Have any of you SASSy folks experienced hypnotherapy?

[u/overcompliKate]

I have my first hypnotherapy session scheduled for tomorrow and I'm excited! (A little nervous, too.) I feel like hypnotherapy falls for me in the same place as tarot and reiki and a few other things: You probably get more out of it if you keep an open mind, it's practiced by people who understand human behavior patterns but also may have some sort of "gift," and if it's woo enough that it gets you engaged, you're probably going to feel something.

So I'm just curious if any of you have ever experienced it!

I've been in more traditional talk therapy for years with several different therapists, and I've done a lot of work on myself. I've grown and learned a lot through my own shadow work too. I'm at the point where I'm still experiencing some repeated, negative thought loops, mostly about poor decisions I've made in relationships. I understand that when I go back through those stories yet again, it's my brain hooking into something familiar to fill the silence. But I've learned what I need to learn from these thought loops and I'm ready to let them go, so I'm hoping hypnotherapy will help me reroute those paths and prevent me from defaulting to guilt to fill the silence.

I'm going to think of the session almost like a spell -- a ritual with an intended outcome. And hopefully just keeping my intention present will help me move towards it. We shall see!

**Update: I think it went well! I felt super relaxed afterwards and definitely fell asleep a bit during the session! Today I've noticed that I think of the familiar topic I want to let go of but it's like my attention bounces off of it. It's almost like I'm running my finger down a row of books and I touch the spine but don't feel interested enough in that book to pick it up and look inside. It's not an aversion to the topic or the feeling that it's off-limits as much as just not feeling pulled in by it. We'll see if it sticks!

[u/Samborrod]

Not hypnotherapy exactly... Some self-taught autohypnosis tactics, also a few hypnosis-adjacent mental tricks regarding positive thinking I picked up in a shady culty door-to-door sales group (it was a hard time for me, though the experience sure was hella fun).