I did hypnotherapy (so you don’t have to)
Today we’re gonna give it 80%
VANCOUVER — I tell Kyla I’m ready to be hypnotized.
I’ve been seeing her off and on for almost three years; since that brief, all-consuming moment when it seemed the world was about to end.
She mentioned hypnosis on our initial screening call. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of not being in control. I did mushrooms for the first time last summer and it was a lot.”
She said hypnosis was nothing like that.
“You’ll be in control the whole time. I’m just there to walk you through it,” she explained “Sometimes it helps surface things from your subconscious.”
I told her I would think about it. I wasn’t ready for my life to become a Phoebe Bridgers song. But she was easy to talk to, so I booked an initial session.
My therapy thus far has centered mostly on my anxiety — on my black-and-white thinking, and how my desire to be perfect sometimes leaves me feeling dissatisfied instead of grateful. At one point she tells me that even my worst performance is probably better than average and that it’s okay to only give things 80 percent of your effort. This is something I had not previously considered.
And so we’ve been making progress.
But while our bi-monthly meetings have helped clarify certain things, I’ve noticed that I’m having recursive thoughts about my career and what comes next. “I don’t know what to do,” I tell her from a thick pleather chair. “I feel pretty successful but I still want more.”
She smiles at me across a small gray coffee table. It’s a Monday morning in January. I am dead serious.
She reminds me that she often works with clients looking for guidance, and that hypnosis might be clarifying. It’s the first time she’s mentioned hypnosis in many sessions.
“Let’s do it,” I say, perhaps too quickly.
She tells me to close my eyes and sit with my arms and legs uncrossed.
“Draw your attention to the sensation of your breathing. Noticing the coolness of the air on the nostrils on each in-breath and the warmth on each out-breath.”
I sit there breathing, breathing, breathing.
Kyla tells me to feel the breath spread across my body and to try and ignore my distracting thoughts.
I’ve been hypnotized once before, at a midway one summer in Edmonton. I was one of maybe a dozen people on stage. The guy made us dance and when the performance was over he told us we would go home and have the best sleep of our entire lives. It could have been embarrassing but I was too hypnotized to care. That night I slept like a fucking log.
As Kyla speaks, I feel a similar sense of suggestibility wash over me. I’m in control like she said, but I feel open and relaxed. I keep breathing. She tells me to open my eyes and stare straight ahead. I do this for a few seconds until she suggests that I roll my eyes up, close the lids, and take a big, deep breath.
“Imagine yourself floating downward,” she says.
I do and fall deeper into relaxation. Body still, brain quiet. With every breath, I feel a buzz similar to nicotine in the spot just between my eyebrows.
She continues. “In a moment, you will find yourself at a fork, with a path to your left and a path to your right. The path on the left will represent staying your current course. The path on the right will represent a new change.”
I breathe in. The buzzing between my eyebrows is blooming out, burrowing into my brain.
“When I snap my fingers, you will step on the left path.”
Snap.
She tells me to picture the path, what it looks and feels like, what the conditions are like underfoot.
Snap.
She tells me to picture the same path three months later.
“Notice how it feels to be there, who you’re there with, what your mood is like,” she says. “Notice how you feel, how much energy you have.”
Snap.
She tells me to picture the path at six months, and again at one year later. I sit there, inhaling and exhaling. Picturing the possibilities. The buzz has spread from my temple down towards my chest. Kyla tells me that on her next snap, I should picture the end of the path. “Your mind will take you as far as it can imagine you going,” she says. She counts back from three.
Snap.
“Notice what the path has been like. Smooth and straight? Windy and bumpy? Did things get more rewarding or not? Anything that might be valuable to you in making decisions.”
She asks if I’m ready to explore the next path.
“Yes.”
We repeat the process. I visualize the path of change — how it feels at three months, six months, one year, and, eventually, at the end. She tells me my subconscious has the infinite creative healing and intelligence to guide me and maybe I believe her.
Later, I will tell Kyla that this second path was darker and more winding than the first. That I see a change coming at 33.
For now, she tells me she is going to count up to five and that, when she is done, I will return to my fully alert state with a sense of “peaceful tranquility and calmness.” That, in every day, in every way, I will notice myself getting better and better at listening to the guidance from my subconscious mind. And that I can get back to this place simply by listening to the session which she has helpfully recorded on her phone.
One.
Rise up in your awareness. Feel your body in the room.
Two.
Continue to rise up in mental and physical awareness. Notice sounds in the room and outside the building.
Three.
Begin to wiggle your fingers and toes. Bring life and energy back into the body.
Four.
Almost there.
Five.
Comments, criticisms, collaborations? Email me at ethan@humanpursuits.org, or follow me on Twitter and Instagram.
