Hypnosis can help insomnia and is a fast and comfortable treatment. You may even get health fund rebates for hypnotherapy.
As a clinical hypnotherapist (AHA) and medical hypnotist, not only do I see many people for sleep disorders in my clinics but also many people who present for other reasons turn out to have sleep disorders.
You may have been taking sleeping pills that no longer work or tend to dull your mind during the day.
Perhaps you were prescribed other medications that have side-effects that are reducing the quality of your life. We can help you withdraw from those drugs.
What kind of sleep disorder do you suffer from?
Insomnia and sleep disorders can come about for several reasons.
Are you having trouble sleeping when you need to?
Have you experienced long-term insomnia?
Has shift work knocked out your good sleeping patterns?
You may not be able to get to sleep in the first place.
You may have poor discipline around going to bed or spend hours while in bed thinking about various things in your life that have nothing to do with sleep.
If you have disturbances in slow wave sleep (when you normally dream), you can suffer profound physical and mental exhaustion because the sleep never goes down into the REM state in which you dream.
You may be experiencing intermittent disturbances where you wake up several times a night.
Or you may wake up early and be unable to get back to sleep.
Hypnotherapy for insomnia can help you get a better night’s sleep.
Physical causes of sleeplessness
Sleeplessness may be due to physical disorders such as reactions to medications, urinary incontinence, addiction, alcohol use, nutritional deficiencies, toxic poisoning, hormonal disturbance, hyperandrogenism, hyperthyroidism, adrenal storm, pineal tumor, enzyme failure, restless leg syndrome, bruxism, sleep hypoventilation, obstructive sleep apnea, pain, disease, infection and reaction to shift work.
I am also a clinical naturopath (ANPA) so will be screening you physically for signs of any of these disorders and recommending changes. You are a whole person so I treat you holistically to get the best results.
It’s important to find the cause of the insomnia instead of simply trying to apply treatments without investigation.
Many of these disorders are often missed by clinicians because they don’t ask the right or sufficient questions. I think it’s important to be thorough in screening you and may even order some tests.
I will also ask you to bring the results of any tests you may have already had done to the first session.
As a naturopath I prefer natural insomnia remedies, so I may prescribe some herbs, supplements, change your diet and maybe implement some lifestyle changes.
When insomnia is psychological
You may be experiencing emotional disturbances that are the results of unprocessed personal issues: Stuff you haven’t dealt with that is nagging at you.
Disturbances in slow wave sleep can lead to psychosis. This is when you lose touch with reality and can’t tell what is real and what is not. You lose the ability to have rational thought which can often lead to misdiagnosis of mental illness.
Dreaming is so important because it is the time when your mind does a lot of unconscious processing and if you don’t sleep deeply enough to do that, you begin to lose your sanity.
Some people have PTSD where you wake up in a state of fear in the middle of the night or you are afraid to go to sleep.
Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders, reactions to bad relationships, moving house, changing jobs, phobias, reactions to noise disturbances and fear of different kinds can all contribute to sleeplessness.
The importance of sleep
Humans are genetically programmed to sleep around a third of our lives. It is a necessary biological function.
During sleep our immune system ramps up to deal with infections, repair damaged tissue, and to a lesser extent clear undigested food. If these functions do not get their opportunity to happen, we become ill and prone to infection.
Sleep is a short form of hibernation to get us through the night when it is less safe for us to be exposed to the world. We are animals and have millions of years of genetic programming that enabled our species to survive and prosper. We cannot ignore that programming.
We also have to rest our bodies because we are not machines and when we do not rest our body, it breaks down and malfunctions.
Brain wave cycles
The brain has five basic brainwave cycles: high beta, beta. alpha, theta, delta. High beta is the fastest and theta is the slowest.
We are our most excited and awake in high beta although much of our daily functions may take place in the beta state. When in delta we are in deep sleep and dreaming. Our sleep is disturbed when we keep remaining or coming back up to the beta and high beta states.
Children and adults can have night terrors. Having said that, we can have nightmares in the theta state but that process can be reprogrammed with hypnosis.
If you are lying in bed in the high beta wave (alarm state) you will have no or only poor, intermittent periods of light napping.
Why hypnotherapy helps overcome insomnia for you to sleep
Hypnosis is the ancient Greek word for sleep. Yes – part of it is that simple. When I take you down into a hypnotic trance you come down out of high beta and down to the alpha state. I may even take you down into lower brainwave states.
Your body begins to rest and I am training you to do that yourself on a regular basis.
Since I am also a clinical psychotherapist and mental health professional (PACFA, ARCAP) we can deal with your outstanding issues that might be keeping you awake.
The major feature of hypnotherapy is that this work can be done fast.
I also give full written instructions on what I want you to do at home between sessions so we are on the same page and taking you in the right restful direction to have a good sleep.
For hypnotherapy help to overcome insomnia with Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH, BHSc, ND in our Sydney clinic or by Zoom from anywhere in the world call 0403 398 808
