I was recently asked by a psychotherapist who came to me as a client, when I would not recommend hypnosis to someone. This coincided with me encountering two past clients of mine who I deemed to not be a good fit to continue doing hypnosis with me.
I think this topic behooves its own discussion. The sign of any worthwhile modality is one that knows its place and doesn’t claim to be a catch-all for all situations. Humans are too complex and diverse for any one solution to apply in all cases.
So in this article, I’ll aim to explore some cases in which it might be best not to try hypnosis.
Contraindications for Hypnosis
There are several presenting medical and psychiatric conditions that are advised against being combined with hypnosis.
These include:
- Uncontrollable panic attacks
- Epilepsy
- Eating disorders
- Psychosis
- Personality Disorders
In some cases, extra specialization might allow a person to provide hypnosis services to individuals with these diagnoses, but in general hypnosis can sometimes make these conditions worse, or at the very least more complicated to work with.
When Hypnosis Isn’t Right for You
In addition, I like to emphasize to clients that as a whole, hypnosis is not an interpersonal experience, it’s intrapersonal. Whereas most therapy is based on the concept of developing a “therapeutic relationship” with the therapist, hypnosis aims to deepen your relationship with yourself.
The practitioner is merely a guide, and although it’s obviously still important to have feelings of connection and trust with your hypnotist, the actual change being created is not born out of the relationship.
This is important to keep in mind depending on the type of support or assistance you are seeking.
If you need to practice your social or interpersonal skills, if you need a strong empathic mirror to support you, if you specifically want someone outside of yourself to give you their perspective on things or provide their expertise, than hypnosis alone might not be the right fit.
Hypnosis can help you get unstuck, help you find your own answers that lie within, and help you get out of your own way.
But you’ll still be limited to what you already have inside you, even if only in potential. Hypnosis is an amazing way to discover that you are far more capable than you maybe realized.
Meanwhile, therapy has the advantage of an outside person adding their own value to your experience, enhancing you with a separate set of skills or insights that you might not poses.
This is why we often recommend that you work with a therapist even while working with hypnosis – each helps in very different ways, and it can be useful to unpack what emerges in your hypnosis session with someone who you have a close emotional and therapeutic relationship with.
The Specifics of Hypnosis Assisted Healing
And then of course there’s the distinction between conventional hypnosis and hypnosis-assisted healing. We have an entire article dedicated to the subject, but in short, most hypnosis tends to focus on the here and now and be cognitive and behavioral in nature. Hypnosis Assisted Healing places more emphasis on analysis of why things are the way they are and regressing to earlier memories when necessary in order to heal them.
Each of these approaches has their own advantages. If you prefer not to dwell in the past, if you care more about what than why, if you want the hypnotist to take the lead on things, then a more conventional hypnosis session would be right for you.
Conversely, if you’re fascinated by why things are the way they are, if understanding why influences how you experience the world, and if you want to take a more proactive and self-guided approach to your own healing, then Hypnosis Assisted Healing method practice at Navya could be a very powerful experience for you.
