Can hypnotherapy improve dissociative symptoms?

Can hypnotherapy improve dissociative symptoms? And if so, is it done through only suggestion therapy?

This question was submitted by 'Yumi'

Mark says...

Certainly some people can have a sort of dissociative sense, you know, that could be as a result of trauma, it could be that they have a right hemispheric deficit in the brain and the left hemisphere tends to make us feel more abstracted, you know. People who've had the injury to the right hemisphere will often report not understanding everything but feeling separate from it and disassociated. The right hemisphere has to do with overarching context, and seeing the bigger picture and so forth. Left hemisphere modus operandi is more to do with focusing down on detail. So, you know, if you do that, if you're just focused on detail, you can suddenly start to feel as if you're disassociated from reality can be a protective mechanism, a protective part of your mind trying to protect you from trauma.

Often it may be that the left hemisphere is being overworked at the expense of the right hemisphere which is the overseer of context. So the ways to engage the right hemisphere might be spending more time in nature, purposely enjoying art for art's sake, or reading poetry and that kind of thing.

We can actually get back in touch with the right hemisphere and therefore feel more associated again. We might use hypnosis again to revivify times you felt more connected to reality around you, you didn't feel that there was a sort of invisible screen perhaps between you and other people or other situations. So we might use hypnosis in in that way as far as is it just done by suggestive therapy, experiencing things on a multi-sensory level - for example massage or forest bathing, going into the forest and hearing the sounds in the forest and the sensations of touch in the forest, and the smells of the forest and even the tastes in the air of the forest, and so forth, can really help people feel embodied and alive, and we can do that hypnotically as well as actually asking people to go into a forest.

So yes we can certainly use hypnosis for when people feel abstracted from reality separate from reality and and disassociated in that way as I say it can be a right hemispheric deficit in some people.