I I wasn’t getting it I’ve always been nervous before interviews since my university days, but this was my first time doing an interview like this. As someone with anxiety that my family calls “control issues,” I was reluctant to undergo hypnosis. But as a curious journalist, I was intrigued. So I tried to ignore the weightless feeling in my stomach as I logged into a video call with David Wright. The 55-year-old counselor and hypnotherapist is the clinical director of Counseling and Therapy Associates’ mental health and hypnosis clinic in Taylor.
My only experience with hypnosis so far has been through receiving hypnosis. From the back corner of my high school auditorium, I watched cynically as a showman hypnotized graduating seniors with an all-night party. I am reminded of a man’s claim that it is impossible to hypnotize someone who is reluctant to do so due to fear, skeptical stubbornness, or other reservations. “That’s ignoring me,” I thought. But here I was, scared, skeptical and stubborn, surrendering to hypnosis for this story.
While hypnosis is clearly Wright’s specialty, it’s not what first drew him into the field of mental health. His interest began when he was 17 years old, when he took a job as a counselor at a youth summer camp. He supervised a cabin of teenagers who often confided in him. After hearing about their various struggles, Wright decided to work with youth. This led him to Wayne State University, where he earned a master’s degree in counseling in 1992. Now living in Woodhaven, he has been practicing mental health counseling for nearly 30 years and is well known locally for his hypnosis stage show as The Motor. The town hypnotist. Last summer, he started a podcast of the same name.
Going into my virtual meeting with Mr. Wright, I found him to be genuine and approachable. (I didn’t know until halfway through the interview that the showman at that all-night party was none other than David Wright.) He defines hypnosis, just as he does with each client. I started with that. “It’s not magic,” he said. Instead, he compared hypnosis to meditation. He described it as simply quieting the mind and allowing access to the subconscious mind. In this state, he said, people are more receptive to suggestion. “I can’t do that. zap Change people,” he said. “People who come to me have already decided to change. I just guide them down that path.”
Part of my doubts stemmed from misinterpreting hypnosis as some kind of supernatural feat, but I realized that my mind was opening to possibilities. – this might work after all.
Mr. Wright began the process by instructing me to stare into the light of the webcam, then led me through a series of muscle relaxation instructions. When he began to describe the weight of my eyelids, I was surprised to find myself struggling to keep them open. Thankfully, he quickly instructed me to keep them closed.
Still, what really perplexed me was when I tried to open my eyes and he said the act was impossible. Something inside me sneered, from far below my deep state of relaxation. But when Wright told me to do it, it was as if my lower and upper eyelids were superglued together.
Mr. Wright went on to take me deeper into my subconscious and perform other tests to show the extent of my immersion. Finally, he brought me back to reality. Once I surfaced, I felt fully awake, yet more relaxed than I had been in years. My muscles didn’t tense anywhere, and my restless mind remained calm.
Up until this point, I had barely registered my own surprise. When my mind returned to the building, I felt a little foolish for all my doubts. My skepticism was gone and I was curious to see how hypnosis could be used to treat mental illness.
While chemical depression is caused by a brain imbalance and may benefit from medication, hypnotherapy is a holistic treatment for conditions such as anxiety, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and situational depression. Wright said it could be used as a law. “For most people, these problems indicate that the brain is overreacting to stimuli. In these cases, hypnotherapy attempts to implant suggestions that change a person’s thought patterns.”
Wright gives the example of a client who has lost a loved one. Although situational depression is often part of the normal grieving process, some people have difficulty recovering from this pain. “It’s important to change the client’s frame of reference so they can move forward with a healthier mindset,” he said.
The same goes for hypnotherapy as a treatment for SAD and anxiety disorders, he says. In the case of SAD, therapists can make suggestions to rewire your brain’s response to seasonal changes, as well as improve your overall health and well-being, such as eating a healthy diet and maintaining a regular sleep schedule. We also provide practical suggestions for promoting this.
One of the main benefits of hypnotherapy is its ability to create immediate changes, Wright said. Traditional treatments that use talk therapy to uncover the roots of a patient’s psychological distress are also effective, but this can take years. “For me, the why is not as important as the behavior I want to change,” he said. “If we can change a patient’s thinking and change their behavior in just one session, that would be great.”
