THE USE OF HYPNOTHERAPY IN SLEEP AND DREAMS
The use of hypnotherapy to help people’s sleep patterns is becoming more and more common. Because of shift work and the general demands that modern society makes on people in terms of constant stimulation whether through entertainment, drugs (legal or illegal), the bombardment of sound and noise, the excessive use of alcohol – which is known to disturb sleep patterns all this has led to our 24/7 world in which it is even thought by some that “sleep is for wimps.”
A pub quiz question could be “Who first said, ‘Sleep is for wimps?’”. What is certain is that there is no overall agreement as to how much sleep we really need to function properly. It is thought, though, that one out of every four people does not get enough sleep.
How Much Sleep Do We Really Need?
When I treat people for sleep problems I ask them how much sleep they need to function properly. The range I’ve come across is from 2 to 15 hours.
A female client of mine said she needed fifteen hours a night. She was a nurse so it was a bit of a puzzle how she could get that much sleep under the circumstances. That was part of the problem as she was lacking energy from “lack of sleep”. She was a physical embodiment of her need for excessive sleep. She had very pale skin and very fair blonde hair and seemed, in a way, not quite of this world.
At the other extreme I have even heard about an hypnotherapist in London who claims she only needs one hour sleep per night because, in the daytime, she makes up for it by going into an hypnotic state when she is treating her clients! I know the feeling, in a modified way, because I have done it myself when I’ve felt tired and it has worked wonders.
So the problem of insomnia is a relative thing depending on how much sleep people think they need. Generally, six to eight hours is a good, healthy average though it also depends on the quality of the sleep.
Underlying causes of insomnia
If it is truly insomnia that the person suffers from then it should be looked upon as symptom, not a condition. The underlying causes need to be diagnosed. This could be depression, anxiety, excessive stress, thyroid problems, painful conditions such as arthritis.
Hypnosis then would be used to treat these conditions rather than a direct approach on the insomnia as such. If the person is suffering from a painful condition then hypnosis would be used for pain control. If it is psychologically based then the treatment would be based on dealing with thoughts which lead to sleeplessness, whether these thoughts are due to depression, anxiety, stress, illness, etc., or some combination of these.
Appropriate suggestions would be made to counteract these unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more constructive ones.
I frequently have clients who find it difficult to sleep because they are suffering from stress and anxiety and then they become even more stressed and anxious because they are not getting enough sleep. This forms a vicious circle that can get worse and worse.
A visit to the doctor leads to sleeping pills being prescribed, but there are doctors now who don’t recommend that because the answer is that it is the stress and anxiety that needs to be dealt with not the lack of sleep as such. If the person can learn to relax and deal with anxiety and stress more effectively then it will follow that sleep will come more naturally.
My method is to emphasize that anxiety over loss of sleep is worse than actually losing the sleep!
Usually the amount of sleep a person gets averages out over a week or two. If the person becomes unduly anxious about some loss of sleep on a particular night then it leads to more nights being disturbed than would be otherwise the case.
I point out that during WW II most people had very disturbed sleep for obvious reasons and had to get by on as little as three hours a night. As undesirable as that it is also the case that it did not have any long term effects on most people. In fact, in wartime Britain there was actually less mental illness than there is in peacetime.
Research shows that tiredness as such does not cause any physical damage to the person although they obviously have to be very careful when driving or operating machines as concentration is affected.
Using hypnotherapy to promote better sleep for shift workers
If the problem is straightforward and the person has problems sleeping because of shift work then there are several things which can be done.
The person could actually find a job where the hours are regular and then use hypnotherapy to suggest that as time passes the mind will remember again the times when the person slept well. The suggestion is then made that this memory of sleeping well is still within the person’s mind and that the pattern of sleeping well will be re-established as the hypnosis becomes more and more effective through repetition.
This can be done by making a tape that the person listens to or it can be done through self-hypnosis.
If the person has no choice but to continue working shifts then the suggestions would have to deal with that problem. This is more problematical because shift patterns vary.
If they are continuous nights then the pattern is to get the mind used to sleeping during the day. In that case the tape would have suggestions to that effect or the person could use self-hypnosis for the same purpose.
If the shift patterns are rotated from morning to afternoons to evenings/nights or in the opposite direction then physical factors come into play. The body needs several weeks to adapt to major shifts in sleep patterns so if the shift work rotates from morning to afternoons and evenings/nights too rapidly then sleep is a problem and hypnosis has limited power in that situation.
If the shift pattern actually goes against the clock from evening/nights to afternoons to mornings then hypnosis has even less power to help. This is because the body finds it harder to adapt going against the clock in shifts of sleep patterns compared with shifting clockwise.
If medication is prescribed to help the person to sleep, then hypnosis can be used to suggest that the subconscious mind will use the medication, on a temporary basis, to the best of its ability to make the drug work in a powerful way to give deep, refreshing sleep.
Further it could be programmed to accept that when off the medication the subconscious mind will not forget how the drug worked on the mind, as well as the body, to give a deep refreshing sleep and that in that way it will continue to produce the therapeutic effects of the medication even when the medication is not being used any more.
It is possible to use hypnosis to promote deeper sleep and to counteract broken sleep. Again this can be done by use of a tape or self-hypnosis and through repetition the mind begins to react to suggestions for relaxation before sleep and sleeping through the psychological process of conditioning.
This means that the mind begins to associate the process of hypnosis with sleep itself.
A distraction technique can be used too whereby thoughts, images, feelings are brought into the mind that are the opposite to the thoughts, image and feelings that are keeping the person awake.
For example, this could be imagining oneself on a desert island in the shade of a tree. Then imagining further that the problems of the day can be put into a wooden box, put on the sea and then just allow the problems to drift away until they can be dealt with the next day.
This is paralleled with the idea of the tide bringing back the box so the troubles can be dealt with appropriately during the day. This can be done through self-hypnosis or by using the tape I make.
Dream Interpretation and Hypnotherapy
“Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.” Freud
For Freud dreams were extremely important in dealing with people’s problems because often the problem would be an expression of something not settled in the unconscious mind (subconscious tends to be used interchangeably with the term unconscious).
It is important to make a parallel here between sleep and hypnosis. In sleep the critical censor is asleep so that what comes from the subconscious mind is not censored and dreams can be very disturbing, shocking, nightmarish…
Usually if the dream is too shocking or nightmarish then the person could wake up before it reveals the unthinkable. However, the material of dreams is often presented in a distorted or in a symbolic way so that the critical censor does not come into action because it doesn’t understand what the dream is communicating.
This, in fact, is what happens if we do wake up and remember the dream because often the dream does not make sense.
An attempt to analyse dreams can be made using hypnosis though this often is not absolutely necessary. Just discussing the dream with the dreamer can be very effective which is illustrated below with an example.
Research on dream interpretation shows that: it is best to guide a person in the interpretation of their dream, rather than interpret it for them. Suggestions can be made by the therapist but it must be taken in that way and not as an interpretation.
Usually when using hypnosis to interpret a person’s dream it is done with the view of getting the person to understand in the hypnotic state what the dream is about.
So when the person is in the hypnotic state the hypnotherapist can ask, “Does this dream relate in some way to the problem you have been having?”
If it does then it would be helpful to go over the dream whilst the person is in the hypnotic state and if possible to even “redream” it. When they originally dreamt the dream it could have had some very strong emotional content which didn’t allow any understanding of what the dream was about but just left a feeling of anxiety and/or fear instead.
With the hypnotherapist guiding the person to understand the dream more objectively then hopefully they will see the true psychological significance of the dream.
I do not emphasize dreams when I do sessions with clients but it is not uncommon for them to mention dreams to me. If they ask what it means then I say that I can help them to interpret it but since it isn’t my dream I would only be guessing if I told them what it means.
It is a well known fact that dreams have a number of functions which can be very helpful to us. There are problem solving dreams; lucid dreams where dreamers feel that they are able to control their dreams; precognitive dreams (dreams that can see into the future); nightmares; night terrors; dreams which process out “rubbish” from the day and dreams, it seems, which are just the brain entertaining itself while we are asleep.
There are dreams too which can tell us about the state of our bodily health, but more about that later.
Dream Interpretation and Hypnotherapy: A Personal Example
My personal experience of dreams related to hypnotherapy occurred when I was training to become an hypnotherapist and psychotherapist.
During the two weeks when I recorded my dreams I used the hypnotic technique of suggesting to my subconscious mind that I would remember dreams which had some significance in my life.
One dream that occurred was very brief but significant nonetheless. I was in a pond up to my shoulders in the water. On my left shoulder was a frog and in front of me another frog which had a human face.
That frog in front of me said, “Don’t hurt him.”, whilst looking at the frog on my shoulder.
For several years afterwards I didn’t know what the dream was supposed to mean. The answer finally came when I discussed it with a group of students in a psychology course I was teaching.
One of the female students, who was a mature woman of about forty years of age, said it was about metamorphosis or change that I was undergoing and that I had to be careful not to sabotage the process.
On reflection this was the answer because I had indeed made a major change to my life which was still ongoing.
However, this dream occurred before the change had taken place. I had the dream in 1989 a full year before I permanently left my post as a full-time lecturer in psychology and sociology. I took early retirement at the age of 50, in 1990.
I had already decided to go independent and practice as a therapist using my knowledge of psychology and my experience teaching thousands of students over the years.
The dream was telling me that what I intended to do could go wrong and to be careful how I did it. This interpretation by the student has guided me and helped me to keep my mind focused on making a success of my latest career in my life.
Can Dreams Reflect Physical Health?
As referred to at the start of this chapter there are some dreams which can reveal valuable information about the state of a person’s body.
Usually this is through a metaphor such as seeing the body structured like a house. The idea is that different parts of the house correspond to different parts of the body.
If there is something wrong with the body then it is reflected by seeing some damage done to the house. For example, broken windows could mean it would be wise to have your eyes checked even if there seems nothing wrong at the moment.
Likewise, if there is a leak in the plumbing it means that the equivalent part of the body may need to be checked.
Dr Patricia Garfield has done research on this in California from which she used some of the data from her research to write her book, “The healing power of dreams”.
She found that dreams can tell you that something is wrong with your body before you or the doctor know about it.
The brain is constantly checking the body through the night and sends messages through dreams which are controlled by the subconscious mind. These messages are picked up in dreams because the signals transmitted at the early stages of a disease can be very subtle and we ignore them in the bustle of the day.
At night though the brain can register these signals and then transmit messages to the subconscious mind in dreams.
Examples she gives can come from a variety of metaphors. One woman had a nightmare that her stomach was being gnawed by rats. Instead of rejecting the nightmare she asked her doctor to send her for diagnostic tests.
She was found to be in the early stages of stomach cancer when it was still easily operable. So despite the dream being horrible it did help to save her life.
Nightmares, Lucid Dreaming, and Hypnotherapy
There is also the idea that dreams can be controlled through the power of suggestion.
This may be done with children who have “bad dreams” or for people who are capable of “lucid dreaming” where they already have the ability to control their dreams.
In bad dreams it may be possible to turn a nightmare for a child into an acceptable dream. If the child is being chased by a monster in a dark wood in a reoccurring dream it may be possible to change it by suggesting that the child could bring a helicopter into the dream where it lifts up the child from the scene and safely takes the child away.
Lucid dreaming is the ability to control your dreams while you are asleep so that if you are flying you can actually control where you fly.
A fairly common dream is flying over the River Thames or some other river. For those who can control their dreams they can swoop down to look at an interesting bridge or building or swoop up to get a “bird’s eye view”.
So although dreams may not come into the hypnotic technique that strongly, nonetheless, they do relate to the subconscious mind which is the part of the mind involved in hypnosis.
The connection then is obvious and can be used to advantage. As mentioned before the person who is hypnotised can be given suggestions through hypnosis that they will have dreams which relate to their problems whether they are problems in living or problems of the body.
How Can Hypnotherapy Improve Sleep?
Hypnosis can be used for disturbed sleep patterns as, for example, happens with shift work and for aiding deeper, better quality sleep.
Sleeping pills can be used in the short term but can be counterproductive in the long term. Hypnosis can be used to take over from sleeping pills as required.
It is useful too for dealing with depression, tension, stress, anxiety and even physical conditions which lead to sleep problems.
The point was made that hypnosis is not essential for dream therapy. However, since hypnosis deals with the subconscious mind and, that is where dreams are located, then it can be an aid for recalling dreams and analysing them.
It is claimed too that dreams can be revealing about physical ailments or diseases that we may be unaware of during the day.
If sleep problems or anxiety are affecting your wellbeing, I offer hypnotherapy sessions in Newport to help you relax, sleep better, and feel more in control.