From curing a fear of flying to slimming, hypnotism can work wonders.

Health Editor Barry Nelson meets a North-East therapist who is turning her attention to women with fertility problems.

KATE Gillen has qualifications as long as your arm.

She teaches psychology at Teesside University. But what really fascinates her is the amazing power that hypnotism has to influence our behaviour.

Kate – Dr Gillen to you – has 20 years experience of teaching psychology at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. But it is in using her unusual skills as a qualified hypnotherapist that she comes into her own.

“When I was at university, I was fascinated to learn about the unconscious mind and the potential effects hypnotism can have on behaviour,”

says Kate, who grew up in Hartlepool.

She points out that hypnotism has been around since the ancient Greeks and, in recent years, has become an increasingly popular form of therapy for a range of problems. “I have been practising as a hypnotherapist for about two years now, tackling a whole range of problems from weight control to phobias, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine, fear of heights, fear of flying, even chocolate addiction.”

Clients she has helped include someone who overcame their fear of flying to go on honeymoon and someone so frightened of heights he couldn’t climb a ladder. She’s helped someone with a fear of public speaking, while clients with weight problems and irritable bowel syndrome have also benefited from being hypnotised.

ENCOURAGED by her success rate, Kate is now branching out into a more exotic use of hypnotherapy – trying to get through to the unconscious minds of women who have had difficulty getting pregnant.

As far as she knows, Kate is the first fully-qualified hypnotherapist to offer her services to women having infertility treatment. She is encouraged by an Israeli study from five years ago which suggested that hypnotherapy can help women with fertility problems conceive.

The Israeli researchers were interested to see if hypnosis could make the embryo transfer stage of IVF more successful. The study of 185 women found that 28 per cent of women in the group who were hypnotised became pregnant, compared with 14 per cent of those who weren’t. The Israeli researchers believe that hypnosis may have helped the women relax, making embryo transfer more likely.

Kate admits the study was on a small scale, but believes hypnotism can help women struggling to get pregnant. “Having infertility treatment is very stressful anyway. What hypnotherapy does is to get them to cope with their stress, to get their bodies into a state where it is more likely for conception to occur,” says Kate.

Apart from trying to get a woman ‘in the mood’ to become pregnant, Kate says hypnotism can also help them with changing their lifestyle to make pregnancy more likely.

“They might also want to lose weight, take more exercise and stop smoking. It is all part of getting the body and mind into the optimum state for pregnancy,” she says. “Some women have limiting beliefs, that they will never become pregnant or carry a baby to full term. Others have fears about parenting. As a hypnotherapist, you have to help them to a more healthy way of thinking.”

Lay people can find the idea of hypnotherapy off-putting, thanks to TV images of subjects being made to bark like dogs by stage hypnotists, but Kate takes pains to explain to clients that they have nothing to worry about.

“Hypnotherapy allows people to achieve an altered state of consciousness, usually through deep relaxation.

In this deeply relaxed state, a number of techniques may be used to help bring about the change required by the client,” says Kate.

A common technique employed by Kate is called “direct suggestion”, where the client hears suggestions for changes in their behaviour. In this state, the messages go directly to the unconscious mind, where the roots of problem behaviours exist. A number of techniques are available to the hypnotherapist, including the famous swinging fob watch at the end of a chain. While Kate does not personally use this approach, she says it is still used by some therapists.

“I use a variety of techniques, sometimes just asking someone to close their eyes. I sometimes ask people to concentrate on a specific object, it might be my hand moved in front of their eyes. Counting down is also a common way to relax people.”

People think that being hypnotised is being in a trance-like state, but Kate says it is more like being absorbed in a good book or a film. “It is actually quite a natural state, there is nothing untoward about it.”

Kate also stresses that the client is always in control and will not be made to do anything that is against their wishes. In fact, we often enter a hypnotic state quite naturally, for example ‘switching off’ when we are driving along a familiar route, but reacting quickly if we see brake lights.

“In hypnotherapy, the therapist is the navigator, but the client is the driver,”

says Kate. “It is incredibly useful for reducing stress and anxiety, which negatively affect the immune system.”

Even better, Kate teaches clients how to ‘top-up’ their hypnotherapy at home. Maybe Middlesbrough FC, the football team Kate supports, should consider inviting her around for a performance-boosting hynotherapy session.

■ To contact Kate, call 07974- 117887, or send an email to kategillen@hotmail.com

Anne’s story

ANNE, 37, a North-East lecturer who heard about Kate Gillen’s hynotherapy course by word of mouth, felt she needed help to try to shed a few pounds. Concerned about her excess weight, Anne signed up for a series of hypnotherapy sessions with Dr Gillen.

She was delighted at the results, losing around a stone in weight and finding a new resolve to eat more healthily.

“I needed to be motivated to eat more sensibly and lose weight and the hypnotism has done the trick,”

says Anne. “Literally the day after my first session I felt different. I started saying that I had had enough to eat and I resisted the impulse to clean my plate.”

Anne lost an impressive eight pounds in the first month after seeing Kate and even managed to lose three pounds over Christmas.

“The self-hypnosis she teaches you is particularly useful. I do this most days and it even helps me to sleep at night,” says Anne. “It was a positive experience for me, I would recommend it.”