Weight Loss Hypnosis in Chicago
When the issue of weight loss hypnosis comes up, the first question you should ask is who will be performing the hypnosis and what are their qualifications. This is as true in Chicago as anywhere, and I will explain to you what it means and what the different answers imply for your total weight loss [...]
When the issue of weight loss hypnosis comes up, the first question you should ask is who will be performing the hypnosis and what are their qualifications. This is as true in Chicago as anywhere, and I will explain to you what it means and what the different answers imply for your total weight loss experience.
You may not be familiar with hypnosis or how it can help you to lose weight. Hypnosis is a simple procedure that utilizes your own ability to concentrate deeply on internal and external stimuli in order to engage your mind-body connection in a hopefully beneficial process. This is of course an oversimplification of a very interesting psychological process, and it is a process that happens on its own as well. If you have ever “spaced out” while listening to music, or become so engaged in a book that you lost track of time, you essentially experienced a hypnotic event.
Now hypnotherapy is a somewhat different matter, because it aims to use your own natural mental capabilities to communicate with a level of your mind that is beyond your conscious accessibility. In this way, you can experience hypnotic phenomena in a way that feels involuntary, even though it is only you doing it.
You have to understand that there is much more of your mind than you experience at any given moment. You see, you have all of these memories and thoughts and judgements going on behind the scenes, and you can watch them happen in an EEG or fMRI machine, but you are not consciously able to become aware of them most of the time. So hypnotherapy is the art and science of pursuading that unconscious part of you to do things that the conscious part wants to have happen.
Weight loss hypnosis, in Chicago as elsewhere, is based on the idea that there are a number of unconscious factors affecting your ability to lose weight. For example, if you feel hungrier, you will probably eat more no matter how badly you want to lose weight. If your mouth begins to salivate when you see a chocolate cake, you will probably put some of that cake into your mouth. So there are all kinds of unconscious responses that a skilled weight loss hypnotherapist can manipulate in order to make it much easier for you to lose weight.
However, it becomes tricky because there can be unconscious elements that have meaning to you. For example, a part of you may be afraid that you will leave your husband if you become too thin and too pretty, and so it will influence you to continue maintaining your overweight status. Or if you are on some level afraid that food will become unavailable to you, you will not be able to stop yourself from hoarding fat in your body. There are an unlimited number of possibilities, and many of them have significant psychological implications.
This is why I do not like the idea of anyone performing weight loss hypnosis who is not a qualified mental health professional in addition to being a hypnotist. Because hypnosis isn’t really a type of therapy, it is simply a technique or set of techniques that can be used to enable and enhance therapies. And when you get into the area of working with meaningful unconscious processes, someone who is not a psychotherapist is not going to have the expertise to navigate these treacherous waters.
So before you select a weight loss hypnotherapist in Chicago you should be sure to find out about their credentials, and make absolutely sure that they are qualified to act as a full-fledged psychotherapist, not just a hypnotist.