Today we will look at the notes from the interview between Andrew Huberman and Dr. David Spiegel. In his podcast, Andrew interviews Dr. David Spiegel, who is specialized in clinical hypnosis. They discuss the use of clinical hypnosis for the treatment of trauma, chronic pain, anxiety, and more.
I would like to remind you that these are my personal notes from the podcast and I have no intention to replace the original content. You can watch the podcast here
In this podcast notes you will find out:
What is Hypnosis and Hypnotic Experience?
Self-directed Hypnosis and Hypnosis App
Confronting stress and trauma with hypnosis
Rethinking about Mind and Body in terms of navigating daily life
Dealing with Grief with Hypnosis
What is Hypnosis and Hypnotic Experience?
Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention. Hypnotic experience is like when you lose yourself in a movie, or a book, where you are totally focused. (Go back to Table of Contents)
What is Hypnosis Good for?
Hypnosis is a problem-focused treatment that can help stress reduction and many other issues we face in our daily lives. Hypnosis is good for mind-body interaction in relation to stress.
Hypnosis strengthens the neural connections. Although there is not enough evidence to support this, Dr. Spiegel believes that brain networks form stronger connections through self-hypnosis.
Hypnosis can also help with phobias and traumas. It helps you to restructure the narrative to these situations. It restructures the understanding of your experience. (Go back to Table of Contents)
Self Directed Hypnosis
Hypnosis is usually performed by licensed professionals. But Reveri app can help you to perform self-hypnosis. It helps to deal with pain, stress, focus, insomnia, and help people eat better and stop smoking. (Go back to Table of Contents)
What is Hypnotizability?
It is the capacity to have a hypnotic experience. This can be checked with the Spiegel eye-roll test. (Go back to Table of Contents)
Confronting stress and trauma with hypnosis
Instead of trying to get rid of stress, we should build our durability for stress. Once we build our ability to recognize and manage stress, we can deal with it a lot better. If we try to avoid stress, then we will have great difficulties in life.
Dr. David Spiegel uses a great analogy about learning how to ride a bike and stress. We cannot learn how to ride a bike without hurting ourselves. Stress, although it can be unpleasant, prepare us to handle life better.
Hypnotic experience can help you redefine stress and trauma and it will help you to deal with it a lot better. (Go back to Table of Contents)
Rethinking about Mind and Body in terms of navigating daily life
We need to see our brain and our body’s signals as tools. These tools help us to see and understand what is happening around us, such as what should we pay attention to, and what is important.
For instance, we can modify the way we see pain. Does it mean that our body is healing and pain is a sign that gradually things are getting back to normal? Or is it disrupting our life and causing problems?
You can use this to manage stress and anxiety as well. You can modify the way you process stress based on what your brain tells you the stress means. Try to understand what is happening around you. What causes the stress? You face it but also say “this is an opportunity for me to do something about it”. So you are not ignoring or trying to get rid of the pain or stress, you are rehabilitating. (Go back to Table of Contents)
Dealing with Grief with Hypnosis
Grief is inevitable. It is a process of understanding that you will have a life without your loved one. You will need to start thinking that even though they are gone, what have they left you with? What would they say to you right now? How would they feel about your life? What would they advise you to do? This sort of questioning can be helpful in the grieving process. (Go back to Table of Contents)