I have wanted to bring up the topic of using hypnosis in psychotherapy for quite some time. I delayed because I was afraid of the topic’s possible negative impact on some readers, but I have decided that the topic remains relevant and of concern.
While I grew to have a strong bias against using psychoactive medications as a primary therapy for DID, I continued to use such medications as an adjunct to psychotherapy. I found that medications, as an adjunct, could support some patients to enable the psychotherapy to assist them in processing their trauma. Perhaps it is possible to use hypnosis in that way.
I know that there are therapists who use hypnotherapy in treating those suffering from trauma and dissociation. My understanding is that some are successful in that treatment. For those that are helped in that way, that is wonderful. Unfortunately, I know psychiatrists who have used hypnosis in therapy inappropriately – to the extreme detriment of their patients. I am sure my bias increased as a result.
I went through my own period of enthusiasm in doing hypnosis. I attended some international workshops and conferences on Hypnosis in Seattle, Berkeley, Banff, and Phoenix. I have no doubt that my knowledge of hypnosis has been useful in my practice.
Even though hypnosis is a poorly understood subject, it is well recognized that about 10% of the general public are highly hypnotizable. Often a person’s expectation and readiness to go into a trance is so strong that all a hypnotist needs is more a matter of confidence rather than skill to put a person in a trance. Once a patient asked me to put her in a trance when I thought she was the worst candidate for hypnosis. I reluctantly obliged. Much to my surprise, she promptly fell into a deep trance. According to all the criteria I knew, she was not a good hypnotisable subject as she was highly critical, defensive, angry and obsessional. I soon realized that it was her willingness and readiness to go into a trance that put her into a deep trance despite those qualities. It had nothing to do with my skill, or lack of skill, in hypnosis.
My decision to stop using hypnosis was entirely a personal one, and is not a view shared by therapists in general. However, I thought it might be worthwhile to share my views and concerns with readers in the DID community.
[1] Dissociation is already a kind of self-hypnosis. All DID individuals I have met seem naturally easy subjects to be put into a trance.
While hyper-vigilance is a handicap, a symptom of PTSD, vigilance remains a necessary protection when navigating the dangers in this world. I wish to once again remind systems who are reading this that while protective alters should be encouraged to dial down their hyper-vigilance as best they can while maintaining their vigilance. I fully expect that some alters are appropriately vigilant in guarding against hypnosis as a protective function.
The fact is that all abusers develop manipulative skills as part of their abusive behaviour. It is no coincidence that abusers use the similarly phrasing when denying abuse to their targets, like “You must have been dreaming.” Part of the problem with hypnosis is that many hypnotists may use similar language, particularly in one technique of hypnotic induction called the “Confusion Technique.” In my opinion, this is a very serious danger to those with DID.
[2] It is easy to hypnotize someone with DID. But knowing what to do after putting someone in a deep trance is something that demands proper psycho-therapeutic training. It is simply not therapeutic to put a person in a trance to remove a symptom – expressed as or through an alter – by the power of hypnosis. That is not therapy. It does nothing to help a patient process their trauma. It is not empowering the patient in reclaiming their life from trauma, rather it is more in the nature of suppression and, therefore, will be likely only a temporary relief and other symptoms.
Knowing what to do for a patient means that it is not necessary to put that patient in a trance. It is wrong for a therapist to first explore the unknown roots of a disorder through hypnosis just because you have not formulated a treatment plan. With DID, hypnotizing a person to find out what they apparently cannot otherwise recall misses the key point: There is likely a very good reason why a given memory is hidden by one part of a system. Do not rush the process of healing by digging up memories. Letting the patient present them in their own time, when they feel safely empowered, actually allows them to heal faster. Why? Because crashing the amnestic barriers the patient has created under the stress of horrific trauma is a recipe for retraumatization – not healing.
[3] Hypnotizing patients further exaggerates the power-hierarchy inherent in the therapist/patient relationship with the dis-empowering nature of the hypnotist/client relationship. All psychotherapy should carry the implicit aim of “empowering” the patient. It is not a surgical relationship where the surgeon operates on the unconscious patient while doing all the work with his/her scalpel. Psychotherapy is only successful when it is a joint, collaborative venture.
[4] Many claim that the hypnotherapist is only enhancing the power of the client to solve his/her own problem. That is a good sound bit but it is not true in practice. Humans, simply speaking, are notoriously prone to corruption when handling power, as in the aphorism, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It is so very easy for a therapist to control the client in a highly passive and suggestible state of mind. Real therapeutic success, therapy that empowers a patient such that they can deal with new stressors in their experience, is based on the patient’s confidence that he/she has gotten better out of their own effort.
[5] In hypnosis, you are rendered completely helpless. It is a myth that under hypnosis you cannot do anything that goes against what you really want. That is a lie. If you are told under hypnosis that the next person you meet who smiles at you is actually someone who is going to hurt your child, it is not too far fetched to think that you will kill him if you are given a gun. In a deep hypnotic trance, you lose your discriminating power. You can then be persuaded to believe what is suggested to you and perform the most irrational things.
These are several of the reasons for my abhorrence against the practice of hypnosis as psychotherapy. It gives the hypnotherapist too much power by taking power from the patient. All successful salespersons and politicians have acquired some skills of hypnosis, some of them don’t even know it. It just comes naturally to them.
Once again, for those that hypnotherapy has helped or is helping, that is wonderful. I am not suggesting you terminate therapy which is proceeding successfully. My biases are about caution. Best wishes.
