TRANCEFORM YOUR LIFE

With Hynosis

In the 21st century, hypnosis as a treatment that connects the mind and the body is widely used in medicine, dentistry and psychotherapy. It can also help those who are seeking to improve their performance in academics, athletics, music and other endeavors. Here is a partial list of those psychological problems, physical illnesses and other life issues for which hypnosis has proven effective. It’s necessarily incomplete; every day someone somewhere finds a new use for hypnosis.

With each item on the list you’ll find a brief description of the benefits of hypnosis. If you’d like to know more, there’s a vast and growing literature about hypnosis on the web. If you’re specific in your search — say, hypnosis+anxiety — you’ll find that many of the sites will also provide links to scientific papers that document the effectiveness of hypnosis as a treatment.

If you are experiencing a problem not listed below and would like to discuss if hypnosis can help, please call Dr. Arnett at 303.921.2475.

 

Abandonment
Heal the inner child.

 

Academic Performance and Study Habits
Enhance the ability to study, focus, concentrate, absorb new information and, therefore, improve grades.

 

Allergies
Decrease high stress levels that affect the body's ability to cope
with allergens; avoid psychological triggers for allergic reactions.

 

Anesthesiology
As an adjunctive treatment, decrease the amount of anesthesia needed.

 

Anger
Replace the “trance of rage” with relaxation and calm.

 

Anxiety
Relieve situational anxiety by increasing comfort in anxiety-provoking situations; decrease existential anxiety by relaxing and opening to the possibilities of meaning.

 

Asthma
Promote relaxation and explore underlying anxieties that exacerbate the condition; expand airways and reduce the incidence and severity of asthmatic episodes at the start of an attack.

 

Attention Deficit Disorder
Increase relaxation, decrease stress, improve organizational and social skills, ignore distractions and enhance focused states of attention.

 

Bed-Wetting
Train a child to awaken and go to the bathroom when his bladder feels full.

 

Bone Healing
Promote faster healing, increase mobility and decrease the use of pain-killers.

 

Bruxism
Help to relax the masseter and other masticatory muscles and reduce the incidence of habitual teeth grinding.

 

Burns
Reduce pain and the use of narcotics; promote healing.

 

Cancer
Relieve and reduce pain, stress, and depression, and calm fears and anxiety; enhance the immune system.

 

Cancer: Pediatric
Reduce pain and anxiety associated with treatments.

 

Chemotherapy
Increase appetite and reduce pain, nausea and vomiting.

 

Childbirth
Avoid life-threatening allergies to anesthetics, physically relax, experience pain and discomfort as only pressure and come to believe that birth will be comfortable, easy and joyous.

 

Chronic Pain
Avoid habituation to increasing doses of pain-killing drugs; help the brain to stop responding to pain signals.

 

Concentration
Increase the ability to attend and remember.

 

Dental Issues
Reduce dental phobia, control a strong gag reflex, treat chronic facial pain, improve dental hygiene and modify unwanted habits.

 

Depression
Find hope, forgive the past, embrace possibilities, and engage in new thoughts and activities that bring more joy to life.

 

Dermatological Problems
Regulate blood flow and other autonomic functions not usually under conscious control; affect the neurohormonal systems that regulate many body functions; increase healthy behaviors, decrease situational stress, control harmful habits (eg, scratching); provide immediate and long-term analgesia; ameliorate symptoms related to diseases, accelerate recovery from surgery and promote healing.

 

Diabetes
Promote compliance with diet and exercise, blood sugar monitoring and administration of medication, stress reduction, and the use of visualization and imagery to stimulate insulin production by the pancreas.

 

Dyspesia
Reduce pain and decrease the use of medication.

 

Epilepsy
Assist in diagnosing and distinguishing between epileptic and non-epileptic seizure events; reduce the incidence and severity of seizures and the use of neurotoxic drugs.

 

Erectile Dysfunction
When the cause is psychological, replace negative with positive thought patterns, reduce anxiety and create relaxation around sex.

 

Habits (down with the bad, up with the good)
Reduce the incidence of or eliminate embarrassing habitual behaviors such as nail biting and procrastination; increase helpful habitual behaviors such as exercise, meditation and time management.

 

Headache: Migraine and Stress
Reduce the number and severity of migraine attacks and relieve the symptoms of stress related headaches.

 

Hemophilia
Reduce the amount of clotting factor needed and improve the ability of the blood to clot.

 

Hypertension
Decrease vascular resistance, reduce blood flow and lower blood pressure.

 

Immune System
Reduce detrimental immune function changes associated with acute stress in order to enhance health and prevent illness, especially in patients with compromised immunity.

 

Infertility
Increase relaxation and decrease womb contractions during in vitro transfer procedure; improve attitude and enhance optimism.

 

Insomnia, Agrypniaphobia (fear of being unable to fall asleep) and other Sleep Disorders
Learn to drop instantly into an alpha state and use subconscious triggers to eliminate worry and anxiety in order to fall asleep and stay asleep.

 

Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Reduce distension and pain, improve digestion and bowel function and increase a sense of well-being.

 

Menopause
Balance hormones and decrease stress, thereby reducing symptoms (hot flashes, headaches, night sweats)

 

Nausea, Vomiting and Morning Sickness
Reduce or eliminate symptoms.

 

Obesity, Weight Control and Eating Habits
Maintain diet, eat healthier, avoid snack and comfort foods and enhance motivation and self-esteem.

 

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Diminish intrusive and/or insistent thoughts and behaviors that disrupt daily life.

 

Performance: Athletic, Musical
Reduce or eliminate fears — of failure, humiliation, success — and other mental obstacles and distractions to peak performance; learn how to set goals and to perform self-hypnotic mental rehearsals.

 

Performance: Tests
Reduce or eliminate the emotional and physical effects of test anxiety such as fear of failure, heart palpitations, sweating and paralysis (to name only a few).

 

Phobias
With simple phobias, eliminate single fears (such as a fear of cats but not rabbits or a fear of flying). With multi-faceted complex phobias, in conjunction with psychotherapy address underlying emotional issues and through desensitization and relaxation, reduce or eliminate the specific fear and/or the fear of being afraid.

 

Physical Rehabilitation
Reduce emotional and physical tension, enhance motivation for treatment, diminish pain and improve physical function lost due to illness or trauma.

 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Modulate the emotional and cognitive distance from traumatic memories as they are worked through therapeutically, especially for symptoms such as dissociation and nightmares.

 

PTSD: Combat
Tailored to the type of trauma, the comorbid diagnoses and adjustment problems and the severity and type of presenting symptoms … modulate the emotional and cognitive distance from traumatic memories, reduce the incidence and effect of disruptive thoughts and feelings (flashbacks, nightmares) and assist in reestablishing a sense of comfort, safety and connection in the context of work, family and social relationships.

 

PTSD: Sexual and/or Physical Abuse
Restructure memories of the trauma experience by reviewing them with greater control over the physical sense of comfort and safety; balance painful memories with a recognition of efforts to protect self and others who were endangered.

 

Public Speaking
Reduce anxiety, increase relaxation, build confidence, rehearse, practice self-hypnosis

 

Reading Problems
Increase motivation, speed and comprehension.

 

Relaxation
Reduce stress at will, enhance the immune system, improve health and well-being; learn self-hypnosis.

 

Sexual Enhancement
Increase focus and concentration and intensify sensual and emotional connection.

 

Sexual Dysfunction
If the problem is psychosomatic, increase self-esteem , facilitate the change and release of negative or limiting habits and associated ideas, identify triggers that summon negative behavior or feelings and learn to manage the internal processing of hurt feelings, anger and stress.

 

Shyness, Self-Consciousness and Erythrophobia (Fear of blushing)
Practice self-calming, inhibit the flow of adrenaline and learn to shift the focus of attention from self to others.

 

Smoking (Stop!)
Reduce the smoking habit, diminish craving and symptoms of withdrawal and develop strategies for better health.

Stress
Relax; learn self-hypnosis.

 

Stuttering
Reduce anxiety, build confidence and rehearse speaking.

 

Substance Abuse
Shorten the time needed to establish a therapeutic relationship, help in ego building, learn relaxation techniques, increase motivation and promote behavioral methods such as attendance at AA meetings and medication compliance.

 

Surgery
Reduce pain, speed post-operative healing and shorten hospital stay.

Tinnitus
Reduce volume, stress and negative emotions.

 

Trichotillomania (habitual hair pulling)
Enhance the awareness of habit and reinforce behavioral control.

 

Writer’s Block
Reduce or eliminate fears (of judgement, failure, rejection, success) and increase the ability to relax and open to creative flow.

 

WITH EMDR

Many studies continue to validate EMDR as the most effective treatment for all kinds of trauma. Like penicillin and other medical and psychological treatments, including hypnosis, the EMDR treatment method was an accidental discovery.  In the early 1990s Dr, Francine Shapiro, a Candadian therapist, noticed that when she moved her eyes from side to side while remembering a traumatic event, the emotional and physical charge of the traumatic memory decreased while the memory itself remained intact. She began experimenting with herself, and then used the technique with a few patients whose traumatic memories were so persistent and intrusive that they could not lead normal lives.  Some of these were Vietnam combat veterans suffering from severe PTSD.  What she found was that while traditional “talk therapy” often re-traumatized patients (because they kept repeatedly relieving the traumatic experience) EMDR worked to actually relieve the emotional and physicals symptoms resulting from trauma.  Soon other professionals were confirming her findings with clients and in a short time EMDR became the treatment of choice for trauma as recommended by the American Psychological Association and other professional organizations.

As with hypnosis, scientific studies continue to determine just how and why EMDR works.  What is known is that memory, especially emotional memory, is processed in one part of the brain called the amygdala.  Usually,  the brain does this automatically when we sleep, with REM sleep and dreaming. But when for some reason emotion is not processed it often gets “locked” in the amygdala. For reasons not yet clear, bi-lateral stimulation of the brain (originally, Dr. Shapiro’s left-right eye movement) “unlocks” these memories and frees the emotions and physical sensations that accompany them. Unlike “talk therapy,” however, EMDR also affects the actual neurological process itself. Quickly, usually in a relatively few number of sessions, EMDR drains the debilitating charge from the memory while leaving the memory itself intact.  Thus a veteran plagued with flashbacks and night terrors because of his combat experience can with the help of EMDR come to a place of peace where he can remember the experience but without the symptoms of PTSD that have made his life a living hell. Or victims of rape or child abuse can come to terms with the past, keeping the memory but letting go of all the agony they’ve been holding and trying, most often unsuccessfully, to avoid for so long. And these are just the most extreme examples. Everyone suffers trauma at some time in life, and any experience can be traumatic depending on the circumstances and an individual’s personal history.  What’s nothing to one person may prove traumatic to another.  Take a look at the list above and you’ll find that many of the issues helped by hypnosis can also be helped by EMDR.

While EMDR is in no way the same as hypnosis, they are complementary therapies that work well together in the context of psychotherapy.  Like hypnosis, EMDR is a relatively short term treatment aimed at creating immediate change and offering fast relief.