Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

The History of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Plus How Hypnosis Helps Phobias, and a look at Depression and Hypnotherapy

By Alan Crisp DHP Clinical Hypnotherapist

www.yourtruth.co.uk and www.hypnoseek.com

The use of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool is as old as man himself. As far as can be traced back through time, we can find records of hypnosis being used to heal and to make change. Hypnosis has been used under many different names down through the centuries and the use of hypnosis for healing can be traced back to around 3000 BC in Egypt. Both the new and old testaments of the Bible speak of what could be deemed to be hypnosis, and the ancient Greeks and Romans had sleep temples where those seeking healing would be put into a trance like sleep. Their dreams, would be interpreted by the priests. By rhythmic drumming and monotonous chanting together with eye fixation, the Shaman of today can still produce catalepsy of the body and this helps to give the shaman the appearance of having magical powers just as they have done for centuries. Much of what has been done in the past by the village witchdoctor, shaman or wise woman, can be attributed to the fostering of a strong belief, conviction, expectation and imagination in the one being healed, and the chanting and singing often takes the form of what we would term as suggestion. After all, if the most powerful and magic person you know tells you will become well, you are very likely to do just that. Of course in many cases where such an individual administered to a sick person they would have recovered eventually anyway and this intervention just speeded up the healing process.

It has long been believed by many healers that body, thoughts and emotions can influence one another. Therefore it is possible to influence a physical sickness by working on and realizing particular emotions and by changing thoughts and behavioural patterns.

The Romans said 'MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO', healthy mind in healthy body.
This saying seems to confirm that for many centuries it has been believed that physical and emotional well-being have an effect on one another. To put this in perspective, only has to consider how our health declines after periods of stress or as a consequence of radical events.
The division between body and mind in medicine is something that only took place around 1750, with the scientific developments from Newton. Since then the mind and spirit have been considered to be under the jurisdiction of the church and the body under the jurisdiction of science. This is also the reason why all other kinds of medicine see the human being as a whole consisting of body, mind and soul.

Traumatic experiences are not only stored on an emotional level but also on the physical level. The emotional charge of the different traumas can influence our immune system and health conditions. Through processing old traumas and the emotional charges that are connected to a certain sickness it is possible to find resources inside of us that could help us start the healing process.

Modern hypnosis began with Anton Mesmer (1734 – 1815) in the 18th Century. Mesmer was a medical graduate from the famed medical school of Vienna and after studying as a Jesuit priest, he became interested in magnetism. Mesmer became Europe's foremost expert at magnetic healing, where magnets where passed over the body to effect a healing. His results where fabulous and so he became very famous. Mesmer believed all living things contained a kind of magnetic 'fluid' and if a person had enough of this fluid, they would be healthy. This is where the term 'Animal Magnetism' comes from. Mesmer forgot his magnets one day and so just made passes over the patient with his hands and was surprised to find that they got better. From there on, he thought he had sufficient magnetic fluid in himself top effect the cures.

James Braid (1795-1860) coined the terms 'hypnotism' and 'hypnosis, in 1843. He was a Scottish surgeon working in Manchester. He found that some people could go into a trance if there eyes where fixated on a bright object like a pocket watch for instance. He believed that a neurological process was involved and that the process could be very useful when no organic origin could be found for a persons disorder.

James Esdaile (1808-1859) another Scottish surgeon working in India would use ey fixation to prepare a patient for surgery and slow sweeping motions, putting them into a deep hypnotic sleep, causing full amnesia throughout the body.

James Braid and James Esdaile where among the first who could be called 'scientific' in their research and use of hypnosis. These pioneers removed hypnosis from the realms of 'mysticism', and started experimenting with what could really be done with it to help people with their disorders. Other scientific pioneers include, Liebeault, Bernheim, Brewer and Freud. Unfortunately the great man himself, Freud, was responsible for hypnotherapy being shelved by many for some time when he abandoned it's use.

Amongst those individuals who have been fundamental to the current view of hypnosis are: Milton Erikson, Ormond McGill, Charles Tebbetts and Dave Elman.

Ormond McGill was, it is true a stage hypnotist, but he preserved the public interest in hypnosis, but then the great Charles Tebbetts was involved in stage hypnosis in the early part of his career, but these where different times to those we live in today and the stage hypnosis would prove to engender a desire to know more about this curious art and therefore bring many of the people who moved the therapeutic use of hypnotherapy forward through the last (20th) century.

Dave Elman brought some measure of acceptance to hypnosis from the medical profession in the USA when the Council on Medical health of the American Medical Association accepted the use of hypnotherapy in 1958.

Probably the most important contributor to the acceptance of hypnotherapy as both an art and a science, was the grandfather of hypnotherapy – Dr Milton Erikson. Dr Erikson was a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist with outstanding professional credentials and because of his solid medical background he had credibility within the medical profession. Other people worthy of note for their contribution to the advancement of hypnotherapy as a healing art and as a science in the 20th century are: Rosen, Abramson, Menninger, Shenek, Magonet, Wolberg, LeCron, Bordeaux, Wetzenhoffer, Erwin and Simonton, who continues to do amazing things with cancer patients using mental imagery and focusing on beliefs and belief systems amongst other things.

What is Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is the application of therapy during hypnosis, to change or modify behaviour patterns that we wish to change, such as the compulsion to smoke, gamble, drink etc. It can help in the cure of phobias such as the fear of spiders/insects, fear of flying, fear of thunder and lightning, fear of injections etc. It can help with motivation, confidence building, reducing stress and can be very effective in pain control.

Hypnotherapy deals with Psychosomatic problems - that is, problems of the mind that are rooted in and controlled by the subconscious mind. We always do what our subconscious mind tells us even if it goes against reason and logic. Hypnotherapy therefore, bypasses the conscious mind to allow the positive life-affirming suggestions for change, of our own choosing, to be fed to our subconscious mind directly, for us to act upon.

Hypnotherapy, and more precisely, hypnotic suggestions, have a cumulative effect, so over time there is a build up of suggestions being reinforced in the subconscious mind that it will act upon, and will do so more rapidly than if you were feeding the suggestions to your conscious mind.

For problems where a causal event or events may exist in the past, hypnoanalysis is used initially in order to find the sensitising event or events and release the emotion and motor actions associated with them, thus freeing the individual from the grasp of an outdated and obsolete (possibly never really needed at all) thought pattern and/or conditioning. Following this, healing suggestions and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) are used to build on the individuals desire for change to strengthen and support forward movement into a positive future.

Hypnotherapists do not control your mind!

Hypnotherapy empowers you to take control of your mental resources to bring about the changes you want. You are always in control during hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and the therapist cannot make you do anything against your will, or that is not within you as an individual to do. With a little work a good therapist and a good client who wishes to make changes and is motivated to, will be able to achieve success in about 95% of cases.

Who can be hypnotised? I would say that virtually everyone can be hypnotised if they have a good therapist and wish to cooperate with them in order to work on the problem with which they are presenting.

What does hypnosis feel like? I know how it feels to me, but it feels different to some people than to others. I would explain it as a relaxed easy feeling and a heightened state of awareness. Sometimes you may be prone to drift away for a while just like day-dreaming, and you might just as easily be concentrating on your therapist's voice. Your good therapist will ensure you get the very best from your hypnotherapy session and will guide you in everything you need to know.

Hypnotherapy can help to address many problems including:

Fear of Flying Fear of Crowds

Lack of Confidence Stress Issues

Low Self Esteem Fear of Heights

Panic Attacks Exam Nerves

Driving Test Nerves Smoking

Weight Loss Nail Biting

Relationship & Sexual Tinnitus

Stop Smoking IBS

Stress Anxiety

Hypnotherapy is not magic but it sometimes seems magical!

How Hypnosis Helps Phobias

People can be afraid of a wide range of things and what can be totally acceptable to one person can be quite panic provoking to another.

Some of the fears I see most often in my practice are:

Animals

Being alone

Blood

Small or enclosed spaces

Dark places

Death

Heights

Injections/Needles

Open spaces

Snakes

Spiders

Travel

Trains

Water

Some unusual ones:

Yellow (the colour)

Red cars

Men with beards

Apples

What is a phobia?

A phobia is any persistent fear of a specific stimulus object or situation. Phobia is from the Greek to fear or dread. It is more than a simple fear, or a being afraid. It is to be totally terrified of the stimulus. When presented with a phobia problem by a client, I always begin by finding out if it is a fear they have, or a phobia. If their problem is spiders for instance, then can they imagine themselves holding a spider on their hand if they are rewarded with £100? What about £500, and so on. If they could bear the spider for a large amount of money, even just for a few seconds, they do not have a phobia, but rather a fear. The person with a phobia of spiders would not be able to bear to touch one for any amount of money or any other reward. Some people are obsessive with their phobia. This means, they can't even bear to think of the stimulus and it will likely be totally controlling their lives.

Another complication is that a client can present with a fear/phobia of flying as an example. However, the skilled therapist, on exploring this fear/phobia with the client, may find the fear/phobia is actually about being enclosed, or locked in. Perhaps it might be a fear/phobia of dying, not being able to breath on an aircraft, or something else connected with the aircraft or leaving their own area/country etc, but not actually the flying itself.

What has caused the phobia?

A client will often say that nothing has caused the phobia, it just started, they've always been afraid of dogs, etc. If one person is afraid of dogs and another isn't, then clearly there is a difference between the two. One person has either been exposed to some causal event which has been repressed in the subconscious mind, or has learned to be afraid from a parent or other authority figure at some time earlier in life. The causal event may not have been very traumatic at the time, but the young mind will have seen it out of the context that would be understood by a more mature mind in later years. It may have caused an emotional response and/or motor actions to be locked away, repressed, and the emotion and possible motor responses will have been locked away and anchored to the event. The subconscious mind can often set up a kind of false instinct, whereby any sign of the stimulus, or even something resembling it, or associated with it, may cause a phobic reaction, and then the body's flight or fight response will kick in and the individual may begin to panic…panic attack.

Hypnotherapy to relieve phobias

The first thing the skilled hypnotherapist will do, is to work with the client to discover the causal event, and once found, to desensitise the client from it. Once this has been achieved, then hypnotic suggestion, metaphor and possibly Neuro-Linguistic Programming will be used to create a new template for the client so they can see the previously feared situation, object or circumstance in a new and non threatening light, through a new lens as it where. If the causal event, or events are not found and the emotion not released, then the phobia may just resurface later with more intensity than before if that is possible. The person with a phobia will need to be helped to find and review the trigger situation, to see it with an adult maturity and understanding, and to then see the cause in a different way and with a different and better understanding. The mind can be reprogrammed to see things in a different way and to accept situations as normal that would previously have been viewed as threatening.

How many sessions of therapy will be required?

How many sessions will be needed to release a person from their phobia will depend upon many things, not least, the clients personality type, maturity, desire to overcome the phobia, and of course, how deep seated the phobia is and how long it has been in place. However, the average for people I see is about 3-4 sessions. This can be much longer in some cases, especially where full blown panic attacks are occurring at seemingly random times and in diverse places.

For more information, please contact you local hypnotherapist. Most hypnotherapists will be happy to provide an initial free consultation for you in order to discuss your problem and to explain to you how therapy would proceed. This session will normally last about 45 minutes. My clients say that this short session often produces therapeutic results for them and helps them to feel confident about setting up a series of therapy sessions to overcome their fear or phobia.

Please always see your doctor first and foremost before you contact or visit any therapist and tell him/her about any symptoms you may have, such as, headache, soreness in limbs, racing heart, dizziness, sweating, blurred vision, a feeling of unrealness, etc. Although these are all common for someone suffering from a fear, phobia, or indeed from a panic attack, organic causes should always be fully checked out by a medical professional in the first instance.

When consulting a hypnotherapist, I advise that you ensure they are a Clinical Hypnotherapist and that they belong to a professional body such as one of the following:

British Institute of Hypnotherapy

General Hypnotherapy Register

Professional Association for Hypnotherapists and Psychotherapists

Hypnotherapy Association

National Council for Hypnotherapy

Check with the organisation(s) that the therapist is indeed registered with them. Also check that your chosen therapist has experience in dealing with the problem you have and that they have adequate professional insurance (they must display their certificate of insurance at their place of work).

Depression and Hypnotherapy

In 1999, The World Health Organisation (WHO), issued a proclamation regarding the prevalence of depression. Depression is currently the worlds fourth most debilitating human condition, after heart disease, cancer and traffic accidents. The WHO predicted that by the year 2020, less than two decades hence, depression will have risen to become the second most common cause of human suffering worldwide.

This may be a surprise to many as this is a disorder well known to healthcare professionals across the globe. There are many so called 'miracle drugs' often in the news, and so shouldn't the rate of depression be on the decrease? Well, unfortunately according latest statistics in the UK and USA, it is actually on the rise in every age group.

In his excellent book 'Treating Depression With Hypnosis', Doctro Michael Yapko PhD, says "Hypnosis is not a type of therapy like psychoanalysis or behaviour therapy. Instead, it is a procedure that can be used to facilitate therapy. Because it is not a treatment in and of itself, training in hypnosis is not sufficient for the conduct of therapy". Hypnosis is, in my opinion the vital procedure that allows my clients to focus fully and without distraction upon the therapeutic strategies I apply in treatment sessions. This, of course, requires thorough training and experience in hypnoanalysis and psychotherapeutic techniques.

Dr Yapko reached two powerful and empowering conclusions in his work. Firstly that people suffering with depression need to be taught to accept and work with ambiguous circumstances in life, and secondly to search for and focus on a meaning for their life.

This is such sage advice. I find continually that clients presenting with depression at any level are struggling with the vagueness of life and its meaning for them. Life is ambiguous in that we don't really have the answers for most of life's most challenging questions and this can leave anyone a little dizzy thinking about it, let alone looking for answers to give meaning to their existence. In the masterful work of the late Dr Victor E. Frankle, this need for a meaning in life is made very clear. More than this it is shown how the how, is very less important than the why in life.

In his book, 'Man's Search for Meaning' Victor Frankle says "Life does not mean something vague, but something very real and very concrete, just as life's tasks are very real and concrete. They form man's destiny, which is different and unique for each individual". Having survived the Nazi Concentration camps of world war two, Victor Frankle is well qualified to make such profound statements. If you are suffering from any level of depression, I recommend a reading of this short but empowering book.

Modern Clinical Hypnotherapy is producing good results for many individuals suffering with depression. This is not an easy or instant fix, but fairly early progress can be made with the individual who is truly wanting to overcome this life restricting condition. I'm optimistic about the results we will continue to see from treating depression with clinical hypnotherapy as a part of a balanced treatment regime.

By: Alan Crisp DHP MASC MBIH LNCP GHR Reg

Alan Crisp DHP, is one of London and Essex's leading Clinical Hypnotherapists and specialises in stress and anxiety related conditions. Alan is a Full Professional Member of the British Institute of Hypnotherapy, and is registered as a Clinical Hypnotherapist with the General Hypnotherapy Register (the recording arm of the national Hypnotherapy Standards Council). Alan is also a Licentiate Member of the national Council of Psychotherapists, the oldest such organisation in the UK

You can contact Alan on 01702 338558 or visit www.yourtruth.co.uk and www.hypnoseek.com