Maybe it’s because there are too many cheap thrillers or questionable healers who also offer a mystical session in a combination package with meridian pendulums and singing bowl massage brand “Om”: We still see hypnosis in the esoteric corner, as a border crossing science dismissed. Wrongly, because more and more serious studies prove their therapeutic effectiveness. The current scientific evidence is downright sensational: hypnotic trance influences the activity of the brain, intervenes in the biochemistry of our body – and is now even used against hay fever, depression and irritable bowel syndrome. The hypnosis doctor Dr. Wolfgang Blohm.
dr Blohm: For overweight, eating and obsessive-compulsive disorders and burnout. For psychosomatic problems, tinnitus, neurodermatitis, migraine, stress-related illnesses and aftercare for tumor therapy. The list keeps getting longer.What’s new on the list?
The latest and officially recommended is irritable bowel syndrome, which can hardly be influenced otherwise. It has also been proven that allergies, especially hay fever, are improved by hypnosis. It even has a regulating effect on the body’s allergy cascades and in this way alleviates the symptoms very directly. However, it is much more effective to change the internal tensions behind an allergy. If that succeeds, the allergy says goodbye. I’ve experienced that many times. This experience also fits into the knowledge of the close connection between body and soul and of psychoneuroimmunological connections. Hypnosis has also been shown to help with anxiety disorders, ADHD and depression.
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Pain patients free of pain through hypnosis?
Supposedly, pain patients can do without up to two thirds of their medicines through hypnosis. wish or reality?
Reality. Even people with chronic pain can benefit from hypnosis. On the one hand, the therapist can work on the basis of pain processing and enable the patient to deal with his pain differently, to experience it differently. On the other hand, attention can be focused on another area of life, so that pain is no longer the focus of all experiences. And, very important: The therapist can work on inner areas of tension, the patient’s problems that are behind his pain. On an organic level, hypnosis can improve blood circulation, for example. That alone can dull the pain.
Recent studies report that hypnosis leads to “plastic changes” in the brain. What does it mean exactly?
The brain function is changed by hypnosis in such a way that it also leads to an altered state of consciousness. In practical terms, this means that the patient can create their own virtual space in trance, which is filled with liveliness and plastic experiences and thus comes very close to “reality”. In this sense, the image produced in hypnosis is equated with an actually experienced experience.
And how do you do it?
By offering the patient in the hypnotic trance state as many different possibilities of perception as possible with as many sensory impressions as possible, such as smells, sounds or taste experiences. Our subconscious understands this “language” particularly well and can then implement everything in an intensively experienced way.
Can humans be reprogrammed?
The new studies also show that the success of hypnosis depends on the right suggestions. What does “correct” mean in this context?
A good trance initiation is open. She does not authoritatively dictate what the patient must do or not do. Rather, it issues invitations to switch to inner perception. Instead of the external senses, inner images, feelings, ideas or impressions are activated that cannot be grasped with an alert consciousness. So the therapist has to find those words – suggestions – that make this possible. They should appeal to the inner perception of the patient, so that he can decide for himself which ones suit him and which ones he wants to follow. In this way, the autonomy of the patient is preserved and promoted from the start. Solving his problem is also about developing his ability to find a way on his own responsibility. Because only your own solutions are coherent and permanent.
Can humans really be reprogrammed? Many people are afraid of being brainwashed.
No, there is no actual reprogramming. But hypnosis makes it possible to find and walk new paths in life. However, as mentioned, the patient does not experience this in a passive state to which he is at the mercy of his will. Well-formulated suggestions do bypass the patient’s alert, often very critical consciousness. However, they do not turn it off, they only reduce it temporarily. Therefore, the patient is then open to thoughts and feelings that he would otherwise not allow. Brainwashing is definitely not possible with hypnosis!
You speak of “well formulated” suggestions. What are bad, harmful?
Negations can be harmful: The therapist suggests something that is NOT supposed to be done, thought or considered. The unconscious has a hard time with such negative statements and sometimes implements them in exactly the opposite way. In addition, it often proves to be very harmful if the therapist unknowingly leads his patient into areas with negative connotations through invitations or offers. These include, for example, abuse or traumatic childhood experiences that the patient does not want to deal with. This can intensify an existing trauma.
The little difference
The other great fear of many people is being at the hypnotist’s helpless power or not waking up from hypnosis. Justified?
This is rubbish! It is true that information from internal perception takes the place of the externally directed sensory organs such as the ear, eye or skin . Nevertheless, the patient is always awake, always with himself and always in control of his senses. He determines what he says or does in trance. Hypnosis is not possible without or against his consent. At no time is he at his mercy, helpless or unable to act. The patient can interrupt or stop the hypnosis at any time.
The little difference
Hypnosis and hypnotherapy – laypeople like to lump those together. Understandable, because the boundary between the two methods is not so easy to draw. On the one hand, hypnosis (ancient Greek: “sleep”) refers to the process with which a hypnotic trance, i.e. a temporarily changed attention and deep relaxation, is achieved. On the other hand, the state of hypnotic trance is meant. It is achieved through suggestions by the therapist. If they are to continue to have an effect after the hypnosis (e.g. when giving up smoking), they are anchored more deeply and measurable changes in the way information is processed in the brain occur.
Hypnotherapy is one of the psychotherapeutic methods . It was coined by the American psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980). The term summarizes forms of therapy that use knowledge about the effects of trance and suggestions therapeutically.
