Empowering Parents to Address Children’s Psychological Concerns
Based on Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development, children of different ages have specific developmental tasks and growth characteristics. Paediatric hypnotherapy not only addresses immediate issues faced by children but also considers their long-term developmental needs. This approach aligns with parental guidance methods to ensure the comprehensive psychological growth of children.

Child Emotions

1. Fundamentals of Paediatric Hypnotherapy
2. Family of Origin and Parenting Styles
3. Children’s Behavior and the Subconscious
4. Brain Development and Hypnotherapy
5. Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development
6. Children’s Sleep and Hypnosis
7. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
8. Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
9. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
10. Pediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching
11. Positive Parenting for Children and Adolescents
12. Satir Parenting Techniques
13. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Role Tree
14. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Jointed Doll Models and Emotion Dolls
15. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Story Cubes
16. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Seed Paper and Handprint Paper
17. Workshop Processes for Parents and Schools

Paediatric Hypnotherapy Techniques

1. Communication Tips with Parents and Home Support Strategies
2. Code of Conduct for Pediatric Hypnotherapists
3. Suggestions in a Waking State
4. Metaphorical Stories
5. Trust Building and Addressing Hypnosis Fears
6. Focus, Imagination Exercises, and Body Scanning
7. Special Sleep Induction Methods
8. Rocking Induction Method
9. Candy House Induction Method
10. Lights Out Induction Method
11. Puppet Induction Method
12. Weight Induction Method
13. Number Catching Induction Method
14. Actor Induction Method
15. Worry Tree and Managing Negative Emotions
16. Inner Ally and Positive Resources
17. Hero Friends and Overcoming Fears
18. Security and Puppet Communication
19. Happiness and Gratitude for What You Have
20. Attachment Theory and Managing Separation Anxiety
21. TV Rewind and Handling Negative Experiences
22. Future Time Machine and Growth Mindset
23. Brain Calculator and Cognitive Behavior
24. Visualization and Pain Reduction

Applications of Pediatric Hypnotherapy

• Behavior

1. Emotional Fluctuations
2. Separation Anxiety
3. Respect and Courtesy
4. Tardiness and Procrastination
5. Lying
6. Cheating and Stealing

• Habits

1. Bedwetting
2. Sleep Habits
3. Psychogenic Stuttering
4. Hair Twirling, Nail Biting, and Thumb Sucking
5. Preventing Drug Initiation

• Performance

1. Stress and Tension
2. Academic Performance

• Self-Image

1. Adolescent Breakup Distress
2. Bullying, Verbal, and Emotional Abuse
3. Parental Divorce
4. Social Skills
5. Excessive Attention to Appearance and Ugly Duckling Syndrome

Stanford Medicine
3-10-2012
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Not getting sleepy? Research explains why hypnosis doesn’t work for all

Not everyone is able to be hypnotized, and new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows how the brains of such people differ from those who can easily be.

The study, published in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, uses data from functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging to identify how the areas of the brain associated with executive control and attention tend to have less activity in people who cannot be put into a hypnotic trance.

“There’s never been a brain signature of being hypnotized, and we’re on the verge of identifying one,” said David Spiegel, MD, the paper’s senior author and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Such an advance would enable scientists to understand better the mechanisms underlying hypnosis and how it can be used more widely and effectively in clinical settings, added Spiegel, who also directs the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine.

Spiegel estimates that one-quarter of the patients he sees cannot be hypnotized, though a person’s hypnotizability is not linked with any specific personality trait. “There’s got to be something going on in the brain,” he said.

Hypnosis is described as a trance-like state during which a person has a heightened focus and concentration. It has been shown to help with brain control over sensation and behavior, and has been used clinically to help patients manage pain, control stress and anxiety and combat phobias.

Hypnosis works by modulating activity in brain regions associated with focused attention, and this study offers compelling new details regarding neural capacity for hypnosis.

“Our results provide novel evidence that altered functional connectivity in [the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex] and [the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex] may underlie hypnotizability,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

For the study, Spiegel and his Stanford colleagues performed functional and structural MRI scans of the brains of 12 adults with high hypnotizability and 12 adults with low hypnotizability.

The researchers looked at the activity of three different networks in the brain: the default-mode network, used when one’s brain is idle; the executive-control network, which is involved in making decisions; and the salience network, which is involved in deciding something is more important than something else.

The findings, Spiegel said, were clear: Both groups had an active default-mode network, but highly hypnotizable participants showed greater co-activation between components of the executive-control network and the salience network. More specifically, in the brains of the highly hypnotizable group the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an executive-control region of the brain, appeared to be activated in tandem with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which is part of the salience network and plays a role in focusing of attention. By contrast, there was little functional connectivity between these two areas of the brain in those with low hypnotizability.

Spiegel said he was pleased that he and his team found something so clear. “The brain is complicated, people are complicated, and it was surprising we were able to get such a clear signature,” he explained.

Spiegel also said the work confirms that hypnotizability is less about personality variables and more about cognitive style. “Here we’re seeing a neural trait,” he said.

The authors’ next step is to further explore how these functional networks change during hypnosis. Spiegel and his team have recruited high- and low-hypnotizable patients for another study during which fMRI assessment will be done during hypnotic states. Funding for that work is being provided by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Funding for this study came from the Nissan Research Center, the Randolph H. Chase, MD Fund II, the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The study’s first-author is Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, who was formerly an instructor at Stanford’s Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research and is now an associate professor of psychiatry at UCSF. Other co-authors are John Gabrieli, PhD, a professor at MIT (then a professor of psychology at Stanford); Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, a research scientist at MIT (then a science and engineering associate at Stanford); Brian Haas, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia (then a postdoctoral scholar in the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford); Roland Bammer, PhD, associate professor of radiology; and Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

The Guardian
22-7-2012
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Vaughan Bell: hypnosis is no laughing matter

Long derided as a tool of quacks and comedians, the science of suggestibility is enjoying a revival as a clinical tool

Hypnosis is the eccentric uncle of cognitive science. It was once part of the mainstream – studied by scientists and clinicians alike in its 1960s heyday – but it slowly fell into disrepute as it was picked up and popularised by tacky stage hypnotists and quack practitioners in the following decades.

In recent years, hypnosis has seen something of a rebirth, and neuroscience studies using the technique are now regularly published in some of the most respected scientific journals. Curiously, though, it hasn’t shaken off the stigma entirely. While writing this article I contacted several researchers who have published neuroscience studies using hypnosis, and not one replied. The reticence is understandable. Like the study of consciousness 20 years ago, hypnosis is still considered by some to be a “career-limiting move”. Consequently, scientists make sure they stick to the most conservative and orthodox form of research – academic journals, occasional conference presentations, and definitely nothing that hints of hype, or indeed, public exposure.

The lack of wider discussion is a pity, as hypnosis – or rather suggestibility – is a remarkable aspect of human psychology. The ability to be hypnotised seems to be a distinct trait that is distributed among the population, like height or shoe size, in a “bell curve” or normal distribution: a minority of people cannot engage with any suggestions, a minority can engage with almost all, and most people can achieve a few.

The key word here is “engage”, as, contrary to popular belief, hypnosis cannot be used to make people do something against their will, even though the effects seem to happen involuntarily. If this seems paradoxical, a good analogy is watching a movie: you don’t decide to react emotionally to the on-screen story, but you can choose to turn away or disengage at any time. In other words, the effects of the film, just like hypnosis, require your active participation.

The most difficult suggestions to achieve are those which affect the fundamentals of the mind, such as memory and perception, meaning that while highly hypnotisable people can experience temporary hallucinations and amnesia after suitable suggestions, low-hypnotisable people may only be able to experience temporary changes in their volition or movements – such as an arm feeling heavier than usual, perhaps.

It seems, however, that there is very little that can be done to make you more or less hypnotisable – the hypnotisability trait is the primary factor in how successfully you can experience the effects. We know that there is a genetic component to this trait and that several studies have indicated that highly hypnotisable people show structural and functional differences in the brain when compared to low-hypnotisables, but the question of why we have a varying ability to have our reality changed by suggestions remains a mystery.

Due to their ability to have their mental processes temporarily altered in ways previously not thought possible, highly hypnotisable people have become key in scientific studies. Amir Raz and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal reported that it was possible to “switch off” automatic word reading and abolish the Stroop effect – a psychological phenomenon that demonstrates a conflict between meanings, such as where we are much slower to identify the ink colour of a word when the word itself describes a different hue. Furthermore, when this experiment was run in a brain scanner, participants showed much lower activation in both the anterior cingulate cortex, an area known to be particularly involved in resolving conflict between competing demands, and the visual cortex, which is crucial for recognising words. Although this may seem like a technicality, to the scientific world it was a strikingly persuasive demonstration that hypnosis could apparently disassemble an automatic and well-established psychological effect in a manner consistent with the brain processes that support it.

Neuroimaging has also proved key in answering the question of whether hypnotised people are pretending to experience the effects. When people are asked to fake hypnosis, to the point where observers cannot tell the difference between them and the genuinely hypnotised people, the two groups are clearly distinguishable by their brain activity.

Taking the science one step further, researchers from the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science in Sydney have published a series of studies in which they have used hypnosis to temporarily simulate genuine conditions where patients may hold false beliefs or lose awareness of a problem after brain injury. One such condition, called somatoparaphrenia, can occur after right-sided brain injury and can result in the patient denying ownership of a limb. Literally, the patient believes that their arm is not theirs, has been replaced, or belongs to someone else – something which both challenges our intuitive ideas about how we perceive our body and can pose a practical problem for post-injury rehabilitation. In highly hypnotisable volunteers, the Macquarie team momentarily instilled a similar feeling of limb alienation to examine whether healthy people could rationalise such a counterintuitive idea, finding that participants remained consistent in their explanations even when challenged with visual evidence.

A special issue of the respected journal Cortex will shortly be dedicated to the neuropsychology of hypnosis, additionally pointing to the growing momentum of the scientific revival. The wider public, however, still base their knowledge on the watches and weight-loss stereotype, meaning it is likely to be a while before neuroscientists feel comfortable about breaking their self-imposed silence.

NPR
30-06-2011
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Report Details How One Principal Hypnotized Students For Years

A school district in Florida just released a 130 page report that details how one high school principal hypnotized between 70 and 75 students since 2006.

The school district began investigating Dr. George Kenney, the former principal at North Port High School in Sarasota, after he admitted that he had hypnotized Wesley McKinley, 16, a day before he killed himself in April.

According to ABC News, investigators say Kenney now admits that he had hypnotized two other students who died within a month of McKinley.

ABC News reports:

[Kenney] had denied using the technique on Brittany Palumbo, 16, who killed herself May 4, or Marcus Freeman, 16, a star quarterback on the high school team, who died in a car crash March 15.

“Dr. Kenney admitted that he lied … and he admitted that he did have sessions with both of the other deceased students,” according to the report by Steele Investigations Agency, released this week.

In his interview with the investigators, Kenney, a popular principal at the school since 2001, said he felt terrible about “putting his school and his students through something that they didn’t need or deserve to have to endure on top of all the tragedy they already have experienced” and started to cry, the report says.

Tampa Bay’s Fox 13 reports that Kenney’s hypnosis sessions were well known and widespread. Kenney would hypnotize students to help with their test scores and athletic performance. Fox 13 reports that Kenney always sought parental consent. In 2009, the report says his supervisor told him he could only perform hypnosis in a psychology class, but Kenney continued doing it because he said he was never told to stop.

Fox 13 says no one is linking the hypnosis with the deaths of the students, but The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that the school district put Kenney on leave in May pending an investigation into whether he broke the law when he hypnotized students.

The Herald Tribune reports that “therapeutic” hypnosis is against the law the in Florida, unless it is monitored or conducted by a medical professional. But it’s unlikely that Kenney will face prosecution, because the law is vague and “rarely used” since it was enacted in 1961.

The Herald Tribune reports:

Bradenton lawyer Mark Lipinski said the statute lacks the crucial definition of “therapeutic,” leaving investigators with only its broad dictionary definition.

“The law is obscure, vague and unenforceable,” he said. “I honestly just don’t see a crime and any case would be a stretch, in my opinion.”

BBC
06-06-2011
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NHS should offer hypnosis as standard says new report

Hypnosis should become a standard technique on the NHS to treat a range of conditions according to a new report.

The hypnosis and psychosomatic medicine section of the Royal Society of Medicine says the technique can be used to relieve pain and treat stress related conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.

Graham Satchell reports.

American Psychological Association
01-2011
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Hypnosis continues to show promise in reducing pain and soothing anxiety, although the research is still inconclusive about its success in smoking cessation.

The first task for many psychologists who use hypnosis is telling patients what hypnosis is and what it isn’t.

“If you watch hypnosis on TV, the subject always ends up clucking like a chicken, being naked or assassinating a president,” says Eric Willmarth, PhD, founder of Michigan Behavioral Consultants and past president of APA Div. 30 (Society of Psychological Hypnosis).

Even though stage hypnotists and TV shows have damaged the public image of hypnosis, a growing body of scientific research supports its benefits in treating a wide range of conditions, including pain, depression, anxiety and phobias.

“Hypnosis works and the empirical support is unequivocal in that regard. It really does help people,” says Michael Yapko, PhD, a psychologist and fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. “But hypnosis isn’t a therapy in and of itself. Most people wouldn’t regard it that way.”

Hypnosis can create a highly relaxed state of inner concentration and focused attention for patients, and the technique can be tailored to different treatment methods, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. Patients also can become more empowered by learning to hypnotize themselves at home to reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, or alleviate some symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Hypnosis has been used for centuries for pain control, including during the Civil War when Army surgeons hypnotized injured soldiers before amputations. Recent studies have confirmed its effectiveness as a tool to reduce pain. Among the leading researchers in the field is Guy H. Montgomery, PhD, a psychologist who has conducted extensive research on hypnosis and pain management at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he is director of the Integrative Behavioral Medicine Program.

In one study, Montgomery and colleagues tested the effectiveness of a 15-minute pre-surgery hypnosis session versus an empathic listening session in a clinical trial with 200 breast cancer patients. In a 2007 article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (Vol. 99, No. 17), the team reported that patients who received hypnosis reported less post-surgical pain, nausea, fatigue and discomfort. The study also found that the hospital saved $772 per patient in the hypnosis group, mainly due to reduced surgical time. Patients who were hypnotized required less of the analgesic lidocaine and the sedative propofol during surgery.

“Hypnosis helps patients to reduce their distress and have positive expectations about the outcomes of surgery,” Montgomery says. “I don’t think there is any magic or mind control.”

In a 2009 article in Health Psychology (Vol. 28, No. 3), Montgomery and colleagues reported on another study, which found that a combination of hypnosis and cognitive-behavioral therapy could reduce fatigue for breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.

Research has also shown the benefits of hypnosis for burn victims. In a 2007 report in Rehabilitation Psychology (Vol. 52, No. 3), Shelley Wiechman Askay, PhD, David R. Patterson, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Washington Medical School found that hypnosis before wound debridement significantly reduced pain reported by patients on one pain rating questionnaire.

No cure-all
People vary widely in their ability to respond to hypnotic suggestions, a trait which can be measured by standardized scales. But it isn’t well understood what causes the varying levels of “hypnotizability” or their significance.

Yapko says few clinicians use hypnotizability scales because responses to a structured test don’t predict how a patient will respond to hypnosis in treatment. He served as guest editor for a recent special issue of the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (Vol. 58, No. 2) that examined research on hypnosis and depression. In an editorial, Yapko urged more research and a rejection of outdated views that hypnosis can precipitate suicide or psychosis in depressed patients. Other articles examined how hypnosis can be integrated with cognitive-behavioral therapy or used with depressed patients and their families.

Willmarth says he doesn’t always use hypnotizibility scales with his patients, but will try a hypnosis session and measure the patient’s response to see if it is effective. “You have to be a little bit willing to fail in order to do it often enough to succeed,” he says.

Hypnosis may not succeed in all cases and can actually be detrimental in some instances, especially in the realm of retrieving memories.

Joseph P. Green, PhD, a psychology professor at Ohio State University at Lima, has researched how hypnotic suggestions can produce distorted or false memories. He also found that people may believe hypnotically induced memories are more reliable, mirroring a mistaken cultural belief that hypnosis acts like a truth serum. Hypnosis is “on thin ice” when used to recover memories, as is the case with most other memory retrieval techniques, Green says.

Hypnosis got a bad name in the 1990s when some therapists convinced patients they had been molested or abused as children because of hypnotically induced memories, which often had no evidence to support them. As a result, many innocent people were wrongly accused of abuse in hundreds of court cases, Yapko says.

“People didn’t really understand the suggestibility of memory,” he says. “That whole issue has pretty much fallen by the wayside now” because of advances in research.

In a 2007 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada established a precedent that post-hypnosis evidence is inadmissible in court because of its unreliability. In R. v. Trochym, the court overturned a murder conviction after a witness changed her timeline of events following a hypnosis session that was requested by detectives. The jury wasn’t told that the witness had been hypnotized or that she had changed her recollection.

“In sum, while it is not generally accepted that hypnosis always produces unreliable memories, neither is it clear when hypnosis results in pseudo-memories or how a witness, scientist or trier of fact might distinguish between fabricated and accurate memories,” the decision stated.

Up in smoke
Smokers also should be wary of the plethora of hypnosis programs and tapes peddled online with guarantees of instant success. “Despite the widespread use, the science warranting that popularity is suspect,” Green says.

Green began studying hypnosis and smoking cessation more than 25 years ago after seeing overblown claims from itinerant hypnotists who held weekend sessions in hotels before moving on to the next town. In a January article in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis (Vol. 52, No. 3), Green and Binghamton University psychology professor Steven Jay Lynn, PhD, wrote about the body of research on hypnosis and smoking cessation and found mixed results.

In a literature review published in 2000 (International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Vol. 48, No. 2), Green and Lynn analyzed 59 studies on hypnosis and smoking cessation. While hypnosis was more successful than no treatment, it was generally equivalent to other smoking-cessation methods. However, many studies had combined hypnosis with cognitive-behavioral therapy or other treatment methods, so it was impossible to determine the effectiveness of hypnosis alone. Green says hypnosis may help smokers quit, but more research needs to be done. In a 2008 report published by the Cochrane Library, Neil C. Abbot, operations director for ME Research UK, and colleagues examined nine randomized trials and also found insufficient evidence to recommend hypnosis as a specific treatment for smoking cessation.

Learning the ropes
While more research is being conducted on the benefits of hypnosis, graduate schools are lagging behind in incorporating hypnosis training into psychology programs, say Yapko, Willmarth and Montgomery. “The universities have really dropped the ball by thinking hypnosis is a sideshow rather than being relevant to effective psychotherapy,” Yapko says.

Some graduate schools may not be convinced of the effectiveness of hypnosis or the research supporting its use, but other schools have developed clinical hypnosis classes, including Saybrook University’s Graduate College of Mind-Body Medicine in San Francisco, where Willmarth teaches a hypnosis course. At Washington State University, psychology professor Arreed Barabasz, PhD, directs the hypnosis laboratory and teaches graduate-level hypnosis courses and research seminars. He also is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.

Since many psychologists have never taken a hypnosis class as part of their education, they often seek training later in their careers. It can be bewildering to find a class, though, since a search for “hypnosis training” generates more than 600,000 hits on Google.

“You can go anyplace on the weekend and get a hypnosis certification,” Willmarth says. “You have thousands of lay hypnosis schools that are willing to train anyone who will pay the tuition.”

To make sure psychologists don’t end up with charlatan teachers, Willmarth recommends courses approved by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. ASCH also offers a certification in clinical hypnosis for licensed health-care professionals with at least a master’s degree. Certification requires at least 40 hours of ASCH-approved workshop training, 20 hours of individualized training and two years of independent practice using clinical hypnosis.

Willmarth says interest in clinical hypnosis is growing and more psychologists are learning how hypnosis can help their patients.

“It goes in waves,” he says. “Right now, we’re on an upswing.”

Cochrane Library
06-10-2010
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Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation

Background
Hypnotherapy is widely promoted as a method for aiding smoking cessation. It is proposed to act on underlying impulses to weaken the desire to smoke or strengthen the will to stop.

Objectives
To evaluate the efficacy of hypnotherapy for smoking cessation.

Search methods
We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group Specialized Register and the databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED, SCI, SSCI using the terms smoking cessation and hypnotherapy or hypnosis. Date of most recent searches July 2010. There were no language restrictions.

Selection criteria
We considered randomized controlled trials of hypnotherapy which reported smoking cessation rates at least six months after the beginning of treatment.

Data collection and analysis
Three authors independently extracted data on participant characteristics, the type and duration of the hypnotherapy, the nature of the control group, smoking status, method of randomization, and completeness of follow up. They also independently assessed the quality of the included studies.

The main outcome measure was abstinence from smoking after at least six months follow up. We used the most rigorous definition of abstinence in each trial, and biochemically validated rates where available. Those lost to follow up were considered to be smoking. We summarised effects as risk ratios (RR). Where possible, we performed meta‐analysis using a fixed‐effect model. We also noted any adverse events reported.

Main results
Eleven studies compared hypnotherapy with 18 different control interventions. There was significant heterogeneity between the results of the individual studies, with conflicting results for the effectiveness of hypnotherapy compared to no treatment, or to advice, or psychological treatment. We did not attempt to calculate pooled risk ratios for the overall effect of hypnotherapy. There was no evidence of a greater effect of hypnotherapy when compared to rapid smoking or psychological treatment. Direct comparisons of hypnotherapy with cessation treatments considered to be effective had confidence intervals that were too wide to infer equivalence.

Authors’ conclusions
We have not shown that hypnotherapy has a greater effect on six‐month quit rates than other interventions or no treatment. There is not enough evidence to show whether hypnotherapy could be as effective as counselling treatment. The effects of hypnotherapy on smoking cessation claimed by uncontrolled studies were not confirmed by analysis of randomized controlled trials.

The Guardian
30-09-2010
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Hypnosis reaches the parts brain scans and neurosurgery cannot

No longer a mere vaudeville routine, hypnosis is being used in labs to cast light on the innermost workings of the brain

Vaughan Bell blogs at Mind Hacks

Whenever AR sees a face, her thoughts are bathed in colour and each identity triggers its own rich hue that shines across her mind’s eye. This experience is a type of synaesthesia which, for about one in every 100 people, automatically blends the senses. Some people taste words, others see sounds, but AR experiences colour with every face she sees. But on this occasion, perhaps for the first time in her life, a face is just a face. No colours, no rich hues, no internal lights.

If the experience is novel for AR, it is equally new to science because no one had suspected that synaesthesia could be reversed. Despite the originality of the discovery, the technique responsible for the switch is neither the hi-tech of brain stimulation nor the cutting-edge of neurosurgery, but the long-standing practice of hypnosis.

The surprising reversal of AR’s synaesthesia was reported in a recent study by psychologist Devine Terhune and his colleagues at Lund University in Sweden. The researchers showed photos of colour-tinted faces to AR and asked her to identify the onscreen hue while electrical activity was measured from her brain using scalp electrodes.

When the colour of the onscreen face clashed with the colour that appeared in her mind’s eye, she reacted slowly, as if trying to read traffic lights through tinted glasses. Meanwhile, the electrical measurements showed her brain struggling to resolve the conflict.

But after hypnotic reversal, she glided through the colour naming, reacting as quickly as people without synaesthesia, and showing none of the tell-tale neurological signs of trying to resolve competing mental demands. Hypnosis had not only altered her experience but had modified the workings of specific brain pathways in ways that we cannot usually manage through conscious will alone.

In a growing number of labs around the world, hypnosis is being used as an experimental tool to allow researchers to temporarily unpick our normally integrated psychological responses to better understand the mind and brain.

Synaesthesia is an automatic psychological association that occurs only in a very few people, but we are blessed (and, indeed, cursed) with minds that mostly operate on autopilot. Take words, for example. As you read the words in this text, you are not consciously identifying each letter, joining them together in your head, and matching the collection to a memory of what it means, it just seems to happen automatically when you see each one.

In an analogy to AR’s colour-clash face task, if I ask you to name the colour that the word green is highlighted in, I hope you would say red. It turns out that you are slightly slower at naming the highlight colour when it clashes with the word (like in red, green and blue) than when the colours and the words match (as in red, green and blue) because we can’t decide not to read the words when we see them – it happens automatically – and this interferes with trying to name the ink colour.

This interference is known as the Stroop effect and, along with the normal brain responses that accompany it, have also been reversed with hypnosis by “switching off” automatic word reading.

If you’re not familiar with hypnosis, I suspect you might be entertaining visions of a Victorian gentleman in a three-piece suit swinging a pocket watch in a brain scanner, but there is no magic to the procedure – it simply requires that someone concentrates on your voice. Even the relaxation part has been found to be optional after an innovative study managed to hypnotise people while on exercise bikes.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about hypnosis is that not everyone is hypnotisable to the same extent: countless research studies have shown that we each differ in our susceptibility. Most people can experience their arm feeling light or heavy at someone else’s suggestion, a few less can feel as if movement is being prevented on command, and only a minority – about 10% of the population – experience changes in the workings of perception, memory and thought.

For those who are “low hypnotisable”, being hypnotised is often like listening to one of those slightly dull relaxation tapes that go on for too long, but for high hypnotisables, known as “virtuosos” in the scientific literature, the effects are compelling.

We don’t know why we have this tendency, but we do know it is partly genetic, that it’s influenced by specific genes, and has been linked to differences in the structure of the brain.

The trait seems to be normally distributed throughout the population and no reliable methods have been found to alter how hypnotisable we are. Most likely, some people have it, while others do not. This trait is usually described as “suggestibility” but it is nothing to do with gullibility or being easily led. People susceptible to hypnosis are not more naive, trusting or credulous than anyone else, but they do have the capacity to allow seemingly involuntary changes to their mind and body.

The key phrase here is that they “have the capacity to allow” because hypnosis cannot be used to force someone against their will. It’s a bit like watching an emotional movie. If you want, you can turn away, ignore what’s going on, or play sudoku in your head, but if you engage with the story you don’t consciously decide to feel joy or sadness as the story progresses, you just react. Hypnosis works in a similar way – some people just seem to have the capacity to get more “caught up in the story”.

When a suggestion is successful, the experience of it seeming to “happen on its own” is key and this is exactly what neuroscientists have been working with – by suggesting temporary changes to the mind that we wouldn’t necessarily be able to trigger on our own. In the case of the two experiments that managed to temporarily “switch off” the Stroop effect in highly hypnotisable people, the suggestion was that the words appeared as “meaningless symbols”. This avoided a clash between the colour and the word because the text suddenly appeared to be gibberish.

These studies have been useful because they have found that the brain’s system for resolving conflicting demands, part of our system for managing attention, seemed to go offline. Hypnotic virtuosos apparently have the capacity to put this system on standby when they need to, something that low hypnotisables lack. Neuroscientists Amir Raz and Jason Buhle suggest hypnosis is really when we allow suggestions to take over from our normally self-directed control of attention that deals with mental self-management, allowing science an exciting tool to “get under the hood” of the conscious mind.

As well as allowing us to better explore the nuts and bolts of the mind and brain, hypnosis is also being used to simulate experiences that normally cause people problems, such as hallucinations or loss of control over the body. Because the effects of suggestions are only temporary, hypnosis can be used to trigger these experiences without distress and for only a few minutes at a time. “Virtuosos” are now highly sought after for brain scanning experiments where researchers look at patterns of brain activity when, for example, they are asked to hear illusory music or feel as if they can’t move their hand.

Several research groups have shown that hypnosis seems to emulate these experiences very closely and that the effects on the brain are different from when participants are asked to fake or imagine the same thing – both important comparisons because we can’t tell just from what someone says that they are genuinely experiencing the effects (as parents of school-shy youngsters with mysteriously timed stomach aches could attest).

Our own research group is using hypnosis to simulate changes in control of the body, in part to examine whether similar brain processes are involved both in hypnosis and a condition called conversion disorder – where what seem to be neurological symptoms appear, like paralysis or blindness, despite there being no damage to the nervous system that could explain them.

So far, there seems to be similarity between the disorder and the effects of hypnosis in that the frontal lobe attention systems seem to be taking other brain areas offline. What we’re not sure of, is why this is only temporary in hypnosis but long-term in conversion disorder.

But perhaps even more mysterious is why we have the capacity to be hypnotised at all. As a species, about 10% of the population can have their reality profoundly altered simply by tuning in to suggestions made by someone else – something that is deeply weird when you think about it.

Virtuoso hypnotisability has never been reliably linked to any problems or difficulties and it has been suggested that, on the contrary, it actually reflects a more efficient control of the brain’s attention systems. It could be a side-effect of other benefits, but we still don’t have any good theories. If you have any suggestions, do let me know.

1. PREAMBLE & MISSION

The Association for Integrative Medicine (AIM) has established the AIM Psycho-Social Crisis Response Team (CISM-IASC Aligned) to provide immediate, short-term psychological support during critical incidents, natural disasters, and mass casualty events.

These guidelines serve as the global standard operating procedure (SOP). While specific therapeutic modalities may vary based on local cultural needs and practitioner expertise, all interventions must be evidence-based, legally compliant, and strictly adhere to the protocols defined herein.

It is imperative to adhere to these guidelines in their entirety. Any violation of these ethical, safety, or operational standards will result in the immediate revocation of AIM-PSCRT membership and potential legal referral.

2. COMPLIANCE & LEGAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Local Legal Sovereignty
It is imperative that all AIM-PSCRT chapters operate strictly within the legal framework of their respective jurisdictions.

The definition of “allowable psychological interventions” must comply with the regulations established by local medical and mental health licensing boards.
In instances where a particular technique is legally restricted to medical doctors, non-medical AIM members must resort to alternative stabilization techniques that are legally compliant.

2.2 Zero-Tolerance Policy
The following protocol shall be observed in the event that a member is found to be acting beyond the scope of their legal practice or in violation of the “Do No Harm” principle. In such an instance, the member in question will be permanently expelled from the Association.

3. OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORKS

All AIM-PSCRT interventions are required to be structured around two non-negotiable international frameworks:

3.1 Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM)
It is imperative that members employ the CISM model (Mitchell & Everly) as the foundational framework for intervention.

Target: The primary objectives of treatment are stabilization, reduction of impairment, and facilitation of return to function.

Prohibition: It is imperative to refrain from conducting “psychological debriefing” (CISD) on individuals who are still in a state of high acute shock or dissociation. The primary objective is to defuse and stabilize.

3.2 IASC MHPSS Guidelines (2007)
According to the 2007 Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) MHPSS Guidelines, adherence to the aforementioned guidelines on mental health and psychosocial support in emergency settings is mandatory for all members.

Core Principle: Do No Harm.
The coordination process is as follows: It is imperative to avoid working in isolation. In order to ensure an integrated response, it is essential to coordinate with general health services and community supports.

4. MEMBERSHIP QUALIFICATION & VETTING

To ensure the highest standard of care, the “Volunteer” status does not exempt members from professional rigor. Candidates are required to successfully complete the following three-stage assessment:

1. Written Knowledge Exam: The course material encompasses the CISM theory, IASC guidelines, psychotraumatology, and local legal statutes.
2. Crisis Intervention Exam: The practical simulation necessitates that the candidate exhibit the capacity to implement rapid stabilization techniques, meticulously adapted for crisis scenarios, under observation.
3. Resilience Test: A psychological evaluation is necessary to ascertain whether the candidate possesses the emotional fortitude to function in high-stress environments without becoming a secondary casualty (vicarious trauma).

5. CLINICAL BOUNDARIES: PFA & THERAPY

5.1 Distinct Roles
It is imperative that members clearly distinguish between Psychological First Aid (PFA) and Clinical Psychotherapy.

Psychological First Aid (PFA)
The objective is threefold: immediate stabilization, safety, and comfort.
The timeframe for this process is measured in minutes to hours post-event.
Action:The reduction of arousal is imperative to ensure that fundamental physical needs are met.

Clinical Psychotherapy:
The objective of the treatment is threefold: first, to facilitate profound processing; second, to promote resolution of trauma; and third, to effect change in personality.
The temporal framework encompasses a period ranging from weeks to months following the occurrence of the event within a clinical setting.
Action:Regression analysis and restructuring.

5.2 Operational Restriction
According to the fifth section of the AIM-PSCRT protocol, members of the organization are strictly forbidden from conducting deep clinical trauma processing in the field. The objective of the treatment is limited to the alleviation and stabilization of symptoms.

5.3 Disclaimer Requirement
It is imperative that each member explicitly articulates the following to recipients (or guardians) prior to engagement:

The techniques delineated herein are intended for the provision of psychological first aid and the immediate stabilization of emotional states. It is imperative to note that these measures are intended to provide supplementary support and do not supersede critical medical interventions, law enforcement negotiations, or prolonged psychiatric treatment.

6. MECHANISMS OF ACTION & PFA APPLICATION

6.1 The Neuropsychological Mechanism
Interventions are predicated on the assumption that during a crisis:

The experience of high emotional arousal has been demonstrated to be a catalyst for the activation of the fight-or-flight response.
The aforementioned factors result in the suspension of the critical faculty, otherwise known as the conscious filter.
Individuals exhibit a heightened susceptibility to suggestion. Consequently, the AIM-PSCRT member is tasked with the role of “External Regulator,” employing authoritative yet soothing directives to circumvent panic and reestablish a sense of safety.

6.2 The PFA Principles in Context
Members are expected to implement the standard PFA model through specialized communication.

LOOK (The initial phase of the process is observation and triage):
A comprehensive evaluation should be conducted to ascertain the presence of any indications of dissociation, characterized by a vacant stare. Additionally, the manifestation of hysteria or shock should be closely monitored.
Application:These signs should be used as entry points for “Utilization” techniques.

LISTEN (Pay close attention to the following list of validation points):
It is imperative to engage in active listening, prioritizing the immediate concerns of the individual.
Application:Pay close attention to the “key words” that the survivor employs and subsequently offer them suggestions that will facilitate the establishment of a rapport.

LINK (Resource Connection):
The establishment of a connection with individuals or services is imperative.
The application of the survivor’s internal connection to their own past resources of strength and calmness, also known as anchoring, is a crucial aspect of the intervention.

7. EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE & PROTOCOLS

7.1 Emotional Knowledge and the Inner Child
It is imperative that members operate from the understanding that all emotional reactions, including hysteria and freezing, are inherently beneficial.

Concept: The concept of the “Inner Child” or Subconscious Mind has been postulated as a factor in eliciting such reactions, which are believed to serve a protective function.
Technique: It is imperative to refrain from resisting the emotional response. First, it is essential to acknowledge the protective intent behind this behavior, as illustrated by the following statement: “I know part of you is trying to keep you safe/alert.” Following this acknowledgment, a more adaptive approach to safety should be proposed, such as conserving energy.

7.2 Consent and Legal Handling in Chaos
In situations characterized by chaos, where the provision of written informed consent is impracticable, the principles of consent and legal handling are of paramount importance.

Implied Consent: This assertion is only valid in circumstances involving life-saving or acute stabilization when the subject is unable to communicate.
Verbal Consent: It is imperative to seek this whenever possible.
The Two-Person Rule, also known as the Buddy System, is mandatory. It is imperative to note that no member of the AIM-PSCRT is permitted to engage with a survivor in a secluded area independently. It is imperative to always work in pairs. One individual is tasked with facilitating the process, while the other focuses on observing and documenting the proceedings. This measure is designed to safeguard the interests of both the survivor and the member by preventing the emergence of allegations against either party.

8. FIELD SAFETY & SELF-PROTECTION

8.1 Environmental Awareness
According to the most recent research, members are responsible for their own safety first. It is imperative to establish a clear distinction between the concepts of “heroism” and “negligence.”

Structural Safety: It is imperative to refrain from entering structures that have been damaged by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, fires, or floods, for the purpose of providing psychological support. It is imperative to await authorization from the pertinent Fire and Rescue authorities.
The Sanctuary Rule: It is imperative to ensure that the location designated for intervention is shielded from the direct view of carnage or immediate danger.

8.2 Health & Evacuation
The following section will address health and evacuation protocols.

The following is a discussion of disease prevention strategies. In regions affected by disasters, such as floods, it is imperative to assume that all water and surfaces are contaminated. The utilization of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) is imperative in scenarios where physical contact, such as a handshake, is deemed to be unavoidable.
Escape Route: Prior to engaging any survivor, it is incumbent upon the member to identify the nearest Exit Strategy.
Hostile Environments: In the event that a location becomes subject to violence, such as riots or looting, AIM-PSCRT members are required to promptly remove their identification vests and evacuate the area. It is imperative to acknowledge that our role does not entail the maintenance of peace.

Los Angeles Daily News
05-08-2009
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HEALING – After a childhood of trauma, local woman finds solace in hypnotherapy

Sasha Carrion will tell you from firsthand experience: It takes a lot of strength to overcome a lifetime of trauma.

But nearly 30 years after her mother disappeared – murdered, she believes, by her own father – the 32-year-old former Torrance resident has figured out a way to put the past behind her.

She did it through hypnosis.

“My whole life was absolutely centered on getting justice for my mother’s murder,” said Carrion, who was so moved by her emotional transformation that she became a hypnotherapist. “It had consumed me.”

Hypnosis, a process by which a person enters a state of deep relaxation and heightened suggestibility, helped Carrion heal by allowing her to let go of her past.

It wasn’t an easy past to relinquish.

Carrion’s life has been a series of struggles – tragic events that began 27 years ago when she awoke one day to find her mother, Rosa Maria Marquez, missing from their Bell Gardens home.

She was 5, and her parents were separated and in the process of getting a divorce.

“I remember calling out to my mom and she didn’t say anything,” said Carrion, now a stunning woman with deep brown eyes and coffee-color hair. “The next thing I remember is the cops were there.”

Carrion’s father, Raphael Marquez, whom Carrion described as abusive and volatile, was questioned about the disappearance but never arrested.

“The police were asking me questions,” said Carrion, who chose to take her mother’s maiden name. “My dad showed up and he quickly pushed me to the side and said, `Don’t tell them that I ever hit your mom or you.’ ”

Her father fled to Mexico shortly afterward, leaving Carrion and her 3-year-old sister in the care of their widowed grandmother.

Because her mother’s body was never found, police never categorized her disappearance as a murder. Consequently, Carrion wrestled with the possibility that perhaps her mother had left them.

“I knew it was either A, my father had killed my mother, or B, she had abandoned us,” Carrion said. “You can’t win with that. Either way you lose.”

Finding family
When Carrion was 19 and ready to face her past, her paternal uncle agreed to take her to her father.

They flew to Mexico, where had remarried and had two more children.

Shortly after their reunion, Carrion asked her father: “Did you kill my mother?”

He said no.

“He told me that she had left him for another man,” Carrion said. “I was so desperate for a family that I believed him.”

For almost a decade, she maintained a relationship with her father and his new family. She sent gifts. She visited often. Then one day, her uncle came to her with a confession.

“He told me, `I’m afraid if I die I’m going to have to face your mother on the other side,’ ” she said. “Then he tells me how my father killed my mother.”

Carrion suspected her uncle’s words were true.

“I called my father to confront him about this. He didn’t admit it; he just told me to (expletive) off.”

Carrion tried to get legal action taken against her father – she even got her story featured on the Web site of “America’s Most Wanted.”

But there was no evidence. No body. Nothing she could do. In 2007, her father died from a rare form of lymphoma and cirrhosis of the liver.

Carrion said she didn’t mourn.

“The moment he died, it was as if I was free,” she said. “I had that weight taken off my shoulders. It was to the point where it had completely taken over my life.”

Alleviating the pain
By that time, years of distress had taken its toll. Not yet 30, Carrion was suffering from a host of ailments including migraines, hair loss, stomach pains and backaches.

Doctors couldn’t help her, she said. Antidepressants didn’t work either.

It wasn’t until, on a whim, she decided to try hypnotherapy that she began to feel better.

“I was finally able to let go,” she said. “I felt better almost immediately.”

Carrion said becoming a hypnotherapist herself (at the time she had been working in the fashion industry) was a natural step.

Within months, she was certified by the International Hypnosis Federation and the Omni Hypnosis Training Center, the first accredited school of hypnosis.

She had found her calling.

“When I did my first class of hypnosis, it was huge,” said Carrion, who practices out of her home in Marina del Rey and an office in Redondo Beach. “They asked for volunteers, and every chance I could get I would put my hand up.”

How hypnosis works
For most people, hypnosis conjures images of swinging pendulums and sleeplike trances.

In reality, it is more aptly described as a state of focused attention and heightened suggestibility, during which the patient is completely aware of what he is doing and saying.

“There is a fear that with hypnosis you can make the client do whatever you want them to do, but it doesn’t work that way,” said Torrance psychiatrist Isabel Puri. “The person who is in control is the patient. At any point, if you want to stop the hypnotic state you can.”

Puri, who has a certificate in hypnotherapy, said hypnosis can be an effective treatment, particularly for mild depression and anxiety disorders.

“Typically, the milder disorders are more likely to respond to hypnotherapy,” she said. “That is because all hypnosis is actually self-hypnosis. Once you learn the techniques, you need to practice by yourself.”

Hypnotherapy is often used to help people stop smoking, lose weight and overcome phobias. It also has proven helpful, as in Carrion’s case, in overcoming trauma.

To break the trauma cycle, a hypnotherapist must replace negative thoughts with positive, reassuring thoughts and feelings.

“Sometimes it’s like being freed from a curse,” Carrion said.

That’s how it felt for “Joan.”

An Orange County attorney who preferred her real name not be used, Joan, 27, had been suffering from anxiety and panic attacks for several years before going to see Carrion.

“It was to the point where I literally could not eat in a restaurant, not even a Subway or McDonald’s,” she said. “Basic things like going grocery shopping and running errands was a struggle.”

Joan had heard about Carrion through a friend who had gone to see her. She said she was skeptical at first, but decided to give it a try.

It worked. After only two sessions, Joan said, she started feeling better. Carrion also taught her self-hypnosis, which she used at home.

“Right away, I noticed that I wasn’t as agitated,” Joan said. “Instead of going to the bad place where everything is a crisis, it’s more like, `Things are going to be OK. Things are fine. I’m in an appropriate amount of control.’ ”