Jessica Boston, cognitive hypnotherapist
You’re at an event. There’s a circle. People are introducing themselves and soon you will have to do so too. You begin rehearsing the words in your head. Your ears feel blocked; you can’t hear what others are saying. How on earth will you hear your own voice when it pierces through the room, somehow not your own? When it’s your turn to speak, the words jumble, dissolve; you’re not sure who you are anymore, let alone what you have to say. You can feel the heat in your cheeks. This is what public speaking anxiety feels like. At least this has been my experience of public speaking anxiety.
In the past few years, I’ve come to accept that this is a part of me that cannot be exorcised, purged via talking therapy or tamed with pharmaceuticals, mindfulness or meditation. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been terrified at the prospect of speaking in front of a group of people. My reaction has always been physical as well as psychological.
For the Re-Enchantment Issue, I spoke with Professor Ronald Hutton about cunning folk. We discussed the various practices and alternative therapies around today that could be said to be derivative of cunning craft. One of these was hypnotherapy. Curious, I took up London-based hypnotherapist Jessica Boston’s offer to see what hypnotherapy could do for me.
What is hypnotherapy?
Put simply, on the NHS website it says: “Hypnotherapy uses hypnosis to try to treat conditions or change habits.” Stereotypically the word “hypnosis" conjures up an image of being coaxed into staring at a spiralling circle of a pendulum, by someone who re-writes your mind. Hypnotherapy isn’t really like that.
In a hypnotherapy session, you are encouraged into a relaxed trance state and guided through various moments in your life. Your true memories aren’t rewritten; rather, the goal is to change how these memories impact your life now. Jessica Boston, in our two sessions, emphasised the importance of speaking directly to the unconscious mind. So many of our fears are “irrational”, in the sense that they exist, but we know they shouldn’t.
A brief history of hypnotherapy
Elements of hypnosis and hypnotherapy were employed by cunning folk who needed to get their clients into this trance state and in dialogue with the unconscious mind. Such trance states probably date to pre-history. Modern hypnotherapy traces its history to mesmerism, named after the German physician Franz Mesmer. Mesmerism, also called Animal Magnetism, was a popular concept in the Victorian period. It was believed there was a universal fluid in all things which could be manipulated to bring about change. Though soon discredited, useful components of the talking therapy later became hypnosis and hypnotherapy, named after the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos. Freud was initially interested in hypnosis for its psychologically therapeutic benefits, though later disregarded it for psychoanalysis.
Today, hypnotherapy is still used, though there is limited understanding concerning how it works. This may well be because it appeals to the unconscious mind, our ancient animal brain, the realm of dreams and symbols and imagery that’s not yet fully understood. There’s also the question: “Does it work?” It is generally thought that it doesn’t work unless you allow it to work, which is quite reassuring.
What happens in a hypnotherapy session with Jessica?
I was surprised at how well our session worked via Zoom. The work you do is all in the mind, so I suppose it makes sense. With compassion and sensitivity, Jessica guided me through difficult, sometimes traumatic memories, helping me re-visit parts of myself I’d left behind or buried and have conversations with these ghosts. Along the way, she prompted me to pull out symbols and images and mantras that served as guides and anchors in the vast realm of memory and interiority. These were drawn from the stories that I find empowering and from recurring dreams—I have written about my recurring whale dreams before—I found this part extremely powerful. As Jessica said, if others were to work with my own set of symbols, they’d likely find them total nonsense.
Towards the end of each session, Jessica drew some oracle cards that strongly resonated. After each session, she made me a personalised MP3 that I was to listen to daily. I often did so before sleep, which sometimes resulted in vivid dreams. A week or so in, my whale dreams returned to me.
So does it work?
There are so many alternative therapies which claim to “cure” lifelong anxiety. None of them work like that. Different therapies work for different people. It is good to approach alternative therapies with a healthy dose of scepticism, so long as your mind is open enough that you won’t miss things that are really there. A lot of these things won’t work unless you have this openness to experience.
Early on, I discussed with Jessica my previous experiences with conventional talking therapy. She said that for many people, this can help; for others, it can make issues worse. In therapy, you’re generally dealing with the conscious mind and constantly re-iterating your problem. You know rationally a fear is irrational, but that does not alleviate the pain it causes you. She said that sometimes, with hypnotherapy, you can get to the root of a problem quicker. Your unconscious, as Cormac McCarthy describes in his essay “The Kekulé Problem”, sometimes works in mysterious ways.
Two months on, and I believe Jessica’s sessions did help alleviate my fear of public speaking. Perhaps it worked because I let it. But I can see the benefit in this therapy which delves into the unconscious mind. As a writer, I have a storytelling brain. Jessica helped me re-frame this anxiety and see how the stories my mind tells itself, based on its prior experience, can be re-written. Again, the memories are not re-written but the narrative is. I found little soundbites from the therapy, which weren’t part of the process, very helpful too. For example, when I’m catastrophising about what might happen, I’m actually channelling my creative capacity in an unhealthy way. It would be healthier and more fulfilling to sit down and write a short story or novel when I need to purge something.
I am not cured of social anxiety, but I went out the following week feeling a lot less hyper-vigilant. In the weeks that followed, I got over the idea that I needed someone else to host the Cunning Folk book club. I started hosting it on Zoom alongside an occult writing group. During lockdown, it’s hard to see full results, so only time will tell. I would recommend trying hypnotherapy if any of this resonates.
How to explore hypnotherapy for yourself
Jessica Boston offers hypnotherapy sessions online and in London. Alternatively, you can find a therapist via Quest Cognitive Hypnotherapy, an association dedicated to documenting evidence-based research on the efficacy of cognitive hypnotherapy. These may not be accessible to everyone.
Alternative therapies can be prohibitively expensive, but there are ways of reaping the benefits without the high price. Jessica also offers group sessions, and has a CD, “This Feeling is You”. It’s described as “an immersive experience, part music, part hypnosis and meditation”.
There are some techniques that you can learn to do yourself, and they might not feel like self-hypnosis—I like how Haruki Murakami describes his writing discipline as a form of mesmerism. In a Guardian article, cognitive hypnotherapist Katie Abbott shares some self-hypnosis techniques that can be done by anyone, anywhere. Without the label of hypnotherapy, many occult and esoteric practices, such as tarot, share a similar goal: to speak directly with the unconscious through the language it knows best.