My Initial Inquiry into Hypnotherapy: Awkward, Uncertain, and Eventually Life-Changing

That First Email

I wasn’t completely sure why I was writing to a hypnotherapist.

It felt impulsive – or perhaps some weird compulsion.

To say I had very little understanding of hypnotherapy at the time would be an understatement. To be honest, I may have even harboured some quiet fears about it. I will say that still to this day, I cannot tell you how or why I messaged her, but I am so glad that I did.

I already had about 3 years of weekly psychotherapy sessions under my belt, lead by a lovely therapist with had a bunch of fancy ivy league degrees. My initial email to her was very clear. It was mainly about how in the previous few years I had severely lost myself and did not know who I was anymore. I made a lot of progress in talk therapy, and became accustomed with the format of therapy, so you’d think I would have some kind of minimal “sense” to be able explain what I was looking for when I reached out to my (eventual) hypnotherapist…

My initial email started off fair enough….

(For context, her website is called "WayBeyondTalk.com")

Hello Tina,

I have a “talk therapist” who has helped me in so many ways. It wasn’t always easy for me though — in the beginning there were times I sat on the other side of the screen wanting words to come out of my mouth, but they just couldn’t/wouldn’t? form and exit.

All I could do was sit in silence.

So, if nothing else, your website and branding of your methods caught my attention.

I don’t want to stop seeing my therapist, but perhaps there’s a way to dig in a little deeper…

….but when I tell you the email fell off a cliff from there…

Oof.

(while some sharing is cathartic and can break down barriers, I will not post what came after my intro out of a minimal amount of a self-preservation instinct).

I believe all you need to know is that she needed about 5 days to decide whether she should reply, and with me sharing her gracious, honest and kind response, there will be enough to piece something together from your imagination.

Her Reply

Hi Mandy,

My apologies for the tardy reply.

I'm a little unclear on what you need or are looking for... If I understand correctly, you might have suppressed a lot of emotions, and as a result found (find?) it difficult to speak about what/how you feel. Currently it is still difficult to connect with known or unknown emotions. Often when a person has suppressed their emotions, they can experience them bodily. The body can speak when the emotions cannot... because the emotions are actually "stuck" in their body. This can be an effective means to begin to release what is stuck, and heal. This is not uncommon in my practice. There can be other ways to get there, but that depends on the specific situation of each individual.

Based on the little information I have, I cannot assure you if my approach is what you need. However, I do offer an alternative approach to traditional therapy that is geared to work at a subconscious level.

If you have more questions, let me know, or if you prefer, we can have a brief phone chat. In either case, let me know.

Regards,

Tina

My Reply

My reply to that message was nominally better… …and started off with a very honest admission:

“Unsure of what I’m looking for."

Very true.

When (re)reading my message, I can see I wasn’t terribly clear on what I was looking for.

A little bit of approach and avoidance?

The Intro Session

I then went on to try and clarify things, and we eventually booked the first information gathering session. Where, because I still was not quite sure why I contacted her, I shared A LOT of different things.

After that first intro session, she gingerly suggested that we would benefit from another “intro session” to gain a little more clarity before doing any actual work — something I’m not sure she’s had to do often in her 15-plus years of practice.

When you read the words “approach and avoidance” in my email reply, that was exactly what was happening. I was curious about hypnotherapy, but I didn’t understand why. At the same time, I was skeptical — perhaps even cynical. Holding those feelings while talking to someone who was simply trying to see whether she might be a good fit to help me (after all, I was the one who reached out) was its own kind of tension.

I carried those paradoxical feelings into my eventual first in-person session in her Montreal office — almost as if it were a test.

Reflections

We know how my introduction ends. The experience was nothing short of life-changing — so much so that I changed careers.

There was a time in my life when shame would have prevented me from sharing a story like this — a moment where it’s clear I didn’t really know what I was talking about, or even what I wanted, and where the feedback I received reflected that back at me. Today, though, it’s a really funny story to me. Whenever the memory comes up with Tina, my hypnotherapist-turned-mentor, we end up laughing pretty hard about it.

I’m not suggesting you want to follow the same path I did and change careers. Rather, I wanted to share this for anyone who might recognize themselves here. You may have a sense that something could be shifting — and still, for now, feel stuck in patterns you understand very well. This is also very much for those of you who feel hesitant, skeptical, or unsure of what you’re even looking for with hypnotherapy.

I know these places well.

In the next post, I think I’ll share what my first hypnotherapy session was like, and what quietly began to change afterward.