Approach · hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy
I am a certified hypnotherapist, and what I actually do under that name is much quieter than the word suggests. There is no swinging watch, nothing theatrical, and nothing that takes your judgment away from you. It is a focused, settled state that you enter deliberately and can leave whenever you choose. You have been in something close to it many times: absorbed in a book, driving a familiar road, on the edge of sleep. We use that state on purpose, with your consent, for something specific.
Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.
What this looks like with me
We agree on what we are doing before we do anything. That means naming the aim out loud, in your own words, and naming what is off limits. I do not surprise people with hypnotherapy, and I do not use it in a first session. It also means agreeing on how you stop: you can open your eyes, speak, or simply say the word, and we are done. Knowing that in advance is what makes settling possible at all.
Then it usually begins with something like guided attention. I talk, slowly, and you follow it: your breath, the weight of your hands, sounds in the room, a place you know well. Your thinking mind keeps commenting for a while, which is normal and not a problem. Somewhere in there most people notice that their body has let go of something it had been holding for months, and that is often useful in itself, particularly for people who have not felt genuinely settled in a very long time.
From there we work with images and metaphor, because absorbed states take those in more readily than argument. A door. A road. A weight put down somewhere specific. A younger version of you who gets told something she needed to hear from an adult. What comes up is yours, not mine; I am mostly asking questions and following what you describe. Frequently the image is more precise about your situation than anything either of us would have produced by discussing it.
We also use it to rehearse. If you have a hard conversation coming, a medical procedure, or a first day, practicing it in a settled state means your body has been through a version where it did not go into alarm. And we always come all the way back out, unhurried, before the hour ends. You will not be left half in it. Being at home when we finish makes that easier, which is one more argument for doing this by video.
You are awake the whole time. Nothing is done to you.
It is a state you have been in before. We are only using it on purpose.
Where I find this fits
A nervous system that has not rested
For people who have been braced for years, the experience of genuinely settling can be unfamiliar enough to be worth the session on its own. It also gives us a reference point you can find your way back to.
Grief that words keep circling
Grief is my primary specialty, and it does not always yield to discussion. An image can hold what a sentence cannot, and something often becomes speakable afterward that was not speakable before.
Anticipatory fear
A surgery, a flight, a hearing, a conversation you have been dreading for weeks. Rehearsing it in a settled state changes what your body expects to walk into.
Habits with a physical hook
Nail biting, teeth grinding, the reflex reach for something at the end of a hard day. This works best combined with understanding what the habit is doing for you rather than against it.
Sleep
Practical work with the state you cannot get into at eleven at night, learned somewhere other than in bed at eleven at night.
How we would work
We start with a free 20-minute consult by phone, text or video. You tell me what you are hoping for and I tell you honestly whether hypnotherapy is a reasonable part of it or whether something else fits better.
If we go ahead, sessions are weekly by secure video or audio, and hypnotherapy is one instrument among several rather than the whole practice. Internal Family Systems, somatic work, mindfulness, expressive approaches, EMDR where a memory still carries a live charge and I am EMDR certified, and my own Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning where an old loop keeps closing on itself. Which of those we use depends on you, not on a template.
I work with adults, seniors, couples and families. I do not treat bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
- Consent and a named aim before anything begins
- An agreed way to stop, which you control
- Never in a first session
- Working with images and metaphor rather than instruction
- Rehearsing hard moments in a settled state
- Coming all the way back out before the hour ends
Questions people ask about hypnotherapy
- Will I be unconscious, or do things I would not choose to do?
- No. This bears no resemblance to what stage shows have taught people to expect. You are awake, you can hear me, you can speak, you can open your eyes, and you can end it at any moment by simply deciding to. Nothing is done to you and nothing overrides your judgment. Most people describe it afterward as being deeply absorbed rather than being under anything, and a common comment is that they were more present than usual rather than less.
- What if I cannot be hypnotized?
- People vary in how readily they settle into this, and depth is not what determines whether it is useful. Light absorption is enough for a great deal of the work. If it turns out this is genuinely not your route, I will say so plainly rather than making you keep trying, and we will use one of the other things I do. There is no version of this where not going deep counts as a failure on your part.
- Are you certified in this?
- Yes. I am a certified hypnotherapist, and I use the word certified here deliberately because it is accurate. I am also a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, California license 36950, which matters: hypnotherapy in my practice sits inside clinical therapy with a licensed therapist, not as a standalone service on its own. I hold an MA and a PhD as well, and a PhD is a degree rather than a license, so I will always be clear that my license is the LMFT.
- Can hypnotherapy recover memories?
- I do not use it for that, and I want to be direct about why. Memory is suggestible, and absorbed states make it more so, which means what surfaces under those conditions cannot be treated as reliable history. Building work on material produced that way risks doing real harm. I use hypnotherapy for settling the nervous system, for working with images and metaphor, and for practicing new responses, and I use it for none of the things that get promised elsewhere.
Quieter than it sounds
If the word has put you off, that is reasonable, and the reality is much plainer than the reputation. Text or email and we will find a time to talk. Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.