Residents Use Hypnosis to Kick Habits

Residents use hypnosis to kick habits By LIZA MARTIN Advocate Reporter HOPEWELL -- Weight loss. Smoking. Public speaking fears. Nail biting. Insomnia. For more than 25 years, Dee Krier has been using hypnotherapy to help people resolve and overcome their fears, phobias, habits, and addictions "Hypnosis works because it changes the mind-set," she explained. "We try to eliminate the negative and enhance the positive." Hypnosis takes 27 to 30 days to change the average client's mindset, she said, and has about a 98 percent success rate. Pat Bishop, of Alexandria, said she already can feel the results of her weight-loss hypnotherapy in the two weeks she's participated. The 62-year-old retiree said she's eating smaller portions, drinking more water and craving less sweets and carbs. "I'm just thinking differently," she said. "But it feels like it's just coming naturally, and that's what blows my mind." Bishop, a self-professed "Weight Watchers dropout" said she's battled a weight problem all her life and was inspired to try hypnotherapy after her husband used it to quit his 40-year-old habit of smoking. "I've always thought hypnosis was weird. I didn't want anyone messing with my mind," she said. "But when you go into it, you have to go into it positively and give yourself to it." There are no dangers in hypnosis, Krier said, and despite popular beliefs, hypnosis doesn't force an individual to do anything that would go against his or her own mind, but instead changes and then re-establishes behaviors and beliefs.

"Hypnosis is about visualizing," she said. "It just establishes unconscious goals in your mind. If you can't see your goal, you won't meet it." Krier, who's working on her doctorate in clinical hypnotherapy, said she administers hypnosis in private sessions in which clients address and deal with the root of their problems. "A problem usually comes from the subconscious, something that has happened at some time in the past," she said. "So we address emotional problems, trauma, guilt and childhood issues." Krier also gives her weight-loss clients CDs to reinforce the hypnosis, and hands out fliers that read, "I like myself," that clients are expected to put on their bathroom mirrors and on their cars' visors. "In order for your body to adapt to the changes, your subconscious mind must believe you like yourself," she said. Paula Martin, of Newark, who is in Krier's weight loss study group, said she's lost 18 pounds in the past two months. "Hypnosis reinforces what we already know: portion control, healthier food choices and exercise," the 43-year-old said. "Although I have tried these things in the past, without hypnosis, I wasn't successful." Krier said hypnosis is growing in popularity and one day might replace chemical methods of overcoming the mind's vices. "People are looking for ways to get healthy without chemical medications," Krier said. "This is the way people will be doing things in the future."