The final component is key. Connecting the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula turns down anxiety, which inhibits the mind from real change. In this state, the mind feels freer to experiment with altered perception and behavior. It also shuts off outside conscious awareness, including painful feelings and thoughts that could be distracting.
It’s also worth noting that everyone has different levels of “hypnotizability,” meaning some of us are more susceptible to being put into this dissociative state. “Our hypnotizability is a very stable trait in adulthood—as consistent as IQ,” said Dr. Spiegel. “About 20% of adults are very hypnotizable, 60% moderately, and another 20% not hypnotizable. It is more a matter of how one uses the hypnotic task, and taking an approach that involves focusing on what you are for, rather than fighting what you are against.”
My experience getting hypnotized for a sugar addiction
For my hypnosis, I decided to go to Kerry Gaynor, a celebrity-loved hypnotherapist in Los Angeles, who has helped everyone from John Mulaney to Heather Locklear quit smoking. “I think there’s an infinite source of power that lies within us,” Gaynor told me. “I think most people have trouble connecting to that power, and hypnosis is one tool to help people make that connection.”
Before getting started, we talked about why I wanted to tackle sugar addiction—he explained that hypnosis won’t work if you’re there just because you should be. You actually have to want to change your behavior for the effects of hypnotherapy to take hold.
Gaynor’s method typically includes three one-hour sessions, done five to seven days apart. During the first session, Gaynor said it’s about confronting the person to start thinking about their addiction differently. We talked about seeing sugar as something that’s life or death—that eating sugar is literally killing me. It’s this framework that lets people take power over their addiction.
In the first session Gaynor presented me with a lot of different scenarios. This one resonated with me the most: Say you’ve been dating someone for a few years, everything has been going great, and you have a lot of fun together. Then one day, you happen to follow them and it turns out they’re a serial killer who has been murdering people the whole time you’ve been together. (Stay with me here.)
Gaynor asked, “Would you ever get back together with that person? Even though you once had so much fun, will you ever be able to see them the same?” The answer, obviously, is no. Yes, this is an extreme example, but this is how Gaynor wanted me to start to think about sugar—something I can never see the same way again and will never want to go back to.
The actual “hypnosis” portion of the sessions lasted maybe five minutes, and I definitely wasn’t out of it or in an altered state. Gaynor said this is normal. “When you’re in hypnosis, you can always hear the suggestions, otherwise it wouldn’t work,” he explained. He equated your state of mind to daydreaming, or the few moments of rest before you fall asleep, or when you sort of “zone out” during a movie or lecture.
