I Did Hypnosis with My Mom to Try and Cure Our Shared Anxiety

I am driving north on a stretch of South Jersey highway at rush hour, and for the first time, I am hearing the story of how my mother feared the devil might possess me as a baby. It is on the list of the irrational and not entirely religiously inspired worries that have plagued her over the last quarter century. (Others include suffering from a flesh-eating bacteria and not arriving to work before that guy in accounting.) She is unsure why these are the things that cause her stress, and equally as sure that these are thoughts other people do not have.

My mom, also known as Daria, is explaining the moment she became an anxious person and saying how she feels partly responsible for my own nervous tendencies. We are on our way to our first-ever joint hypnosis session where, we hope, to be charmed out of our anxiety, a compound and interdependent type of stress that has led me to wonder whether it is a learned behavior or an inherited one.

Often, the idea of hypnosis conjures visions of being lulled into a trance so deep that you end up clucking like a chicken onstage in front of an audience of bloated, red-faced retirees on a cruise ship. But the practice has become a trusted form of treatment for pain management and behavior modification. During the American Civil War, doctors used hypnosis on soldiers before amputating. More recently, collegiate psychology programs have been incorporating hypnosis into their curriculums. Washington State University integrated psychological hypnosis into their counseling psychology graduate program in 1984, calling the practice "one of the most versatile and useful of health care tools for both physical and mental health."

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Hypnosis exists in many styles and methods. The word hypnotherapy is a gray area for practitioners; generally, the National Guild of Hypnotists recommends avoiding the term unless you're a licensed healthcare professional, since the word therapy indicates the client will undergo a psychotherapeutic treatment. In many states, hypnosis is an unregulated field, though others, like Colorado, require practicing hypnotists to be licensed and to pass an exam. In New Jersey, hypnotists do not need to be licensed when aiding clients in increasing motivation, kicking habits like smoking, and "stress management not related to a medical or mental health disorder."

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