Get Relief With Hypnotherapy In Maryland
Struggling with persistent symptoms can be exhausting and demoralizing.
When dealing with difficult, ongoing medical issues, sometimes we can do all the treatments suggested by a physician and the irritating symptoms continue. Other times, we’re told that there’s not much than can be done, medically, for our distress. Are we just stuck with being miserable? Not necessarily. Hypnotherapy can be a powerful tool for dialing down the distress.
Why Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is a drug-free tool that can help you access and utilize your own inner resources to manage challenges and distress. It won’t negatively react with any medications you may be taking and can reduce agitation and distress about discomfort.
Research has shown that hypnotherapy is an effective treatment for a wide variety of concerns, including conditions that can be medically challenging to treat, like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and tinnitus.
Relief from IBS With Hypnotherapy In Maryland
Irritable bowel syndrome is a group of symptoms that include pain in the gut along with bloating and constipation and/or diarrhea. It’s a common ailment but not entirely understood. Many people find that it is worsened by certain foods and/or stress. Suggested treatment can include medication as well as diet and lifestyle changes. Unfortunately, it can be a bit tricky to manage, even with those treatments, and the symptoms can cause distress and worry, sometimes leading to a limiting of previously enjoyed activities because of the unpredictability of symptoms. All of this can be demoralizing, stressful and have a negative impact on one’s quality of life. Effective treatment can help turn this around.
It has been demonstrated that hypnotherapy can be an extremely effective way of getting relief from IBS (check out this story from NPR). Not only can hypnotherapy help with the reduction of symptoms, but the effects can last up to five years, according to research. Almost all medications come with the risk of negative side effects. It can be a great advantage to have some effective drug-free treatment options, like hypnotherapy, available. Plus, most people find these sessions very relaxing and enjoyable, which cannot always be said for every kind of intervention.
If you’ve heard the expression “gut decision”, you’ll recognize that we are aware of (but don’t always acknowledge) the relationship between the brain and the gut. The science is there to back it up and the gut is frequently referred to as “the second brain” due to that close relationship between these parts of the body that aren’t exactly next door to each other. If you are interested in a deeper dive on this topic, check out this article from the Harvard Medical School. Hypnotherapy jumps right in to help that brain-gut communication improve to help with IBS and other digestive issues, while quieting the nervous system that can also be jacking it all up.
Maryland Hypnotherapy to help with tinnitus
Tinnitus is a ringing, roaring or buzzing noise that you hear in one or both ears that isn’t coming from an outside source of noise. It can appear for a lot of different reasons—underlying illnesses, side effects of medication, loud noise exposure, injury, or even earwax build-up. New, persistent symptoms are always good to check out with your physician. If there seems to be something causing the tinnitus that can be fixed or removed, that’s worth knowing and doing first! But a lot times, there’s nothing to be done, medically, and the doctor tells you that you’re going to just have to learn to live with it. Easier said than done when the ringing or buzzing can be persistent, uncomfortable and SO VERY LOUD IN THERE! Again, it can feel demoralizing to know that there is not a lot of medical treatment available and it’s not going to just disappear, creating even more stress and discomfort.
Hypnotherapy can help dial down the distress and bring relief from tinnitus, even more so than one possible medical treatment that is out there, according to this study. Sometimes the more we focus on something that’s bothering us, the bigger and more distressing it can feel. Anyone who has been awake at 3am, staring at the clock, thinking, “If I get to sleep NOW I’ll still get a few hours. Am I falling asleep? Is this what falling asleep feels like? It’s already 3:30?” knows the truth of this in their exhausted bones. The more we focus on not being asleep, the harder it is to fall asleep. Same goes for being worried about your blood pressure reading at the doctor’s office—the more we’re focusing on it and stressed about it, the higher the blood pressure goes. A lot of uncomfortable sensations and experiences in the body are like this too—tinnitus being one example. Hypnotherapy can be really helpful for bringing the distress level down around the discomfort of tinnitus and not paying as much attention to the noise, reducing the negative impact of it on one’s mood and functioning.
Who’s The boss?
Some people get a little worried about hypnosis/hypnotherapy because they are afraid of “someone controlling their mind”. This is not how hypnotherapy works (please see an early blog post of mine on the top myths about hypnotherapy for lots more detail about this and associated concerns). Many hypnotherapists believe that the bulk of hypnosis is self-hypnosis. The hypnotherapist is a reference and guide, offering suggestions and showing a pathway. But the client is on a Choose Your Own Adventure journey. The client decides which suggestions that have been offered to take in, how deeply or lightly to enter hypnotic trance, and has full power and capability to come out of the trance any time they wish.
A skilled hypnotherapist will work to understand your unique experience of the concern you are having and create an experience and set of suggestions custom tailored to what may work well for you. As treatment progress, the client is empowered to learn self-hypnosis so that they can access these powerful inner resources more and more on their own and well beyond the end of formal treatment with a professional. Working with a hypnotherapist can be a valuable investment that can provide benefits far into the future with these skills that you gain and keep.
A free consultation for Hypnotherapy in Maryland
This is a brief overview of how hypnotherapy can be helpful for a couple different conditions. More information about other issues that can be effectively treated, in-person at my office in College Park or online, with hypnotherapy can be found on this specialty page. If you are curious to see if hypnotherapy can help you and want to explore this more, feel free to contact me for a free 15 minute phone consultation.
