Hypnotherapy for Depression

Claire Small
Authored by Claire Small
Posted Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - 5:28am

Many, many people suffer from depression, and anyone with experience of this knows that it is exhausting and crushing. Depression affects a vast number of people, and it can have a huge impact on your daily life, slowing everything down and making even regular everyday tasks much more difficult and strenuous. There are many different options out there that can help to treat depression, from cognitive behaviour therapy to medication, and different methods can work for different people to different extents.

One option for helping to mitigate the effects of depression is hypnotherapy, a type of treatment that can be found from many different providers like hypnotherapynewcastle.org. Hypnotherapy can look mysterious and a bit suspicious to people who have not tried it, though, so an introduction to how it works might be useful. Let’s run through how hypnotherapy can be used to treat depression.

What is Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is an increasingly popular method of treatment that can be used for a range of different conditions, including depression. There are several different approaches to hypnotherapy used by practitioners, and different methods that can be used for the process of hypnotising a patient.

Hypnotherapy works by helping you to enter an extremely relaxed state of mind, and using that to introduce ideas to you while you are more receptive to them than you would be when fully conscious. This is because mental health conditions can block your receptiveness to ideas, causing anxieties around coping methods, and hypnotherapy can allow you to go around these blocks. While hypnotised, you can introduce alternative methods for coping with your problems, before being brought out of your trance again.

There is no major danger to hypnotherapy. You are always one hundred percent in control while being hypnotised, and can bring yourself out of the trance at any time if you need to. There are risks of a couple of minor side effects, including headaches and dizziness, but these usually fade very shortly after the end of your hypnotherapy session is over.

How does Hypnotherapy for Depression work?

Hypnotherapy is not enormously effective as a treatment for depression if used in isolation. Treating depression can be difficult, as a lot of the most effective options, like cognitive behaviour therapy, can be difficult to get into the right frame of mind for in order for them to be properly effective.

Where hypnotherapy really shines for treating depression is when it is used as a complementary therapy treatment, combined with cognitive behavioural therapy or other therapy techniques. Hypnotherapy can make you more receptive to other treatments such as cognitive behaviour therapy, giving these other treatments a greater effect and making it easier to deal with depression and related problems.

Depression is a complex problem. Conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety problems and schizophrenia are physical conditions, and not just feeling a bit sad. They are caused by chemical imbalances in your brain, and should be treated carefully and thoroughly in accordance with advice from licensed medical professionals, just as you would treat any physical illness that was having a major negative effect on your life.

Hypnotherapy is a complementary therapy, not a cure in its own right. You should not attempt to use hypnotherapy as the only form of therapy for your mental health, but it can make a valuable contribution if used in combination with other forms of treatment such as cognitive behavioural therapy or others like interpersonal psychotherapy!

Conclusion

Hypnotherapy might not be for everyone, but many people find that using a course of hypnotherapy from a provider such as hypnotherapynewcastle in combination with medication, cognitive behavioural therapy, or both, can make a huge difference to their ability to manage their depression. You should always talk through potential treatment options for your depression or other mental health conditions with your GP before you begin a course of hypnotherapy or medication, but hypnotherapy can be a great way to boost the effectiveness of other treatments on your mental health. It’s perfectly safe and can be very effective, as long as you make sure to use it in combination with other treatments and to follow any recommendations made by your GP or other licensed healthcare professional!

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