Children’s problems: can hypnosis help?

What concerns does your child have? What concerns do you have about your child? At this time of year, going back to school can have many negative consequences for children and adolescents. Your child may start wetting the bed again. How do you handle your child’s school phobia? Is your child being bullied or, in fact, is your child the bully? There is no doubt that our children’s problems can leave us with sleepless nights. What is the right thing to do, make them harden, keep them at home? Children’s anxieties are very real, and as adults, anxiety is difficult enough without the undeveloped emotional attachment to anxiety. Anxiety in children can manifest when children become withdrawn, wet the bed, and develop tics. You may be at the end of your tether.

Hypnosis is gentle relaxation that can occur at any level of consciousness. Have you ever driven home and not remembered the trip? That is hypnosis. We automatically daydream every 90 minutes: it’s the mind’s way of resetting itself. While hypnosis may be consistent with quitting smoking and losing weight, it’s actually a key to your subconscious mind. We know that it is possible to change the neurology of the mind, that is, to reprogram the mind to be the way you want it to be. So why not teach your son how to access her mind now so that he no longer has to deal with her anxieties?

Children are naturally gifted when it comes to imagination. You could say that they are the most natural candidates for hypnosis. Obviously, any experienced hypnotherapist will work within the framework of the child: what works for young children will not work for teenagers as they seek to be accepted into the world as young adults. Small tips would include when your child sleeps at night, whispering affirmations in the present tense, for example “you are a big boy/girl now having dry nights and expect to wake up in the morning in a dry bed”, “when you are confident you stand tall.” Including the child’s favorite superhero in the story is helpful and gives them a sense of strength they can draw on. Sleep is when the subconscious mind makes sense of the world and unravels any worries.

In a hypnotic session, the parent is always present, but it can be helpful for the parent to wear headphones so the child feels like they have some privacy. Obviously children will find it easier to open up if they are not being bombarded with questions and it is important that the therapist has a good relationship with the child. This is the time for the child to learn about the amazing workings of his own mind and how he doesn’t need to be upset by what others say and do. Children feel things as we do, but remember that they are absorbing their problems as much as their own. Children need to be able to release these emotions so they can gain confidence and assertiveness. In our world, it can seem like children are being treated like mini-adults; they are not, they are children whose childhood must be spent learning about themselves and the world. Hypnosis is not about turning the child into something you or the therapist want, it is what the child wants and giving him the skills that he can carry into adulthood.