Hypnotherapy to reduce stress and anxiety during infusions

Hypnotherapy is the use of guided imagery which motivates detachment from unwanted sensations and replaces them with new beneficial ones that promote general well-being. By increasing relaxation and decreasing anxiety, pain is reduced, and mainstream treatments are better tolerated.

Why should you consider hypnosis as a supplement to your current conventional treatment? How does it feel?

• It’s a natural state that people achieve without realizing it, such as when you are watching a good movie. In other words, it’s a state of focused concentration or attention.

• You are able to dissociate yourself from pain and hence, external environmental triggers diminish.

• You are focused and easily and positively respond to verbal or non-verbal communication.

• People describe the hypnotic mindset in different ways such as, “being beside oneself”, “out of body experiences”, “daydreaming”, “tuning out” or a meditative state. Thus, from a different vantage point it’s easier to change how you perceive pain.

Hypnotherapy as support to conventional treatments:

Healing the body is a natural process that is stimulated or started with the promotion of positive thoughts. Pain, discomfort, unpleasant urges, sensations, and general malaise are the result of a series of neurophysiological processes there is no such thing as a single pain center in the brain that we can target. Hence, using guided imagery we target the source of the pain to create a state of analgesia.

Hypnotherapy and reaching goals:

Hypnosis is essentially a simple, straightforward, and common-sense therapy. For example, by relaxing, thinking positively, and picturing your goals, hypnosis can help you to progressively improve your habitual feelings, behavior, and change your thought patterns.

Important points about hypnotherapy for medical purposes:

• In 1961 the American Psychiatric Association endorsed hypnosis as a therapeutic procedure.

• Many well-known and respected hospitals use hypnotherapy as a complementary and holistic approach to increase the results of mainstream treatments. The integration between the mind, body and spirit, has proven to accomplish the deepest level of healing possible.

• Ericksonian Hypnotherapy focuses on solutions and outcomes, not problems.

*Medical institutions and affiliates that use Hypnosis and Alternate Holistic therapies to increase positive results from mainstream therapies:

MD Anderson Hospital

Mayo Clinic

Cleveland Clinic

Mount Sinai

St. Luke’s Hospital

Houston Methodist Hospital

Montefiore Medical Center

John Hopkins

Dialysis and Chemotherapy Infusion Clinics throughout the U.S.

*Information found on the internet

Does Hypnosis work?

Seven out of 10 people benefit from hypnotherapy. Furthermore, uncertainty is not predictor to responsiveness if the client is willing to relax during a hypnosis session. Motivation toward a chosen result is the main catalyst because you are focusing on a goal.

Hypnosis to cope with pain:

Physiological and emotional issues many times are the result of negative thinking, whereas hypnotherapy aims to encourage positive ideas which lead to improvement of health conditions. For instance, pain, soreness, and discomfort during chemotherapy or dialysis can be felt as either the most terrifying sensation or a fulfilling experience that leads to optimal health.

During hypnosis you cannot be made to do anything against your will. On the contrary, you must want to accept suggested ideas and actively imagine responding to experience their effects. Using MRIs and PET scanning techniques have shown that hypnosis modulates activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which links the limbic (emotions) and sensory cortical areas (physical sensations) of the brain during hypnotic pain relief. This means that the sensations that would normally be experienced as painful no longer have the negative emotions that would normally be associated with them.

Please, read what MD Anderson and Psychology Today have written about hypnosis:

https://www.mdanderson.org/patients-family/search-results.html?q=hypnosis#_ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/hypnotherapy https://www.livescience.com/35827-clinical-hypnosis-medial-problems.html

Take a look at these three studies:

Elkins G, Jensen MP, Patterson DR. Hypnotherapy for the management of chronic pain. Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 200755(3):275-87.

Spiegel D, Bloom JR: Group therapy and hypnosis reduce metastatic breast carcinoma pain. Psychosom Med 45(4):333–339, 2009.

Patterson D, Jensen M: Hypnosis and clinical pain. Psychol Bull 129(4):495–521, 2003. Mao JJ, Palmer CS, Healy KE, et al: Complementary and alternative medicine use among cancer survivors: a population-based study. J Cancer Surviv 5(1):8-17, 2011