Can Hypnotherapy Help You Get Over a Breakup or Divorce?
Can hypnotherapy help you get over a breakup or divorce, and how would it work for you specifically?
If you're going through a divorce or a breakup, you probably thought of going to therapy at some point. Or you might be thinking, I need to see somebody. I might need to see a therapist to help me get over this.
But you probably didn't think of hypnosis.
And I want to bring another perspective to that: hypnosis and motivational interviewing together.
Should you choose hypnosis, or just classical talk therapy?
I'm not bashing talk therapy. But what I specifically learned from my experience working with my clients is that a lot of the time therapy fails because there's a lack of a working definition of the goal — what we're working towards.
Let me give you an example.
You broke up, or you are going through a divorce, and it's like your life just shattered. The routine, the known, what you knew how life would be, is no longer here. And you experience grief and pain, and this is really devastating, and you want it to go away.
This is a very big topic. This is a very big goal.
How hypnotherapy can help you specifically
Number one: motivational interviewing.
Motivational interviewing is a way to talk to people, or a way to conduct coaching and counseling, that helps bring clarity and work with ambivalence and ambiguity.
Because when you come to a therapist after divorce, the goal is: I just need to process this, and I need to not feel like that anymore. Or maybe you have a different goal, like I want to date again, I want to stop hurting.
Again, as I said before, this is a very big goal, and it's a very vague goal.
With motivational interviewing, we are actually going to break it down into small goals. What is the most pressing thing right now, in the next few weeks? What do you want to achieve in the next few weeks? Not in a year, not in ten years, not in five years. Right now.
Motivational interviewing is wonderful for that.
Number two: hypnotherapy.
Now, I will be honest with you. I can't hypnotize you to be happy, to forget your ex, to have everything go away at the snap of my fingers. This is not how hypnotherapy works.
And if you find another hypnotist who says that in a session or two they will help you get over your ex and you will be healed perfectly — run away. They don't know human psychology, and this is an unethical promise.
What I can promise you is that clinical hypnotherapy helps with anxiety, helps with grief, and helps with stress management.
From my previous experience working with clients, the biggest outcomes from hypnotherapy are being grounded, finding purpose, being more connected, and conflict reduction — because people are more regulated.
And it is a self-regulation tool. Because I'm not just performing hypnosis on you. I'm teaching you how to perform self-hypnosis. So when you go home, you will have an additional tool for self-regulation.
And motivational interviewing is really building step by step.
Internal Family Systems
In addition to that — here's how I work with my clients who have just gone through a divorce, or are going through a divorce or a breakup, and it's really hard for them.
The philosophy of my entire work is Internal Family Systems. It's an evidence-based approach founded by Richard Schwartz, and the premise is that we have multiple parts in our mind, multiple personalities in a way.
When we are going through really tough times, we have a lot of wounded parts in us, and we have a lot of reactive parts, and we have a lot of protective parts. And the reason our life feels like it's in disarray sometimes is because all of those parts are activated.
So through the IFS philosophy and approach, with motivational interviewing, and with hypnosis — and I do a lot of IFS in hypnosis. I do a lot of Internal Family Systems and parts work in hypnosis, and it's extremely, extremely, extremely effective.
This is how hypnosis works specifically in divorce.
Rather than tackling healing, tackling getting over your ex, tackling moving forward with your life — we break it down into small goals, and we work on those goals one goal at a time.
How long does it take?
When it comes to divorce, normally: however long it takes for your nervous system to adjust.
But I'm a very practical person. I like to break it up into 12 sessions. At session 12 we do a check-in. Have we achieved that goal? Where are we moving, or what is next on the horizon? And does it make clinical sense for us to work together, or maybe you need another specialist?
Maybe you achieved one goal, and maybe it became evident that there's something else. Or you want to try something different, or there's another goal that you want to work on together — and we work on that goal for another 8 to 12 sessions.
I hope it helps
Let me know in the comments where I can clarify. And I'm curious — have you tried hypnosis before, and what did you think hypnosis was? Because there's a lot of misconception about hypnosis.
I don't do stage hypnosis. I don't do mind tricks.
This is how I treat gay men going through the painful time of divorce and that devastation. We're not tackling big, vague healing. We break it down into small pieces and move one step at a time, with evidence-based approaches.
I hope it helps.
If you would like to learn more, go to my website, goodhypnotherapy.org. The link is in the description. You can find all the information about me, the services, how to book a 15-minute consultation, the pricing, all of that on my website. I also have a lot of resources, like blogs and more information about what I do and how I help people.
I hope it helps. I will see you in the next video.
Bye y'all.
More on this: Hypnotherapy for gay men after divorce or a long-term breakup · What is clinical hypnosis?
