What gay hypnotherapy actually is (and what it is not)

First, the part that is not this

Hypnosis has a bad history with gay men, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. For decades it was one of the tools used to try to make people straight. It did not work, because orientation is not a switch and never was, and it hurt people badly. Every major medical and psychological body has said so plainly: sexual orientation is not a disorder, attempts to change it fail, and the attempts themselves cause harm.

So let me be plain too. Nothing on this site, and nothing in my room, is about changing who you are. If you arrived here hoping for that, I am the wrong person and I will tell you so in the first five minutes.

Two other things this is not, since they share the search results: it is not stage hypnosis — nobody clucks, nobody hands over control — and it is not the erotic hypnosis content that lives a few links away. Different thing entirely.

So what is it

The clinical definition first, because it is not mystical. In 2014 the American Psychological Association's division for psychological hypnosis defined hypnosis as a state of focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness, with an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion. Hypnotherapy is the use of that state to treat a psychological or medical concern. That is the whole thing.

Gay hypnotherapy is that, done by a gay practitioner, for gay men. The method is identical. What changes is everything around the method — and if you have ever sat across from a clinician and watched their face when you said my husband, you already know the difference.

You do not explain the smaller world, where your ex is at the same parties. You do not explain the family who treated the ending as less serious, or quietly vindicating. You do not explain the age story that runs sharper in gay life than most people admit. You do not manage my comfort. That is not a small thing. Most of the time it turns out to be the thing.

How I actually work

Here is where a lot of hypnotherapy fails, and I want to be specific about it. Many hypnotists talk about a "pre-talk" and then go straight to the induction. If you are not clear about what you want, or not actually ready to change it, hypnosis by itself does nothing. Nothing. You had a pleasant twenty minutes with your eyes closed.

So the order is not optional. Every engagement starts with an intake and motivational interviewing — the part where we find out what actually gets you moving, because no one is unmotivated; people are always doing something. Then Internal Family Systems as the frame, because the pattern you came about is being run by a part of you that has been protecting someone for a long time, and steamrolling it does not work. Then, and only then, the hypnosis — which is where talking to that part gets easy in a way it never is in ordinary conversation.

Afterwards I record a session built around your situation, your language, your goals. Yours to keep. Not a stock download.

What people come for

Three things make up most of the practice, and each has its own page written for the person living it, not for someone shopping for a modality:

• Someone you love is drinking or using, and you have become extremely good at a job you never applied for.
• Your marriage or long relationship ended, and what went with it was not just him but your sense of who you were.
• You run a business and your mind never switches off, and nobody you have found understands both the company and your relationship.

Alongside those: the midlife reappraisal that arrives when you did everything right and feel nothing; body image and weight, without the promises; work with gay Black men, and the honest answer to why a white immigrant lists that; and chronic pain, on its own site.

Does it work

Yes, and I would rather give you the honest version than the persuasive one. For anxiety the evidence is strong: a meta-analysis of seventeen controlled trials found the average person treated with hypnosis improved more than about 84% of people who were not. Sleep, good. Stress, moderate, and the reviewers say the studies need to be better. Pain, real and quick, and it never stops surprising me.

And — this is the part I want you to hear — we also lack a lot of studies for exactly the areas where I have seen it work best: grief, the aftermath of a breakup, the long adjustment to a life that changed shape. It works there. It does not work there by itself. It needs the foundation underneath it, which is why the order above is the order.

Who I am

Eugene Berezin. Registered Hypnotherapist in Washington State (#HYPN.HP.70073119), substance use disorder professional trainee, Master's in psychology, and more than ten years in mental health before I opened this practice — psychotherapist, youth counsellor, case manager, social work. I moved to the United States from Russia in 2013 and rebuilt a life from scratch in a second language. Then I went through my own divorce. I am openly gay, and I built this practice because when I went looking for someone who understood my life without needing it explained, I could not find him.

Sessions are $250 for sixty minutes, online, worldwide, in English or Russian. You send a request, I reply within one to two business days, and no payment is taken until you have decided.

Request an appointment (opens the secure SimplePractice appointment request form in a new tab)

Sources: APA Division 30 definitions of hypnosis (2014). Valentine, Milling et al., The efficacy of hypnosis as a treatment for anxiety: a meta-analysis, International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2019.