“Your eyelids are getting heavy, your eyes are closing” - many consider hypnosis to be almost an occult method of influencing the human subconscious. However, in fact, this is only a type of psychological correction, officially hypnotherapy refers to medical services. It is actively practiced to treat mental and physical illnesses. For World Hypnosis Day, RIA Novosti spoke with those who went into trance to cope with problems.
Couldn't sleep without TV
Vita Lanina was afraid of the dark since childhood. At certain moments, the fear receded, but the anxiety always remained: Vita could not sleep without a night light or TV turned on, and long-distance travel, which she had long dreamed of, was not available.
“My father worked as a psychologist, so I tried for a long time to work the internal clamps, to deal with the phobia, but to no avail. It escalated during a difficult emotional period. I understood that the fear was formed at an early age, so I decided to turn to hypnosis,”Vita tells the RIA Novosti correspondent.
The first experience, she recalls, was very comical: a hypnotherapist (a psychiatrist by training) at the first visit put a black plastic bag on the girl's head so that she would be in pitch darkness. “It was terrible, but effective. He asked me questions, I answered. There was no such thing that I plunged into a deep trance and did not realize what was happening."
After that, Vita visited several more hypnologists, each had its own method: someone asked to close his eyes and imagine a certain situation, someone counted to ten. But she "did not fall out of space", as shown in the movies, Lanina specifies. “One hypnologist resorted to esotericism. It seems to me that some miracles really happened there, as if he had the opportunity to influence me more than an ordinary person: he seemed to connect to memory directly and looked for the cause of my fear in it. This is his specific technique, I don't know how it works. It seems that I am just talking to a person with my eyes closed,”the interlocutor continues.
She also spoke with other hypnologist patients. Most of all, she remembered a girl who was desperately trying to lose weight: neither diet nor the help of doctors helped.
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Vita is trying to explain the general principle of all sessions: experts asked questions, she recalled events to the smallest detail.
“I now understand that hypnosis is not magic, not a miracle, it helps to understand the nature of phobia, to make it out. First of all, a person must be “hypnotizable”, that is, succumb to suggestion, be sensitive. When you go to a hypnotherapist, your desire is definitely an important factor. I have a very developed imagination, I have a good idea of, for example, how emotional lumps go down my legs. In the process of hypnosis, some childhood memories are pulled out of you. And there are people who are very open: they can let anyone into their inner world,”says Vita.
Lanina has not completely got rid of the fear of the dark, but now she is comfortable: “I turn on the night light, but I just got used to sleeping like that. But now I understand the cause and effect - therefore I am not afraid. At the same time, the girl does not deny that for the same result, the techniques of an ordinary psychologist would be enough. However, it would take a lot more time, because hypnosis is a more radical measure.
Only ten percent
Hypnotherapist Gennady Ivanov took up hypnosis by accident: at first he was simply interested in esotericism, then he became interested in practices that can extract everything unconscious from a person's memory. As a result, he learned to be a psychotherapist and came to the professional study of hypnosis. Ivanov notes: if a person is afraid of something, he can be hypnotizable. On average, one in twentieth in the world has a phobia, it is quite easy to detect.
“Some situation does not pose any threat for some, but it will affect someone like stress. For example, in a conversation you raise a simple question, and your opponent perceives it strange. He begins to misbehave, to be rude, in general, to behave unnatural. In fact, you introduced him to the very state of hypnosis - a person in a stressful situation for himself does not know what to do. An experienced hypnotherapist simply deepens this state. Most often, this is a reference to early childhood episodes. When a symptom is present, there is something that supports it at the level of neural connections. This chain must be repeated, disassembled to the end. As a rule, after a “flashing” the problem also goes away,”Ivanov explains.
It often happens that the patient is not completely cured - for example, the feeling of panic no longer covers before the flight, but he still understands that such fear exists, although he controls it. In some cases, a person fully works through his fears and ceases to experience them in the future.
“Ideally, you need to find the chain of events that formed the phobia. The therapeutic direction that a person adheres to is of great importance. If you just “open” his head, there will be no sense,”the specialist explains.
People want miracles
Nevertheless, according to Ivanov, hypnosis is so far perceived not as a conventional method of psychotherapy, but as a kind of mysterious practice from a series of reincarnation or regression into a past life with mystical rituals. “There is a very stereotypical scheme at work, causing intense passions. We want to believe in a miracle: when we are told about sleight of hand and focus is one thing, but when magic, extrasensory perception is connected, it immediately becomes more interesting. If we say that hypnosis is based on the long-studied Pavlov effect, and not a miracle, no one will be interested. A person becomes suggestible if you surprise him,”he says.
That is why many hypnotherapists use different "baits" to enhance the effect, but no more. Due to suggestibility, the brain begins to hallucinate, says Ivanov.
“Many pseudo-therapists use this: it's easier not to work out the problem, but to shift the responsibility onto anything - from karma to alien invasion or a universal conspiracy. However, there will be no sense from such "treatment": time passes, the hypnotist leaves, and the effect disappears. Without therapy, such hypnosis is nothing more than a placebo: it can affect like a motivational book - for a while, but it will not solve the problem,”the source said.
“Most of them“forget”even on elementary knowledge, work as coaches or organize trainings”. Hypnosis is also used in court. Lawyer Vadim Rubtsov did not suffer from any pronounced phobias, however, he noticed that he was too worried when he defends the interests of his clients. Increased anxiety sometimes interfered with his work.
“In addition, I reacted painfully to unfounded accusations, and in our practice this is used very often in order to unbalance the opponent. The accusations, as a rule, are unfounded, but they lead to a stupor. In an instant, logic turns off and you can make a fatal mistake, lose the case. I needed to learn how to control such reactions - for that I went to a hypnologist,”Vadim recalls.
He says that the specialist put him into a state of deep trance: what he did and what he talked about, Vadim does not remember. “Basically, I don’t care what the hypnologist found in my memory, it’s important that the problem is gone. Vadim became interested in hypnosis as a practice, he began to study some methods.
“Once I saw how an opponent in the Arbitration Court uses the triple helix technique right at the meeting (one of the hypnosis techniques, its author is psychiatrist Milton Erickson. The story consists of three interesting stories that are not connected in meaning, but they follow each other While a person's consciousness “leaves” after the stories and seeks meaning in them, the narrator inspires the listener with the necessary attitude). I understood: you need to study these methods in order to be able to resist them,”explains Rubtsov.
Like a grain of an elephant
The psychotherapeutic community is skeptical about hypnosis. Psychoanalysts agree that any phobia must be worked out, without this hypnosis does not always help. He can only be a tool.
Clinical psychologist Alexander Pyatnitsky explained to RIA Novosti that, like any technique, hypnosis should be selected for each patient individually, and for some, a similar effect on the subconscious is generally like an elephant's grain.
“Hypnosis is shrouded in a bunch of myths. There is directive hypnosis - when a person really does not remember anything after taking it. They can instill in him any installation. The second version of hypnosis is trance, in this case the patient is conscious, understands everything. By the way, many fall into this state several times a day by themselves: it is enough to think and look at one point. Through metaphors, different visualizations, the therapist gains access to memories and thus can work with the phobia,”says Pyatnitsky.
Hypnosis, the specialist points out, is the simplest technique that does not require work on oneself, which cannot be called an advantage. “But many psychological problems are a call, a signal that a person is doing something wrong. It's not a good idea to just cut off and forget that bell."
Irina Khaletskaya
