 Hey, I'm Drew and you are watching or just listening to the anxious truth This is the podcast that covers all things anxiety anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery So if you're struggling with things like agoraphobia or panic disorder, this is the place for you. I'm happy you're here today We're gonna talk about hypnosis Does hypnosis have a place in anxiety recovery? I have a special guest who's gonna help me answer that question. So let's go Hello everybody welcome back to the anxious truth. This is podcast episode number two three two We are recording in early November of 2022 today. We're gonna answer the question Is there a place for hypnosis in anxiety recovery? It's a good question It gets asked all the time because they know many of you are sometimes marketed to by Hypnotists and hypnotherapists who say that hypnosis is an anxiety cure or a fix for anxiety disorders Is that true or not? Well, I asked my friend Emma Garrick to join me today on the podcast You know may know Emma on Instagram as the dot anxiety whisperer Emma is tops. She's well-trained. She's ethical She's a good person. She's a friend of mine. I trust her Emma is a qualified Psychotherapist and also a clinical hypnotherapist practicing in Scotland So she gave us a really great overview of how hypnosis can fit into the process What it is supposed to do what it definitely does not do how to have realistic expectations and how to be a critical consumer of Hypnosis if you choose to include that as part of your approach to recovery So before we bring on bring Emma on and she was great You guys are gonna dig this just a quick reminder that the anxious truth is more than just this podcast episode Or this video if you're watching on YouTube There's a ton of stuff that I have for you at the anxious truth calm. That's my website You should go check it out. There are three books that I've written an anxiety and anxiety recovery that are being read by tens of thousands of people around the World and I'm really proud of those check them out There is a free one-hour what anxiety 101 video training that you will find linked on the homepage of my website There is my free morning newsletter, which is called the anxious morning. That's on the website. There is the distressed tolerance webinar I do every month with Joanna hardest. She's an anxiety specialist practicing in Ohio You'll find that information on the website all the other free podcast episodes all the social media content It's all there check it out at the anxious truth calm And if you are enjoying this podcast and you find my work helpful and you want to find a way to keep it free of Advertisers and sponsors all the way to do that can be found at the anxious truth calm slash support That is never required but always appreciated no matter how you support the podcast whether just listening or giving a thumbs up on a Video I appreciate you guys. Thank you for all of that. So let's get on to the chat with Emma We went for about 30 minutes. It's packed full of great information I learned a whole lot you guys are gonna dig it and I will come back afterwards with links and a wrap up You know how it works. Hello, Em Hi there, Drew Thank you so much for having me on your podcast Well, thank you for coming Emma for those of you do not know Emma Emma Garrick Emma is a psychotherapist in Scotland And just a lovely human being We did a lot of work that a year ago together and then we just sort of lost touch So it's very nice to be connected with you again and be working together So yeah, it's nice to drift into each other again once in a while every once a year whether we need it or not, right? Yeah, definitely So as I mentioned in the intro Emma is a qualified psychotherapist Emma is also a hypnotherapist And if I use the wrong terms, please jump in and correct me, right? You you have qualifications as a hip Okay, yeah, I'm a clinical clinical hypnotherapist Okay I want to talk about that because I don't know what that is and I need you to explain because I think this is gonna be really important discussion here The reason why I asked you on and we were talking with this I'll look behind the curtain. We did talk about this before we hit the record button But I know many people in the community want to know What about hypnosis? Is that a therapy and they want to know because hypnotists? I don't know the difference between a hypnotist and a hypnotherapist. Maybe you could tell me that I don't know Often we'll say. Oh, yeah, I treat anxiety I treat weight loss and smoking cessation and addiction and relationships and hypnosis is applied to everything So they often get approached by practitioners that will say. Oh, yeah Yeah, I do anxiety and they want to know is that work? Yeah, and I said I gotta get somebody I trust here and that would be em so Okay, give me the reader's digest version here hypnotist clinical hypnot therapist What does all mean? Well, it's an interesting one because Hypnotherapy is the act of performing the therapy Hypnotists you get stage hypnotists, which is what we See in the likes of Paul McKenna. I think he's one, isn't he? Yeah, we see stage hypnosis and for some people I think when they think of hypnotherapy, that's kind of what they're thinking about is this, you know Somebody's going to make me perform like a monkey and then you get lots of different branches of people who practice Hypnosis and for the most part and in Psychotherapy which is where we are and we will see people who are trained in maybe clinical Hypnotherapy or they might be trained in Ericssonian and hypnotherapy or they might be trained in a few other Approaches but for me Clinical hypnotherapy is my background and that's what I've always practiced and some Practices of hypnotherapy are stand-alone in that that will be the treatment modality that that person will only practice However for the likes of somebody like a psychotherapist, we might be trained in a hypnotherapy We might be trained in a an EMDR. We might be trained in CBT, we might be trained in lots of different disciplines and modalities and We will pull that all together as an approach for anxiety so or Whatever you might be treating a depression or PTSD, whatever it might be So there are differences in terms of Styles of hypnotherapy that you can be Seeing advertised as a consumer There are also different Training programs that the hypnotherapist will undertake in order to become qualified as a hypnotherapist and I think what you and I were talking about just a short time ago was the fact that there's some sort of confusion out there and probably in terms of How hypnotherapy can be marketed really for people who have anxiety Yeah. Yeah, so for people that, you know, we're talking to with panic disorder agoraphobia OCD Epicondriasis all those things. Yes the way it's marketed to them is in many times. I think as a standalone modality hypnosis treats the disorder Yeah, and it's kind of pitched as that it's kind of pitched as Hypnosis will be the thing that helps you cure this problem that you have And I think that's where you had approached me was to kind of have a conversation with you about well Where are we with this? What what actually does that mean? So I just want to go back a wee bit because I'm all one for sort of laying Foundations and putting a bit of the the history together for well, where does hypnosis actually come from? What is it that we're actually talking about here when we're talking about hypnosis and And we'll we'll weave in maybe a wee bit about, you know How the training and what people need to be mindful of when they're looking for a practitioner if it's something that they then decide that they want to experiment as part of their recovery with because In my mind and I'll be up front hypnosis is a great therapy. Okay, so I'm But there are limitations with it and I want to be clear about what the expected and should be from consumers perspective in terms of when they go hunting or they're approached by somebody who is offering this as a solution for their anxiety so hypnosis was the god of sleep and Hypnosis is Hypnosis has just sort of derived from there. There was actually a Scottish doctor who was one of the first champions of hypnosis It usually involves using a lot of suggestions that will help induce a state of relaxation and calmness and we use a lot of imagery and Into weaved in there. There will be a lot of suggestions which are Made towards the subconscious element of our minds to help us Alter our behaviors and our patterns of thinking and our emotional state and some of our behaviors So when I'm talking to you just now drew the very conscious part of your mind this part here is listening to me It's watching my face. It's reading my eyes. It's very very aware of what's happening between you and I in this conversation But then there's another subconscious part in your brain that is probably Maybe quite enjoying The sound of my voice or is thinking actually it's quite nice to catch up with her. I've not seen her in quite a while and It's not necessarily You know Listening to everything that I'm saying but it may be getting a bit soothed and a bit calmed by the way that I'm talking The tone that I'm using and maybe just some of the suggestions that I'm making about you becoming a bit more relaxed, right? and this is This is the beauty of a A Hypnotherapy session is that quite quickly we can make suggestions about how people could be feeling and we can use certain Tones and pauses and how we're going to induce a state of relaxation And when we're doing that there are certain parts of our brain that start to respond And we know this because we can measure this and we do this using certain scanning techniques So we've done a lot of imaging. There was an amazing bit of research that was published this year and They were looking at the functional changes in brain activity when people have used hypnosis so they did a massive sample of about 10,000 pieces of research and they Basically concluded that yes, there are Significant changes that happen in lots of different places in the brain And so when we're looking at anxiety for instance the areas that correlate with activity when we're anxious So all of the overactivity that's happening in certain regions That actually gets interrupted and actually starts to calm down and We also know that the reaching of our brain which is Responsible for helping our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our the system that we want to kick in to drive is also Activated which is basically going to help us with our breathing and our heart rate and it's going to relax the muscles in our body So for hypnosis to be I'm Effective we need to make sure that we are in The 10% of people who can be hypnotized That's a fascinating Statistic, right? Yeah, not everybody is open to suggestion Not everybody is a willing participant in hypnosis Okay, and I think there's this preconception and there's certainly nothing that I see very obviously in Marketing material that says if you're one of the lucky 10% Hypnosis might work for you. No, no one ever says that I I have so much respect for the fact that you said out loud on a pretty big podcast 10% It's actually a low number. I did not expect it to be that low Yeah, because when you think about it one of the one of the biggest I suppose one of the biggest fears that a lot of people have with something like hypnosis is that they're gonna come and There's gonna be this loss of control because you're handing control over to somebody else We're talking about our brain and when we've got an anxiety as you know, like in a generalized anxiety or we've got maybe some OCD or something and we're maybe a bit Magical thinking can kick in for a lot of us. We worry we can worry about, you know The effect that some of these things are gonna have on us even people with health anxiety We worry about taking medication. We're worrying about what's going on in here as well Yeah, and I think one of the the barriers to Hypnosis is this fear of the loss of control But one of the best things to remember is that actually only 10% of us can ever be hypnotized anyway That's amazing. You've got to be you've got to be a willing participant in this process But again when you think about it, you've got to be a willing participant in any recovery process for it It's for any type of anxiety recovery to be effective. You've got to play your part in this. Yep I'm wondering that's such a good statistic But I'm wondering in a population of people and in any sort of mental health issue clearly people are looking for improvement That's not news But in our population where people are sometimes really desperate to just feel better Does that make them a little bit more open to that like I'm I really want this to work Will that make a difference? Do you think in your experience? Yeah? I think it will do but I think what I see is that you get The people who are so desperate for it to work that they hand over a lot of responsibility to the practitioner and Then when it's not working, they start to lose hope Yeah So I think there's an obligation on the part of the clinician to make sure that those people know that this isn't failing Because of anything that they are doing or anything that the clinician may be doing there's a high chance and probability that they're just not in the the 10% and It's like, you know, I'm not an expert on this subject area. So I don't want to get to to bog down in it, but it's like recently all of the News that surfaced about SSRIs or antidepressants, you know, we don't really know how they work But there was research that was also done recently which compared which was looking at the The effectiveness, I suppose of hypnotherapy was In comparison to benzodiazepines in terms of inducing that state of relaxation and they find that they kind of were the same I'm not surprised by that Yeah, yeah, I'm not surprised by that. It's great. That's it's very interesting Okay, interesting Well, here's where I think and this is great. This is great information. I'm actually learning a lot here I'm happy if no one listens and I just listen. So I think People are hopeful what I hear most of the time is will it stop my panic attacks when I you know Is it will it give me tools? How does it work? Like Well, somebody teach me something or you're somehow put me in a state of diagnosis that will calm me down and make me Not panic anymore make me not afraid of cancer anymore What is the answer to I know I know what you say What I would say is Yes a little bit, but probably it's not going to do all of that Okay It's absolutely a tool that you can turn to to help you regulate your nervous system It's absolutely a tool that you can help to get you out of that really intense wind up My brain's going 90 miles an hour. I feel incredibly panicked at the moment. It's not going to switch off a panic attack Yeah, it's not gonna do that. Yeah, um It's it's going to help you to probably pave the way for you to learn how to look after yourself as part of your recovery from that site type of disorder and And It's It's a useful thing to learn for yourself. It's a useful tool to add to a tool kit Right, yeah, when we first met and you mentioned hypnosis to me the thing that stuck in my head is well Sometimes I find it useful as a tool in therapy It can help people relax enough to be able to face the panic and do the exposures That's stuck in my head. Wow, that makes a whole lot of sense. That's not whatever Yeah, that makes so much sense. Yeah, so when you're went as you and I both know because we've both been there with our anxiety pretty heightened at times when your head is Going around like a washing machine out of control and when your body is jumping around with lots of different symptoms You want anything to work? Mm-hmm You just want something to work. You just want something to help you and Hypnotherapy can help if you find something that you're Amygdala responds to and this is why I think my reputation Became quite popular because I happen to have quite a pleasant voice so that other people tell me this by the way I'm not telling myself this and People would say to me about there's just something about your voice that I like and I turn it on when I'm feeling really anxious and The reason I think for that is because there there is a quality in some of the Instruments that some of us are gifted with okay, and It's not that And lots of people can practice hypnosis and lots of people can benefit from hypnotherapy but There are certain reasons why some Hypnotherapists are get more results than others Yeah, okay, and I think the thing is When you're in a state a heightened state of panic or you're just in a heightened state with Intrusive thoughts or whatever might be happening in in your world at that time If you can go to something familiar Something that can calm you and something that can soothe you There isn't a replacement for that. There's not a generic something There's something about that that helps your brain feel relaxed and at ease and that can sometimes for some people be gold Yeah, but you've got to find what that thing is in a voice or in an instrument that you're listening to Yeah, no that makes such good sense that and you know what I'm loving about this There's I'm not hearing any crazy promises of it one that comes right down now And I always use this phrase Navigation not eradication and this seems like an excellent navigation tool if you can key into it and it works for you Yeah, but I'm also hearing which What I am also hearing which is interesting is maybe I'm not so now I'm a client and I'm in your therapy room Maybe I'm not the 10% for whom that's effective But it doesn't mean that the way you conduct yourself in session in the way you talk to me might not achieve similar effects Am I right in sort of yeah leaning that from what you're talking about here? absolutely absolutely and We I've had some of the most resistant people in front of me who clearly I can tell they are not going to really Respond very well to hypnosis, but they respond well to me. Yeah, I could see that We talked about how it's so the therapy your relationship with the therapist and finding somebody that you connect with is so important And this could be part of that I get that absolutely, it's a massive part of trust and Building that report and having somebody sit in front of you who is empathetic to what is happening to you Paves a runway that last for a very long time if you are needing some kind of Reassurance, which I know is not what we would offer, but Resurance and soothing and comfort Yeah, but I'm sorry. Am I stepped on you there? No, what I was gonna say is even Even though I know we don't want to offer reassurance I get that and it's not necessarily about will come to me And I'll soothe you But and I say this all the time when my brain is telling me that this is urgent One of the things I really need is somebody to reflect back. It's really not It's really not urgent and some and I any all who listening who like to say that I calm you down I don't know how you can listen to Emma talk and then say I calm you down I don't know how that would be. I could see that What you would be ideally suited though Like I might reflect that back to me It's I'm gonna give you a bit of a confident shoulder shrug like I know you think you're burning, but I prompt me This is not a problem Your way to do it might be a little bit different The voice mannerisms and I could see where hypnosis could be part of that for the people who respond to that This is not a you can get through it and this can help you learn that Mm-hmm, and I think that was part of the reason why Well, it's part of the reason that my name was became what it is now And it was part of the reason why I started to create the whispers as well because I knew that you could have quite a Profound effect in a relatively short space of time on somebody through giving just something Because not everybody can cope with like you say, uh, it's alright, you know, you're gonna be okay Sometimes there's just that neediness of I need something a bit more I need I need something that's just gonna take away the sharp edges of this because Well, as you know, you you you see this yourself, you know, you don't need me to boil your cabbage for you Oh, that's a that's a it seems like quite a Scottish saying I'm gonna use I'm not gonna boil your cabbage for you. Let's talk a little bit about And this is great again. I appreciate this so much. Hopefully you guys are learning from this but now As a consumer of therapy of therapeutic services regardless the US Scotland. It doesn't matter What should I be looking for? well mm-hmm and It's interesting because in in the UK, we have nice who are in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellent and the excellent sorry and they wrote guidelines Okay, and I want to refer back to those guidelines because these are the ones that I practice by that I have listed on my website and they basically They do recognize and complementary or alternative therapies of which hypnotherapy Falls under the bracket of in the treatment of anxiety disorders. However They act they actually discourage the use of hypnotherapy without utilizing medical medication first or at the same time So what they're trying to do there I think my interpretation of this is They're trying to discourage people from thinking that they should be using Hypnotherapy as a standalone therapy That makes that right. That's my that's my interpretation of that go and get yourself checked over by somebody and get yourself set up with some help psychological help and Use hypnotherapy as part of a program Yeah, that's very sound advice. You can't really argue and They're not explicit in that because there are a lot of People who hypnotherapy is what they practice and I'm not here to discredit any Practitioners of hypnotherapy because I know fantastic Practitioners of hypnotherapy and that is what they do, but I also know that their clients are Working with other people as well as part of a multidisciplinary approach, okay? So it's not a case of go and find a psychotherapist who happens to practice hypnotherapy That is absolutely something that you can do and if you get that combination, that's great. Okay? You can see a hypnotherapist and you can see another therapist and you can have your functional doctor or whoever else you happen to be seeing Yeah But I would be certainly looking for somebody who has Knowledge specific specialist knowledge of your anxiety disorder yeah, and working practice of helping people with that and I would certainly be asking the hypnotherapist if they create their own scripts because this is another important thing you can buy scripts in A Book and you could read those scripts, but you could have practitioners reading the same scripts Okay, you don't want the same script read to you. You want something that tackles your fear using words that make sense to your head and You want that tailored to what your needs are and You should be always keen to make sure that your Therapist Takes the time to record your session for you and offers you that so that you can take that with you. Yeah Okay, and hypnotherapy for the treatment. It's not anxiety so multi-faceted So it's not a case of a generic anxiety Hypnotherapy session it needs to tackle the problem in different chunks Just the way that you would in a psychotherapy treatment program Okay, so if somebody's saying to you here's your recording for Anxiety that's it Just be a bit cautious about accepting that that is it because the chances are that's not it. That's Something that's been given to you off the shelf rather than created for you specifically I Sometimes do see that now people will bring me I can never pass judgment because I don't know enough You know and I wouldn't do that, but sometimes it is that look well. I was offered, you know, it's four sessions It's a thousand dollars, you know or seven hundred dollars and it's four sessions. I'm good That sort of sounds like the generic kind of thing. Okay, no problem Those of you watching the video can read eyes. That's fine. Yeah, I get it. Yeah just I my caution would always be, you know people charge a lot of money for things nowadays and Part of the reason is because they sometimes put the onus of the fact that these things don't work back on to the the user and I kind of that boils my cabbage a wee bit and Just always be careful if people are offering you packages at very large prices, especially any cultures or any any therapists because and You want to make sure that you've got an outcome Yeah, and I could see where You train the way you are and you encounter that resistant person or somebody just doesn't respond to hypnosis It's not the only tool you have in your kit Which makes a huge difference of all I have is hypnosis and it doesn't work Thousand dollars and now I have to come to account on that so I could see where that would be a little bit of a Tenduous situation. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense So so we won't be much longer, but give me a rough idea because I know everybody wants to know So now you're in session. What does it look like? I think so many people like is there a moment where it's like, okay? Now we're going to do hypnosis. Is there is it an actual? I'm probably asking you a huge question that you cannot answer in five minutes. No, it's it's um It's a lovely gentle process and if you're anxious before having your hypnosis, that's really normal it's very common and Some therapists if you're in the room with them might put headphones on you They might put you in a chair that slightly reclines. They might offer you The warmth of a blanket because sometimes you will be lying there for 40-50 minutes and you can get a bit cool around the edges and You will be taken through What we call the induction and then there will be a deepener and these are just terms To kind of chunk down the process of getting somebody into a more relaxed state And it's quite often the case that your mind might wander and you might wonder well, is this working? Is it happening? Are we there yet? and Your head will have thoughts that come in and You might lie there and think this isn't working But the practitioner should be reminding you that it's okay for that to be the case that thoughts do come into our minds and Ultimately what you should feel is Your body starts to feel a bit heavy and your head Starts to follow along with what the therapist is guiding you through and it's a very visual And process you won't fall asleep. You will be conscious throughout it and Then you will come to a point where You'll be getting counted up from what will have been your trance and interwoven into that session will have been Suggestions for how you can Hopefully move forward from whatever it is that you're trying to deal with during the session It's always worth while making sure before you do the session that you understand what the output of that session is going to be okay, and Just to make sure that following the session you drink a nice bit of water and that you have a quite quiet and steady day That you took the mystery right out of it It's really just you know, it's it's just a wee storytelling session ultimately I'm always with a lovely ending and it's just quite pleasant It's it's a good way to spend a day and you know I used to really particularly enjoy in my sessions when I my anxiety was really high and My OCD was awful and I used to go and my therapist would do exactly what I've described to you And I would get to the end and I'd be thinking I'll just start over again, please Best break I've had in three days I gotta believe just the effectiveness of that Just giving somebody a break where they can come away from it for an hour or whatever the session is that by itself Would be worth the price of admission even if that was all it accomplished. I think for many people they'd be thrilled with Yeah, totally. I mean, that's that's the best bit about it as you do at the end you go God yeah, you know, there's that sense of relief and And But then obviously, you know, there's that part which I know you're not gonna want to end on which is the anxiety at some point We'll we'll surface again and that's where people get into the whole it's not worked Didn't work yeah, yeah, but it's not that it hasn't worked. It has worked. It has helped It's just that as you know drew sometimes the layers of Recovery or healing that we go through you're just so subtle and gentle and we it's like painting paint on a wall You've just got to keep going until the color that you want gets there and yeah Yeah, I think the lesson you could take out of that session to you might end the session It's like owner chiropractor my back feels great and then the next day not so much But you know, I think what you might be able to take out of the session You tell me if this is seems right to you, but look I I can be okay I don't necessarily think that I I need all the time to make me okay But this can teach me that I can get through things. I am capable of achieving that sort of state. I can do this I'm not broken. Yeah Which would be a wonderful message for somebody to be actually experience instead of just here. That's great So I think that's it and I think the part that I used to look forward to was because I knew I was gonna get some relief Yeah, and when you know that you're gonna get relief. Oh my goodness It's it's something else especially, you know, if you've got really intense Symptoms and that you can relief is possible But that is such a beacon of hope for so many people like nothing is gonna work I'll forget if it works, but look it is possible for you to make distance between you and this thing. It can happen That's great. Absolutely. And just you know, although the the the hypnotherapy you might not You know 10% I'm saying about being are able to be hypnotized You'll still benefit from the relaxation of the experience anyway. Yeah, I would think I mean hell I want to come to Scotland and hang out with you for an hour no matter what And this is really great you were so incredibly I like really enjoyed the conversation I learned so much that I know before and I feel more intelligent and well informed But I really wanted somebody that I knew I could trust to talk about this and you came through with flying colors So thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me To see you again if you guys want to find Emma I have up if you're watching on YouTube I have her Instagram on my screen. It's the dot anxiety whisperer But if you go to the anxious truth comm slash two three two, right? That's the show notes for this one Yeah, I'll make sure I have all m's links on there, too, and I'll be back in a few minutes We'll wrap it up like we usually do. Thanks, Sam Cheers All right, we are back and that was awesome I learned so much today about a topic that I knew nothing about this morning and any day that you can learn something new You are winning and this is why I love to collaborate with people that are smarter and more than Experience to me in certain topics Emma was great She gave of her time on a Friday evening in Scotland because she's four hours ahead of me now She gave of her experience and her training and her knowledge and I appreciate all of that What did we learn? We learned that hypnosis does in fact have a place it could have a place as a tool as part of anxiety recovery We also learned that hypnosis is not anxiety recovery or an anxiety cure by itself Emma was so honest and so upfront about that that 10% statistic blew me away But we do know that it could be a tool and why not take advantage of tools if they are going to help us along the way In this journey, right? So I think that was really great and I appreciated it and yeah I'll have to do more stuff with Emma for sure because she's just good and she has a lot to offer and People just dig your anyway So it's really great if you want to find Emma and follow along with her which I recommend you do I will have all of her links to social media and everything on my website Just go to the anxious truth comm slash two three two. That's the show notes for this particular episode I will link all Emma stuff there. It's easy to find and that's episode two thirty two in the books You know, it's over because The music that is afterglow. It's the song you hear most of the time at the beginning all the time at the end of these podcasts It's written by my friend Ben Drake. He lets me use it on the podcast I appreciate that you can find Ben and his music at Ben Drake music comm go check that out and The usual favors that I'm going to ask you if you are listening to the podcast on Apple or Spotify or platform That lets you rate in review Leave a five-star rating and then maybe take a second and write a review if you haven't before because if you like The podcast and you say that then other people will find the podcast and we could help more people Which is what this community is all about if you're watching on YouTube Subscribe to my channel like the video hit the notification bell, you know the deal And if you have a question leave a comment. I circle back a couple of times a week to interact on YouTube I dig you guys over there That's it. I hope this helped you and educated you as much as that educated me I'll be back next week to talk about something else I don't know what that is going to be but I will be here and remember if Emma's listening She's gonna kick out of this as I say at the end of every podcast. This is the way