Pre & Post Surgical Hypnosis
Dr. Dyan has found that making people self-hypnosis recordings to listen to before surgery, and starting right after surgery, seems to very much improve surgical outcomes* in terms of the following:
- Faster healing times
- Less pain, improved pain management, greater comfort
- Less need for medication
- Less anxiety
- Less medication or anesthesia side effects
- Improved outcomes
- Greater sense of confidence and control
- And more
Generally, hypnotherapy for surgery and hypnosis for medical procedures addresses the specifics of the surgery and process of healing. It is intended to allow the unconscious to be prepared to support the most efficient healing.
Dr. Dyan likes to think of pre and post-operative medical hypnosis like this:
If you were to try to teach a child how to swim, and you took that child and threw them into a pool, they would probably become afraid and would scream or cry.
If, however, you spoke gently to the child and explained exactly what is going to happen, the child would be less likely to be so afraid and would be more likely to learn to enjoy swimming or at least to tolerate it. (For example, you might say, “I am going to hold you and we are going to go into the water. You might get water on your face but that’s ok! We can dry it off. And you are going to splash around and kick your legs and then we will get out and dry you off and take a bath.” Saying this before going into the water would probably yield a better result than just jumping into a pool with the child without a gentle explanation beforehand.)
The unconscious and the autonomic systems of the body can be thought of in the same way. When you go into a surgery or a medical procedure, your body is reacting the way it was designed to when it is cut or when there is an intervention that surprises your system.
Pre-operative hypnosis can be thought of as a way of communicating with the unconscious and the body (like talking to the child before jumping in the pool) so that it is prepared and can relax and cooperate. Post-operative hypnosis can direct the unconscious to support healing and can help with stress reduction, pain management/comfort, and thus with recovery.
Dr. Dyan combines this framework with her training as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner® (SEP) to deepen the support for healthy nervous system responses from a mind-body perspective.
You can read more about her 20 years of experience working in a medical doctor’s practice where she first honed her hypnotic skills. In that article, she also describes how her emphasis on health psychology, while receiving her Ph.D., helped her to develop her ability to specifically prepare the mind and body of her clients to encourage the best surgical outcomes.
* A lot of research supports improved outcome measures when hypnosis is used pre and post operatively.