So, a quick preface: my SO is very suggestible. I’ve been using hypnosis to some non-trivial extent for the past 2 years of the relationship, and I’d argue I’m at least halfway decent at it, and I can state that it works very well on her.
With that in mind: my SO suffers from some rather nasty mental issues, mostly stemming from abuse and bullying during her teenage years. It’s gotten somewhat better, but every once and a while it shows up again in the form of fairly serious social anxiety, and it really is kinda ugly when it does. I’m there to comfort her and make her feel better - I wouldn’t be a good boyfriend if I didn’t - but this negatively impacts her life in ways far beyond me (it’s not helping her career any, I’ll tell you that much), and the idea came to mind to use hypnosis to help her feel better.
The main issue here is: is this dangerous? She’s worried it could somehow force things down and bottle them up, which would be a short-term gain but very harmful in the long term; I’m explicitly trying to avoid this. The other question is, of course, how effective it could possibly be.
In any case, I plan to spend more time looking over whatever research is available (pickings in real science journals for hypnosis are, apparently, pretty slim, which is never a good sign ), but I figured, why not ask here and see if anyone here has advice?
Honestly, my advice would be to send her to a qualified, licensed therapist. Not for hypnosis, mind you, but for working through those issues. Rather than try for some quick fix solution, give her some genuine help.
It’s her choice, obviously, but what you’re suggesting strikes me as the wrong approach. If you actually want to help her, help convince her that talking through her concerns with someone who does the sort of thing for a living can help all of those things you mentioned.
No specific training, just reading up on it and a highly suggestible SO.
See, I agree, because I’ve been trying to convince her of the same for quite some time. Unfortunately, we both work full time, and therapists in the area work fairly standard hours as well, and she doesn’t want to. I blame her mother; she has a very low iew of healthcare and thinks that you go to the doctor when you’re coughing out a lung and not one second before. :rolleyes:
So this is sort of a “plan B”, so to speak. What we can do given the circumstances.
She needs professional help. if she is not willing to do that maybe self help books. AFAIK there are no risks about forcing things down and bottling them up, whatever that means. She is having negative impacts on her life from her psychological issues, she needs to deal with that.
If she is totally resistant to everything else, hypnosis by you probably won’t work, but it can’t hurt. Maybe you can teach her to hypnotize herself. That sometimes help. The only known serious downside to hypnosis is an unwillingness to file TPS reports.
From what I remember of my college class which covered hypnosis, pretending to hypnotize someone is the equivalent of given them a sugar cube and pretending it’s a placebo.
Seeking the help of a genuine, experienced board certified Hypnotherapist can be very beneficial for some individuals.
The most important thing though is that she genuinely believes that hypnotherapy can be effective for her and that she feels comfortable with the individual hypnotherapist she is seeing.
If, like some people, she believes that hypnosis is just a bunch of hocus pocus BS, it will be of no value to her at all.
Well, the problem definitely isn’t her believing that it’s a bunch of hocus pocus. She believes it works (and I do too after how well I’ve seen it appear to work on her). She just isn’t convinced it can help her with this.
Certainly not, but there is supposedly a real, non-woo corollary (that involves, first and foremost, the person wanting to be hypnotized). I haven’t ever done the research on how efficacious it really is or can be, but I think if the OP and his girl are really into it they may as well knock themselves out.
I’ve had very good results listening to hypnosis tapes by Effective Learning Systems. They have many different ones for a variety of problems. There is one called “Conquering Fears and Anxiety”, give it a try.
), but I figured, why not ask here and see if anyone here has advice?
