Is hypnosis safe?
People want to know whether hypnosis
is safe and the answer is definitively, absolutely yes. It is a natural natural
state of conscious awareness that we all experience every day. Are there risks?
Probably not. If a person is suffering from a severe psychotic condition like
schizophrenia, hypnosis probably would not be indicated, but anybody that's a
professional and ethical would not try it. I suppose if you had a very
vulnerable client and a very unethical hypnotherapist, it would be possible,
although it's almost impossible to think of that combination happening, for
something untoward to happen, but I would say your chances of being struck by
lightening are almost about the same. It is a state of consciousness where you
are always aware. You're always in control, and no one can make you do, think,
say or feel anything you do not wish to. Period.
What can go wrong during a hypnosis session?
Not much can really go
wrong that's going to be of great import. The worst possible scenario I can
think of is that the client refuses to go into hypnosis. And that's why I'm
certified in a bunch of other tools as well; there is more than one way to skin
a cat. If a person feels uncomfortable with what I would consider classical
induction, then I might switch to an Ericksonian technique which is much more
subtle and permissive. Or I might use some NLP techniques which are done in a
more cognitive state. So what can go wrong? The person doesn't enter hypnosis,
the person doesn't relax. Very, very rare. I think I've had one person in all
the years I've been doing this that simply refused to go into hypnosis. And what
I did in that particular instance, 'cause I tried everything and that person
wasn't going to, it wasn't going to happen, we said good-bye. So that's probably
the biggest thing that can go wrong. Because hypnosis is a state of conscious
awareness, and because we're always in control of ourselves -- always, always,
always -- when we're in hypnosis, if you are given a suggestion, by a
hypnotherapist that is either antithetical or untoward or in any way
antagonistic, you're simply going to wake up. You're going to come out of that
relaxed state and say, "What are you talking about?" And then you get up and you
leave. And you don't pay him or her. And the chances of that happening are
probably pretty slim because anybody worth their salt is going to make sure that
your experience is pleasant. They want you to be happy. I want my clients to be
happy and get their results so they refer all their friends and family to me.
That's how I stay in business.
Are there any physical dangers associated with hypnosis?
I have
spent a great deal of time, both in my certification process and my doctoral
studies, researching the literature. And to my knowledge, there is nothing,
nothing physically that can happen as a result of hypnosis.
What are the psychological dangers associated with hypnosis?
If we
repress a memory because of a childhood or life trauma, it's because there's a
good reason for it to be repressed. Our brain is a marvelous tool and part of
our subconscious mind's job is to protect us and keep us safe. So if something
happens to a child or even an adult that becomes a repressed memory, it's being
repressed for a good reason, and digging it up and reliving it or even
remembering it might not be in that person's best interest. The other danger if
you will, and it's not really a danger, is that sometimes when we recover
memories the memories we recover when in hypnosis aren't real. They can seem
very, very real, and that's one of the reasons hypnosis is very rarely used in
court in trials because what a person remembers happening under hypnosis may or
may not be real and unless there's some way to cooperates that memory with
outside proof we can't prove it's real. And so a person could "remember"
something that never happened, and it could be extremely traumatic, and it could
set off this whole chain, I suppose, of psychological distress that could be
avoided. Now there are a lot of ways of looking at experiences that have
happened in the past that may not have been pleasant, in what I consider much
safer ways. There's a technique, for instance, called time-line therapy where we
look at things from afar, so you're not in it- you're not reliving it, you're
looking at something and you don't have to have any emotion attached to it, and
we can learn what we need to learn, if that's even appropriate, and quite
frankly I use time-line therapy a lot. We can learn what we need to learn about
those experiences so that we can release them, the negative emotions associated
with them.
Who should avoid undergoing hypnosis?
Quite frankly, I can't think
of any, and I'm going to say this with quotes around it, "normal" person, that
could be harmed in any way by hypnosis. There is research to suggest that
certain psychotic conditions, in particular, schizophrenia is contraindicated in
terms of hypnosis, but we're talking about a psychosis here. And even then, the
experts in the field, and these are medical professionals that are doing
research on it, far behind the experience and training I have, or probably ever
will have, even then, if a psychotic person is introduced to it correctly,
probably there will be no harm, but no one in their right mind is going to treat
a psychotic person unless they are qualified to do so. So, is there anybody, a
"normal" worried person, you know, that's what I like to think, that I work with
the worried well of the world. Any worried well person, will probably benefit
from hypnosis if they wanted to, but I can't imagine that there would be anybody
that shouldn't do it.
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