Virtual Hypnotherapy
My name is Michael Conrad. I'm a retired psychologist (1978 - 2020), a current medical hypnotist (since 2000) and a life counselor who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Neuroscience and Physiology and can therefore talk with you on a variety of issues.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT, helps you perceive the things that bother you in a different light so that you won't feel so physically or emotionally unbalanced.
The mind controls the body. If it is your mind that is making you feel physically sick or mentally unbalanced, then it is your mind that can make you healthy again. And when your willpower isn't working effectively, then hypnosis will help. However, don't expect years of what you're going through to disappear in one session. On average, 3 sessions per week for 2 weeks make hypnosis the most effective for permanent or at least long-lasting change. There is no such thing as a one visit cure just as there is no such thing as one pill from a bottle of pills is all you need.
Hypnosis may be able to help you with depression, stress, anxiety attacks, as well as possibly eliminating physical aches and pains such as painless childbirth, fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome, lower back pain that require injections and eliminating your dependency for alcohol, illegal drugs and pain medications such as opioids.
Hypnosis may also be good for ADHD, tourettes, stuttering, nervousness, sleeplessness, nail biting, biting the inside of your cheeks, fear of spiders, heights, dentists, flying and possibly anything else you can think of that you would like to change for the better.
Virtual Sessions are now the most effective way to get help when you need it and I can almost always be there for you when you contact me and we will meet on a Google video app called MEET which is already on your Android phone and uses your phone number to contact me instead of a shared platform where hundreds of people can find you. This keeps it personal, one-on-one. We will discuss the issues you'd like help with once you contact me from my contact page.
Virtual Sessions are conducted once you have headphones or earbuds like in the picture above, a place to prop up your phone or laptop so that you don't have to hold it, a comfortable chair or sofa to lean back in and a very quiet room with no distractions, children screaming, phones ringing, or a loved one telling you dinner's ready.
What exactly is hypnosis? The word hypnosis was originally created to describe the process you put yourself through in order to fall asleep, named after the Greek god Hypnos, the god of sleep. It's lying in bed and letting go of all the thoughts and stresses of the day, eventually limiting your thoughts to how warm the blanket feels around you or how soft the pillow feels beneath your head, and without even realizing it, you drift off to sleep.
Hypnosis is actually called mesmerism. You are mesmerized when you can focus your attention on something to the point where you are oblivious to everything else going on around you. It's also called tunnel vision. Named after Franz Mesmer, the creator of the mesmerizing techniques everyone has mislabeled as hypnosis.
Franz Mesmer's theory is this. By focusing your eyes on an object (visual tunnel vision) while focusing your hearing on the sound of someone's voice (audible tunnel vision), the more mesmerized you become, at which point a part of your mind becomes willing to accept suggestions, but only if they're coming from someone you trust and if you were leaning in the direction of those particular suggestions in the first place. Think of a hypnotist/mesmerist as a motivator who helps you stay on a path that you've already taken.
The confusion all began in 1843 when James Braid noticed that when clients had created tunnel vision and were mesmerized, that they exhibited the same sleepy "look" that one had when going to sleep. So he changed the word from mesmerized, which is the "focused" look, to hypnotized, which is the "sleepy" look. But he eventually saw his mistake, that they weren't sleepy at all, so he tried to change the word back to mesmerized, but by then the word hypnotized became so popular, thanks to movies, that he gave up trying.
Knowing this, here is what to expect. Your hypnotist, or mesmerist, will ask you to focus your eyes on a particular object (visual tunnel vision) while focusing your hearing on only the sound of his voice (audible tunnel vision). If you have followed instructions, then your eyes will appear blurry, out of focus, distant. This is a hypnotic state of mind, or more precisely, a mesmerized state of mind. Another way to put it is, when you have both tunnel visions, you are literally hypnotized, even though the actual word is mesmerized. The hypnotist, or mesmerist, will then give you suggestions that you are willing to accept in order to experience change for the better.
Can everyone be hypnotized? NO. About 15% of the world's population's brains are wired differently. Another 10% either don't trust the hypnotist, are afraid of the unknown, simply cannot relax, try too hard or are easily distracted by everything going on around them and therefore cannot follow instructions.
Who, then, can be hypnotized? Daydreamers, artists, musicians, actors, athletes, deep thinkers, introverts, puzzle solvers, gamers, visionaries and the like. In other words, anyone who has a very creative and vivid imagination.
Why do hypnotists/mesmerists say the word sleep? They don't have to say sleep. In fact, you can stay wide awake which is explained in the next paragraph. Some hypnotists say the word sleep because we do it effortlessly every night and therefore it's the easiest word for our brains to accept and comply with. However, it isn't really sleep, but the moment before sleep when your body stops fidgeting and completely relaxes. You will still be able to hear everything going on around you and you will always be able to accept or reject any suggestion given to you.
Wide awake hypnosis, which is what I quite often do in my psychotherapy sessions, is when the hypnotist, or mesmerist, gets the client to create visual tunnel vision as well as audible tunnel vision, as explained above, and instead of having them close their eyes with the word sleep, they stay wide awake and follow the therapist's suggestions. Once you have both tunnel visions, you are hypnotized, or more precisely, you are mesmerized. All that is left are the therapist's suggestions.
A brief history here. In the beginning, mesmerizing techniques, now mislabeled as hypnosis, were only used by medical doctors, especially during war times before the invention of morphine, which primarily calmed injured soldiers, put them into deeper REM sleep during unfortunate amputations, and also limited infections and quickened recovery. Many years later was when non-medical people used their very limited knowledge of mesmerism/hypnosis to create stage shows for entertainment purposes only, while leaving the true medical effectiveness of hypnosis to us real professionals.