Unraveling depression: Principles and practices of clinical hypnosis

People struggling with depression are burdened by losses they can't and won't accept. They find themselves at odds not only with their circumstances, but also with symptomatic expressions of their exhausting efforts to shelter from, gird against, and contend with their pain and desolation. Their embattled sense of self gets no respite: Everything, including the depression itself, feels threatening, a violation, other. This article investigates why, and demonstrates how, hypnosis is particularly well suited for treating such self-referential, adversarial entanglements. Fundamentally associational in both structure and function, hypnosis resonates with other long-established, connection-based traditions for altering suffering. In keeping with Taoist, Sufi, and Buddhist ideas and practices, hypnosis introduces a quality of acceptance into the relationship between self and other, between self and pain. Clinical hypnosis establishes and maintains a context of interpersonal and intrapersonal security, a protective space and a relationship in which avolitional experience is not felt to be out-of-control or uncontrollable, but rather not-in-need-of-being-controlled. It thus becomes safe for clients to become curious about, approach, and engage with what in other settings would have the potential of producing a fearful, even panicky, reaction. By altering the boundary between clients and their suffering, clinicians facilitate an effortless rapprochement, making possible the shifting, repurposing, and unraveling of symptoms.