Quit Smoking, banish anxiety, lose weight, get over a failed relationship and regain control of your mind. Just some of life’s hurdles that can be overcome through hypnotherapy. Rescu. asks Deborah Marshall-Warren to tell us everything you’ve always wanted to know about this excellent therapy.
Having met and had three very effective treatments with Deborah at the Six Senses Destination Spa last year, I know first hand the power of hypnosis to start you on a journey of personal and behavioural change. Deborah is a published author and expert in the field of hypnotherapy and has successfully treated clients from around the world from concerns such as quitting smoking, losing weight to shifting negativity around their childhood.
Victims of crime, abuse and long term behavioural issues have benefited from Deborah’s unique and highly effective technique. We tracked Deborah down in Malta (she lives between Malta and London) to debunk the myths and tell us more about this often misunderstood treatment.
RESCU: What is hypnosis?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “Hypnosis is a deep state of relaxation. You may liken it to the feeling of relaxation that you may have experienced during a meditation, or in prayer, or in the head-to-toe relaxation at the end of a yoga class. This form of relaxation does induce a mild form of hypnosis.”
RESCU: What is Hypnotherapy?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “Hypnotherapy combines this deep state of relaxation with therapy to promote relatively fast and lasting personal transformation, change and development.
Therapy combined with hypnosis can help you to regain control of thoughts and feelings that do not honour how you wish to present yourself and how you wish to feel. You can let go of negative thoughts and labels that you have absorbed in the past, and replace them with thoughts and feelings and labels that reflect the true best and brightest in your life now.”
RESCU: What can hypnotherapy cure?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “Curious as it may seem, the majority of people do not come to hypnotherapy for a ‘cure’ as such. People come for a hypnotherapy session to gain clarity and understanding of what is going on at an emotional level inside themselves. They come to take control of certain negative emotions and responses to situations and to ‘things’ that erupt in uncertain and disturbing ways. Such ‘things’ may be anything from aeroplanes to lizards.
Many healthy and happy people who come for hypnotherapy say that in every other part of their lives, they are happy with who they are. They simply want help getting on top of one aspect of their lives, such as:
• improving their confidence and self-esteem
• to gain freedom from anxiety and panic attacks
• to tackle a specific challenge such as public speaking, an interview, a driving test, or losing weight
• or stopping smoking, nail biting, going red in front of authority figures
• being afraid of spiders or heights
• or simply moving on from not believing they can succeed.
Some come to hypnotherapy because their usually healthy minds suddenly become unhealthy, perhaps because of a loss of a job or relationship, or perhaps for no apparent reason at all. The bottom can appear to drop out of their world. Their usual buoyancy, happiness, and their robust sense of self-esteem sink without trace. They come for help with depression.”
RESCU: What is interactive hypnotherapy?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: In a session of interactive hypnotherapy, you design the suggestions that are to be installed within your subconscious mind. You get to choose and to suggest, and to embed, the words and the phrases that best reflect the feelings and the values that you, as an individual, wish to govern your own personality. You get to design your own labels!”
RESCU: Would I be put to sleep?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “The state of hypnosis is an altered state of awareness. It is a heightened state of awareness. It is not a state of sleep. Hypnosis is a way to reach a delicious state of relaxation, a state in which time passes very quickly. At the end of a session, you may find it quite incredible to learn that you have been in this relaxed state for almost an hour or more.
An hour in hypnosis is, in a sense, equivalent to a couple of hours of sleep, in so far as one awakens from the relaxation feeling rested, rejuvenated, and mentally cleansed.”
RESCU: Movies have always shown a very intense experience of people under hypnosis. Are you out of it during Hypnosis?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: Hypnosis is not a passive state. You can laugh in hypnosis, and you can cry in hypnosis. Neither emotion will necessarily disturb the state of relaxation.
If, however, you were to be faced with some form of danger???if, say, someone outside the practice room were to shout ?Fire!? then you, the client, would immediately end the hypnotic state. (Of course your hypnotherapist would intervene to bring you out anyway, but she wouldn?t need to.) Your natural protective faculties would bring you back into the room, back into full waking consciousness.”
RESCU: Why would I choose hypnotherapy?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “Interactive hypnotherapy presents different opportunities to different people. Generally speaking, if you can think of it, if you can put a name to it, then you can use hypnotherapy to help clear it, to free it, to transform it, or to improve it!
It is a form of life coaching. You get to discover that you can be your own best life coach in so far as you gain access to the wisdom and the direction within you. It is one of the most powerful, and yet somehow most misunderstood, of the complementary therapies.”
RESCU: Is hypnotherapy specific?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “Interactive hypnotherapy is specific in that it allows you to go to a specific ‘file’ or memory that is influencing your experience of yourself right now, and open it and edit it. You can gain a healthier mental perspective on it. You can move forward beyond it.”
RESCU: What is regression in hypnosis?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “This is like being given the key to a storehouse of memorabilia. You can access specific events in any particular year that now influence how you think and feel. You can go directly to the first day of school, when you felt abandoned, rejected, frightened, and insecure???having been left there by a parent whom you implored not to leave you.
Hypnotherapy can give you a sense of enlightenment and surprisingly immediate links with past and present personal circumstances. You can gain an immediately healthier sense of clarity and perspective on those circumstances…”
RESCU: How do hypnotism and hypnotherapy differ?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “You may associate the word ‘hypnotism’ with what you have seen on television and on the stage, or have heard second-hand about stage hypnosis. You may believe that in hypnosis you may lose control, be humiliated, embarrassed, or reveal a secret. You may fear that you will not remember what happened to you.
In fact, hypnotherapy – unlike stage hypnosis – is a process of negotiation and persuasion. You are in control each and every step of the way. You are very aware of everything both you and your therapist say and you will remember the gist of everything said.”
RESCU: Can I be made to do something I do not wish to do?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “If any form of words or ideas were to be introduced that were contrary to your morals, your values, beliefs, and culture???be they issues of faith or otherwise???then you will eliminate the trance state. You will not do anything, or act in any way, that is contrary to what you would be disposed to do in full conscious awareness.
Knowing and remembering the essential detail of what happens during each and every session keeps you in touch with your experience and keeps you in control.
The reason that people who have experienced stage hypnosis do not appear to remember what happened to them is that the stage hypnotist embedded a specific command to that effect.”
RESCU: Do clients have to do any preparation?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “No preparation is necessary, other than giving consideration to what you wish to achieve with the help of hypnotherapy. What to bring? ? I suggest that you bring an open mind!”
RESCU: Is it safe? Are there any side effects?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “Interactive hypnotherapy is a very loving, nurturing process of negotiation and persuasion. The lasting side-effects are positive.
Whatever specific area of life, or challenge, that you come to work on, you will find that your sense of self-confidence and self-esteem tend to soar. Positive outcomes create a ripple effect into other areas of your life. You may have come to the hypnotherapy session with a wishlist, and discover that some of those wishes are granted with barely a mention, because they were tied up with other things. You may find that some outcomes are an unexpected but delightful surprise.”
RESCU: Does it work well with other therapies?
Deborah Marshall-Warren: “Bright intelligent people can talk and talk and talk about their problems, and the subconscious does not get a look in. Therefore you can choose to run interactive hypnotherapy alongside counselling sessions, for two reasons. First, it is possible to speed up the process of psychotherapeutic change and second, you can often effectively and elegantly move beyond a ‘block’ or a point at which you feel ‘stuck’.
Hypnotherapy also sits particularly well beside Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).”
For more info about Deborah Marshall-Warren and her books, go to her website: www.marshall-warren.com/
Also, consult the Australian Hypnotherapist’s Association and the national Hypnotherapist registry for information on this therapy and to find practitioners in your area.