I see the cheek-chewing thread got bumped, so I figured I’d update this. I finally made some appointments with a psychologist who did hypnotherapy, but it didn’t work for me. For one thing, either she didn’t know how to hypnotize somebody or I didn’t know how to go under…I guess I was expecting her to swing a big silver watch?
Anyway, she first had me tell her my life story, which was not as much fun as I’d thought it might be, and frankly quite annoying. “Yes, my daddy abandoned us when I was a kid, but that’s not what this is about for fuck’s sake!” So after we got through all of that (over several sessions) she just had me close my eyes while she repeatedly told me that I was very relaxed. I tried to relax and make it work, but then she would ask questions like, “Okay, think of a time when you were safe and protected…where are you?” and I’d be caught off guard.
She also gave me some suggestions for when I was actively biting my cheeks, such as stroking my cheek with my hand and remembering to care for myself. :rolleyes:
So I gave it a fair shot I think, but didn’t see any improvement in my problem. For a while there, I would catch myself ripping at my cheeks and stop myself, saying, “Do you want to go back to the bloody doctor, is *that what you want?!” *This soon ceased to be effective as I realized I would not be going back under any circumstances.
Some people are better hypnotic subjects than others, some hypnotherapists are better than others.
Some hypnotherapists use simple relaxation techniques like you describe, others use so-called “shock” or “instant” inductions, which bypass the critical mind and often get people into a deep trance within a few seconds, without all that relaxation stuff.
For cheek biting, I would recommend checking out something like the NLP Swish Pattern or the Silva Method 3 Scenes technique.