Hypnosis For Treating Psychiatric Disorders — Could It Work?

Hypnotherapy is one of the oldest forms of psychotherapy in the West. When we think of hypnosis, we might associate it with people dancing like chickens on stage. Generally speaking though, hypnosis is all about focusing attention on positive imagery.

Hypnosis is the tool, and hypnotherapy is the use of this tool in a therapeutic context. In America, the clinical use of hypnotherapy has been around since 1961, when the American Psychiatric Association approved it as a form of therapy to treat mental illness.

I’ll tread carefully by pointing out that there is still insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of hypnotherapy (conforming to academic norms), however, lets not ignore the existing data — a 2006 study suggested that those who underwent hypnotherapy before surgery saw 56% reductions in their levels of anxiety.

Another study involved 84 depressed participants who underwent a 16 week program in either hypnotherapy or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and according to the Beck Depression Inventory scale, those who received the hypnotherapy displayed slightly greater improvements in their symptoms.

I am currently exploring my options in regards to hypnotherapy, as I believe it could be an effective tool to add to the treatment kit. Hypnotherapy appeals to me because it works to move your conscious mind out of the way so that you can reprogram your subconscious mind.

The main thought in psychology today is that our conscious mind runs about 5% of our lives, while our subconscious runs the other 95%. That’s a huge portion of influence, especially considering we don’t have much control over what goes in and out of the subconscious. Our conscious minds act as the gatekeepers to what can go in and out of the subconscious, however the conscious mind does a lousy job at gate-keeping because our subconscious minds are usually full of self-limiting and self-defeating beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.

Because the subconscious runs an overwhelming majority of our lives, it means the more self-limiting and self-defeating beliefs it has programmed into it, the more we think, feel and act out in these self-limiting and self-defeating ways. Hypnosis works to push this conscious mind out of the way, so that you can access the subconscious. Once you have greater access into the subconscious, you can start to reprogram it with more favorable beliefs. The more favorable the content of your subconscious, the more favorable you think, feel and behave in every day life.