hypnotherapy...
Uses - Anxiety
Why Hypnosis is Powerful in Helping Anxiety
Acceptance of persuasive communications of therapy
The suspension of critical thinking in the hypnotic state may make
the patient more susceptible to accepting the persuasive communications
of therapy. McConkey has written:
"Clients who typically make critical and negative comments towards therapeutic communications are essentially required by the hypnotic context to listen to persuasive messages from the therapist in a way that they may not ordinarily do so; this process of attending and listening, without. commenting, may make the clients more accessible to the content of the therapist's message." (p. 80).
Additionally, alterations in cognitive processes may help patients
to accept alter-native interpretations of events, their significance,
the patient's coping abilities and skills and the expected outcome.
The restructuring of cognitive processes maintaining the anxiety
disorder is a major goal of therapy.
Increased reality acceptance of fantasy experiences
Many psychotherapies utilize imagery and fantasy to facilitate the
process of change. Certain patients in hypnotically assisted therapies
may more readily respond to imagery and fantasy as reality, since
the hypnotic process provides a powerful way of enhancing imagery.
Specifically, hypnosis may enhance a variety of interventions applied
to the treatment of anxiety.
1. Systematic desensitization remains one of the most common treatments
for specific phobic disorders. Lang showed that patients who benefit
from systematic desensitization have a greater ability to generate
emotional responses to the imagined items from a hierarchy. The
more realistic the experience of the imagined situation, the more
likely are such responses to be generated. Hypnosis offers an adjunct
to desensitization that is potentially extremely powerful, since
the attribution of realism to imagined events is a characteristic
of the hypnotic state.
2.The effectiveness of coping rehearsal may similarly be aided by
the reality attributions effected through hypnosis. With the increased
realism of fantasy rehearsal, andsthe uncritical acceptance of the
implied message that this will oc-cur, patients' expectations and
motivations to expose themselves to the anxiety- provoking situation
may be heightened. In the absence of self-defeating thoughts that
maintain anxiety, successful coping may become a viable outcome.
Increased sense of control of bodily processes associated
with anxiety
Arousal reduction and relaxation may be enhanced using hypnotic
procedures.
When patients are able to use self-hypnotic arousal reduction and
relaxation it adds to their confidence in coping and their sense
of self-control. When patients are able to influence what they previously
thought unalterable, a shift in their locus of control and sense
of self-efficacy is effected. Such a change in perceived self-efficacy
in dealing with the anxiety-provoking situations may oc-cur either
through behavioral control perceptions (being able to do things
to reduce the anxiety) or cognitive control perceptions (the belief
that they can manage the anxiety-producing situations).
Dissociation from feared situations
'Patients with anxiety disorders frequently become absorbed in the
fear state. Their anxiety responses generate further cognitions
concerning the danger posed by the symptoms and their inability
to cope. Dissociation via hypnosis can provide an adaptive and useful
method of reducing this reactivity to the anxiety-producing situation
and to the symptoms that may follow.
Book a session with Dr Jan: Tel: 03 9419 3010 or email