131. Debunking Hypnosis Myths: The Truth About Hypnotherapy

- Welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic,

the show where practical mind power

and mystical wisdom collide

with humor and wild curiosity.

- Yeah, we're not here to play it safe.

I'm Cinthia Varkevisser,

your resident spiritual shift disturber.

I stir things up with mystic power and bold action.

- And I'm Michelle Walters,

coach and hypnotherapist.

I bring strategy and transformative hypnosis

to help you turn subconscious walks into unstoppable momentum.

- Let's shake up your thinking, dive into your soul

and make bold moves in your life.

- We'll take you on a journey of breakthrough

and aha moments exploring spirit, business, love,

relationships and self expansion.

- We're connecting you with your highest self

and flipping fear into strength.

- So buckle up, we're doing this,

one wild transformative conversation at a time.

Let's go!

Hello!

You are here with me, Michelle Walters, on this week's episode of Mind Power Meets Mystic.

I am a hypnotherapist, and frequently on this program I am joined by my counterpart, Cinthia Varkevisser, who is our show mystic.

is taking the week off and so it's my time to share a topic with you.

This week

I am going to talk about hypnosis which many of you know about, many of you are

curious and interested about, but what I thought I would share about today is

some myths about hypnosis. One of the things I encounter as I'm out talking

to people and learning what's going on with them and what they might want to

shift in terms of their mindset is that there are a lot of myths floating around

in the movies, in people's heads, that sometimes get in the way of people

trying this fantastic method to understand and reshape your thinking

that is hypnosis.

I am speaking at a conference coming up April 23rd and 24th

of this month, April: 2025

Summit and I thought as an entree to that that it would be helpful for you to

learn a little bit about hypnosis and what some of these myths are and why you

need to let them go. So more information to come about the Prosperous Woman

Summit but have a check for your calendar. It is absolutely free and the

link is in the show notes.

So let's get right into it. Our first myth about

hypnosis is that hypnosis is mind control. Well this myth is just foowee.

Isn't it wonderful to think of hypnosis as having the powers that you see it

having in the movies? The movies have done an awful lot to shape our culture

and our beliefs and certainly there are lots of movies where hypnotists show up

and control somebody's mind and make them do things they don't want to do.

Well here's the truth. That's the myth. Here's the truth. Hypnosis is a

collaborative process. The individual who is working as the client with the

hypnotherapist, somebody like me, has complete control over what they do in our time together.

People can pursue any topic they want to pursue in hypnosis.

Hypnosis is often called meditation with a goal, but the client is always in control.

I don't have any magical powers to take over their minds and make them do something that

don't want to do.

As an example of this, if you are in a deep state of hypnosis and somebody says something

to you that you find abjectly unbelievable or completely untrue, one of the things I've

seen happen is that it makes people sort of either pop out of hypnosis completely or reduce

their level of trance.

This is what happens because your subconscious is always there to protect you.

And hypnosis is not mind control.

Your subconscious and your conscious mind are both present during a hypnosis session.

And so hypnosis is definitely not mind control.

Now that being said, some interesting things can happen in a state of hypnosis.

So for example, I had a client and we were working on something and I had the client

in a state of trance and I had him visualize walking down a corridor and then I told him

to reach out and turn the knob and open the door.

And this client lifted his hand and raised his hand and twisted his wrist just as if

he was turning a knob to open a door.

This is not unusual but he was doing it and he was aware of doing it.

It was not harmful in any way, it was just the result of being in a deep state of trance

and collaboratively acting out that small instruction.

So we have now debunked Myth 1, hypnosis is mind control, hypnosis is not mind control.

The second myth about hypnosis I want to talk about is that hypnosis puts you to sleep.

Well, hypnosis is not the same as sleep.

Hypnosis is a state that is sort of between being awake and being asleep.

So many people don't know this, but every night as you fall asleep, your brain passes

through a state of hypnosis.

The same thing happens when you wake up.

Many people go into a state that is like hypnosis during the day.

It can be like when you are deeply entranced watching a movie and forget about everything

else or when you've been driving down the freeway and you've gotten from point A to

point B and you've completely forgotten the space in between.

Those are states are hypnotic.

Now there is something called sonambulism.

Sonambulists are people who go into very deep states of trance and those deep, deep states

of trance can feel like sleep. I had one client who came to see me with a goal of stopping

drinking. This client had been realizing that he was drinking more than he really wanted

to and he wanted to dramatically cut back or virtually stop his drinking. So this client

got it was came to see me in my office, stepped into my recliner and fell into a deep state

of trance so deep that he was snoring. Curiously, this client saw fantastic results from our

session and was able to let go of this habit of drinking too much and made huge progress

in terms of stopping drinking. Very happy client. Hypnosis does not put you to sleep,

it can put you in a deep state of trance.

The third myth I want to talk about is that you can get stuck in a state of hypnosis.

You cannot get stuck in a state of hypnosis.

That's just the truth.

Again, this is another myth that comes to us courtesy of the movies, where in the movies

it can be a lot of fun to imagine that people can get stuck in a state of trance.

The fact of the matter is that you remain in control when you are in a state of hypnosis.

Just like you are in control when you are falling asleep or you are in control when

you are daydreaming, you cannot get stuck in a state of hypnosis.

I have had a few times that I've had clients who have experienced maybe a lot of emotion

in their session or something that surprised them.

In those cases, I have had clients who needed a couple minutes to compose themselves or

get back into their regular state of mind.

That does happen, but you cannot get stuck in a state of hypnosis.

It's just impossible.

The fourth myth I want to cover is that only weak-minded people can be hypnotized.

This is not true at all.

People can be hypnotized to different depths.

There are people who go deeper into trance and people who don't go as deep into trance.

People have control over how deep into trance they're going to go.

People can go deeper into trance by having more practice, by having deeper rapport with

their hypnotherapist, by basically allowing the trance and the depth to happen.

I want to assure you that hypnosis does not only happen to gullible or weak-minded individuals.

Amongst my many clients, I have worked with medical doctors, I have worked with PhD physicists

and startup creators.

Clients are not weak-minded people.

Many of them are actually people who have tremendous control

over their mindset and recognize that hypnosis is a powerful tool

to be able to use for self-improvement in all kinds

of different directions.

The fourth myth -- oh, that was number four.

I'm going to move on to number five.

The fifth myth is that you lose control in hypnosis.

Well, this comes largely from stage hypnotism.

So I'm gonna distinguish there's something different

between hypnosis and hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis is the state of mind associated

with being in a state of trance.

Hypnotherapy is when you're using hypnosis

for therapeutic results, which is how I use it.

Now there are folks who use hypnosis for street hypnosis or stage hypnosis.

And many people go to these shows and see someone leading a group in hypnosis and they

think oh my gosh these people in this group, how could they possibly stand up there and

be patting their heads and rubbing their tummies and doing silly things in front of the audience.

This must be that they have lost control.

But here's the thing.

They're in a big group of people.

You're always going to meet someone who is okay with following along.

That's just what happens.

These people who are on the stage are not doing anything embarrassing or anything unethical.

Whatever it is they're doing works for them and that's the way it is.

So you don't need to worry about myth number five because you lose control under hypnosis

is a myth.

You actually have complete control.

I'm going to take another little break here to talk about the upcoming summit that I am

speaking at along with four wonderful other female hypnotherapists.

We have come together to put on the Prosperous Woman Summit.

year April: 2025

different topics in hypnosis. I'm speaking one day about hypnosis for

relationships and I'm speaking the other day about hypnosis for business but we

have a fine group of lady hypnotherapists who are talking about

hypnosis for confidence, hypnosis for health, and hypnosis for a wide variety

of other topics. So if you are curious to learn more about hypnosis or hypnotherapy,

I highly encourage you to sign up. It's free. You get lots of great gifts when you sign up

for the Prosperous Woman Summit April 23rd and 24th. It is online and it's going to be great.

See the links below in the show notes.

Back to myths about hypnosis.

Hypnosis is supernatural or black magic.

Well, this is one of my favorites because I don't know, I think supernatural topics

are really interesting and intriguing, but I have to tell you that hypnosis is not supernatural

and it is not black magic.

So you might know that forms of hypnosis have been around for thousands of years.

around for thousands of years.

If you think back, there were ancient sleep temples

in places like Egypt and Greece.

And so it's been known to humankind for a long time

that there is a certain kind of ability

to access this state of trance

and to be able to use it for facilitating

your thought process and making things happen.

So just like we've had lots of things

that we thought were supernatural or black magic,

we just didn't have the science to know about them?

Well, hypnosis is one of those things.

One of the examples I like to use is meteors.

Ancient people thought that meteors were the gods throwing

rocks at them from the sky because they didn't

have any other science.

They didn't know anything different.

And so this, to them, seemed like a logical explanation.

Well, a lot of people have thought that hypnosis must be kind of like that.

It must be something magical or from the gods or whatever, because they didn't know about

it.

We didn't have science to explain it.

The wonderful thing about living in today's world is we have science.

And science has showed us through psychology, through neuroscience, and through looking

hypnotized people and MRI machines that what hypnosis really is is it is a

distinct brain state. It is a special state where certain parts of your brain

basically dial down and get out of the way so that you can go through and make

changes that you want to make in your brain. It just kind of helps you get out

of your way because you've dialed down these other parts of your brain that

that are standing in your way.

And for this reason, I love to use hypnotherapy

to help people with improved creativity.

I've used hypnosis to help people be more creative

and write their books, to get past writer's block,

to do various things.

So think about using hypnosis for creativity

and recognize that the myth that hypnosis is supernatural

Black Magic is just a myth.

Myth #7.

You won't remember anything.

Well, that's a myth too.

Most individuals remember everything that happens in hypnosis.

Sometimes people do go into a deeper state of trance and perceive that they are asleep.

But even in that state of trance where you are very, very quiet, extremely relaxed, many

of those memories of what came up in the session often occur to the client an hour or a day

later when they're thinking about something else and then they realize, "Oh yeah, we worked

on this in the hypnosis session."

Oftentimes it feels like a daydream or relaxation.

Now I have had a couple of clients who've come to see me saying, "Hey, there's something

I want to forget, and can you use hypnotherapy to help me forget about it?"

Well, you can use hypnosis to induce a temporary state of amnesia, but it doesn't last very

long.

So it's important to know that that does happen and it can work, but it is a temporary

state of amnesia. I had a client who came to see me. She was feeling really

terrible. She had been unfaithful to her husband and she just couldn't stop

thinking about the temporary partner that she had seen for a short period of

time. While I couldn't make her stop thinking about this person at all, she

was able to use hypnotherapy to help her reframe what that relationship had been

and recognize that this desire to forget about the the extra partner was really

more about her grief in losing that opportunity. Hypnosis can help you to

reframe things and think about things in different ways and that can be extremely

therapeutic. The next myth, number eight, some people cannot be hypnotized. Well, it

is true that some people are more hypnotizable than others. I have seen

this in my practice. There are people who quickly drop into a state of hypnosis as

if they do this all the time and it's easy and goes swimmingly and then there

are clients who need more practice and do not go as deep into a state of hypnosis.

What I have seen is that clients who come back and who do these simple self-hypnosis

exercises that I recommend are able to go deeper into states of hypnosis.

deeper the state often will lead to a more deep and swift change of thinking.

Rapport between your hypnotherapist and you is very important. If you don't like

or trust your hypnotherapist you're not going to go into a very deep state of

trance. So it is very important to make sure that if you are working with a

hypnotherapist. It's someone that you like, someone that you vibe with, and

somebody that you feel comfortable with in terms of going deep. The next one I

want to talk about is hypnosis can force truth or reveal secrets. And there's

another one that comes up sometimes in the movies, you know, "Hey, hypnotize me"

and you'll see that I really did know that it was the bad guy who did this

thing. Well, hypnosis as I've said earlier is a state of consensus. It is not

something that I can force people to tell me their secrets or to reveal

truths. Sometimes in a state of hypnosis, people do discover things about

themselves that they didn't know before and sometimes when they recognize those

truths they feel differently about who they are or what they're doing or or how

they can be. For example, I had a client who came to see me. She was retiring early

in her late 50s or early 60s, she told me that she had been compulsively pulling hair

out of her head one strand at a time since she was, I think, in her early teens or older

childhood.

This bad habit had led her to having a bald patch on her head where she had actually done

damage by pulling out too much hair.

What we recognized in our work in hypnotherapy was that she had had a number of adverse childhood

experiences which had led her to begin practicing this bad habit.

This bad habit was something that I helped her to get a handle on so that she no longer

would pull her hair. It was so gratifying to know that I could help this person who had had this

long-standing, lifelong problem with pulling out her hair to not pulling out her hair anymore.

So she could look forward to a happy retirement and growing her hair back, which made her very

happy and made me happy too. The last myth I want to talk about is hypnosis is a miracle cure.

I would love it if I could report that hypnosis can instantly solve all problems and cure diseases

and make everything bad go away, but that is not how it works. It is very effective and has been

shown to be effective that it is helpful for anxiety or in pain management. It is something

that requires effort and it is not an instant fix. Now I will say that I've had

a couple of clients who have come to see me for single sessions because they had

a very very specific thing coming up and one session was probably all there was

time for or was going to address the issue. I had a client a few years ago who

had flown many times from the United States to Europe and in general did not

have a fear about it, but there had been a death in her family recently and an

upcoming trip was making her particularly apprehensive. And so one

session with her immediately before her flight made her feel much much better,

much much more calm. Recall that she had done this a number of times. She didn't

really have anything to fear that seeing her family was going to be helpful and

therapeutic and positive. And so in that case one session was good. And I had

another client who came to see me she had an upcoming surgery and she was

worried about this elective surgery and how it would work and how it would go.

Well the surgery was happening in just a few days and so we were able to work

together and really really calm her down so that she was not so scared of the

surgery and she could go into the surgery with a positive mindset. I hope I

I have done a good job of assuring you that these 10 myths about hypnosis are not anything

you should be putting your mind or worry against.

Hypnosis is extremely effective at addressing all kinds of issues.

It can be used for your health, it can be used for your relationships, it can be used

for your business, it can be used for habit changing, it can be used for all kinds of

things. I often tell people that if they think that the problem might be a thought process

problem, which a lot of things are, we should have a consult. I will put my link in the

show notes where you can get a hold of me for a one-to-one conversation and let's talk

about it and see if you have something going on that I might be able to help you with.

If you are curious and want to learn more about hypnosis in general, I don't think

there's an upcoming better resource that I can recommend than the Prosperous Women Summit

th,: 2025

Link is in the show notes.

It's free.

Me and several other great female hypnotherapists will be there presenting, so check out the

details and I hope to see you there.

Thanks for listening to this week's

episode of Mind Power Meets Mystic. Please follow us or subscribe and come

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