HYPNOTHERAPY

Click here for answers to frequently asked questions about hypnotherapy.

Description of Practice
Dr. Leit is a certified clinical hypnotherapist.  She works with clients to modify undesirable behaviors, emotional content, and attitudes, as well as a wide range of conditions including dysfunctional habits, anxiety, stress-related illness, pain management, and personal development. Dr. Leit uses hypnotherapy as a way to access the untapped power of the mind. She uses guided relaxation, intense concentration, and focused attention to achieve a heightened state of awareness that is sometimes called a trance. In this naturally occurring state, this technique enables changes in perception, a major increase in response to suggestion, and the potential for controlling many physiologic functions that are usually involuntary. In this state of intense relaxation and concentration, the mind is able to focus on positive suggestions about desired responses, attitudes, and behaviors which can be carried out at a future time. These subliminal messages are surprisingly powerful in creating change.

Approach To Hypnotherapy
Dr. Leit uses the transformative power of hypnotherapy to help replace internalized limiting beliefs with positive messages and attitudes. Her goal is to use this powerful tool to facilitate changes desired by her clients while they are in a deeply relaxed, receptive state. Hypnotherapy is usually considered an aid to coaching or counseling rather than a treatment in itself. It is a helpful supplemental tool because the hypnotic state allows people to explore painful thoughts, feelings, and memories they might have hidden from their conscious minds. The hypnotic state allows a person to be more open to discussion and suggestion.  Hypnosis enables people to perceive some things differently, such as blocking an awareness of pain.

Fees
Free initial phone consultation to discuss the issue to be treated and determine the recommended number of sessions (generally 1-6). Hypnotherapy fee:  $100 per session (sessions generally last an hour or an hour and a half).  Includes evaluation, custom script design, hypnotherapy session and custom recording to take home. Clients are asked to make payments before each session, either through the PayPal account linked to this site, or cash or check at the time of the appointment. 

Other Information
All sessions are recorded and made available to clients as MP3 files or CDs so they can reinforce the session as often as necessary.

Types of hypnotherapy practiced
Weight loss
Smoking cessation
Prosperity
Sports performance
Stress management
Sleep disorders
Phobias, fears, and anxiety
Depression
Self-esteem
Protection
Recovery from loss

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Frequently Asked Questions About Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is not a dangerous procedure. It is not mind control or brainwashing. A therapist cannot make a person do something embarrassing or something the person doesn’t want to do. The greatest risk is that false memories can be created.  Dr. Leit provides MP3 file recordings of all sessions to avoid this risk for clients.

What is hypnotherapy?
Hypnosis is not sleep, but an altered state of consciousness in which a person accesses that part of his or her mind that is capable of adjusting the problem without the conscious, thinking mind directing it.  Hypnotherapy uses guided relaxation, intense concentration, and focused attention to achieve a heightened state of awareness that is sometimes called a trance. In this naturally occurring state, this technique enables changes in perception and memory, a major increase in response to suggestion, and the potential for controlling many physiologic functions that are usually involuntary. Hypnotherapy is often applied in order to modify a subject's behavior, emotional content, and attitudes, as well as a wide range of conditions including dysfunctional habits, anxiety, stress-related illness, pain management, and personal development.

Does hypnotherapy work?
Once critically viewed as unscientific, hypnosis is now being used successfully in a variety of clinical contexts worldwide—including during operations at the Harvard and Iowa University Medical Schools. "Hypnosis has been used in Western medicine for more than 150 years to treat everything from anxiety to pain, from easing the nausea of cancer chemotherapy to enhancing sports performance," Carol Ginandes of Harvard Medical School says.
Even the Wall Street Journal (Friedman, 2003) has documented how hypnosis has entered the mainstream and is using trance states for fractures, cancer, and burns and speeding recovery time.  It is also widely used with documented effectiveness for weight loss, dentistry, fertility, childbirth, allergies, eating disorders, headaches and improved academic and sports performance.
Dr. David Spiegel, Stanford University researcher, asserts that, although we don’t fully understand how it works, there is significant evidence that hypnosis can be effective in helping people reach into their own unconscious resources to solve problems normally beyond their ability. Not only does it work, but it often succeeds where modern medicine has failed.  The British Psychology Society concurred, stating in 2001 that hypnosis is a valid subject for scientific study and research and a proven therapeutic medium.  Enough studies have now accumulated to suggest that the inclusion of hypnotic procedures may be beneficial in the management and treatment of a wide range of conditions and problems encountered in the practice of medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy (British Psychological Society, 2001).

How does hypnotherapy work?
The outer layer of the mind, or what we think of as consciousness, deals with intelligence, reality, and logic. The inner mind is concerned with emotion, imagination, and memory, as well as the autonomic nervous system which automatically controls our internal organs (i.e., how we breathe, send oxygen to our blood cells, or walk without using the conscious mind.)
The unconscious mind knows how to work without the conscious mind directing it. Hypnotherapists contribute positive suggestions and rely on the patient’s unconscious mind to come up with the answers. 
Hypnosis is a way to access the untapped power of the mind.  In this state of intense relaxation and concentration, the mind is able to focus on positive suggestions which can be carried out at a future time.

Benefits of hypnotherapy:
Hypnotherapy can improve the success of other treatments for many conditions, including:

• Phobias, fears, and anxiety
• Sleep disorders
• Depression
• Stress
• Post-trauma anxiety
• Grief and loss

It also might be used to help in achieving goals and with pain control and overcoming habits, such as smoking or overeating. It also might be helpful for people whose symptoms are severe or who need crisis management.

Hypnotherapy can be used in two ways:

1. Suggestion therapy — The hypnotic state makes the person better able to respond to suggestions. Hypnotherapy can help some people change certain behaviors, such as to stop smoking or stop nail-biting. It can also help people change perceptions and sensations, and is particularly useful in treating pain.
2. Analysis — This approach uses the relaxed state to find the root cause of a disorder or symptom, such as a traumatic past event that a person has hidden in his or her unconscious memory. Once the trauma is revealed, it can be addressed in psychotherapy.

Who is not likely to benefit from hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy might not be appropriate for a person who has psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, or for someone who is abusing drugs or alcohol. It should be used for pain control only after a doctor has evaluated the person for any physical disorder that might require medical or surgical treatment.
Some therapists use hypnotherapy to recover repressed memories they believe are linked to the person’s mental disorder. However, hypnosis also poses a risk of creating false memories—usually as a result of unintended suggestions by the therapist. For this reason, the use of hypnosis for certain mental disorders, such as dissociative disorders, remains controversial.  Because she is not a licensed professional counselor or psychologist, Dr. Leit does not do regression hypnosis—focusing instead on suggestive hypnosis.

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