While traditional medicine is sometimes a bogeyman with its pharmaceutical industry suspected of being more interested in profits than our well-being, alternative medicine is on the rise. And there's something for everyone. Decried by some, or celebrated as a panacea by others, these practices do not leave anyone indifferent and everyone has their own opinion. One of the most popular of these alternative medicines is hypnotherapy. However, this practice, whose origins are older than one would think, is confusing, as it is associated in the collective unconscious with the field of entertainment, practiced by gurus and manipulators. Here's something to see a little more clearly, and why not make you want to try it.
If I say "hypnosis", what do you answer? If the first images that come to mind are Professor Sunflower and his pendulum, or even the snake from The Jungle Book bewitching Mowgli, you are not mistaken, but we are not talking about exactly the same subject. Because the keyword in "hypnotherapy" is indeed "therapy", and this is of course practiced in a practice and not on a cabaret stage. No pendulum or guru with a chameleon gaze ready to pickpocket a docile audience, which does not fit here. There is indeed something to be confusing, and to dispel doubt as soon as possible and avoid disappointment, know that as with any therapy, its results depend on the dialogue between therapist and patient. It will not be enough to let yourself be hypnotized and wait for the hypnotherapist to do all the work. But let's first go back to the basic principles of therapeutic hypnosis.
Because if the practice therefore undoubtedly suffers a little from its association with psychoanalysis, its more spectacular twin sister, the theory which supports the therapeutic application of hypnosis has indeed something to convince even the most skeptical. It shares many of the basic postulates of psychoanalysis, the two disciplines having developed in parallel. Freud notably practiced hypnosis for a long time, and it is no coincidence that many hypnotherapists have basic training in psychology. Hypnosis is then an additional tool that they can choose to use, which offers, so to speak, a shortcut to the patient's unconscious. The unconscious is the key term to understand hypnotherapy. This governs all the phenomena that escape our consciousness. This can therefore designate from a physiological point of view the simple maintenance of our vital functions, but also on a psychological level, everything that is of the order of impulses, desires, anxieties, fears, etc... So many phenomena that will impact our conscious part. See where we're coming from?
Thanks to this shortcut therefore, hypnosis makes it possible to work on the unconscious, to remodel it in part. As Freud and his successors established, this discipline posits that what troubles us often resides in that dark, hidden area of our psyche. It is therefore not surprising that it appears to be a miracle solution, since it would allow in just a few sessions not only to access, but also to modify, phenomena that years of classic therapy are sometimes not even enough to bring to light. day. An example is worth a thousand words:consider the case of quitting smoking, which is one of the most popular interventions in hypnosis — and one of the easiest to perform according to therapists. The basic principle is that the therapist suggests to the patient, once he is in the desired trance state, to associate tobacco with unpleasant, even repugnant sensations. Ideally, once this work is successful, the mere sight of a cigarette should inspire disgust in the patient! Addiction and phobia are good examples of how the unconscious works—since they both refer to behaviors that the conscious, rational mind cannot control—making them very good clients for hypnosis.
Another fundamental difference with show hypnosis is the state in which the patient is immersed. If we speak of "trance" and it is indeed a modified state of consciousness, halfway between waking and sleeping, it is not necessarily perceptible as such by the patient. — who sometimes even complains of not being hypnotized! The trance can also be more or less "deep" depending on the therapeutic objectives and the patient himself. Hypnotherapy works by suggestion, the patient must remain receptive - it is not enough to fall asleep like a mass to be freed from all his troubles as if by magic, quite the contrary! It is the therapist's dialogue and suggestions that will, so to speak, "infiltrate" the unconscious of the person treated, the invisible and normally impassable barrier between conscious and unconscious being temporarily lifted by this state of trance.
There is no doubt about how hypnosis works therapeutically. Apart from the almost banal cases of resolution of phobias, or of successful weaning in the case of addictions, the method has sometimes turned out to be truly prodigious for cases which, however, had nothing a priori obvious about being treated with so. The founder of the current of Ericksonian hypnosis, Milton Erickson, is still the best example. Reached at the age of 17 from poliomyelitis and, when certain death was predicted for him, he manages, completely paralyzed, to recover the use of his limbs by practicing a form of autohypnosis which will inform the theoretical contributions of the branch of hypnosis bearing his name. The unconscious is to our conscious mind what the submerged part of an iceberg is to its visible part. We still know very little about it, but such an example suggests unsuspected possibilities. This is an area where reality seems to take on fantastic features — one could say miraculous, if the explanations underlying it were not ultimately rationally based.
The question to ask is therefore rather:will hypnosis work on me? On this point, practitioners claim that even recalcitrant subjects would be receptive to hypnosis. Their stubbornness would only represent an obstacle of the conscious mind, which a competent hypnotherapist should be able to circumvent by adapting his approach. There are many branches of hypnosis. If classical hypnosis aims to be more authoritarian, the Ericksonian approach mentioned above is more based on dialogue and listening, considering the uniqueness and complexity of each patient and each unconscious, and believing that it must adapt its approach to each particular case. Today it is undoubtedly the majority branch within therapeutic hypnosis.
As with any alternative medicine, the choice of therapist is crucial. Indeed, the profession is not regulated, and anyone can therefore establish themselves as a hypnotherapist. It is therefore wise to turn to health professionals already established in more traditional disciplines - and therefore guarantors of a certain code of ethics - who have integrated hypnosis as a therapeutic tool. This does not mean that the therapists whose main practice is hypnosis are not competent or of integrity, but their training and the quality of the latter vary widely. Practitioners generally indicate that they have graduated from such or such training on their websites. Do not hesitate to push the investigation a little bit before setting your sights on one of them.
The personality of the therapist will also play a lot on your affinity and the success of the implementation of hypnosis. Some will opt for mystical-spiritual approaches, while others will prove to be much more down-to-earth. It's up to you to find out what will work best for you.
Finally, keep in mind that a reputable hypnotherapist will generally not seek to establish a long-term relationship. Most interventions are expected to bear fruit after a few sessions at most. Anyone who tries to keep you coming back too regularly will probably turn out to be a charlatan by having more after your wallet than your well-being.
