Why Exactly Did I Choose Hypnotism Over Conventional Mental Health as My Modality to Help Others Heal?

Today I want to speak to why I became a hypnotist/NLP practitioner instead of going into conventional mental health because there was indeed a reason — actually a few of them.

I will start with my own experience working with psychiatrists back in 1989–1990. I had seen three different ones in that space of time because I was working with a community mental health center. It was referred to me by the Suicide Hotline after my ex very lovingly wrote the number down and suggested sweetly that I could call them when I felt like it. It took me about a week to make the call, and then I had a month’s wait till I was able to get the first consultation appointment. Good thing I wasn’t suicidal, though to be honest, I was having suicidal ideation at the time, which only means that I thought my life would be better if I no longer had to live it — things were that emotionally painful. I NEVER had a plan to kill myself — EVER as I would never do that to those who I knew loved me — and luckily for me, I had many people who loved me aside from my now ex — we still love each other — we just are no longer ‘in love’ with one another. Obviously, he picked up on the fact that I wasn’t feeling so good though I don’t recall ever speaking to him about it directly. Maybe that was a clue, because anyone who knows me, knows that I speak my truth — yet, depression does have a way to shut one down.

Because I was at a community center the psychiatrists were there to do their residency so there were many changes over the time I was there.

So, the first psych that I saw gave me a couple of choices of meds to go on. Remember, I was showing up looking very depressed, so giving me an antidepressant made sense. I was put on desipramine which is a tricyclic and in no time it had me spiraling up into hypomania (below mania). So, I was then placed on the mood stabilizer, lithium on such a high dose I couldn’t function. The blood levels were right on target. However, they didn’t mean anything really for over time that stuff became toxic, my body no longer able to detoxify it. I have told that story many times so I am going to skip it here.

Many times people with bipolar (what at the time was known as manic depression) are diagnosed in this manner — being placed on an antidepressant and then cycling up because the practitioner had not seen the cycles develop yet. My cycles were actually 6 months up and 6 months down along with the seasons. There was never a normal even mood in the middle till I got healed of the underlying negative emotions many years later.

Psychiatrist number 2 was a person who was doing a project on Seasonal Affective Disorder — mainly an illness where the lack of light causes one to feel depressed — she thought I would be a great candidate — until my case manager and psychologist took me out of her hands knowing that this was not my diagnosis as she was the one who diagnosed me — correctly. My real issue with her was that when I told her that I wanted to do a PH.D. in psychology she told me flat out that I was having fantastical thinking and should be more realistic about what I could do with my life. I would have to say that I have since met two people with schizophrenia one a psychiatrist himself and a nurse that works with him working for patient advocacy back in Massachusets if they are still alive and working. I don’t know because this goes back to the early 1990s. With one paper to complete for my 2nd Master’s degree, my guess is that she was wrong to say what she did at that time.

I ask my clients all the time — especially those given diagnoses where they are told that they will have these problems for the rest of their lives and can only ‘manage’ them by following their doctor’s orders, “Are they a God or Goddess? Who is in control of your mind, you or they? Because it is really only you who can make that decision.” I can’t tell you the looks of hope that come into these clients eyes — because the reality is that most of these issues are all in one’s own mind, so if one is able to take away the thoughts and behaviors that form the symptoms of the diagnosis, one is able to be diagnosis and symptom-free — it is really that simple.

Psychiatrist number three had upped my lithium dosage so high that I couldn’t function. I found out a couple of years after that the reason for this was to keep me from having a psychotic break, — but really…does one have to be non-functional and feeling ill to have enough medication to do the job?

Well thankfully, psychiatrist number 4 understood that I had a naturally high baseline — meaning that I have a very quick mind and lots of energy and that she didn’t see any reason to take that away from me. She explained to me that we had to be very careful to keep me in the place where I was able to be at my best and use my mind to its fullest without allowing me to break through to mania — so she titrated the lithium down even more than the previous one so that the dose came down from a high of 1,500 mg to 450 mg with me taking 2 tabs one night and alternating with 1 tab the next and that was perfect till my kidneys started to slow down their operation and that was when she took me off the lithium.

I got involved in working in the conventional world of mental health as a consumer provider in 1993. The job I got was to last only a year, it was very low paying at all of $7.24/hr as a cum laud graduate with a double major and concentration out of college — but this was the best job I ever had basically being paid to play with my clients as their social coordinator. I took them in the 15 passenger van on the Saturday trips to all the places they chose to go the previous Thursday — and sometimes I came up with other places that they wouldn’t know of like the art galleries and old town in Rockport on the ocean which they loved. Wednesday was basketball day, so we would go to a nearby church and play basketball. I sucked at it both because I am all of 5 feet tall and totally uncoordinated but they loved the fact that I gave it a shot anyway. We went to many restaurants where I was so happy to have Jeff, one of the clients figure out the bill, math not being my strong suit.

And, then I left that job and started working in supportive housing programs where the bosses were totally incapable of the least bit of compassion toward the problems our clients had. One was worse than the next — with the over medication, dehumanizing attitudes, and I would say sexualizing in the first place when the leggings were in showing off the bodies of the young women who worked there confusing some of the patients in terms of their dress.

There was one psychiatric appointment I had with one of my one-to-one clients where his psychiatrist was asking me how he was doing. I plainly stated that as far as I knew the client could speak for himself so why not speak directly to him, he’s sitting right in front of you.

Issues like these continued even with my hypnosis clients having a hard time with their getting help for their physical health problems because their records had on there that they had anxiety or depression so were treated like children as if they had no other problems to be looked into.

After all the years that I have been involved in mental health, it is plain to me that there is very little true help and guidance with most of the conventionally trained psychiatrist out there — it is all about medication management — known as psychopharmacology — where you get a 15-minute appointment to see how you medications are doing for you. There is no talk therapy at all. I was lucky in that my psychiatrist always saw me for a full 50 minutes and did the therapy with me including my asking her at the end of my sessions how to best help one of my own clients having lost any respect for my bosses. She helped me a ton in that department for which I will always be grateful. She thought I would make a great psychiatrist. After dropping out of nursing school hating the way that people are trained in the conventional system that was quite out of the question, never mind not having a short-term memory to learn all the information a doctor needs to learn.

Hypnotism is a perfect fit for me. I can be myself dress the way I choose, without any overarching associations telling me what I can and cannot do with my clients. My clients are doing quite well without the ridiculous hypocrisy of the conventional mental health associations, thank you very much. Of course, there are professional parameters to be met, but because it isn’t a licensed profession by the state, there is really little that can be done because there is no license to be revoked.

But, the main reason that I love working with hypnotism is that it is based on bringing wholeness back to our clients, body, mind, and spirit. We always hold the space for them to completely heal. We never diagnose them as that is outside our scope of care not being MDs, and that is a great thing because it means they will never have a reason to use their diagnosis to not do those things that pretty much anyone can do with an average or higher IQ.

The best thing about hypnotism is that we are using the natural ability of the client’s own mind to reframe those negative thoughts and behaviors to thoughts and behaviors that work for them in a gentle manner (at least most of the time as there are those times when one needs to be a bit more assertive with certain clients). For those clients who are younger, below the age of 26, they are already naturally in the hypnotic state because it takes that long for the prefrontal cortex to develop fully where the reasons, rationalizations, and judgments begin to get in the way of easy letting go of issues. All I need to do for those kids is have them take a few deep breaths and they are in a deep enough trance to do the work. With adults, a formal induction is required with all the deepeners to get them to a great place to do the work. If you have been hypnotized, visualizing and feeling yourself going down the stairs is the one that is most often used most would know. However, there are many types of deepeners that I use with my clients in addition to the stairs.

You can see, there are many reasons for my deciding to go the route that I have. It is a lot more fun working toward a client being totally free of their issues, and knowing even 15 or more years after doing the work, that they are still doing great! Some have needed ‘tune-ups’ along the way, but the great majority are doing just fine, thank you very much.

So, if you have tried everything else, hypnotism and NLP are a great way to go. However, you must trust the practitioner and it helps greatly if you actually want the results of your treatment. In my case, letting go of the presenting problems is about 20% of the work. The other 80% is helping my clients to get their compelling future coming into their lives. Because, the goal is not merely to let go of the problem, it is to have a quality of life that is more than worth living full of fun, fulfillment, and love.

If you are interested in having a 45-minute Chaos to Clarity call with me, by all means contact me here: dawningvisions.com/contact_suzanne/ with a bit of an idea of why you are seeking my services and a few dates, times, and most importantly your time zone so we can set up a time. My promise to you is to only offer you services if I can indeed help you both in your falling within my ‘scope of care’ and that our personalities match up to make the work as pleasant as possible for both of us. All my work is done online and has been for quite a while now — starting several years before COVID hit.