Hypnotherapy helps
test takers, smokers relax, improve lives
By Jen Beasley
January 26, 2006 | Chad Austin was
never good at taking tests. He'd study. He'd prepare.
And then, after all that, he'd panic.
So when the 23-year-old hairdresser
from Salt Lake City needed to pass the theory and law
tests to get his license to cut and style hair, he tried
something he'd never done before to overcome his test
anxiety.
Austin went to a hypnotherapist.
And according to him, it worked. "I took both tests
in under 10 minutes and got 99 percent on both of them,"
Austin said. "There were 25 people taking that test,
and only five of us passed. I give full credit to (the
hypnotherapy)."
Hypnotherapy is a treatment in which
a person is put into a trance, or a state of extreme
relaxation, and then motivated through positive reinforcement
from the hypnotherapist to do whatever it is that he
or she seeks to do. Its supporters say it can help a
person lose weight, stop smoking or even recall repressed
memories and past lives. Its critics say it is quack
science; at worst a dangerous scam and at best an unproven
method of therapy.
Linda Wells, a hypnotherapist from
Ogden, said hypnotherapy is all about getting people
to believe something in order to make it true.
"If you want to make any changes
in your life you can do it by telling yourself over
and over again," Wells said. "A lot of people do this
every day by telling themselves things that aren't true-'I'm
so fat,' 'I'm so ugly,' and make themselves believe
it. But if you say 'I'm a non-smoker' 100 times a day,
pretty soon you're a non-smoker. The thing that I do
is give people a shortcut by planting that in their
subconscious."
Wells said she uses visualization
techniques, kinesthetics, and repetition of positive
phrases to her clients in order to get them to picture
themselves the way they want to be. She also teaches
clients how to do self-hypnosis, in order to refresh
the therapy whenever needed.
She said the trance state is not
like what is portrayed in the movies, but rather is
more similar to when a person drives from point A to
point B without realizing it, or daydreams in class.
"All hypnosis is self-hypnosis,"
Wells said. "When you're really relaxed the self-critical
part of you just shuts up."
Diana McIntyre, the Salt Lake hypnotherapist
who treated Austin, said hypnotherapy works because
it gets the conscious mind out of the way of the subconscious
mind, removing anxieties and tension. But, she added,
it only works if the person undergoing it is dedicated
to the purpose.
"I can't make anybody do anything
they wouldn't ordinarily do. I can't make people rob
banks," McIntyre said. "People who want to make life
changes and quit smoking, I can help a person quit in
1-5 sessions. But the first thing I ask is 'Are you
really ready?' And if they just say 'I think so' I say
'Come back when you're ready.'"
Practitioners of hypnotherapy do
not have to be psychologists or psychiatrists, and usually
receive their training at institutes that also teach
things like massage therapy and acupuncture. For this
reason, and because it is difficult to isolate whether
the hypnosis is actually the cause of change in people,
many mainstream mental health professionals do not consider
hypnotherapy a true form of treatment.
Dr. Larry Carcelli, a psychologist
at the Ogden Center for Counseling, said he would like
to believe that hypnotherapy works, but is skeptical.
"For things like smoking cessation
or weight loss, the real issue is lifestyle change,
anxiety management," Carcelli said. "(Hypnotherapy)
has not been shown to be effective. It's trumpeted as
more than it is."
Laura Fisher, a psychiatrist from
Providence, said she believes hypnotherapy may have
merits but knows of nobody in conventional psychiatric
circles that performs it.
"I don't think it's generally
not legitimate, but I'm sitting here trying to think
of any condition or problem where it is considered a
preferred, bona fide treatment," Fisher said.
Despite the criticism, McIntyre said
she does treat most clients successfully, and her favorite
ailment to treat is stuttering. McIntyre said stuttering
is typically the result of a traumatic event in somebody's
life, and by using age regression hypnosis to take them
back into that event, she can cure them.
"They walk in stutterers and
they walk out non-stutterers," she said. McIntyre said
her business is not so much about helping people quit
smoking or lose weight as it is taking people into memories
that have been forgotten or repressed, a practice Carcelli
said is dangerous.
"The function of the brain
is to protect the organism," Carcelli said. "Repression
often takes the form of putting aside memories that
emotionally get in the way of your ability to function.
My belief is that those memories get repressed for a
reason. It is not my place to force the emergence of
those memories."
He said a better method is conventional
therapy, where any repressed memories can come out on
their own.
"The patient's mind knows better
than any therapist when it is time for those memories
to emerge," Carcelli said.
Fisher criticized hypnotherapy as
a means of repressed memory recollection because she
said the line between reality and suggestion is very
thin. She said there have been court cases in which
juries have been convinced that somebody committed a
crime because of confessions that came during sessions
of hypnotherapy, a method she said may lead to confessions
by innocent people.
"I think most literate and
honest psychiatrists would think this subject is troublesome,"
Fisher said. "The problem with that whole can of worms-and
it is a can of worms-is that research shows that suggestion
is indistinguishable from memory. It's somewhat irrevocable
in that people come away believing things that may not
have happened."
Wells, who said she does not believe
in past lives and so does not practice past-life regression
and rarely practices age regression, said sometimes
memory recollection can be a very beneficial thing.
She said once she helped a lady discover where she had
left her lost wedding ring, and helped a man remember
what went on while he was in a coma, including details
of the accident that put him there.
And McIntyre used the technique on
Chad Austin, taking him back to a time when test taking
was not such a terrifying experience, and encouraging
him to live that way again.
Austin said he was so pleased with
the results he recommended the procedure to friends.
He said one friend has quit smoking and another has
lost 70 pounds after undergoing hypnotherapy. And Austin
said he has completely overcome his fear of taking tests.
"I usually got really panicky
and said 'Oh my God!'" he said. "But after (hypnotherapy)
I just sat down, breathed, and it was great. I was relaxed,
and focused and all of it."
MS
CB
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