My next stop naturally was the internet to find out more about self-hypnosis. A form of hypnotherapy that doesn’t require the therapist to be physically present, self-hypnosis consists of listening to pre-recorded sessions and absorbing their contents. It’s cheaper and no appointment is required.
What is self-hypnosis?
“Self-hypnosis is when you guide yourself into the same focused state as you would during hypnotherapy but without an external therapist,” describes Fluri. “The core process (narrowing your focus, relaxing deeply and becoming more open to suggestion) is the same. The difference lies in who’s steering the ship: in hypnosis, it’s the therapist; in self-hypnosis, it’s you.”
The first app I found, Doddle by hypnosis practitioner Emily Leyes, ended up being one of my two favourites. There are sessions for everything from better sleep to stress relief, improved focus, sustained motivation, habit adoption, future self-visualisation and much more.
Grace, an app by elite performance hypnotherapist Grace Smith, is the other one I like. The sessions are longer and slightly more niche, covering topics like parenting, IBS (which can be exacerbated by stress), crisis support and insomnia. Unlike meditation, which seemed to invite wriggles and concentration lapses or affirmations, which I enjoyed but didn’t truly believe in, hypnosis gave me a form of positive reinforcement that didn’t make me feel like I needed to do anything in order to receive it. For example, Leyes, in one of her sessions, reminds the listener not to stress if their focus does start to wane–somewhere deep in the grey tissue, the information is being absorbed.
What’s it like to self-hypnotise?
The first question people ask is always the same: does it work? In many ways, it does. I’ve found myself feeling calmer and less panicked in situations where my sympathetic (stressed-out) nervous system would typically kick into action. I’ve been able to more clearly identify the moments in which I tend to reach for peanut butter as an emotional support, rather than a dose of healthy fats.
With doom scrolling, I’ve found and downloaded an app that strictly (read: cannot be overridden) blocks social media save for one hour each morning. Spending time each morning visualising my future self and the decisions I would want her to make has made effecting change, like getting off my phone and out of the snack cupboard, easier. The thing I wish was more obvious, though, is that hypnotherapy (and self-hypnosis) is not another word for “magic”. Like other practices, it requires consistent application in order to reap results.
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