The successful use of hypnotherapy in this area is well documented. Life-threating habits such as smoking and excessive eating need to be eliminated. Other habits that need to be eliminated are not life-threating, but they are habits that affect life styles. Good examples are hair pulling, nail biting, skin picking, and food addictions. Sometimes a habit simply needs modification. I recently had a patient who was addicted to chocolate.
She ate about 12 ounces of chocolate a day. She was breast feeding her new infant and her sugar levels in her milk were affecting the child's sleep behavior. The standard techniques were used, and the main hypnotic suggestion was given that one ounce of chocolate a day would satisfy her cravings, and that with with passage of time the cravings would diminish. When a behavior is simply a habit hypnotherapy is a powerful technique to eliminate or modify it, but if there is a pathology at the root of the behavior, psychotherapy is indicated, and the hypnotherapy would be used adjunctively, as it often is.
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