5 Magical Things About Hypnotherapy

I haven’t written in a while. Guilty as charged.

Today I feel particularly inspired to write because of a really good hypnotherapy session.

It’s been nearly a year since I went completely off-track (or perhaps on-track?) from a software engineering team lead to become a hypnotherapist. Doing this work has been nothing short of satisfying.

You see, I’m the classical engineer who gets an adrenaline rush from one major aspect of my work: fixing things. The difference between now and then is I’m fixing people rather than fixing computers. More accurately, my clients fix themselves and my job is to guide them there.

In Singaporean slang, it feels shiok! when my clients arrive at the a-ha moment and untie the knotted buttress roots of their issues.

Today, Bethany (name changed of course) returned for a 2nd session and the feedback was positive beyond my imagination. I felt that the first session didn’t go well but here I am proven wrong AGAIN. This is the kind of situation where I’d love to be wrong.

Bethany had come to me for her tendency to ruminate on unpleasant events and it was causing undue stress. Before the session starts, I always ask if the client has observed shifts in their awareness and behaviour. She said that she’s half less likely to ruminate and she now catches herself before she goes too deep. As a pleasant “side-effect”, she slept much better too!

#1 magical thing about hypnotherapy: We think we have a thousand seemingly unrelated issues but many of them actually stem from the same origin.

Today we worked on her judgemental behaviour. Just like in all my sessions, we found a young child whose parents were controlling. Thereafter came a particularly emotional outburst of tears.

I love tears. When I see tears, the therapist in me knows I’ve hit jackpot.

During the debrief, Bethany was surprised that these events event came to mind. She is one in many clients who said the exact same thing.

#2 magical thing about hypnotherapy: Your subconscious mind presents whatever you need in the moment to heal. You just need to accept it and talk about it when it comes along.

A-ha! Imagine Bethany’s surprise when she joined the dots.

After the session, we continued to have a long conversation on how some of her friends and family were stuck in their healing journey before she came back to talk about herself. She became acutely aware that whenever someone asked why she got angry, she burst into tears. As she recounted her experience, she was already tearing up.

I casually commented that her parents probably did the same to her as a child. Immediately, she recounted an incident where her mom had scolded her and then asked her to explain her actions. She told her part of the story and guess what? She ended up getting berated through and through!

“There you go!” I said, “You’ve answered your question.” Bethany went “ahhhh…!” That’s precisely the a-ha moment that therapists, hypnotherapist or not, love to see.

#3 magical thing about hypnotherapy: Once you can see the origin of your problem, it stops working its magic on you.

Many clients worry about getting re-triggered and ask “will the problem relapse?” I’ve never encountered one so the answer is probably no. It’s like an expert telling you how David Copperfield’s illusion worked, and then it stops being a magic trick to you. The people around you will still do their thing to trigger you; you can’t change the spots on a leopard. However, their behaviour will no longer trigger you. It’s over. Sayonara.

#4 magical thing about hypnotherapy: healing can happen in a split-second just by talking it out.

Ok fine… technically it was more of a counselling session. I’ve heard of wonderful sessions that go just like that! The client comes in, talks it out without even entering hypnosis and leaves happy and completely healed.

Now, I can’t be certain that the emotional issue will go away completely because we didn’t do a session to work on it. Nonetheless, now that Bethany’s aware of it, she can at least catch herself when it happens. Healing has occurred on a mental level but not emotional and cellular healing. Sometimes it’s all that’s needed. We’ll see…

It’s only been Bethany’s second session with me and that’s the next magical thing about hypnotherapy.

#5 magical thing about hypnotherapy: It’s entirely possible to heal decades-old problems in just 1 or 2 sessions! That’s 4 hours to overcome decades-old problems!

Think about it… Bethany had suffered her issues decades! Till today, I still find it incredible that age-old issues can vanish literally overnight but results clearly show that it’s within the realm of possibility.

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Credits: Photos by Almos Bechtold, mohamed abdelghaffar