Ep. 3 - Body Dysmorphia and Hypnosis: Rapid Change, Lifelong results (The Body Dysmorphia Recovery Podcast)
July 12th, 2022
Welcome back to the Body Dysmorphia Recovery Podcast!
This blog post includes a transcript of an episode of the Body Dysmorphia Recovery Podcast. To listen to the full episode, click the link here.
[00:00:00] Doug: If you feel that body image issues have too much of an impact in your life, if you try and fail regularly to be kind to that image of yourself in the mirror, if just looking at a photo of yourself makes you feel physically terrible, or if all you want to do is be able to love yourself, lean in my friend and get excited.
This is your invitation to a life where you can love your body. Where body image issues don’t control you, where you can feel at peace with how you look and where you can live without that negative self talk draining you every day. This isn’t fiction. It’s a reality that thousands of people have already reached.
If you like this show, you’ll love the powerful resource that’s helping people get to that point. It’s my elite hypnosis audio, The Miracle Mirror. This hypnosis is designed to help you heal that relationship with your reflection, to let go of critical and damaging self-talk, and to learn to love your body [00:01:00] again. So much so that this change might just feel miraculous.
This audio is the perfect next step to being free from that body image struggle once and for all. Once you get your audio of the miracle mirror, you don’t have to dodge your reflection anymore or cringe and apologize every time the front camera turns on. This audio will help you start to heal how you feel about your reflection, and it will help you get those issues out of your life for good.
You can get your miracle mirror audio by going to anywherehypnosis.com. That’s anywherehypnosis.com. Right on the homepage, you’ll see right away where you can get your miracle mirror audio right now. And I’m serious about that. Right now. Pause this podcast and go get your audio today.
Don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you get back. Go to anywherehypnosis.com and get that today because it’s completely free. And this will change how you feel about your reflection for good. Test this audio for yourself, because you’ll never know how [00:02:00] just effective this will be until you see the changes in your own life.
Again, that’s anywherehypnosis.com. One more time, anywherehypnosis.com. Now on with the show.
(INTRO)
[00:02:11] Doug: This is the body dysmorphia recovery podcast, where we explore powerful resources to help you heal body dysmorphia and the harmful eating patterns and help you live your normal life after BDD. Even better, we’re doing it without waiting weeks or even months to get treatment. My name is Doug Sands and I’m your body dysmorphia hypnotist.
On this show, you’re getting cutting edge methods to wipe out BDD once and for all. You’re also getting interviews with leading treatment experts for BDD, body image issues, and disordered eating. We’re giving you tools to work through all areas of body dysmorphia and to get it out of your life once and for all.
Get ready my friend, because this show may change your life for good. Let’s get started.[00:03:00]
(MAIN)
[00:03:03] Doug: Welcome back to The Body Dysmorphia Recovery Podcast. My name is Doug Sands, I’m the hypnotist and the host of this show. And I’m really excited to have you here for this episode because we’re exploring a lot of really great information. The goal of these early episodes is to answer as many of the common questions that I get all the time about body dysmorphia, as we can.
In this episode, we’re talking specifically about hypnosis and how we can use it to work through BDD and disordered eating. And in later episodes, we’re going to explore other methods of how we work through these issues. But, why not start here? You can gain from all the expertise I’ve learned in this area. And this episode is going to be a really great place to start.
And before we do that, if this is your first time listening to this podcast, I wanna welcome you. While you’re here, I highly recommend that you hit subscribe. Click the subscribe button wherever you’re listening to this podcast, because we’ve got some incredible episodes coming up that you won’t [00:04:00] want to miss.
Now, this episode is all about hypnosis and about how I work with hypnosis to help people make incredible changes with body dysmorphia and harmful eating habits. We’re going to answer a lot of frequently asked questions about hypnosis in general, and about the specific ways I use hypnosis to help clients make changes in these specific areas.
So first of all, what is hypnosis? Right off the bat, this is kind of a tricky question to answer because not even all hypnotists agree on a clear definition. That’s how cutting edge hypnosis is. We’ve had 125 years of study that back this up and prove it as a medical reality. And we’re continually breaking new ground in this field.
We’re always exploring deeper and deeper using these methods to help overcome new issues each and every day. And just as an example of the interesting ways that people are using hypnosis, I know hypnotists who specialize in pain management for surgery without anesthesia. I [00:05:00] know hypnotists who work with cancer treatment.
I even know one hypnotist who specifically treats lime’s disease. It’s a very flexible process and it’s still growing. But what is hypnosis? Most people, if they’ve heard of hypnosis at all, have a negative, if misguided view of it. They may believe the rumors that they’ve heard about hypnosis being mind control or something that’s awful and dangerous for them.
Hypnosis is not witchcraft, it’s not sorcery, and it’s definitely not mind control. It’s a tool that each and every one of us already has. In fact, we’re often doing self hypnosis almost every single day. Think about this. Have you ever been on a really long car ride? And while you’re watching out the window at the telephones poles just scrolling past, you kind of zone out and your mind is somewhere else while your body is still there in the car, or maybe even watching a scary movie.
And even though you know that those are just pixels on the screen, you still jump when the bad guy comes out, as if he’s in the room with you. And finally, [00:06:00] maybe it’s a romantic movie. And even though you know that those are just actors, that Brad Pitt is not actually married to that woman, you still cry when they break up because it hits you so deeply.
These are all examples of trance states where our unconscious mind is coming to the fore, where we’re able to access those deeper emotions and really tap into our beliefs and values. And that’s essentially what hypnosis is. We’re going into a trance state and instead of doing it just automatically, we’re doing it intentionally to create those changes and work through those habits directly with your unconscious mind.
And we’re going into trance all the time. Some researchers estimate we enter some form of trance every seven minutes. In fact, you might be in a trance right now while listening to this, maybe part of you is listening while another part is driving or zoning out or doing something else like washing the dishes.
We zone out when we brush our teeth or when we get in an elevator or when we dive deep into a work project or get in the flow, as they say. Hypnosis is [00:07:00] simply about using this state of trance intentionally to help us make those incredible changes. So, first of all, how do we do this? For well over the last century, people have been studying exactly what hypnosis is.
And if you’d like to check out the research yourself, I highly recommend you check out Google scholar for all the research studies and scholarly articles. You’ll probably be surprised by just how many there are surrounding hypnosis. That’s because people have been studying hypnosis since it first appeared in Western medicine, way back in the 1800s.
And since the development of the MRI machines, researchers have been analyzing what’s actually going on in our brains while we’re in hypnosis. Part of what they discovered is that hypnosis naturally lowers our brain waves to a state where we can access that unconscious mind, and make those changes very easily.
Here’s a brief explanation of it. During a normal waking state, our brain wave frequency is hovering at a state we call beta frequency. Below that [00:08:00] is what we call a light trance, and that is at alpha frequency. That’s where you might be zoning out in class, or you might be drifting away as your unconscious mind drives that car. Below that light state of trance at alpha, we have theta and theta is the golden working state of hypnosis.
This is where our conscious and unconscious mind meet. And below theta, just to give you an idea, we have Delta. And Delta is the state where we’re actually asleep. And that’s why it looks like people are asleep in hypnosis because they’re hovering just above sleep. Now, theta frequency is a really relaxed frequency to be in, but you’re still aware the entire time. When a person is in hypnosis, they typically remember about as much as they would from a normal conversation.
Theta is an incredibly relaxing and creative state of mind for us to be in. And perhaps you’ve already experienced being in theta. It’s that really relaxing feeling that you have just as you’re starting to fall asleep. Or if you’ve [00:09:00] ever had a really great idea just before you drift off, that’s because your mind was in theta frequency.
It’s that really creative states where all of these different connections can meet and mingle. Theta frequency is where your conscious and unconscious mind can meet and kind of blend together. You can exchange those ideas and make new connections. You can also work directly with your unconscious mind in this state to make some changes.
And essentially, that’s what we’re doing in hypnosis. We’re getting people to that theta frequency and then we’re giving suggestions. Originally, that’s all hypnosis was. Now, we’ve built in frameworks and tools and techniques from psychology, from neuroscience and more to make these changes even more effective and even more rapid than they originally were.
And now, talking about brainwaves, there is an interesting link between hypnosis and meditation. In solo meditation, we may feel like our brain is slowing down and becoming really relaxed. But typically, our brainwaves actually speed up into [00:10:00] what we call gamma frequency. Gamma is simply anything that’s higher than beta frequency.
Guided meditation is where we find the link with hypnosis. Most guided meditations are lowering people down that brainwave frequency. They get people down to the alpha frequency and sometimes these meditations get people all the way down to theta. And interestingly, after I learned hypnosis, I began to realize just how many guided meditations are already using methods from hypnosis, perhaps without even realizing it to help people really relax into that experience.
And for those who’ve never experienced hypnosis, just know that it’s much like a really deep guided meditation, only far more relaxing. So when is hypnosis actually happening? The short answer is all the time. The long answer is that it depends on how you define it. At its base form, hypnosis involves two things.
Number one, it involves a focused point of attention. And number two, it involves a bypassing of the [00:11:00] critical faculty, let’s dive a little deeper into that. The critical faculty is essentially like a wall or barrier that prevents unwanted beliefs or habits from getting into our unconscious. Think of it like a gatekeeper who prevents things that you don’t actually want in your unconscious from getting through. The critical faculty is what prevents us from believing what any Tom, Dick or Harry tells us is real and actually making our own critical judgements.
Now, it’s really important to note that our critical faculty doesn’t develop until around age six or seven. That’s part of why kids have such vivid imaginations. They’re able to access those deeper feelings, those deeper realities in their unconscious. It’s also why kids might believe more when they’re at that young age.
If you tell a really young kid that there’s a purple dragon in the hall and they want to meet them, they might just believe you and run out and check. After age seven, that critical faculty has developed. And while they still may check out of curiosity, they’re much less likely to take what [00:12:00] you say as immediate truth.
Now, this window between age zero and seven is critical for our development. That’s because our brain is soaking up information like a sponge. Essentially, it’s trying to learn how to survive and thrive in the world that it finds itself in. Oftentimes we’re taking a lot of that info directly from our parents.
We’re often taking their beliefs whole cloth into our unconscious mind. And many times we don’t realize this until much later. Some often say that our parents were the first hypnotists in our lives. They were giving us instructions both consciously and unconsciously about how we should live when we didn’t even have a filter to decide if it’s helpful advice or not.
And those suggestions went straight into our unconscious minds. And that’s why those early lessons can be difficult to root out with willpower alone. And that’s why, if a caregiver, an older sister, an aunt, or anyone in your early life had body dysmorphia or harmful eating habits, you were extremely [00:13:00] likely to pick that up. But that’s a discussion for another episode. Let’s get back to what’s actually happening in your mind, talking about that critical faculty.
Remember, this is a barrier between your conscious and unconscious mind, and it is possible to get things through that barrier consciously. It’s kind of like battering down a door. You’re essentially using those 28 days to form a new habit to wear down your brain’s resistance until it becomes that habit and enters that unconscious mind.
That’s the hard way to do it. Is also the way that most people try to change, and it’s the reason that so many people give up when it doesn’t happen right away. But if that critical faculty, that barrier were up all the time, nothing would get through to our unconscious. We won’t be able to change anything in our life because we never actually get through.
That’s why our critical faculty lets some things through at different times each day. I’d love for you to think of the critical faculty as a gate that opens and closes. Some like to think of it as a membrane that becomes selectively permeable at [00:14:00] different times. However it makes sense to you, that’s perfectly fine.
Every day at certain times, we’re letting that barrier down so that our unconscious mind can take this stage. As an example, you’re watching a TV show or reading a really good book, you’re essentially letting your unconscious mind take the four to access those deeper emotions and memories to get at your core beliefs and values, and to help you gain understanding about what you are actually reading or watching.
And we’re doing this all the time, lowering and raising that critical faculty often without even realizing it. Think about how students zone out into a trance while in class. That’s because their unconscious is working through and processing the information they’ve just been taught and fitting it into what they already understand.
Drivers often zone out or do other tasks consciously while driving because their unconscious mind is a much better driver and it’s much better at keeping them safe with all the information that’s coming in. Our conscious mind can hold only about seven plus or minus [00:15:00] two bits of information at a time, while our unconscious mind can take in millions of bits of info.
Our unconscious mind is a better driver because there are so many things happening at once and our unconscious can absorb all of these and keep you safe if an emergency happens. So in hypnosis, we’re using that focused attention to help bring your mind into that theta state of trance, where it then can let that second part happen.
That critical faculty can lower to help you make those changes. We show your mind that it’s safe to let that barrier down for a little while to help clean up any unhelpful habits and to install new ones, to help you in your life. And sometimes when I explain this part, people freak out a little bit. They say, if my mind lowers that barrier, doesn’t that mean you could just mind control me? And I get where they’re coming from, but when you are in trance, your unconscious is always listening. Even in trance, even while asleep, your unconscious is always functioning, always making sure that you are safe. And if at any time in [00:16:00] trance, your unconscious doesn’t agree with anything the hypnotist says, it’s going to bring you out of that trance. And to give you a little bit more information, I actually did an informal study with this.
Way back when I was doing my initial training as a hypnotist, I would put volunteers into a trance and then I’d give them five beneficial suggestions. Then I’d follow it up with one negative suggestion like you’ll gimme $5 after the session, or you’re going to hug the next person that you see on the street. Every single time, one of two things happen. Either their unconscious mind ignored it and the suggestion never took hold or it brought them completely out of trance because that negative suggestion broke the trust with me as the hypnotist.
Now, hypnosis is all about trust. And interesting fact about hypnosis is that you cannot hypnotize someone who doesn’t want to go into hypnosis. Hypnosis is a consensual state, and you have to be able to relax and just let yourself experience this to be able to go into that trance and make those changes.
[00:17:00] Interestingly, I often run into people who tell me that they can’t be hypnotized. They think that I don’t know their mind is too strong or something to go into hypnosis, even though the people with the strongest minds, the strongest imaginations are often the people who go the deepest. And I find that the people who think that they can’t be hypnotized, there’s always a part of their mind that says, but what if? What if they could be hypnotized and really, why are they talking to a hypnotist then?
Oftentimes, I find that these are the best hypnotic subjects, because they’re so curious about it, but that’s a conversation for another time. When I’m helping a client to get rid of BDD, or harmful eating in those one to two sessions, what’s actually happening? At the overview, there are many, many things.
Hypnosis is a multi-layered process. Many times our conscious mind doesn’t even pick up on the many tools we’re using to help make this change but the unconscious mind does. It’s always listening and it’s gathering all of the resources that we’ve carefully layered into each hypnosis session, to make sure that you’re making [00:18:00] this change quickly.
Here’s the process in a nutshell. First of all, we always de-traumatize. And I wanna talk about trauma because it’s something that people shy away from. These could be big traumas, they could be little traumas. I often say big T traumas and little T traumas, meaning the big T traumas are what people expect when we talk about trauma. Things like a car accident or the death of a loved one, or abuse. Little T traumas are little things that add up over time. Things like being judged about our weight or having jokes made about us by our peers. All of these things can add up to the same impact as one big traumatic event.
And when we de-traumatize a person, this helps a person to feel safe and relaxed. It helps your unconscious mind to be more open to change. It essentially helps your unconscious mind to lay down that armor and say, I trust this person, I trust this process and we’re going to make this change quickly. The goal is to work out any of those emotions, those deep hurt emotions that might make the person [00:19:00] “Abreact”.
And the definition of “Abreact” is when someone goes nuts to use the medical term. It’s when they experience those negative emotions so strongly that they freak out. Maybe they have flailing arms, maybe they’re crying, maybe they’re shouting. What’s happening is that their mind is literally recreating that traumatic experience for them.
And that’s terrible because when our mind is creating that inner movie, it’s often like where they’re experiencing it again for the first time. And that can often re-traumatize a person or dig those wounds even deeper. In traditional hypnosis, there was a myth that you had to have someone abreact to get that out of their system.
It was a crossover from psychotherapy and the other modalities of the time, but we’ve come a long way since then. If someone in this day and age tells you that you need to abreact, you need to have that difficult experience to get that change. Find someone else to work with because hypnosis and so many other tools have come a long way since just putting a person in that difficult situation and letting them work itself [00:20:00] out. Hypnosis has also come a long way since swinging washes.
Yes, that was part of the history of hypnosis, but no one really does that anymore. In modern hypnosis, we’re working with the unconscious mind in many ways. And the really cool thing about hypnosis in this day and age is that you don’t have to relive that painful memory to get it out of your system.
Often we’re able to heal this trauma just as effectively by working with representative symbols within trance. That’s because our unconscious mind is very adept at picking up hidden meaning. It’s why we don’t need to re-experience that trauma because our unconscious mind is really intelligent and it’s able to pick up on what we’re trying to tell it without actually being in that memory again.
We give the brain powerful symbolism and metaphors and the brain essentially maps that across to the change we’re looking to make and does this for you automatically. Much of what we do in hypnosis has direct ties with psychology. And many of these methods were developed by experts who are trained in both fields, as many who [00:21:00] work in psychology know when we’re making that change, we need to get the brain on our side.
And so we need to de-potentiate that trauma if you will. This helps make sure that you’re not going to abreact or have some difficult emotional reaction to this. After we de-potentiate that trauma so it doesn’t come back to interfere with us, then the next step is to help the conscious and unconscious understand what the actual problem is.
Often, this problem is not what we expect consciously. Sometimes the conscious mind might just be guessing at what that problem is because the unconscious mind might actually be keeping it a secret to protect us. That moments of realization when a person’s unconscious shares with them what the real problem is, that moment can be incredibly powerful.
Sometimes knowing that alone is enough to kickstart those incredible changes. Your entire mind finally gets it and when it feels safe in this relaxing trance, it can start to work through that. Once the client knows what the real problem is, it’s time [00:22:00] to start working with this and notice that I said the client, not the hypnotist needs to know what this is.
One of the cool things about hypnosis is that I don’t really need to know what that problem is. Sometimes the clients share the details with me and other times it’s fairly painful and they want to keep some of that to themselves. The cool thing is we can make those changes just as effectively, whether I know the exact details or not, because we’re changing how your brain stores and relates to that memory, not the memory itself.
In hypnosis, we can strip away the negative emotions from that memory while maintaining the learnings that we got from it. It may sound complicated, but it’s actually quite straightforward. And oftentimes this involves visualization. That’s because as humans, we are highly visual creatures. We’re actually creating entire movies in our minds.
When we are experiencing an emotion or reliving in a memory, we’re essentially creating a movie in our mind and reliving it. Now in hypnosis, we can create specific visualizations [00:23:00] and mental movies to achieve specific breakthroughs. We then work through that visualization to make that change effectively. All the while just like an empowering metaphor, the conscious mind might get caught up in what’s happening in the visualization while your unconscious mind is getting the messages it needs to form that deeper structure and map that across. During this deep change work, I’m often helping a client to heal some of those old wounds so that they realize they don’t need that habit any longer. Often after we heal those wounds, the brain realizes that it doesn’t need to keep that harmful habit around anymore because there’s no real purpose to it.
And that can be a really powerful moments of change. Sometimes, we’re giving your unconscious better tools to work through that goal that you’re trying to achieve and still do it ecologically so that you are helping all of the different parts of yourself and not hurting yourself. Though often, there’s no need. The trauma or issue that was underneath that habit is gone. That forms the majority of what we do in [00:24:00] hypnosis, the bulk of that session. And after we’ve done the major change work, we then install those changes so that they’re not just floating around in your mind without being put to use. This is also where I add in some powerful, beneficial suggestions to help it really stick.
Finally, I bring them out of trance and we go through a few ecological checks, including future pacing to check how congruently that person has integrated those changes. Sometimes this involves a brief secondary hypnosis to check all the systems and make sure everything’s good to go. So how long does this actually take? Our actual session takes between 90 and 120 minutes.
Usually, that first session is closer to the higher end. And after that, if we need any second sessions, those are typically shorter between 60 and 90 minutes. What I’ve described is the first session in this process, and we can make incredible changes within that first session, for some that’s all they need.
Typically though, I recommend having two sessions and here’s why? Imagine that [00:25:00] you have a piece of land that you want to build something on, but right now there’s an old rundown shack on it. You’ve gotta tear it down, remove all that junk, and only then can you build something new on top of it. So essentially we can tear it down that shack in one session and clean it up and lay that foundation. But we don’t want to do too much within one session, because doing too much means that we’re not doing it ecologically. Meaning that we’re kind of coming in and blasting it and slapping up something as a replacement, but it really helps to have that second session to build that new house carefully and to clean up the space around it, to make sure that this change is going to last for the rest of your life. Some people, it does take a little bit longer than that, but almost always, people will see amazing results very quickly. After that first session when that shack is gone, they’re going to notice just how much they’ve changed and that’s going to build that motivation to continue with the process.
And that’s really one of my main missions. To help people with body dysmorphia and disordered eating, to [00:26:00] get the help they need fast. I don’t want them to have to wait. That’s why I’ve shifted my own practice prioritizing having that first session within 72 hours of that strategy call, because I knew that when I was ready to change, I wanted it done yesterday. I had no patience to wait, especially if you’ve been suffering for months or even years. When you’re ready to change, you want it done now. It’s one of the really unfortunate things I see all the time with ED and BDD treatment programs.
Many with BDD and disordered eating try to get into a program when they’re finally fed up with how they felt when they need that change now. And they’re turned away. They’re put on a wait list for four to eight, maybe even 10 weeks. And I get why this happens, but still this is terrible. Body dysmorphia and disordered eating are really painful experiences as you likely already know. Sometimes they’re even dangerous or even deadly.
If someone was having a heart attack, you wouldn’t make them wait four hours on the curb outside the hospital, would you? When a person finally makes that move to [00:27:00] get help, they’re absolutely ready to make that change and that’s the best time to work with them. When they’re in that perfect frame of mind, when they’re so ready to get this problem out of their life, the change happens almost immediately because of that incredible motivation.
And that’s when these programs put them on that wait list. What if someone needs that change now? What if their health is threatened? And perhaps this has been your experience of having to wait to get that change, and if it has, I’m so sorry and I completely understand your frustration with it. That’s why I use the tools that I do to help people make those changes rapidly.
And that’s why I’ve prioritized making it very quick. As soon as you have that strategy session, we’re going to schedule that first call, usually within those 72 hours to get this issue out of your life. So that’s the hypnotic process I’ve developed for working with these issues. It’s very effective for body dysmorphia, as well as for disordered eating since the two share a lot of similarities and [00:28:00] connections.
And I also wanted to talk about some of the common myths I hear time and time again when talking about hypnosis. Now we’ve already talked about how hypnosis can’t be mind control because your unconscious mind is always working to keep you safe.
So here are a few of the other myths. Myth number one, is hypnosis anti-religious? There’s this myth of hypnosis as being a cult or magic or something else entirely. Even though hypnosis has grown in leaps and bounds since its initial uses, many people still believe it’s anti-religious in some ways.
In reality, hypnosis is not against religion at all. It actually works quite well with many religious trains of thoughts. It works with Christianity, with Buddhism, with Hinduism, and so many more. In fact, it has even been accepted and even promoted by some of the world’s biggest religions. For example, in 1847, over a decade before the American civil war, the Roman Catholic church decreed that hypnosis was not witchcraft, was [00:29:00] not the work of the devil, but actually a powerful tool that each and every one of us has and can use to make powerful changes.
And to take it one step further, in 1956, the standing Pope actually recommended hypnosis. Specifically, he was talking about using hypnosis for women in childbirth who didn’t want to use medication to manage their pain. And he talked about how it was a powerful method that your own mind can use to numb that pain.
So myth number two, is hypnosis witchcraft? Hypnosis has in fact nothing to do with witches nor warlocks, nor wizards, nor magic of any kind. It’s a very scientific process that was originally misunderstood. When it was first used, hypnotists added a lot of flare and drama because they weren’t really sure what was making the change and what was just stage effect.
Society had no idea what was going on so some people thought it was just witchcraft. Nowadays, we can actually see what’s going on in the brain in hypnosis. We can study people in [00:30:00] hypnosis using F MRI machines and other tools of modern medicine. And thankfully it has taken much of the mystery out of hypnosis for the good of the people who get help.
Another question that I get all the time is what if I get stuck in hypnosis? I just have to laugh at this one because it’s not possible. That’s because hypnosis is working with your unconscious mind and your unconscious mind is always awake, always aware and always listening. Your unconscious is working to keep you alive.
If something were to happen to your hypnotist, say your internet connection cut out in the middle of our session. You just come back to a waking state, whether immediately or in a few minutes. Eventually, your mind would wake you up because you’d have to use the bathroom or go get food or water. The longest I’ve ever seen someone stay in hypnosis after the hypnotist stopped giving suggestions was around 10 minutes. Likely, that was because they were really enjoying themselves. And that’s because hypnosis is an intensely relaxing experience, which is a really unique way of saying it. But once you [00:31:00] experience it you’ll know exactly what I mean.
It’s quite a pleasant state to be in and we actually can continue hypnosis on our own or even access hypnotic states through self hypnosis. As an aside, I actually use self hypnosis nearly every morning as part of my morning routine. It helps to clear up many of those issues that I’ve been thinking about and to give you that motivation to work on the next big project.
And we’ll talk more about self hypnosis in future episodes. The final question that I get all the time talking about different parts of hypnosis is whether stage hypnosis is real or not. Many people first find hypnosis because of a stage hypnotist. Maybe they saw a show at their local high school or college, or even a corporate event.
Now, clearly this podcast isn’t about stage hypnosis, but there are some interesting parallels and there’s something of a divide between therapeutic hypnotists and stage hypnotists. Many who do hypnosis for change work, feel that stage hypnotists give them a bad name, that they promote the mysticism of it and [00:32:00] reduce some of its credibility.
But the two go hand in hand. Stage hypnosis helps to popularize hypnosis in general and it still does to this day, I can’t count the number of times that someone has come into my online practice because they first saw a hypnotist on stage. And in fact, without stage hypnosis, therapeutic change where hypnosis likely wouldn’t have survived its initial stages.
It wouldn’t have lasted long enough to be studied and incorporated into modern medicine because the stage hypnosis helped to build interest in exploring it further. Now, change where hypnotists help out the stage hypnotists in turn, by helping people see that there’s more to hypnosis than suggestion and stagecraft.
That’s actually a psychological process that’s happening in our minds and in our bodies. And in fact, many hypnotists do both stage hypnosis and therapeutic hypnosis. And as a full disclosure, I also do stage hypnosis. For me, I prioritize fundraising shows for [00:33:00] worthy causes, especially school music programs. So why do I do it?
One, I get to help people and I get to help them raise in some cases, thousands of dollars in a single night. And number 2, it’s fun. I really enjoy being up there on stage and interacting with people and really helping them know a little bit more about hypnosis. And there’s also another really important reason I continue doing both. Because each time that I’m on stage, I get to hone my hypnosis skills even further. Think about this. If I can hypnotize 30 complete strangers with an entire audience watching behind my back. Think how much better I’m going to be able to work with you one on one when we’re completely focused on helping you make this change.
Remember though, when we’re working through issues with BDD and disordered eating, it’s not stage hypnosis. You’re not going to bark like a dog or quack like a chicken at any time in our session. It’s very serious. And this is complex work that dives into some deep seated issues. Really, the only similarity between these two parts of my business are the hypnotic techniques [00:34:00] that I use to help people get deeply into trance.
Everything else is a little bit different. And the amazing thing about hypnosis is that because we’re still breaking new ground in a centuries old practice, there’s always new techniques to learn. What I love about hypnotists and many experts who work with BDD and disordered eating is that they are constantly improving.
They’re always learning more. They’re always finding new ways to improve their work, to help people make those changes more effectively and even faster. There’s a lot to hypnosis that people don’t realize. And I love to know what surprised you the most in this episode? If you’d like, I highly encourage you to reach out to me and send me your answer.
I always love to get in touch with listeners. You can find me on all of the social media apps. The best place is probably my website, which is Anywhere Hypnosis because that’s where you can find the most up date information on how to reach me. Again, that’s Anywhere Hypnosis. So what’s next? We’ve got some incredible conversations coming up, including our first interviews with BDD and [00:35:00] ED specialists in other fields. If you don’t want to miss them, which I don’t think that you do, I encourage you to subscribe. Click the subscribe button wherever you’re listening to this, because you won’t want to miss out on all the incredible resources that are coming your way.
And while you’re there, why not leave a review? It takes 30 seconds at most, and it’s a really powerful way to help pay it forward for the information that we’re sharing in this podcast. This is really important, especially while this podcast is growing. We’ve had an incredible amount of downloads already and to help keep that momentum going, please leave a review.
Leave a review especially if you have an apple device, because that helps to push it to even more podcast directories. Please do that right now, because even a one word five star review really helps this podcast to grow. That’s all I really ask because this helps to pay it forward not to me, though it doesn’t make me feel really great, knowing your thoughts on this show. It’s to pay it forward to all the people who will benefit from this info, to help them find [00:36:00] this podcast. It’s helping everyone who’s struggling with BDD or who’s facing a disordered eating, or who’s just hating the way they look and wondering how they can change.
The more reviews that we get, the more the podcasting platforms naturally push this to people who can benefit from this incredible information. Now it’s time for the empowering metaphor. And if you haven’t heard this in past episodes, empowering metaphors are hypnotically developed stories that can help you to make powerful changes in your life often unconsciously. While your conscious mind is caught up in the story itself, your unconscious mind is following the structure and making the changes it needs to make by mapping that across. All that you need to do is sit back, relax and enjoy. Today’s empowering metaphor is called drywall screws.
When I was young, my family owned a drywalling business and drywalling for those who don’t know, is a type of interior construction where we’re putting the actual walls up. We’re putting up material on the dry studs and it’s very hard physical work. It involve lifting these massive sheets of gypsum [00:37:00] board, which were often over 12 feet long and weighed well over 50 pounds, sometimes even a hundred pounds.
Eventually, we outsourced this to a team of young strong men, because that meant we could focus on the skilled parts of our work. And when we attached these boards of gypsum to the wall, we would attach them to the studs with screws. And it surprised me to think that all that weight could be held up by those tiny screws.
And for much of my time with the drywall crew, my job was to cover those screws. Sometimes they would stick out and I’d have to get them flat before I could go about the rest of my work. And my grandpa taught me to carry a hammer to pound in those screws, because my grandpa grew up when they used to be nails. And I’d pound those screws until they lay flat or until they broke. Sometimes I missed, sometimes I punched holes in the walls that I’d have to fill later. Until one day, my uncle taught me that it was much easier and much more effective that when you’re working with [00:38:00] screws to just use a screw driver.
Thank you again for listening into this episode of the podcast, and remember to click that button to subscribe because you won’t want to miss out on what’s coming next. We’ve got some really fantastic episodes coming your way.
Again, my name is Doug Sands, and I help people with body dysmorphia to wipe out BDD, to heal harmful eating, and to finally live that normal life again without waiting that four to eight weeks to get into treatment.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. And I look forward to seeing you right back here in the next one.
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Like what you heard in this episode? Remember to Subscribe! Click the + button on your favorite podcasting app, because you won’t want to miss out on the bonus episodes that you’ll only get when you subscribe.
Want to watch what happens behind the scenes? Check out the Body Dysmorphia Recovery Podcast on YouTube! Whether for solo shows or guest interviews, you can see everything that’s happening behind the scenes to bring this podcast to you.
Ready to learn more about ending BDD with Hypnosis? Check out Doug’s website! Here, you can learn more about how Doug helps people end BDD, heal harmful eating, and live that normal life again.
You can also check out the Free Hypnosis Audios that Doug has created especially for podcast listeners. Click here to get your Binge Blocker Hypnosis, to help you overcome uncontrollable eating whenever it strikes! And if you’re ready to overcome that struggle with mirrors, photos, and videos, it’s time for The Miracle Mirror. You can find out more about both here.
Finally, if you’d like even more of the Weight Loss with Hypnosis podcast, check out the show on Instagram and TikTok!
To your journey towards life without BDD or body image issues,
Doug
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgp0ylxhJsL2QXsU8IdmQVQ