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Rewriting Old Stories: How Hypnotherapy Unlocks Change · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: The combination of these three changes that happen when you go into a state of hypnosis makes it sort of a hotbed for being able to make changes.
• 0:15
  Mary: For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek.
• 0:23
  Mary: But in nature, violets are anything but weak.
• 0:26
  Mary: They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem.
• 0:29
  Mary: Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult.
• 0:38
  Mary: It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature.
• 0:44
  Mary: If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place.
• 0:51
  Mary: Hey Violets, welcome to the show.
• 0:53
  Mary: I'll be the first to tell you that I don't know much about hypnotherapy.
• 0:57
  Mary: But as a licensed mental health therapist, I do know that our thinking brain hides an awful lot of stuff or writes a story about it that we believe is true and it fuels our actions.
• 1:08
  Mary: Let me give you an example.
• 1:10
  Mary: I have a client who has a memory of spending a day cleaning the house for her mom who had to work an extra shift.
• 1:16
  Mary: When mom gets home, my client, then a nine-year-old girl, is so excited for mom to see the work that she's done.
• 1:23
  Mary: The only memory my client has about her mom's reaction is that her mom expressed disappointment that my client forgot to unload the dishwasher, like mom had asked her to do that morning.
• 1:33
  Mary: So for this woman's entire life, starting when she was just a child, she believed that she failed and that she would never be good enough or do things right.
• 1:43
  Mary: But if I have her do some deep breathing, ground herself, and then think back to that time, she can often recognize that her mom's reaction wasn't quite as harsh as she thought it was at the time, and that it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with her mom's own situation.
• 2:00
  Mary: And often the big loud memories that fuel our self-beliefs ignore other evidence, that we often do things for which we earn praise.
• 2:09
  Mary: However, these ingrained beliefs and the negative thinking can be very difficult to unlearn or to rewire.
• 2:16
  Mary: We can engage in a lot of yah buts.
• 2:19
  Mary: If my limited understanding of hypnotherapy is correct, sometimes tapping into a slightly more relaxed state may enable us to more easily relinquish the grip of our thinking mind and allow ourselves to let go of limiting narratives.
• 2:32
  Mary: But I'm excited to dig into this and learn more.
• 2:35
  Mary: My guest today is Michelle Waters.
• 2:38
  Mary: Passionate about creativity, growth, and persuasion, Michelle shifted from a corporate career in digital marketing to working as a clinical hypnotherapist at the end of the pandemic after experiencing a massive wave of heartbreak when her dream life partner passed away.
• 2:53
  Mary: Since then, she has been working with individuals to let go of outdated, unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns to grow and change, transforming clients to lead much happier and productive lives.
• 3:05
  Mary: In 2025, Michelle developed her first app, Make My Hypno, which makes personalized hypnosis recordings on demand.
• 3:14
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Michelle.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Mary.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very excited to be here with you today.
• 3:21
  Mary: Yes, I am so interested to learn more about this.
• 3:25
  Mary: So before we get into all that good stuff, can you start with just sharing the parts of your story that you feel like informed your journey?
• 3:34
  Mary: Like how did you get here and why are you doing the things that you're doing today to help people?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: I have always been so curious about the powers of the mind and about how people think and about cognitive biases and about how people record and remember their experiences.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: I loved your story.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that curiosity and interest took me first to MBA school, where I went and got an MBA and then went out into the world of what turned into digital marketing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: It had been marketing before, and helped companies for a couple of decades with their creative campaigns.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it really caught my attention and I was good at it because I liked the like, how do we talk about things?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: How do we persuade people?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: How do we get people to consider trying us?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: That kind of thing.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I did that.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a lot of on again, off again, on again, off again, because that's really kind of how digital marketing and agency work lives.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: I found a book uh just before the pandemic by my one of my favorite authors, Leanne Moriarty.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: She's the author of Big Little Lies.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: She also wrote a book called The Hypnotist Love Story.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I read this novel, and I was like, I want to do that.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: That lady has the coolest job.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so I Googled it and found a school and started attending on the weekends and thought I'll just do a little bit of this.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I loved it so much.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: I made my way all the way to the end and got certified as the clinical hypnotherapist.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that was all very cool and exciting.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, I'll just keep kind of playing with that while I do my digital marketing career.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, like so many people during the pandemic, life just kind of went and like the bottom fell out on me on a number of things.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: I had met my dream life partner, and he passed away.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I sold a house and I moved, and my job in digital marketing ended, and I just was not feeling it to go get another one.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was like, you know what?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of people changing jobs right now.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna do this.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started seeing clients for hypnotherapy.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really what got me off onto this um different road that I've been on for the last few years.
• 6:05
  Mary: You've had a lot of things happen, and usually that is where the kind of the crossroads happens in our path that a big change, and sometimes, you know, it's not even a huge thing.
• 6:17
  Mary: You know, it can be something where it's like, oh, here's a different thing.
• 6:21
  Mary: And it sounds like you sort of started slow with something that really interested you, and then it bloomed later when there was space in your life for it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of just, you know, I felt like, oh, I have this certificate sitting on the wall.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: What if I put it on the wall of an office?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I started seeing people uh both online as well as in person and really helping lots and lots of people to figure out what what might be in their head that is not serving them, and how do we get it out of their head and put in something better so that their life upgrades?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, in the in my previous life, I would be excited about a new website for Schwab or an email campaign for Clorox.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: And this is very different.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is helping Jane and Joe to think better of themselves, to stop smoking, to lose weight, to get over phobias, to process a relationship change.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's very rewarding.
• 7:29
  unknown: Yeah.
• 7:30
  Mary: Well, before we get into this too much, I really want to talk about what it is.
• 7:36
  Mary: And I would love to talk about the science behind it because I know I do have some listeners who are a little skeptical of certain things.
• 7:46
  Mary: And, you know, for me, I remember this sort of this um, I'll say cartoonish representation of it, like you're getting very sleepy, you know, and you're supposed to watch the pendulum and you kind of go into this alternative existence, and that you know, you're open to all kinds of suggestions.
• 8:06
  Mary: And I know that that is taking it and really making it into something it's not.
• 8:11
  Mary: So tell us a little bit about what it what is hypnotherapy and what is the science?
• 8:17
  Mary: What makes it work?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, for a long time we had no real understood, we just knew it kind of worked, but nobody had any idea.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so it got sort of lumped into the paranormal and this sort of thing.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that was an okay placement for a time being, but it's not really there anymore.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now we have better science and we have things like MRI machines.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: And in the last 20 years, people have discovered that when a person is in a state of hypnosis, which is just a brain state, that's all we're talking about.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: But when a person is in that brain state, three things happen.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: This, your your brain dials down and you become more open to suggestion, more focused, and more dissociated, meaning kind of more dreamy, more able to imagine your body doing new and different things.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so the combination of these three changes that happen when you go into a state of hypnosis makes it sort of a hotbed for being able to make changes, to work with either yourself or in my case with a guide.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: I function as a guide to help my clients to go back in time, to revisit memories like the one you were talking about earlier, to see things differently, to replace a thought of I need a cigarette with I need a glass of water.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's just so healing for so many people.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes people ask, can everyone be hypnotized?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Almost.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: I will say that there are people who have a harder time going into this state intentionally than others, but almost everybody can be hypnotized at some level.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just remarkable how my clients have been able to make changes.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I've helped people who wanted to dramatically cut back on drinking or uh stop pulling like ladies who pull their hair, trictillomania.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Stop that.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, people who have had a hard time like adjusting maybe to a workplace change, uh, to figure out kind of where that's coming from and why and how they can reframe that to be in a much better position walking into walking into their new workplace.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I I uh love the work.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: It is science-based.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's just we didn't have a good, we didn't have the right tools to be able to see the science behind it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: And those tools are improving every day.
• 11:06
  Mary: Well, it's interesting when you talk about having somebody revisit memories because when we encode a memory, there are so many things around it that impact how we encode it, or a story is retold in our family.
• 11:20
  Mary: And the more we hear the retelling, the more we remember it as it's retold.
• 11:25
  Mary: And I remember in one of my doctoral programs, we had we were specifically focusing on the brain.
• 11:32
  Mary: And as they say, there's no pain in the brain.
• 11:34
  Mary: So sometimes when you do brain surgery, the patient is awake because they want to make sure that they are targeting the right part of the brain.
• 11:42
  Mary: And they can actually stimulate memories, like a memory of a song you knew when you were five years old.
• 11:49
  Mary: All of a sudden, you're able to sing this song.
• 11:52
  Mary: So I think that we tend to think if I can't just recall it automatically, it's gone from my brain, which I find that is fascinating because it's not.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it might be, but it might not be, right?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's somewhere in the yeah, sometimes it's there, and sometimes it's there and buried, right?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it never comes up, and sometimes it does.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: A few years ago, I worked with a client who came to see me because she was phobic of bumblebees.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: She was so terrified of bumblebees that she would run from her car door to my office door because she was afraid she was going to get stung between the car and the building.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: She couldn't go on hikes, she couldn't hang out at her boyfriend's picnics.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: She she was really limited in her lifestyle.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I asked her, Well, when have you been stung?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, never, she says.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: How long has this been going on?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: Since I was a child.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember a time when I wasn't like this.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And in our work, we did a technique called regression to go back and see where this terrible phobia might be connected to, in terms of what would come up for her.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: And what came up for her was a vision of being in a garden as a five or six-year-old little girl sitting on a bench beside her mother.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: And there were roses and lavender and little bumblebees flying around the garden.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And her mother looked over at her and said, Honey, I need to tell you, we're here at this garden.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're at a hospital.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Your older sister, who has severe kidney problems, is upstairs in the hospital having surgery right now.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it is possible that your big sister will not make it through this surgery.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to let you know that this could happen.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: So my client, who's only six, is paranoid about losing her big sister.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: She's terrified big sister's gonna die.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And what's right in front of her?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: The bumblebees.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: She transferred that fear about her big sister's life to the bumblebees.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And at a subconscious level, every time she was outside or saw a picture of a bumblebee or thought about bumblebees, or anytime that crossed, she would get this huge anxiety, this huge fear that just froze her, right?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: She was just, she was just completely overwhelmed.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: We came up with an explanation in our work, and that explanation was hugely helpful for her to recover from this paranoia about bumblebees.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: And she's very funny.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: She's like, I still don't want to go hiking, I still don't like being outside, but she no longer has to run from her car to go to buildings.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: She can go to a picnic for an hour.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's a life-changing experience, all because we took the time to dive into what was really going on here.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I could provide her the guidance and the tools and techniques that she needed to be able to change her life.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I I'm just so rewarded by this kind of work.
• 15:13
  Mary: Yeah.
• 15:13
  Mary: Well, and that's so fascinating.
• 15:15
  Mary: And that's one of the things I love about therapy is there's always a reason.
• 15:20
  Mary: And we just have no idea how strong those protective parts of our mind are and what they create at the time, usually when we're kids, to protect us from information or feelings or situations.
• 15:34
  Mary: So I think that is just a fascinating story.
• 15:37
  Mary: So I'm guessing each person is quite different, but do you typically can you facilitate some change with one session?
• 15:46
  Mary: How long does it typically take for change to start to happen for someone?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: It differs a lot.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: It differs a lot by the person, and it differs somewhat also by the problem.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: So problems that have been going on for a long period of time, like a lifelong fear of bees, those problems usually take longer than somebody who um has been a good flyer, never had a problem with it, and now suddenly finds herself afraid she's got a plane next week.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Odds are we can do something in just a little bit of time to make her kind of feel that re-courage come back.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: But it it depends.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: It depends a lot.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's important when I am working with a client one-on-one that we have a good chat so that I have a better understanding of kind of is this something at a surface level or is this something that is potentially medium or quite deep because the deeper work takes more time.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: It it's fun to tell stories of people who have these instantaneous um um solves for their problem through hypnosis, and it does happen.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: It does, but it is not every time, every person, every problem.
• 17:12
  Mary: Well, and it sounds like they need to have a tremendous amount of trust in you and in the process.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and a lot of this comes because, as you said, memories can be malleable, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it is possible for memories to change.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so I need to be very sensitive to that as I'm working with clients to make sure that I'm not making assumptions about what their memories are, that we're really dealing with what comes up for those memories, but I am taking advantage of this state to help people be able to maybe look at something differently, like your client who is able to look at something differently and realize that she cleaned the house.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she was nine.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: That that's much more material, right?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes people need a little support to see that and to to help people get out of um, you know, kind of tail spins on things.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: I I did a lot of tail spinning before I started doing this kind of work, and it's really helped a lot being able to see that there are times when thinking about something and trying to process it on your own is good.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: And there are times when you you need someone else to help you.
• 18:33
  Mary: So, are you able to explain a little how do you get someone into that state where they're more receptive?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: There are many ways of inducing hypnosis.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's important for people to realize that even if you don't think you ever go into a state of hypnosis, you are going in and out of states of hypnosis all day long.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody goes through a state called the hypnagogic state right before you fall asleep.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that moment where you're kind of right between waking and sleeping, that is very much like the uh trance state that I am helping my clients to induce.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: You can go into a hypnotic state by listening to music or by driving down the freeway or by watching a movie.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: What I do, I have techniques that I prefer to use.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: I have a bunch of them that I put together and stack together to help my client go into that state.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: And despite your little joke of you are feeling sleepy, it's not quite you are feeling sleepy, but it is essentially helping somebody to connect with their own sense of how to get sort of so calm, so relaxed that they they kind of check out.
• 19:53
  Mary: Yeah.
• 19:54
  Mary: Well, and I would guess just because I know that fear is a is a huge deep.
• 20:00
  Mary: Demotivator or a huge barricade for some people when there's something they want to work through, but there's trauma attached, or they have, and I'm guessing this is where your resistant people are, where they have this idea that I cannot get to that state because I don't know what's gonna happen, that fear.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens too.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it happens too.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: How do you address that?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's a matter of talking to them more and getting building more rapport so that we have a stronger relationship, that they feel more comfortable and confident about just getting relaxed.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: That that can be some of it.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's a matter of people will go into a little bit of a state of trance and then they'll start to wake up again.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I have to kind of bring them down deeper again into trance state.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: So as I'm working with people, I'm watching them because there are cues and signals that people are in a hypnotic state or that they're more awake or that kind of a thing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: I work to build trust.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think building trust is essential.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And for some of the issues that people come to me for, um, they're really important.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I had somebody tell me once, I've never told anybody this.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then she went on to tell me something about her relationship.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I have worked with people who are dealing with betrayal, both as the betrayer and the betrayed.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: Both both both seats have a lot of trauma associated with them.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and both deserve healing, honestly.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: My my goal is to help my client heal, and it I'm gonna bring all the tools I have available to help him or her get to the space they're trying to go to.
• 21:54
  Mary: And I would think if there is fear there, when they can recognize that a lot of the fear is cognitive, the stories they're telling themselves, that must be so powerful because when they get to that state and then they realize, oh, like I'm okay in this space right now, that's where the cognitions I think can be de-empowered.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, and that's some of it, you know, it's it's interesting in hypnotherapy school, they talk about sort of fears and irrational fears, right?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like it is okay to be afraid of bumblebees if you're standing in a cage full of bumblebees, right?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: That that might actually be a pretty rational fear, you know.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: But if you've never been stung and you're just walking along outside, that's kind of not rational anymore.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, is that folks who have these irrational fears, they know they're irrational, they just don't know why they're there.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that's our work together is to figure out sort of uh why are they there and how do we remove them?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then for some people, they never do figure out exactly why, or they're not really satisfied with their explanation why.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: And in those cases, we sort of go at it as um just really leaning into the power of hypnosis and that the suggestibility, the oh, yeah, it's a problem, but it's really not as much of a problem as you thought it was until we might sort of scale things down.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: I had a client I worked with for anxiety, and it was severe anxiety.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: She was a woman in her late 60s or early 70s, she was a real estate agent.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: She was like super friendly, knew a ton of people, always out there, always on the go doing stuff.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: And she mysteriously came down with this very strange case of anxiety where she couldn't get to the gym, she couldn't go out to lunch with her friends, she couldn't drive her car.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: She was this outgoing person who just fell into herself for no apparent reason.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we worked for weeks looking for an explanation.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Where did this come from?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: How did we get rid of it?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Never really got there.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: But we did get to the point where she was getting more and more ready to let go of this anxiety.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, what was interesting in her case, it was we were we were working and it was almost Easter, and she was a very Christian person.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I asked if I could incorporate her faith and Jesus into our work together.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I had her envision Jesus coming to her and helping her with this.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: And in just a couple of sessions beyond that, she got better.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: And she she got better, she got a lot better quickly and then kind of completely better in a couple of months, you know.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I I don't always do that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: I would never do that without my clients' explicit authority that that was okay.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: But you really want to work in hypnosis with your strengths and your beliefs.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so I am working with people to lean into what they've got, what what what are the tools in their toolkit?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we can use those approaches to get past whatever's their obstacle.
• 25:30
  Mary: Yeah.
• 25:31
  Mary: So in these things where we're talking about anxiety-based, the bumblebees and your your um example you just gave, that that I get that because it's very similar to some of the work that I do.
• 25:45
  Mary: When we're talking about a habit, so somebody says, I want to stop smoking, or I've this, I'm I'm just eating too many potato chips or whatever it is, how does it work in that case?
• 25:58
  Mary: What does it kind of connect to that allows people?
• 26:01
  Mary: I want to say willpower, but I know it's much more than that.
• 26:04
  Mary: That's not the right word, but mindset, what is what does it allow them to access to give them the ability to move into a healthier habit to replace them?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: So for smoking, it's typically looking at why did you start smoking and what is smoking giving you?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: And how do we find replacements for that?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: How do we find new friends who don't smoke?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: How do we find new habits of things to do with your hands?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's knitting or taking photographs, whatever it is.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: But how do we how do we busy up parts of your body, right?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, when it comes to things like weight loss or overeating sugar, I do a lot of work with overeating sugar.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's a matter of using this suggestible part of the brain to kind of bypass even noticing things, right?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: Or becoming more connected to noticing things like or because they're either not noticing things or noticing different things.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it might be a I only eat when I'm hungry and teaching your body to learn how to notice when you're hungry, because you're probably not hungry as much as you got food around these days.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: And when it comes, it's very interesting, like working with clients who have uh hair pulling trachtillomania.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: I thought when I first started working in this category, oh, they're all gonna be the same.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, they're not the same, they're all very, very different.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so discovering why one client is pulling her hair is gonna be a different reason for why another client is pulling her hair or doing something she doesn't want to do.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: So we got to figure out why, and then we got to figure out what we're gonna do to replace that.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had one gal who came to see me uh for hair pulling, and she had pulled out a whole, she'd been pulling her, she was in her early 60s, she'd been pulling her hair since she was 12.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: And she'd pulled out a whole region of behind her ear that was, you know, bigger than a silver dollar, uh, completely bald in that region, had to wear her hair in this funny pattern in order to try and cover up this big bald spot.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: And she had childhood trauma that had been at the outset of all of this.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so we needed to work through the childhood trauma and figure out how to process, reprocess that.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: She'd tried to, but this was the this was sometimes you got to reprocess it a couple of times.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: And this was the time she was ready to get past that.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then we also had to come up with new things for her hands to do because it was as if her hands, and I've had several people tell me this like their hands want to do things that their subconscious mind isn't, doesn't feel like it's directing.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's a matter of figuring out how do you take authority over your hands uh to do something different.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: So for her, she would always pull her hair with one hand or the other.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so we developed a process where she would notice when one hand was elevating and the other hand could catch it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and she also got a big ball of yarn and would dig her fingers into the yarn as a way of trying to replace the feeling of digging her fingers into her hair.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I I like my job in that part of what I need to do is become very creative.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: In and helping these people to try new and different things that um, you know, because most people don't see a hypnotherapist first.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, people would come see us earlier, it might be better.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of people have tried so many things, and then they come to me and they're like, I don't know what else to try.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, for some things, I mean anxiety, you can take medicine, but maybe you don't want to, but maybe somebody doctor could give you medicine.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: But there is no pill for getting over bumblebees or stopping pulling your hair.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, talking to a clinical hypnotherapist would be a way to solve a problem.
• 30:22
  Mary: Well, and one of the things that I love about this, and I love with what I do as a host, is I talk to so many people that facilitate these modalities that are so different, but yet related to what I do as a therapist.
• 30:35
  Mary: And I think early on in my training, because it's been 35 years, there was this idea that the quintessential way to get better is to go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a therapist.
• 30:47
  Mary: And I think what we're finding is these other ways that really have a lot of them have been around forever.
• 30:55
  Mary: We just, we just push them aside, especially somatic things, our body stuff.
• 31:01
  Mary: Um, we put it aside because we're like, that's so simplistic or that's so woo-woo, or it's so fill in the blank.
• 31:08
  Mary: We need to be medical, we need to be scientific.
• 31:11
  Mary: And that's why I asked you about the science.
• 31:13
  Mary: But I think the most important thing that I want people to hear, because I also do coaching, which is a little different than therapy.
• 31:20
  Mary: I want people to know that whatever works for them is valid.
• 31:24
  Mary: Just make sure the practitioner truly has training.
• 31:28
  Mary: Because in for someone in your situation, you do deal with a lot of vulnerabilities.
• 31:35
  Mary: And I think someone that has a gut instinct of like, wait a minute, like this, not that it feels wrong because of whatever somebody else says about it, but it feels not right because of how it's being executed.
• 31:48
  Mary: But I just love empowering people to consider that there's another way that you may be able to address whatever is happening for you.
• 31:58
  Mary: And I just love that.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I've worked with clients who uh I don't know how many of them, but many of my clients have a therapist and me.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: And we're working on similar or related problems, but in different ways with different techniques.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so the work can be very, very complimentary.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Hypnotherapy tends to go sort of hard deep fast.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: It is not as um, I don't want to say it's not as gentle, but you know, I I'm pretty direct.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is the problem you're coming to see me about.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's more like coaching, right?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: This is a problem you're going to see me about.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Let's put together a game plan and get it fixed.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, whereas there are therapists who will take a very long thread to to helping their clients.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, um, and there are clients who appreciate that too, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's just a different, it's a different technique.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I do think that hypnosis got a really bad rap because people didn't believe it was scientific and we always wanted everything to be scientific, and there is science to it.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I think there's also a little woo to it.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's also a little, you know, kind of inexplicableness to it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I have a script I do for creativity.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: And every now and again, I like this one time I had this client and I was doing the creativity process with her.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things the clients do during the session is that they they make a project, they make something in their mind, and I could see what she was making.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't know why, but my my visual sense could could tell me what my client was doing when she wasn't telling me this, I just knew telepathically somehow.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the session, I was like, tell me what you made.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: So she starts describing it, and then I continued describing it, and she's like, How did you know that?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, every now and then I just connect in this inexplicable way, and it's part of I think the fun and the discovery of being able to learn that there is science behind all this, but there's also science that we haven't we haven't figured out how that works.
• 34:25
  Mary: Yeah.
• 34:26
  Mary: Well, and the science part.
• 34:28
  Mary: So I think we know sleep we normalize, we normalize sleep, but sleep is weird, like we pass out hopefully for eight hours every 24, or not all of us can do that, but we are definitely in different brain states.
• 34:42
  Mary: I mean, dreaming is the wackiest thing ever, but it's what we're supposed to do, so we don't question it.
• 34:48
  Mary: So I think that's where that we certainly have different brain states.
• 34:52
  Mary: And if a therapist tells you there's no woo in therapy, they haven't been doing it long enough because you read things, like there'll be things where I will sense something.
• 35:03
  Mary: And maybe because, you know, I've read expressions and unspoken things for all this time, but you really do have to tune in if you're good.
• 35:13
  Mary: You tune into that person that's there with you.
• 35:17
  Mary: Hopefully, I mean, I'm an in-person kind of therapist.
• 35:20
  Mary: I do teletherapy, which I think can, depending on the issue, it's can be really helpful.
• 35:25
  Mary: But I love that in-person because you get that energy a little bit differently.
• 35:30
  Mary: So there's definitely woo in all kinds of healing.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: So there's woo in all kinds of life, you know.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: If you're open if you're open to it and if you're ready to to be brave enough to say, yeah, this is a little weird, right?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are the what are the odds that this and this would both happen at the same time?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Not good, right?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I I feel like as a culture, as a society, we're getting a little more open to the idea of saying that there are things we can't explain, but they do seem to be connected in some form or fashion.
• 36:07
  Mary: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Mary: And anybody that listens to this show, I diss social media a lot.
• 36:11
  Mary: But one of the things that I think it has done is it's given us insight into things that we might not have been exposed to.
• 36:19
  Mary: So we could think nobody does that.
• 36:22
  Mary: And then you see it, and of course, then the algorithm shows you 75 people that do it.
• 36:26
  Mary: But I think it gives us a way to access other things that either we dismiss or we don't know exist.
• 36:35
  Mary: So I didn't even try this, but how about this for a segue?
• 36:38
  Mary: Let's talk about your app, talking about technology.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to talk about my app.
• 36:42
  Mary: Yes, how does this work?
• 36:44
  Mary: What does it do?
• 36:44
  Mary: I'm so fascinated by this.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I realized I've been recording for other people's apps where you can, you know, like access a pre-recorded sleep recording or that kind of a thing.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I have some recordings that I sell on Etsy, and all of these are great.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: They're great.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: My my products are great, but the thing about them is that they're all pre-recorded, right?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's what they are.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: They are not made for Mary, who wants to imagine herself being um a better public speaker or dealing with her anxiety.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe Mary doesn't like relaxing on the beach.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe Mary likes relaxing on a windswept mountain or at a jazz club in Paris.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then maybe Mary also has some additional little things that she'd like to throw in there, like I this is my favorite affirmation, or make me feel particularly confident doing XYZ.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what I realized is that while AI has a lot of problems, what is it good at?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Is really good at just like writing nice words that go together.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: And with direction and some guardrails, I created a method that creates this personalized recording for Mary or Joe or Bob in just a few minutes.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: And my clients have been loving them.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's just, it's a super simple little form you fill out with what it is you're looking for.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: And in about five minutes, your script is emailed to you for your usage forever.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because one of the things that makes hypnosis work is repetition.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I I want people to be able to get their script and listen to it every day or every other day.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you can listen to your script as you're falling asleep because your subconscious will hear it even if you aren't consciously awake.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: I've had people say, What did you put in my recordings?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: Wash the dishes and listen to it.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like um, but the it's rather amazing to me, but the tools to build an app are there.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh this simple little process is facilitating people's big changes.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: Some clients have seen success immediately.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like I have a nice um nice testimonial from a gal who did one for imposter syndrome, and she wanted to be more confident in her speaking, and she landed some big sales the next day.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then I have another one from a gal who wanted to get to the gym more so she could put in the name of her gym and like the things to make it very specific.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: And she's doing great.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: I have another woman who was like, Well, it's helping me to sleep, but it hasn't made me exercise yet.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Okay, but just keep trying.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: Keep trying.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: I recommend people try them for a month, maybe.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: And two weeks later, I talked to her again.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: She was like, Guess what?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: I go walking every day now.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: It just took a little time to kick in.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's pretty amazing that if you have clients who are interested in creating a custom recording, uh, this will make one for them at an affordable price in a matter of minutes.
• 40:16
  Mary: Wow, that is really cool.
• 40:19
  Mary: Okay.
• 40:20
  Mary: So we have talked about so many fascinating things.
• 40:22
  Mary: I have loved this conversation.
• 40:24
  Mary: If people are interested in your app or they're interested in other things you offer, can you share a little bit about where to find you?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you can find out more about me on my website.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Michelle Walters, and the website is Michelle Walters.net, M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E, W-A-L-T-E-R-S.net.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: And my app is called Make My Hypno.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, if it's okay with you, Mary, I would love to share a uh discount code, a link for a discount for your listeners.
• 40:56
  Mary: Yes, I would love that.
• 40:57
  Mary: And we will also put all this in the show notes, by the way.
• 41:00
  Mary: Terrific.
• 41:01
  Mary: Yeah, that's great.
• 41:02
  Mary: Well, thank you for that.
• 41:04
  Mary: That is so cool.
• 41:05
  Mary: I love this.
• 41:06
  Mary: I learned so much, and I really appreciate your time today.
• 41:10
  Mary: I appreciate your time, Mary.
• 41:12
  Mary: Thank you for having me on your show.
• 41:14
  Mary: And I want to thank everyone for listening.
• 41:16
  Mary: So, one of my dreams is coming true.
• 41:18
  Mary: I'm publishing my first book in a few months.
• 41:20
  Mary: I'd love for you to be part of it in the form of emails.
• 41:23
  Mary: They are not spammy and they're not often, but they are fun.
• 41:27
  Mary: It's kind of like a little recess in your inbox, a little fun break in the day.
• 41:32
  Mary: And I'll give you a little bit of behind the scenes stuff, a few free audios of my book excerpts and giveaways, including signed copies of my book.
• 41:42
  Mary: You can sign up at maryrothwell.net forward slash launch team.
• 41:46
  Mary: I will also put that in the show notes.
• 41:48
  Mary: And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.