One intervention that Chris has not tried is hypnosis. It’s not because I don’t believe in it, it’s because the situation hasn’t presented itself, yet. I recently rekindled my interest in hypnosis when I met a woman who is the widow of Dr. Denys Kelsey, a British psychiatrist who discovered early in his career that he had a knack for hypnosis. He was married for many years to Joan Grant, a writer like Taylor Caldwell, whose inspiration for her writing came from her past lives. (Grant claimed she was 25,000 years old!) Grant and Kelsey together wrote Many Lifetimes, a book about reincarnation, and I’ve personally read Now and Then: Reincarnation, Psychiatry and Daily Life by Denys Kelsey, which I highly recommend, as Kelsey writes that he was able to regress some of his patients to the point of conception. Since I literally heard the “ping” of Chris’s conception, and since Chris had confided to me once that he has fetal memory, I wouldn’t mind if he “had a go” at hypnotherapy. This would go over like a lead balloon with my husband, who doesn’t want to bring in any psychiatrist other than the one Chris is seeing. Chris is also understandably tired of seeing a psychiatrist week in and week out. Still . . .
Dr. Stern, Chris’s psychiatrist, doesn’t “do” hypnosis, to my knowledge. She does Family Constellation Therapy and psychotherapy but not hypnosis. For psychiatric patients, wanting to try different therapies beyond what is on offer with their own doctor, isn’t as clear cut as you would think. In the program that Chris attended for two years, the parents often asked about hypnosis and the opinion of the doctors was uniformly against it. The program didn’t “do” hypnotherapy. Neither did it “do” Family Constellation Therapy. What kind of one-on-one therapy it did do is a mystery to me. I suspect that everybody got the same superficial therapy, no matter what their diagnosis. Therapy lite is not for schizophrenia. You’ve really got to get in there.
I have read that people with schizophrenia can’t be hypnotized, meaning that there is something about them that makes it impossible for them to become hypnotized. I have also read that it is dangerous to hypnotize people with schizophrenia. It makes me wonder if there is no distinction made between someone with active psychosis (perhaps harder for them to concentrate) and someone who is more stable. Within the past year or so I have noticed more and more positive articles about hypnosis as a treatment for schizophrenia. The whole area is murky with misinformation and perhaps disinformation. Chris’s program doctors were firmly in the camp of it is dangerous to hypnotize, which causes me to think their opinion is formed because their favored approach is drug therapy.
Psychiatrists seem to be sensitive people. If you are seeing one doctor, you are supposed to apparently only do what that doctor recommends, which is coincidentally whatever he/she is specializes in. If I bring up the idea of trying a new therapy (even a one-off therapy) in addition to Chris’s regular psychiatric appointments, it’s like I’m being hugely disloyal. I don’t think it ought to be this way. As a parent I want to get help for my son anyway I can. I would like to say to psychiatrists “get over it”. Let’s put our egos aside and maybe shave some time off the recovery process by adding some new therapies into the mix.
Hypnosis, done with a responsible therapist, can reveal startling reasons for why we behave the way we do in this life, whether it is overeating, flying into uncontrollable rages, or any number of things. Better still, it can resolve issues that may seem impossible to fix. Young children, in particular, are very close to fetal memories and possible past lives. I am willing to believe just about anything these days, thanks to schizophrenia. Three quarters of the world’s population believes in reincarnation. I am not about to argue against what the majority of people believe in. They all can’t be wrong.
I would be interested to know if anyone reading this post has undergone hypnosis to treat schizophrenia. If so, do you feel it was done well? What results did you notice? Would you recommend this therapy to treat schizophrenia? If you were seeing a psychiatrist at the time, how did you make your case that hypnosis was needed?
Yes, I under went a type of hypnosis called EMDR. The therapist should be highly trained in this area. I had a lot of trauma in my childhood that I could not handle well. My therapist suggested EMDR. The results? I have all the memories still of the taumas but no emtional ties to them anymore at all! EMDR is fantastic! Ihave had symtpoms since the age of seven due to schizophrenia. One other thing….Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the only therapy shown to make a difference in schizophrenia. At least this is the latest report I have gotten. And CBT is what made a huge difference in my own recovery. You might enjoy reading What is Recovery on my blog @ schizophrenia-blog.blogspot.com
I’ve heard about this. Worth checking out. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy.
EMDR works a lot like Emotional Freedom Technique and would be classified in the realm of energy medicine. Both of these therapies show promising results with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, panic disorders, anxiety, etc.
People who have recovered often have stories like Dan Fisher, the psychiatrist for the National Empowerment Center who recovered from schizophrenia. They tried all different kinds of therapies, so much so they couldn’t really say what all helped.
Psychiatrists often think meditation is bad for people diagnosed with schizophrenia as well, but more recent research shows it can be helpful if used in a relatively grounded way (Paul Chadwick has written about this in his book “Person based cognitive therapy for distressing psychosis.”) I would imagine it would be possible to use hypnosis to make things worse, but it could also be helpful.
Trying many kinds of therapies is important. I have noticed that they have always moved my son forward. However, the doctors often don’t see it this way, which is a problem.