110 degrees magazine - Index

110 degrees magazine - 110° Magazine - July 2007 - Through the gates of Hell - Index

BLOOM [KNOCKING DOWN BARRIERS TO HEALTH]
54 www.110mag.com July 2007
to school and became a Certified
Clinical Hypnotherapist. I joined the
American Association of Professional
Hypnotherapists and the International
Hypnosis Federation.
Hypnotherapy is not voodoo. I’m
one of the most normal people you will
ever meet. More and more people are
becoming receptive to alternative healing
modalities.
New patients sometimes tell me
that they had read a little bit about
hypnotherapy but remained skeptical. I
always tell such people, “Let me give
you the experience and then tell me
what you think.”
In every case such people have been
amazed at the results.
Some uninformed people shrink
back from hypnotherapy, supposing
that hypnotism has dark spiritual connotations.
However, the hypnotic state
is a perfectly normal human condition
occupying a middle plane between
sleeping and waking.
Hypnotism brings people into a
healing state. I don’t like the words
“Under a trance.” I want people to
understand that they will be safe and
comfortable. Only then can true healing
actually take place.
Clinical hypnotherapy is altogether
different than stage hypnotism. No
pendulum swinging or lights.
Everything is done by voice.
Some of my patients have come to
me after fruitlessly trying to find
help through traditional remedies for
such things as insomnia, depression,
and anxiety. In some cases they have
been on medications that have
caused other symptoms.
Some have said to me, “I don’t want
to live like this. I don’t want to take
pills. There has to be an alterative.”
A new patient once told me, “I have a
bag with 28 pills that I have to take every
day.” Some people find that kind of thing
to be scary. Plus, maintaining that much
medication is obviously expensive.
Two of my clients told me that they
had been hypnotized in the past. Both of
them had very traumatic and negative
encounters. They were willing to come in
even though they had these histories of
bad experience. The desperation caused
by their problems drove them to give
hypnotherapy a second try.
The whole subject of hypnotism
seems strange to some people, in part
because of the pop-culture’s portrayal of
it based upon stage hypnotists who will
sometimes make a person quack like a
duck or crawl around a stage on all fours.
After the initial session many of my
new patients say that they never realized
how calm and tranquil their minds
could become. They come into my
office carrying a lot of nervous energy
because thoughts and imaginations
are endlessly chasing each other
around in their minds like socks in an
automatic washer.
In many cases that random mental
busyness is exactly their problem. They
have insomnia and anxieties because
their minds will not be still. A mind
whirling out of control will cause anxieties
that sometimes lead to a panic
state or to some stress-related illness.
I’ve had clients tell me that psychotherapy
works better than massage
for achieving a state of tranquility.
“I’ve never been so relaxed!” is a comment
I’ve heard more than once.
Some patients, like my daughter, have
been extremely skeptical at the beginning,
saying things like, “I don’t know
about this. I don’t think this will work for
me.” I use the first session to let them
experience the hypnotic state, itself.
I’ve never had a single person who
couldn’t be hypnotized. Zero failures!
I even tried it on my daughter,
which presented a difficult challenge.
She was 16 and a total nonbeliever,
but she was completely
blown away by the experience.
HEALING AS AN INSIDE JOB
The mind is bizarre. Researchers
explain the nature of hypnotism by
imagining the human mind as having
two parts, and being like an ocean. The
sunlit upper layers of the ocean represent
the 5% of the mind that is selfaware.
Scientists call this the CCM
(Critical Conscious Mind). The unlit
ocean depths represent the other 95%,
which researchers call the SCM (Sub-
Conscious Mind).
In fact, the SCM is subdivided into
seven clearly distinct levels. During the
processes of growing and living, positive
and negative messages continually
pass through our CCM filter and
become buried (or implanted) in our
SCM. Even though we are not aware of
them they are always there and continually
influencing us.
Sometimes the buried messages
control us in ways that we don’t like
and lead to problematic and dysfunctional
behaviors. We call these negative
messages “blocks” or “obstacles.”
We’re not aware of our mental
blocks but one day, for example, someone
says something that triggers a
negative reaction. The reaction begins
to put pressure on the CCM and we
start to develop irrational methods of
responding to the pressure leading to
symptoms including such things as
anxiety, panic attacks, fears, phobias,
and compulsive behaviors.
Symptoms begin to develop which,
if left unchecked, turn into disease,
which is the body’s way of telling you
that something is wrong.
So our role as clinical hypnotherapists
is to delve into the sub-conscious mind
to identify and then remove blocks or
obstacles. More properly, we assist
patients in removing their own blocks.
Milton Erickson, the father of modern
hypnotherapy, was a master at
being skillfully and artfully vague
about resolving people’s problems. The
practitioner doesn’t have to know the
problem, but simply leads people to
self-knowledge.
Hypnotherapy, as I practice it, is a
completely self-actualizing process,
and altogether different than such
things as psychoanalysis, since it isn’t
necessary for me to even know what