doing right now? Like we never want to push you out of your window of tolerance, just like with any other type of therapy. So if there are any of those fears that you're going to be out of control in the session is going to go in direction in a direction that you're not ready for, that won't happen.
00:29:00
Speaker
Like if you have a good therapist, they're going to be able to be with you in that moment so that you're not going to feel alone and be able to guide you through it that in a way that that gives you relief, not in a re traumatizing way. Those are all the notes that I wrote down that I wanted to share.
Engagement and Listener Interaction
00:29:17
Speaker
And I know that that is a lot of information, but probably leads to a lot of questions. So if you have further questions about it, if you are a client, make sure that you bring it up in our session so that I can explain anything further.
00:29:28
Speaker
If you're not a client and you just want to know more about it, feel free to leave a note under the show notes or also if you want to send me a DM on Instagram, it's at empower underscore counseling. And that's probably the best way to reach me. But I'm happy to continue to share how this is going and what I'm learning from it in my practice. But if it's something that you're interested, reach out and if you are in the state of Georgia or Florida, I'm licensed and we can work together.
00:29:56
Speaker
That's all I have for you today. Like I said, let me know if there are any other questions or anything else that I can explain or share. And if not, still, please do me a favor and like this episode, share it with your friends so it can reach more people and we'll talk to you next time.
00:30:14
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Outside of Session. Remember, while I am a licensed therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for individual therapy. The contents of this episode are for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are having a mental health emergency, please dial 911 for immediate assistance or dial 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline.