In this post we’re going to take a look at how non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) in particular clinical hypnotherapy can be used as a tool for facilitating recovery from eating disorders.
3 ways clinical hypnotherapy and the experience of using your mind in new and different ways can help you break free from an eating disorder:
Reason #1 Hypnosis is Inherently Empowering
When we take the stance that the individual has inevitably developed an eating disorder due to their unlucky combination of genetics, personality traits and childhood experiences they are powerless to change.
On the other hand, when we take the approach that eating disorders are learned behaviours and as learned behaviours, they can be unlearned there is much we can do.
The latter is one of the presumptions that clinical hypnotherapy works off.
Whether it is “right” or “wrong” does not even matter because it is the only stance we can take if we want to facilitate change rather than increase helplessness.
In the words of Dr. Milton H. Erickson one of the pioneers and masters of modern-day clinical hypnotherapy:
“Clinical hypnotherapy is a resource-oriented approach which aims to enhance self-efficacy and to support the patient in regard to his/her individual problem-solving strategies1”
Hypnosis is particularly useful for issues that are deep-seated such as an inherent feeling of unworthiness or not good enough. Often people can verbalise that they know they are worthy and definitely good enough and it feels silly to them that they have the unshakable feeling telling them otherwise.
Hypnosis assists with changing the feeling rather than the logical understanding or insight and this changes everything because as I always say to my clients “nothing changes until the feeling changes”.
We work until the feeling and not just the understanding changes.
Until you are happily doing the new behaviour of eating well and taking care of yourself the behaviour itself has limited value.
I know for me in recovery from anorexia nervosa there were many times where I didn’t engage in “eating disorder behaviours” but that was all I was doing.
I wasn’t enjoying, I wasn’t living.
I was just not doing eating disorder behaviours.
Now I really have to wrack my brain to even remember what all the eating disorder behaviours I was doing were (and at the time I wouldn’t have considered them “disordered” they often simply felt like what I had to do).
Nothing changes until the feeling changes and hypnosis is a direct means of changing the feeling. Especially when some of these feelings have been established during our younger preverbal years.
Change the feeling, change your life.
Reason #2 Hypnosis Works at the Unconscious Level
You’ve heard it before and I’m going to say it again, eating disorders are not a choice.
They are no more a choice than being born with a pancreas which does not produce enough insulin is a choice (Type I diabetes).
Here, I’m going to present the notion of “not a choice” in perhaps a slightly different way than you’ve heard it before.
What does “not a choice mean?”
It means that the emotion has already happened, the response already happened before the person has conscious awareness and therefore control over what is happening.
Often toward the beginning of an eating disorder there was a conscious decision to eat less or do other things with food beyond its usual function of sustenance (such as not eat after a certain time, not eat certain foods, only eat certain amounts and so on). However, after time these decisions are no longer decisions and are instead what happens automatically. In other words they become unconscious or what we’d often describe as habit.
This is why it feels for the person with an eating disorder that this is just how they are.
For them it’s not a struggle or an effort to do the eating disorder behaviours, it is a struggle and an effort to go against them.
NOSC such as hypnosis can be very useful here because hypnosis allows for someone to experience going through what has been truly traumatic experiences calmly. Why this is so important is because ultimately your mind does not know the difference between imagined and real life.
If you imagine going through a usually incredibly emotionally charged experience under hypnosis where you are instead calm and resourceful you are essentially giving your brain the same experience as if this were happening in real life.
Which means when you then go out into your real life and find yourself in similar experiences that used to upset you, your brain searches for memories of what happened in its past and how you got through it before. When it can find the memory of you getting through it under hypnosis totally calm and in control it will do that again.
Your brain is willing to change if you first give it a means of doing what it is already doing better or at least as good as its old way of doing things.
You can teach an old dog new tricks and hypnosis may offer one of the fastest ways of doing this.
Reason #3 Hypnosis Removes the Threat
Unfortunately, every time our mind associates anything happening in our life now with past trauma, we compulsively repeat the behaviour patterns we developed to prevent us from fully feeling the trauma in the first place.
Often these patterns were formed when we were very young and no longer serve us given the update of information and experiences, we’ve had since. However, no amount of rational thinking and logic can prevent this from happening, it’s how a human brain works.
Which is where hypnosis comes in because it does not work with the logical, conscious mind and instead assists a person to change things at the level at which they exist, the unconscious mind or the autonomic nervous system.
Further, trying to get rid of our patterns logically frightens our unconscious mind and strengthens our defences to holding onto it. Thus entrenching the very pattern we are trying to remove even more deeply.
From this perspective it is easy to see why relationship problems can be so intractable, someone asking us to change is a direct “threat” to our sense of safety. You may have noticed this in relationships if you’ve ever pressure someone else to give up their patterns.
Rather than trying to talk someone out of behaviours that bother them, hypnosis allows them to get to the real cause of the conflict. When this happens, the defences fall away because there is no longer anything to defend and the conflict and behaviours which are a result of the conflict naturally disappear.
Take Home Message
There exists no therapeutic technique which is a panacea to eating disorder recovery. Fifty years of psychotherapy research has not shown one technique to be superior to any other and just because hypnosis has been shown to be effective in the rapid resolving of many psychological issues including phobias, anxiety, depression and eating disorders does not mean that it will be effective in all cases.
Each individual is unique.
However, in dealing with problems which operate at the unconscious level it makes sense that working at the unconscious level would be a great place to start.
NOSC such as hypnosis make this possible and I believe this field, while unfortunately prone to a great number of misconceptions, is going to be one of the greatest tools in the future of eating disorder treatment.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
Reference
- Revenstorf D, Peter B. Hypnose in Psychotherapie, Psychosomatik und Medizin (2. Aufl). Berlin: Springer, 2009.
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