Depression can only be dealt with through complex treatment, the most important element of which is psychotherapy. One of the most effective methods of psychotherapy is hypnosis, which has not been previously studied at all in the context of psychiatric care for a person with depressive disorders.
The feasibility of hypnosis for depression
The peculiarity of depressive states is that a person, even understanding and realizing his problem, cannot solve it. When he consciously tries to suppress negative thoughts and feelings, the brain perceives this only as confirmation of depression. When a patient thinks about how to overcome a disease, he thinks about the disease, and not about recovery, which prevents him from recovering. Focusing on something positive, interesting, and inspiring during depression is difficult.
Here the treatment of depression with hypnosis becomes indispensable. All positive thoughts, new habits, attitudes and features of the perception of reality immediately penetrate into the subconscious, due to which the consciousness begins to act in a positive way. The only thing the patient needs with this treatment is good imagination, which will create joyful pictures of a positive future.
Method effectiveness
In certain cases, psychotherapists consider the treatment of depression with hypnosis as the only possible way to help a person, because sometimes only thanks to trance techniques it is possible to change the perception of reality and existing negative attitudes. Treatment of depression with hypnosis helps to restore interest in life, eliminate gloomy obsessive thoughts, relieve feelings of heaviness and other negative somatic sensations. Thanks to trance techniques, a person achieves inner peace and receives a charge of energy.
Often, after hypnotic sessions, a person does not realize exactly how hypnosis helped him in changing his own thoughts, since the mind during a trance does not perceive the healing process. However, a person achieves the main thing - recovery, by changing the past pattern of thinking and behavior.
There is a widespread belief that hypnosis can be harmful to mental health precisely because the patient's mind is not controlled in any way. Scientists have proven that the human psyche self-regulates during a therapeutic trance, and therefore there is no danger to the patient's mental health.
The essence of the treatment
To treat depression with hypnosis, psychotherapists or hypnologists use different strategies, but the stages of work are usually the same. It is important for both the doctor and the patient to have each of the stages to establish contact and adapt to the proposed conditions.
First, you need to create a welcoming, calm atmosphere. Further, the doctor needs to focus the patient's attention before directly introducing him into a trance. Here, tactics can be very different depending on the type of patient's perception (auditory, visual, kinesthetic or discrete). After entering into a trance, therapeutic suggestion begins, during which the psychotherapist pronounces the phrases necessary in a particular case, creating positive attitudes in the subconscious of a person. The patient is then taken out of the trance and brought back to reality.
After several sessions with a competent psychotherapist, a person develops a different pattern of behavior in difficult situations and a different attitude to the world. Convalescence usually means getting rid of the pessimistic mood completely.
