Wesselton is director of the D.C.-based American Wellness Institute and a professional hypnotherapist, using a combination of counseling and hypnosis to treat patients with addictions, weight loss and phobias.
How do hypnotherapy sessions work?
What we do is counseling for the first hour and then we have people lay on their back in a wonderful chair and put eye shields on to prevent light and we put a blanket on them so they don’t feel vulnerable. And then we lay a hypnosis over the next two hours. It’s the same sort of state as dreaming. When you go into a dream, you go, “wow.” But in hypnosis you can actually feel you’re back there. If you’re dreaming about elementary school, you’re hand is going to feel little and you’ll see the teacher and remember the name that you haven’t thought of in years. You can use hypnosis for lost and found as well.
What do people typically come in for?
The main two things are smoking or weight. It’s a physical addiction as well as psychological.
Are representations of hypnosis on television accurate compared to clinical practice? No, it isn’t. Actually, the FCC has several laws that one is not allowed to actually do hypnosis on television for fear that people watching may be hypnotized. Sometimes there is very good dramatization, but the really weird stuff doesn’t happen. The mind will go along with things if it’s something it wants to do. If it doesn’t, your superego is there watching and making sure everything is kosher.
So no swaying pendulums?
No medallions or blinking lights or looking at a crack in the ceiling. We do use a pendulum if working with children. They expect that. Children are very creative, but so are people with fears and phobias. The habit is in the head, and the food or cigarettes or fear of flying are externals.
THE 3-MINUTE INTERVIEW – — Kaitlin Schluter
