Hypnotherapy offers the potential to help treat this medical conditions without the need for invasive therapies or additional medications. Therapists consider hypnotherapy a safe treatment option, with minimal side effects.
A person with depression experiences a wide variety of emotions. Hypnotherapy can help a person learn to reduce and/or better control feelings of anxiety, stress, and sadness. Hypnotherapy is also used to treat negative behaviours that could be worsening a person’s depression. These behaviours may include smoking and poor eating and sleeping habits.
It’s important to remember that depression, along with severe and chronic mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, also affect a person’s physical health. Depression is more than just feeling sad or having negative thoughts. It’s a condition where the chemicals in your brain are imbalanced. Hypnotherapy is a complementary therapy, and it shouldn’t be the only therapy a person uses to enhance their mental health.
How Can Hypnotherapy Help Someone With Depression?
It can help target unwanted or unhealthy habits and possibly replace them with healthier behaviours. Examples include adjusting negative thought patterns that could be worsening depression symptoms.
Hypnotherapy differs from other therapeutic treatments in that it focuses on solutions to problem states and behaviours rather than simply seeking to alleviate symptoms of depression. Some of the areas a hypnosis treatment might address are resolving subconscious causes, changing behaviours, and improving self-image and core identity.
Resolving Subconscious Elements of the Depression
Some people report feeling depressed with no obvious or apparent reason. In these cases, there may be hidden, subconscious causes for the depression. One of the main objectives of hypnosis is to bring subconscious elements of the mind to the foreground. In the relaxed state of hypnotic trance, it is possible to recall long-forgotten memories, recognise unhealthy thought patterns or beliefs, and identify previously unconscious biases and assumptions.
The therapist will then guide the person to find ways to resolve these subconscious elements in such a way that emotional change occurs more easily.
Addressing Depressive Behaviours
Depression can sometimes be linked to various behavioural factors such as diet, sleep, and exercise. If the client is amenable, they can first work on these issues with their hypnotist. In some cases, behavioural changes are enough to alleviate the symptoms of depression.
Improving Self-Image & Self-Esteem
Whether they are found to be the cause or result, self-image and self-esteem can play a major role in depression. Hypnosis can help a person recognise and change flawed, habitual thinking about their inherent value and increase their sense of self-worth and self-love. This can be accomplished through guided imagery, positive affirmations, and post-hypnotic suggestions given while in the trance state.
Who Is Hypnotherapy Right For?
Most people who are willing and ready to change can benefit from hypnotherapy. However, because many people suffering from depression also experience low self esteem, believing that change is possible can be difficult.
You Have to Be Willing to Change
Self-efficacy, the belief that a person has the ability to succeed in achieving his or her goals, plays an important part in the outcome of any program involving hypnosis treatment. If a person is lacking that kind of self-confidence, the hypnotherapist will take that into account and work with the person to re-frame any doubts or hesitations that may limit the effectiveness of the treatment.
Because hypnotherapy is a solution-based therapy, much time will be spent addressing underlying subconscious causes of depression rather than the symptoms.
Some of these causes addressed in hypnotherapy may be related to:
• Stressful life events such as divorce or losing a job
• Grief and loss
• Physical and emotional abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Early childhood losses and trauma
• Alcoholism and addiction
• Chronic stress and anxiety
• Nutritional or exercise deficiencies
