Is Hypnosis The Cure For Addiction? Is It Brainwashing or Cutting Edge Science?
This question was posed as the title for an article in The Fix magazine by American hypnotherapist and trainer Wendi Friesen.
In it she tells of how she had once been perplexed by drug and alcohol misusers programs. They had seemed to base their therapy on portraying the users as helpless victims. The result of this was - if a user failed to keep on a particular program, they tended to think that nothing would work.
Hypnotherapy, she argues, comes from a different basis. It changes a person’s beliefs about who they are, creating a positive identity, of being healthy, in control, powerful, and free from a disease. Then, coming from a position of strength, they are taken on an imaginary journey to both see and inhabit their future self as clean, healthy, and powerful – free from addiction and free from cravings. This changes the way the brain reacts by creating a memory – as if it has actually happened. The neuroplasticity of the brain allows new neural pathways to be set up. Former users can build new lives.
Of course, there are many ways to approach drug and alcohol treatment, but hypnotherapy seems to be getting recognition.
Matthew Hall
Master in Clinical Hypnosis
www.effectivehypnois.co.uk
