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Hypnosis: from Myth to Reality

Far from tricks and myths, learn more about hypnosis, the technique used to improve various psychological problems

Júlya Rocha*

Do you know that chill in your stomach, that racing heart accompanied by trembling, when sometimes you even stop? It all boils down to fear, and it can go further and turn into a phobia. A phobia is a persistent and irrational fear of a certain object, animal, activity or situation that causes extreme anxiety. One of the ways to solve this problem is with hypnosis, do you know what it is? Hypnosis is a verbal procedure that aims to alter normal patterns of thought, memory, sensation and perception of reality. To talk about this, we spoke to Medical Psychologist, Dr. João Facchinetti, who has been working with hypnosis for over 20 years.

To begin with, hypnosis is not therapy in itself. "Hypnosis is a working tool to be used in therapy. It is used as a tool that helps to catalyze, to make processes happen more quickly, by opening a door to our unconscious, in which each of us has a kind of 'pantry' full of nutritious and tasty things, but we don't have easy access to them. During the therapeutic process, hypnosis helps to open the door to this pantry so that the person can draw on their own qualities," she explains.

This method can help with all kinds of problems. From anxiety to depression, hypnosis acts on the problem in an often effective way. "People with all sorts of problems come to me, from relationship problems to sexual disorders, anxiety, depression, phobia, panic disorder and OCD. But unfortunately, not all of them can be helped so well." The method can also be used by anyone, without restrictions. "Anyone can do hypnosis because it is a natural state of the human mind. Everyone goes in and out of trance every day. A good example is when you're driving from home to work and you're taking your usual route, suddenly you're worried about something, thinking about it, and you end up driving two or three blocks and you don't even realize you've passed that way. At that moment you're in a light trance state. Here at the clinic, we use specific techniques to rescue these moments, which are natural, in order to open this door to the unconscious and evolve. But there are different levels of trance for each person. Some have a deeper level and others a more superficial one."

It's important to note that not everyone can be a hypnologist. "Every powerful tool requires training to be used. The councils that regulated hypnosis were those of medicine, psychology, dentistry and physiotherapy. These are the professions that have a council prepared to monitor the work their professionals do in the field of hypnosis. It is for these people that we give the hypnosis course. " Which is quite different from self-hypnosis. "Self-hypnosis is something anyone can learn and do. I often teach it to my patients so that they can overcome certain situations more easily. It can be used for sleeping, studying, taking a test or presenting a paper, for example."

But how does hypnosis act on the problem? Dr. João explains. "You are born, for example, without a phobia and there comes a time when your unconscious organizes itself in such a way that you develop a cockroach phobia. During hypnosis you give the unconscious an opportunity to reorganize itself in another way, a better way. That's how it works.

Many people bring their own myths about hypnosis to the office, which they soon put behind them. "There are people who think I'm going to have power over their will, which I don't. During hypnosis your judgment remains, you're conscious the whole time. During hypnosis your judgment remains, you're conscious all the time. Some people think they're going somewhere else. But that's just a myth, you have to pay attention to what I'm saying. Most of the myths are about this, the fear of being unconscious".


Source: Written by Júlya Rocha for the Gazeta de Alagoas newspaper and Gazetaweb.com portal - 20.04.2016 -

Milton Erickson Institute Alagoas.

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