Lifestyle

YOU'RE GETTING VERY SLEEPY...

This Is the Moment That Changed My Mind About Hypnotism

Fear of needles, flying, public speaking, and life without cigarettes—all gone. Real people share how they conquered their anxieties and phobias.

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

PublishedApr 23, 2026, 4:58 PM EDT

UpdatedApr 23, 2026, 5:02 PM EDT

Updated Apr 23, 2026, 5:02 PM EDTPublished Apr 23, 2026, 4:58 PM EDT

Comments

Hypnosis is often portrayed as something supernatural, a gimmick performed onstage by a snake oil salesman for entertainment. It’s easy to doubt its efficacy and ignore it as a potential treatment option until you, too, find yourself frantically searching for solutions.

In 2017, after a frightening hospital stay abroad, I found myself suffering from daily stomach pains that left me immobilized. The pain was so intense and unpredictable that I began to fear leaving my house. Then came the panic attacks—debilitating and terrible.

During my doctor’s checkups, I was told that everything in my body appeared physically fine and that the pain was likely caused by my mind. While Googling every possible solution, I came across articles about hypnotherapy.

I was highly skeptical. “Isn’t hypnotherapy all an act?” I asked myself. Still, my desperation eventually outweighed my doubts. I decided to try it, knowing that it might not work.

To my surprise, the hypnotherapist did not pull out a pocket watch and begin dangling it in front of my eyes during our first session together.

Instead, he asked questions to gauge my situation and whether I could be hypnotized. (Not everyone can, he explained, and the more you resist, the harder it is.) During our next appointment, he reclined my chair, told me to close my eyes, and began helping me relax.

I don’t recall much of what was said during the sessions; typically, I spent the time in a relaxed position, eyes closed.

What I do know is that it helped. I visited him for months, and with a combination of medication, acupuncture, and our sessions, the pains slowly subsided. I stopped having panic attacks. I began attending classes, going to work, and enjoying my life again. Put simply, it was life-changing.

There are innumerable stories online of people who have overcome fears such as flying or public speaking, or who have found support in their weight-loss journeys and in managing mental health conditions like trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) or post-traumatic stress disorder with hypnotherapy.

To be clear, hypnotherapy isn’t a universal fix, and there are equal numbers of stories from people who have found it ineffective or even harmful. I don’t advocate for its use so much as I believe in sharing my own story to educate others and help to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions surrounding it.

Still, it is impossible to ignore how it improved my day-to-day experience of the world. To learn more about its impact on others, I interviewed three people about how hypnotherapy changed their lives for the better.

“I initially felt skeptical. But my fear of needles went from a 10 to a five—in just one session.”

“I have been terrified of needles since I was 4 years old. It got to the point where, if I had to get a shot, my anxiety would start on the day that I booked the appointment. On the day of, it would take me 4 hours to get ready. I would lock myself in the bathroom and cry. I always asked for a butterfly needle, because it was supposed to hurt less, but that didn’t help. My body would go into shock, and I would feel a lot of anxiety even after the fact.

“Eventually, my boyfriend found me a hypnotherapist in Florida whom I met on Zoom. I turned the lights off, made everyone leave the house, and sat on my bed. First, we talked through my fear and its origins, and then she walked me through a 30-minute hypnotherapy session.

“I don’t remember anything she said. When I came to, I felt a lot less anxiety around the thought of needles. Two weeks after the call, I had to get my blood drawn. I forgot about it completely until 30 minutes before the appointment—that has never happened to me before! I was like, ‘I’m not having a panic attack, this is amazing.’ I was still afraid, but I wasn’t freezing up or going into shock, and I didn’t even have to ask for the butterfly needle. I was so happy that I texted the hypnotherapist the next day to thank her. I only did that one appointment. If my fear gets bad again, I’ll go back to her, but for now I’m happy.”

—Alissa Moulster, 26, New York, a content creator and the founder of the lifestyle clothing brand Peach Motel2

“I had been a heavy smoker for 13 years. After one session, I haven’t touched a cigarette in 12 years.”

“I started smoking when I was 16 years old. By the time I was 29, I was smoking a pack a day. My mother was also a smoker, and had been for the past 30 years.

“One day, she and her friend decided to attend a group hypnosis session to stop smoking. Later, she got home and never touched a cigarette again; the urge had been lifted, and she had no desire to smoke.

“It looked so easy that I decided to give it a try. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about my health, but about the amount of money I was spending on my habit.

“The experience was strange and took place in a group setting. First, everybody wrote down the reasons why they were smoking. Then, the hypnotherapist talked us through every reason and why it was not a real one. Then, she encouraged us to smoke our last cigarettes.

“After we were done, we threw them into a fire and threw our lighters away. Then we all sat down together. She was talking us through the hypnosis, but I wasn’t feeling any different. I even opened my eyes in the middle of it to check what everyone else was doing, and giggled at something she said.

“But then the hypnosis ended and, sure enough, I never touched a cigarette again. The thought came up, but it was gone before I ever reached for one. I just didn’t feel like it anymore. It was the best 100 bucks that I invested in my life. And just not money-wise, but also for my health and everything else. Years later, it eventually inspired me to become a licensed hypnotherapist.”

—Claudia Blanco, 41, Los Angeles, hypnotherapist

“Hypnosis took away my nightmares.”

“I have had very vivid dreams my whole life, but by senior year in college, they had gotten dark. I would wake up drenched in sweat in the morning, feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.

“In the dreams, I would be sexually assaulted. Or I would get myself and a child I was babysitting into a horrible car accident. Or I would look into the mirror in the dream, and my skin would be peeled off. It was exhausting and confusing: There was no explanation, no trauma that triggered it. I saw these dreams almost every night, and I started to fear they might become reality.

“I asked my mother to ask her Facebook friends for recommendations, and a few of her friends recommended hypnotherapists. I looked through their recommendations and found a hypnotherapist in Texas, but I was skeptical about how she could help me remotely.

“It was a couple of hundred dollars for a bundle of three sessions, and I just thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen? Either it doesn’t work, but I still get these little meditative sessions, or it works, and I get help.’

“I remember the whole first session. She just walked me through calming my body until I couldn’t move or open my eyes. She then walked me through my sources of stress and anxiety that were projecting into my dreams.

“The next day, I woke up crying happy tears because I had a dream of myself shopping in Paris. I was so excited that I texted her immediately. My dreams improved so quickly that, by the third session, we focused on my self-confidence.

“It’s been three years, and I’ve just started to see some scary dreams again, but they’re not as scary or as frequent, and I’m more aware of them. But if they get worse, I’m ready to go back. The hypnotherapist told me from the get-go that I might need to do it again sometime, and I don’t mind. People need to go back to physical therapy sometimes, too, if they get injured again. Even if I have to go back every three to four years and pay a couple of hundred dollars, I’m fine with it.”

—Miller Ezell, 27, Colorado, digital ad-space freelancer

*Answers have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast.