News: What is hypnosis? Why use hypnosis in therapy?
Posted: 2010-01-30 by Lisa Lombard
Clinical hypnosis within psychotherapy is an evidence-based, effective treatment for a number of problems. What is hypnosis and when can it be useful?
What is hypnosis? Why Clinical Hypnosis?
Hypnosis allows you to focus intently on a specific problem and its resolution, while remaining in a comfortable state of physical relaxation. It also helps enhance your control over your body's responses: the mind-body connection. It is a normal state of aroused, heightened attention and absorption, and imaginative involvement - similar to being so absorbed in a movie or novel that one loses track of time and details of one's surroundings may fade into the background.
Clinical Hypnosis can help with:
- Pain and physical symptom control
- Procedural anxiety management
- Managing stress of infertility treatments
- General Anxiety, Phobias, Obsessions
- Anxiety-driven habits (especially in children)
- Medical treatment side effects such as nausea and
vomiting
- Stress management
- Performance enhancement (e.g., actors, singers,
athletes, students)
The Division 30 Definition and Description of Hypnosis
Hypnosis typically involves an introduction to the procedure
during which the subject is told that suggestions for imaginative experiences
will be presented. The hypnotic induction is an extended initial suggestion for
using one's imagination, and may contain further elaborations of the
introduction. A hypnotic procedure is used to encourage and evaluate responses
to suggestions. When using hypnosis, one person (the subject) is guided by
another (the hypnotist) to respond to
suggestions for changes in subjective experience, alterations in
perception, sensation, emotion, thought or behavior. Persons can also learn self-hypnosis, which is the act of
administering hypnotic procedures on one's own. If the subject responds to
hypnotic suggestions, it is generally inferred that hypnosis has been induced.
Many believe that hypnotic responses and experiences are characteristic of a
hypnotic state. While some think that it is not necessary to use the word
"hypnosis" as part of the hypnotic induction, others view it as
essential.
Details of hypnotic procedures and suggestions will differ
depending on the goals of the practitioner and the purposes of the clinical or
research endeavor. Procedures traditionally involve suggestions to relax,
though relaxation is not necessary for hypnosis and a wide variety of
suggestions can be used including those to become more alert. Suggestions that
permit the extent of hypnosis to be assessed by comparing responses to
standardized scales can be used in both clinical and research settings. While
the majority of individuals are responsive to at least some suggestions, scores
on standardized scales range from high to negligible. Traditionally, scores are
grouped into low, medium, and high categories. As is the case with other
positively-scaled measures of psychological constructs such as attention and
awareness, the salience of evidence for having achieved hypnosis increases with
the individual's score.
This definition and description of hypnosis was prepared by
the Executive Committee of the American Psychological Association, Division of
Psychological Hypnosis. Permission to reproduce this document is freely
granted.