Hypnotherapy for Depression: Why & When it is Worth it
If you suffer from depression, you may find some treatments you’ve been undergoing just aren’t cutting it for you. It’s about finding a combination of what works for the individual where you can feel and experience relief from your depression.
Depression is not a synonym for feeling sad. It is a serious mental illness, with many suffering daily bouts of hopelessness, fatigue, a racing mind, aches, and pains. It hijacks the mind and body.
Hypnotherapy, along with CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) can be a good tool to help the depression deep inside the subconscious mind. Are you curious about hypnotherapy? Here is why and when hypnotherapy for depression is worth looking into.
Depression and the Subconscious Mind
The subconscious mind holds onto our past and current beliefs, emotions, and memories; these, in turn, may in fact be the epicentre of our states of depression. Negative filters can be embedded in the subconscious, triggered by past trauma and bad memories, and influence our moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings.
We can train our subconscious mind to be more supportive, helpful, and a better friend to ourselves. For depression, reprogramming the subconscious can help to better manage and release many of the underlying causes of depression one might have, such as addiction, stress and worry, negative self-talk, and self-harm.
How Does Hypnotherapy Work for Depression?
Hypnotherapy is all about using hypnosis, a highly relaxed, focused state of mind that can be reached by following relaxation and focusing techniques from a hypnotherapist. Hypnotherapy has a goal: to speak directly to the subconscious mind.
When under hypnosis, the mind becomes highly susceptible to new information and new ways of thinking. This means we can tell the subconscious mind suggestions and positive affirmations during hypnosis.
Hypnotherapy for depression offers several key benefits, including retraining the subconscious and overriding automatic thinking patterns that keep habits, negative thoughts, and irrational responses in place.
Treating the Root Cause
Low Self-Esteem
Our mood can be greatly influenced by how we talk to and feel about ourselves. This means our subconscious can be filled with harmful beliefs and negative thoughts. Through repetition our thoughts stick, we learn to hate our looks, or assume we’re not good enough, the subconscious makes us see what we believe.
Hypnotherapy can help in the way of feeding the subconscious positive affirmations so that we can release the old, automatic thinking patterns.
Anxiety and Stress
Stress can cause anxiety, which is frequently an irrational response to the surrounding world. The subconscious triggers anxiety when we experience something stressful. Hypnotherapy calms the mind, letting us recognize the bad thinking patterns and control our thoughts in stressful situations.
Other root causes that can be helped with hypnotherapy are insomnia, weight loss, and addiction.
Depression Help from Hypnotherapy
Coping Skills
Hypnosis can empower our ability to cope, first by recognizing the mind’s response to a triggering event, then by helping to alter the way we respond to these triggers.
Remembering Past Positivity
By reliving and remembering our lives before depression through hypnotherapy, we can encourage a lift in mood and feelings. Revisit positive past experiences, remembering who we were, what we were like, and what happiness meant to us. We can reteach the subconscious how to return to that state by revisiting these experiences.
Enhancing CBT
A study done by the American Psychological Association concluded that utilizing CBT in combination with hypnosis provided a “more effective treatment in a shorter time.” Hypnotherapy frees the mind to be more receptive to CBT, as well as increase expectations of the benefits of CBT.
If you feel your current treatments for your depression just aren’t working out the way you hoped, maybe it is time you considered hypnotherapy. Try using this technique with other methods of treatment. You may find it’s exactly the kind of help you’re looking for, and need.
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