2 Hours of Hypnosis Helped More Than 2.5 Years of Therapy

Takeaway

• Hypnosis is a conscious state of self-discovery helping one access the conscious and subconscious by working with symbols directly provided by the mind.
• Hypnosis helps solve traumas stored in the conscious (or subconscious) by working directly with the symbols that represent them.
• It’s the best method I have tested for solving traumas.

As the tinnitus in my ear was getting louder — and I was getting worse — I decided to take my doctor’s advice and see a hypnotherapist.

A hypnotherapist is a therapist using hypnosis to treat psychological and physical conditions.

Physical?

Yes.

We’re past the point now where medicine treats the mental and the physical separately.

A physical wound will have a psychological impact, and a psychological wound will have a physical impact.

Treating them separately is not only dangerous, it’s a waste of time, effort, and money.

I was happy that the hypnotherapist made this clear from the beginning.

Here’s what you should know about hypnosis, what happened to me while being “hypnotized”, and how you could use it for yourself.

Hypnosis

Most websites describe hypnosis as a trance-like state during which you are super relaxed and “more open to suggestions”.

Maybe it’s the case for some people.

It definitely wasn’t the case for me.

Truth is we don’t know exactly what hypnosis is, and how it works. Barely do we know that the brain emits different types of waves under hypnosis.

If I had to describe hypnosis, I would say that it’s some sort of inner walk across symbolic images straight from the subconscious.

What does that mean?

The hypnotherapist began by asking me questions about my life: what I do, where I live, what I studied.

When she saw the emotion as I spoke, she simply said

“Ah, I see an emotion there. Can you identify it? 
– It’s sadness. 
– Can you pinpoint in your body where it is? 
– In my stomach. 
– Good. Can you close your eyes for a moment?

I closed my eyes, not knowing that I wouldn’t reopen them in the next 135 min.

– Can you tell me what color or form sadness looks like in your stomach?

And so I began to explain.

I can’t tell you what I said because…well, it’s fairly personal.

But what I can say is that as I was describing what “I saw”, the hypnotherapist was drawing and writing so she could understand exactly “where I was.”

And this is where the work of hypnosis gets extremely interesting: we didn’t work with words.

We worked with these images…and places.

Hypnotherapy

Being in hypnotherapy is akin to being in a dream, but a dream located “inside yourself” that you explore and change while being fully awake, fully conscious, and while talking to someone that helps you find your way inside it.

In a way, hypnotherapy is a walk inside yourself, inside your feelings, and inside your traumas.

One could think it’s psychological, but it’s not.

It’s physical. As you move around and resolve trauma after traumas, your body relaxes and you feel increasingly lighter.

The hypnotherapist I went to was extremely good at what she did as she could guide me only based on what I was telling her.

There was nothing I could hide from her.

Somehow…she just saw. Somehow, she knew.

Do you know how it feels to have someone know exactly who you are after watching you for 10 minutes?

That’s pretty uncomfortable.

She took me to the darkest, most repressed parts of myself, and helped me move from one part to another.

I’ll give you an example: I “got into” some sort of office at some point.

The hypnotherapist told me to get out. There was no door, but a small window. So she said “make the window bigger”.

I did, and I got out. I was in a field, with a river not so far away. So I made my way to the river, crossed it, which led me to another place.

Every step you take is a trauma you release.

So every step you take makes you feel better.

It makes you feel lighter.

And it goes at lightspeed.

Why Does Hypnotherapy Work So Much Better and Faster Than CBT?

Nothing scientific here, just my knowledge and experience.

If you have read The Inner Game of Tennis, you know that language is fairly recent for the brain and that images carry much more weight than words.

This is why YouTube > Medium, and why films > books.

The best way to communicate with your subconscious — and the way your subconscious communicates with you — is with images (dreams, anyone?)

This is why every animal on the planet learns by watching then repeating what they saw.

And this is why visualization works — it directs your subconscious to do something.

While CBT is treating trauma with words and emotional labeling, hypnotherapy works directly with the images furnished by the subconscious.

It may take several sessions of therapy to talk and express trauma in words.

If you tell the hypnotherapist that it looks like a dark room, the hypnotherapist will tell you to get inside and bring some light into the room so that we can see what there is there.

One takes 30 seconds to uncover and a minute or so to fix. The other takes 3 or 4 hours.

Images > words.

Conclusion

These two hours of “walk down my own subconscious” were exhilarating, scary, and overall liberating.

I got out of the office with a big smile on my face and as I biked my way home, could not stop laughing when remembering the experience I just had.

You see that scene in Dr. Strange where the Ancient One shows Stephen what he doesn’t know?

Well, it felt the same here.

In a way, I was lucky to have already gone through so many years of therapy. My experience with confronting fears and going to dark places meant I didn’t need much of a push.

Whenever the hypnotherapist told me to go somewhere, or do something, I didn’t hesitate much.

I was also at times unable to quiet my rational mind as I wanted to find out exactly how she did what she was doing, how the mind worked, and what was the symbolic of the things I was seeing.

I could also observe myself releasing one trauma after the other, without being engulfed too much in my own emotions.

I knew this was work I needed to do. It was painful.

It was sad. But not painful.

This experience is to this day one of the most transformative events I have ever gone through.

I can recommend this type of therapy to anyone that wants to get rid of their traumas or answer questions that prevent them from sleeping.

Hypnosis is more than therapeutic.

It’s rejuvenating.

For more articles, head to auresnotes.com.

Photo by Brian Suh on Unsplash