Stanford University’s Lucile Parkard’s Hospital have been using hypnosis to avoid months and possibly even years of wasted time when diagnosing children’s seizures and prescribing drugs.
Physicians used hypnosis to check the diagnosis. When diagnosing seizures, it can be difficult to establish the areas of the brain that cause the seizure. Previously, that has meant monitoring the child, whilst hooked up to monitors, and then waiting for days at a time hoping that the child would have a seizure whilst in the hospital. The waiting can be very traumatic for both the child and their family. Another consideration is that the child is in hospital, away from the factors that may be causing or contributing to the onset of the seizures so they may not even be able to have a seizure in hospital.
To combat this problem, the physicians were able to hypnotise the children. Children are usually much easier to hypnotise than adults because their imagination is much more active and impressionable. In hypnosis, the doctors were able to induce a seizure by asking the child to simply imagine they were going through a seizure.
Whilst under hypnosis, the brain activity can be monitored and this tells the physicians whether seizures are epileptic and need drugs, or non-epileptic, needing psychological or neurological treatment. In a trial of nine children, the hypnotherapist was able to induce a seizure in eight cases, confirming the diagnosis.
When the children were experiencing non-epileptic seizures, a combination of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and hypnotherapy was used to allow the children to recognise the causal factors and use self-hypnosis to ‘turn off’ their reactions thus preventing a seizure.
The hospital found that although many parents and families were initially sceptical of hypnosis, they soon realised the benefits.
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Have you ever noticed that your current relationships are influenced by your past? Many experiences from our past influence how we deal with and see new relationships.
Often, we do not consciously realise, or maybe we do but cannot fix, the ‘left over’ issues that may be preventing us moving on with our life or living our life to its full potential.
It is fairly common knowledge that hypnotherapy can help people to gain confidence, but many do not realise the many other areas in which it can help, especially when combined with another powerful therapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Areas such as increasing sexuality between partners, opening communication channels and other emotions required for a relationship to have a good chance of success. Hypnosis cannot make you fall in love again but we all know that when our self esteem is low it can damage a friendship or relationship.
A hypnotherapist can help you to break old patterns of critical thoughts, removing negative tendencies and helping you to achieve inner peace. Just knowing you have a problem does not help you to resolve the problem; the patterns need to be broken.
All this does not mean that hypnotherapy can make you the perfect partner, however, it can help resolve negative feelings in particular areas that may be adversely affecting your life and if you do wish to use hypnotherapy, or any other therapy for that matter, for couples counselling, then both partners must be willing to give it a try.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is generally thought of as being one of the most successful psychotherapies for bulimia, or bulimia nervosa.
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder where the sufferer will often binge on extremes of food and then force themselves to throw it up to prevent themselves from gaining weight. Many sufferers report a feeling of loss of control whilst binging and the purging is often their way of gaining back that control.
CBT, especially when combined with hypnosis, is a very effective and quick therapy. When dealing with bulimia, CBT aims to interrupt the old thinking processes associated with the issue, such as the preoccupation with food or weight, the ‘all or nothing’ thought process and the low self esteem that generally comes with bulimia. It also aims to interrupt the ‘binge-purge’ cycle.
Many therapists will ask their patients to keep a food diary and give feedback on the meal plans, triggers of thought processes, etc. CBT and hypnosis is used to challenge these old patterns. Around 50 per cent of bulimics are able to stop the binge-purge cycle using CBT. From the remaining fifty per cent, many show partial improvement and only a small minority do not respond.
Sometimes, bulimia is a symptom of a food-obsessed family background so occasionally, family therapy is also recommended to decrease the chance of a relapse.
Many people associate hypnotherapy with building a person’s self-confidence and self-image, however, they may not associate hypnosis with the physical benefits of a similar nature.
When someone suffers from a lack of self-confidence, they often experience physical symptoms of shyness as well, which will make them feel worse, hence their confidence is reduced and so the cycle continues. For example, they may blush uncontrollably or their nerves may also mean they suffer from sweating or shaking as well. These physical symptoms can make increasing your own confidence feel more difficult.
Hypnotherapy can help with these symptoms, by helping a person to control them from the inside. Combined with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), hypnosis can be even more effective. Together, they can help someone to break past habits and behaviours, even physical ones can be broken and new habits learned to replace them with new found confidence.
When you are having trouble sleeping, it can affect all areas of your life. You feel tired, lethargic, can get run down and become ill, feel ill-tempered and emotional and take it out on your family, friends and work colleagues.
Hypnotherapy is often a great help in curing insomnia, especially when combined with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
One common theme, usually present with those who regularly suffer from insomnia, is that they are thinkers and over-think or over-analyse situations. Hypnotherapy can help to break the over-thinking and old sleeping pattern. A good therapist will also teach you strategies to help reduce over-thinking and learn to let go.
If you are suffering from insomnia or having difficulty sleeping, why not try hypnotherapy?
In the last year or so, publicity about the fitting of a gastric band around your stomach to help you lose weight has heightened and many people have undergone the procedure, despite its £7,000 plus price tag. Now imagine that if you were overweight and hypnotised, you could wake up convinced you had had the procedures and could experience all the sensations of the gastric band, including the steady weight loss without actually having had the surgery.
For one Britishrun clinic in southern Spain, they have been finetuning hypnotherapy combined with cognitive behavioural therapy to do just that. The patient undergoes six relaxing and pleasant sessions over a two weeks period, including one deep hypnotherapy session where they have the gastric band ‘virtually fitted’. Just like when you have a real gastric band fitted, the patients even re-visit the clinic over the ensuing months to adjust the ‘virtual gastric band’ to suit the weight loss rate agreed.
The use of hypnotherapy and CBT has been publicised widely as ideal therapies to combine, each ‘underpins’ the other, working in conjunction with each other for some amazingly effective results in all sorts of cases. Even the BBC has run several documentary programmes on the use of the two therapies.
Indeed, even the medical profession has now come round to accept the idea of the Mind – Body Link, and it may well be the answer to our global obesity issue. In the case of the gastric band scenario, if nothing else, the client saves the £7,000 fee, the hospitalisation and surgery, no risks of MRSA, anasthetic or DVT (deep vein thrombosis) and more. As hypnotherapy grows in popularity and becomes more widely accepted as people now feel it is not ‘taboo’ to talk about it, we may well be seeing a real increase in acceptance from the medical profession.
A local newspaper in Huddersfield, reported this week that hypnotherapy cured a compulsive gambler of his addiction, against all the odds.
Gambler Tony Mays, aged 38, has quit his gambling habits and sold his Village Bakery business in Marsden, to move to France for a new life with his wife Zoe. Mr Mays said it took just three hypnotherapy sessions to cure him completely. After the third session, he said:
“I knew instantly that I would never bet again. I couldn’t even bring myself to buy a lottery ticket.â€
From the age of 13, Mr Mays said he started gambling in the arcades whilst living in Blackpool. He continued:
“I’d probably known since the age of 20 that I had a problem, which I tried to hide. It wasn’t the money that was a problem – I didn’t get into debt or put my career or business at risk – it was the amount of time it took up. I felt guilty that Zoe was always waiting around for me and I felt tired all the time. I must have spent around 30 hours a week in the bookies. It was compulsive to go every day.â€
When his mother died from cancer one year ago, Mr Mays decided to change. During his three hynotherapy sessions Mr Mays also learned to self-hypnotise and claims it has also helped him to get fit and lose weight.
“Over a year on, my former gambling colleagues still can’t believe the change. When we went back to Blackpool I had absolutely no desire to gamble, I just wanted to tell all the lads playing the machines to get treatment.â€
Earlier this year, the results of more than six hundred individual studies on more than 72000 people were combined to get an overall success rate from several methods of smoking cessation.
On average, each one had a success rate of about 19 per cent, and as you might expect, the highest success rate was from the group of people with serious heart health problems, although it was disappointing to see that even these had only a 36 per cent success rate.
Across the board, however, the most successful treatment was hypnotherapy. Patients were given suggestions whilst in a relaxed hypnotic trance and the success rate was 30 per cent.
After that, was combination therapy. Combination therapy was 29 per cent. This means where more than one therapy is combined, such as exercise and breathing methods or cognitive behavioural therapy combined with hypnosis. Old fashioned methods, such as having your stale cigarette smoke blown in your face was surprisingly successful with 25 per cent. Acupuncture followed with 24 per cent.
GP advise was the least successful. Some people were successful with just sheer willpower at only 6 per cent. Self help books or magazines were 9 per cent and nicotine gum at 10 per cent.
Hypnotherapy can be very effective when giving up smoking and many people are surprised at the level of success that can be achieved in a mere one session. According to the British Society of Medical & Dental Hypnosis, the latest hypnosis techniques have been up to 60 per cent successful from just one session.
However, for hypnotherapy to work on anything, you must want it to work and want it enough. For example, if you really love smoking and you are only going along to hypnosis because your partner asked you to, then it is not as likely to work successfully.
Even if you don’t believe that hypnosis can help you to lose weight by itself, there is no doubt that many people find it difficult to stick to a diet or exercise plan.
This is where hypnosis can help. It can help to retrain your mind to increase your motivation, make that motivation feel more real for you and keep it in your mind. Hypnotherapy can help you to think like a leaner person and develop new habits as well as discard old ones.
This does not, however, make it the easy option and you should be wary of wild and exaggerated claims that it is some sort of magic.
It is a shame that there are not more scientific, properly monitored studies into hypnosis and its effect on weight loss.
Mott (1982) said:
“although hypnosis is sometimes referred to as a method of treatment, it is more accurate to regard hypnosis as a facilitator of a number of different treatment methods.”
Previous studies have shown that hypnotherapy works best when combined with a behavioural weight management program and works best when the hypnosis is tailored to the individual rather than just a group programme, which is why many people prefer to visit a hypnotherapist rather than use a CD recording. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) helps to identify problematic behaviours and retrain and adopt new behaviours.
If you are interested in how hypnotherapy can help you to lose weight, ask for details.
In recent years, obesity has become a favourite topic for many documentaries and in the news, with many articles and much publicity on the damage it can do to our bodies, our nation and ultimately our children.
A government report published earlier this year predicted that by 2010, more than 12 million adults and a million children will be classed as obese. The problem is getting worse and we need to do something about it now.
Just going on a diet does not usually turn out to be a permanent solution for many people and to truly combat obesity requires a change in lifestyle. However, willpower and motivation play a huge factor.
Hypnotherapy is often used for weight loss and to help battle obesity so hypnotherapists are likely to see an even larger increase in the number of clients wanting hypnosis for this reason.
Over-eating is an emotional need or want rather than a physical one and hence it makes sense to tackle the problem emotionally as well as physically. Many people associate eating with a comfort or habit or they overeat when they experience emotional turmoil of some kind, or a regular emotion such as boredom or upset. For this reason, other therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are ideal as this therapy focuses upon habits and behaviour and works to replace these with more positive habits.
Many people like to find a hypnotherapist who is able to combine the best techniques from more than one therapy to suit the individual, for example, CBT can be combined with hypnotherapy and has proved very effective.