Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy

cairnHeart-Centered Hypnotherapy is an exciting and transformational technique that offers great promise in healing many mental health and physical ailments. I know through personal and professional experience, that profound change takes place in the safe, compassionate healing space created by this technique. I look forward to discussing the potential it may bring to your healing journey.

I received my Hypnotherapy Certification from the Wellness Institute in Issaquah, WA. Founded by Diane Zimberoff and David Hartman 25 years ago, they have taught and trained clinicians the world over in Diane’s breakthrough Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy approach.

A typical hypnotherapy session is 90 minutes. Generally an initial consult is done prior to a full session. This allows for a review of the history of presenting issues, an experience with induction into hypnotic trance and the development of resources to improve positive coping skills.  You are encouraged to practice enhancing these resources on your own prior to a session that involves age regression. It is common that 3-4 sessions are necessary to resolve old patterns of traumatic subconscious wounds and incorporate new coping beliefs and healthy behaviors.

Please call me if you have further questions about Heart Centered Hypnotherapy.

The following excerpt is from a white paper available on the Wellness Institute’s website at www.wellness-institute.org.

Why Heart Centered Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is becoming a more and more common practice for treating some fairly prevalent health and psychological issues. Industry trends indicate that hypnotherapy techniques are being acknowledged as the most effective method for treating some of these common ailments, rather than the use of basic hypnosis, which tends to only provide a temporary solution that does not get to the root of the underlying issue. Below are treatment areas where hypnotherapy has proven to be a highly effective treatment option.

ADDICTIONS
Hypnosis can be useful in modifying self-destructive compulsive or addictive behavior patterns, but usually the change is temporary unless the underlying motivation is addressed. Hypnotherapy promotes the resolution of the issues that caused the addictive behavior in the first place. Addiction to gambling, sex, alcohol or over-eating is driven by a deep unsatisfied need and an existential fear based on that unmet need: an individual may over-eat as a defense against feelings of loneliness and fear of abandonment. Through age regression hypnotherapy we can go back to the source of the person’s fear of abandonment as a lonely child of three, for example, when she was separated from her parents for extended periods of time. Healing that trauma dissolves the tremendous life-or-death feeling that attached to the experience of loneliness, and thus lessens the extent of defense she has been using to cope with it.

ANXIETY AND STRESS MANAGEMENT
Hypnosis is potent in the treatment of anxiety, stress, phobias and fears because it is such a powerful anti-anxiety agent. The nervous system under hypnosis is relaxed. Hypnosis can also be useful in alleviating somatic conditions that can be causing anxiety, such as chronic pain. Of course, as with addictions, the anxiety in an individual’s current life may be the result of earlier trauma, and so hypnotherapy can be a powerful technique to resolve the trauma and relieve the anxiety.

PTSD AND TRAUMA RESOLUTION
Hypnosis is now firmly associated with the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Hypnotic phenomena and the symptoms of PTSD are similar. Physical trauma produces a sudden discontinuity in cognitive and emotional experience that often persists after the trauma is over. This results in symptoms such as psychogenic amnesia, intrusive reliving of the event as if it were recurring, numbing of responsiveness, and hypersensitivity to stimuli. Hypnosis is a powerful tool in the treatment of PTSD because it provides controlled access to memories that may otherwise be kept out of consciousness; it allows restructuring of intrusive memories through corrective re-experiencing of the trauma; hypnosis promotes access to somatic awareness and at the same time effective filtering of environmental stimuli. Through hypnotherapy one can go back to source traumas and resolve the interrupted nervous system reaction that is causing current PTSD symptoms.

WEIGHT LOSS
We prefer to use the term weight release rather than weight loss, because many people avoid loss, but are willing to proactively release what no longer serves them. Weight release is usually best achieved with proper diet and adequate exercise, and hypnosis can be instrumental in motivating an individual to commit to such a healthy regimen. People who need to release excess weight usually have some self-sabotaging behavior patterns, i.e., emotional eating, such as eating to soothe loneliness or maintaining extra weight to keep from attracting attention from members of the opposite sex. Age regression hypnotherapy is a technique that allows access to these underlying hidden motivations, the secondary gains from continuing self-sabotaging behavior.

The following is from the Wellness Institute Website courtesy of Diane Zimberoff.

Five Ways to Treat Depression with Hypnotherapy

Depression is often a reaction to a distressing or traumatic event. The people and situations who are associated with the traumatic event in our lives are referred to as traumatic triggers.

An example is someone reporting, “I never was depressed before my father (mother, child, spouse, best friend) died.”  After a loved one passes on, the individual often has to deal with their belongings including their home, or now has to take on their responsibilities. Any of these can become traumatic triggers. If the person or family member who has lost the loved one does not have time to fully grieve the loss, and to process unfinished feelings about the person, depression may set in almost immediately. Other traumatic triggers include losing a job, divorce, or financial reversals such as bankruptcy or home foreclosure.

THE SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION

The following are some of the typical signs of depression that may take over slowly like a fog rolling in on what was previously a sunny day and now is becoming darker with each minute.

  • Symptom #1 – “Now, I can’t get out of bed in the morning. I just don’t have the same interest in things that I used to.”
  • Symptom #2 – “I have body pains and I’m worried that I may have (fibromyalgia, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, etc.).”
  • Symptom #3 – “I can’t seem to stop overeating and I gained 40 pounds.” Or “I have gone back to drinking, smoking cigarettes or pot, etc.”
  • Symptom #4 – “I’m having trouble sleeping at night and I’m exhausted.”
  • Symptom #5 – “I cry at the drop of a pin, but mostly I feel numb.”

Often these symptoms will be treated with drugs prescribed by a doctor. Anti-depressants, sleep medication, and perhaps a diet or stop smoking program will be prescribed. These treatment methods, of course, are aimed at symptom relief but don’t get down to treating the underlying cause of the depression.

If the depressed person goes to a counselor, they will talk about the feelings which may help for a while. Other therapists may try relaxation techniques combined with positive affirmations. There is a basic reason why these common responses to depression don’t really work: they do not address or resolve the deeper underlying causes of depression.

HOW DOES CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY TREAT DEPRESSION?

1. It helps you enter the subconscious:

First, we drop down from the conscious mind, which is only 10% of the mind into the subconscious mind. Now we are addressing the whole person, 100% of the mind rather than just treating the symptoms.

2. It helps you identify the “unfinished business”.

People often have what Dr. Fritz Perls called “unfinished business” with whatever has been lost, be it a loved one, a job, or a home. These unresolved feelings, such as resentments, regrets, blame, anger, guilt, jealousy, and fear are stored in the body and must be released as soon after the triggering event as possible. Otherwise they become deeply buried beneath the numbness created by the anti-depressant drugs, the addictive behavior, and the concurrent repression that occurs when trauma and grief go untreated. Clinical hypnotherapy works for depression because it removes the underlying basis of depression and completes the unfinished business that otherwise continues to recycle as self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors.

3. It helps you “finish” the “unfinished business” and release the stored emotions/experiences.

With hypnotherapy, we can go down to the deepest level of these traumatic experiences, memories and stored emotions to release them from the mind and body. When this hypnotherapy process is completed, the client reports that their depression has lifted, that they have stopped the compulsive thoughts or behavior, and that they are ready to resume living their lives again.

4. It helps you replace the trauma with positivity.

With each healing session of clinical hypnotherapy, we can replace the fearful repetitive thoughts that often haunt people following a traumatic experience. Positive affirmations now work because the underlying emotional release has been accomplished.

5. It helps you use the power of hypnotic suggestion to create long-term improvement.

Hypnotherapy provides an effective way to access the individual’s ability to affect the physical body. Once self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors have been resolved, the individual can begin to use hypnotic suggestibility to improve the body’s functioning. Hypnotherapy can be very helpful in correcting patterns of restless sleep, low energy or libido, headaches or chronic pain. And one can use hypnotherapy to increase motivation to exercise and eat properly.

Conclusion

Consistent research and methodology refinement has allowed hypnotherapy to progress as an advanced form of therapy to the point where clinical hypnotherapy is now regularly considered as a treatment option for depression. Working in tandem with a group of powerful psychotherapy techniques, hypnotherapy can be a highly successful form of treatment for individuals with depression.

Tel: (406) 396-7834 || Em: info@chuckwaylandtherapist.com || 336 West Spruce, Missoula, MT 59802