A Rude Awakening

A good description of clinical hypnosis for anybody who’s ever wondered what it’s about. Hypnosis can be helpful to some people for a number of mental health and medical conditions.

I don’t know what was wrong with me: a case of ill fit with the world, I guess. I suddenly kept being confronted by the fact of my own mortality, like a glacier in my path, and seizing up with panic.

I told my doctor and, as luck would have it, he was branching into hypnotherapy and wanted to try it out on me. He was quite the evangelist for the treatment. Hypnosis was no mere stage trick, he insisted: A patient of his had recently had major dental surgery — I imagined pile drivers and a building site — solely anesthetized by the doctor’s suggestion. As for quitting smoking, why, the cigarettes virtually extinguished themselves. My panic attacks should likewise succumb to the powers of his mind.

On my next appointment, he led me to a room where he gestured for me to lie down on a very purple, soft leather couch while he took the armchair opposite. He put a CD of New Age mood music on the stereo — some sort of ode to aquatic life-forms, I noticed by the cover — and told me to focus on a psychedelic spiral pattern inscribed on a small piece of paper attached to the ceiling, while simultaneously concentrating on the sound of his voice.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 11 Nov 2005
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.