Hypnosis for Empowering Your Voice with Matthew Brownstein

Hi, I am Nancy Bos. I couldn't resist doing this episode. It adds to the conversation about empowering your voice through reframing personal narratives. Now, what does that mean? That means that we all have stories that we tell ourselves. We all have personal narratives that can either hold us in darkness or can propel us forward in light. My goal is to give you the tools to turn your personal stories into ones that work for you instead of against you, to stop the things that block you, and to get rid of, trash, the junk that holds you back from being your best self and achieving your dreams. So today's guest is is Matthew Brownstein. Matthew is the founder and lead instructor of the Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy. In other words, in the world of hypnotherapy, this is one of the big dogs doing amazing work for the few clients that he still sees, but the students that he helps educate. Now, he's also not only the, the founder and the lead instructor of the Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy, he's also the CEO of the Anahat Education Group. And I just want to— I want to read their mission to you so that you can understand the integrity of Matthew and his organizations. Anahat Education Group is devoted to a synthesis of compassionate service with high educational standards that align with high ethical principles of integrity, social outreach, and community service. So that's who our amazing guest is today. This interview is packed. Let's go. Hello everyone and welcome to Everysing. Today joining me is Matthew Brownstein, expert in hypnotherapy, and I'm super excited about exploring this idea of hypnotherapy because of the, the, the actually the big part that hypnotherapy, that hypnotherapy played in my overcoming my stage fright. I think it's an incredible gift from many different directions. So the idea of personal narratives, the stories that we tell ourselves that might get in the way of how we use our voice, or whether we even use our voice at all, let alone how— I've invited Matthew here to talk to you all about the impact that hypnotherapy can have on this and give us his insights. So welcome, Matthew.

Nice. Nancy, thank you for having me.

Yeah, thank you. Um, I've got so many questions in my head, I'm not even sure where to begin. But let me start, I guess, with this: have you found that hypnotherapy can help a person with their voice, with, with stating their passion or their purpose or singing it or however that may come out?

Yes. Yes.

All right, so can you give me some examples of how that might show up in a voice that hypnotherapy therapy can help with?

Yeah, well, think about what is your voice. I guess I'm talking to you now, I'm essentially sharing my thoughts with you, right? And my voice isn't something I should have to think about, right? You asked me to speak, I'm speaking. Or if you ask me to sing, maybe I could say— but if that's inside of me and I can't get it out, then that's actually a mental challenge, not a physical challenge, right? So hypnotherapy works directly on the mind, but not just on the conscious mind. It works with the subconscious mind. That's the seat of your emotion. That's the seat of your imagination. It's the seat of your creativity. It would be the seat of your song, even though we don't say that formally in the field. So somebody can't get their voice or their song out, then we can use hypnosis and/or hypnotherapy to get to the root cause of what that is and to transform it. Because I believe everybody should naturally be able to just speak or even sing. We can get better at these things. We can learn public speaking or work with voice coach. Yet your natural voice, to just say what's on your mind or what really deeper, what's in your heart, really should be effortless as long as we're not blocking ourselves.

Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. That is, that is fantastic to hear. So I just— some foundational stuff here. You said hypnosis or hypnotherapy. So can you give me definitions of what those two words mean?

Yeah, we define hypnosis as a natural yet altered state of consciousness. So that means it's not drug-induced, but It is different than your normal waking consciousness. Like if you're daydreaming, you're not in your regular waking, we'll call beta consciousness. You start slipping into different brainwaves, like into alpha or theta, and yet you're still conscious. The difference with hypnosis is we have an enhanced state of receptivity to suggestion. So if I say to you, and you now sing beautifully, without hypnosis, you might reject that suggestion. With hypnosis, the critical part of your conscious mind, which could reject suggestions, is somewhat bypassed. So the suggestion that I give you goes in that much easier. So basic hypnosis, or hypnotic programming, is when I help you to go into your own natural state called hypnosis, and I could offer suggestions, or you could offer yourself suggestions, because we do say all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. But if I say to you, You now feel more confident and self-assured in expressing yourself. In hypnosis, it's more likely for those suggestions to go in. And then with really good training, there are many creative ways to get that information into your subconscious. So there's hypnosis in the realm of hypnotic programming, but then there's hypnotherapy, where we use powerful transformational modalities to actually talk with the subconscious mind. So the key character in the subconscious is what we call the inner child. And if that little boy or girl inside has low self-esteem, limiting belief systems, I'm not good enough, I'm not important, what I have to say isn't valuable, I'm not valuable, we could actually go in and transform those beliefs by not just reprogramming, but talking and dialoguing and saying, okay, well, 5-year-old Johnny in there, you know, how are you doing? What's going on? Well, I'm sad. I feel bad. What's going on? Well, they told me that I'm not good enough. Once we find out what that story is that we're telling ourselves deep down inside, we can change that story. So essentially, that's what hypnotherapy is. It lets us get into the subconscious and rewrite the scripts that are holding us back.

Okay, that's huge. I don't want you to stop. That's amazing stuff. But let me ask this question, um, the, the root— is it always directly related to the end result? The person is there seeing— I mean, I've heard of hypnotherapy being used to stop smoking and to lose weight, and now I'm talking about it for stage fright. Is the source of that doubt in the subconscious going to be directly related to performing as a child or something like that?

Are you saying, is the root just coming from our childhood for anybody who's dealing with the present-day issue?

Well, I guess no. I, I suppose so. Yeah, yeah. And let me just word it a different way. That, um, could something unrelated to standing on a stage in childhood have caused the stage fright that the singer is experiencing?

Absolutely, yes. I'll tell you a quick story that I think relates to what you're saying. I had a client, she came in with fear of water, and we would think, okay, so maybe she almost drowned as a child or something like that. But once we put her into hypnosis and to the root cause, she was lying in bed at night as a kid, and her brother came in the room and put a pillow over her face and was smothering her. And once we went to the root cause, she realized, oh, it's not just water, it's anytime something covers my face. So it's— there's an association. So now we just have to say, okay, you're afraid to sing or speak in public. What does that associate back to? Maybe it wasn't that you went to give a speech when you were 10 years old and they ridiculed you. Maybe it was just a whole childhood of mom and dad telling you, shut up, you should be seen and not heard, right? The negative programming— you're not good enough, you're worthless, you're not important— or events that happen where we just feel shame or guilt because we did something that felt bad. We not only have an inner child, what we have, what's called an inner parent, that is a voice that developed in our head during early socialization. If the child does something where you got a negative response from parents or peers, you do anything and you get this negative feedback, we develop the voice in our head of that negative feedback. Next time you're about to do that thing that you wanted to do, the inner critic voice comes in and says, "No, no, no, that's when you got hurt in the past, don't do that." The day that you just stood up and sang your song and They made fun of you. Well, don't do that anymore because— therefore, the real root cause of most issues is not necessarily one traumatic event, although sometimes it is. It's quite often what we call an inner parent, inner child conflict. The child is the wanting voice. I want to sing. I want to speak. I want to be myself. The parent or the critical voice is the should voice. No, you shouldn't be that loud. No, you shouldn't smile like that. No, you shouldn't— all the shoulds. Act as limitations to who we really are. And really good hypnotherapy isn't only looking for events, it's looking at relationships. And the biggest relationship is largely child and parent.

And I, I can imagine conflicting stories as well, that sometimes the parent might have been— the parent voice that we've entrained in ourselves might be encouraging, and then surprisingly shut us down, because that happens to a lot of kids when they're growing up.

Yeah, and this leads to more than just an inner child and inner parent voice. We have what are called subpersonalities or parts, right? So there's the part of me who wants to sing and dance and play, and there's the part of me who thinks I should just be quiet and reserved and hold back. The more we look at what's in the subconscious, we see multiple subpersonalities— not multiple personality, it's not like a dissociative identity disorder It's just like, well, part of me wants ice cream, part of me wants to lose weight and doesn't want ice cream. When you look at, okay, why would, let's say, a client of yours, somebody wants to be more vocal in whatever way, if they can't do it, we could simply go through an easy checklist. The one thing that holds me back most is, finish the sentence. The one thing that holds me back most is, if you do that 10 or 20 times, you'll start to notice, oh, there's a part of me who keeps saying this one theme. There's another part who's saying this theme. Hypnotherapy lets us talk to those parts while you're in hypnosis so that we can truly change them. We're not just analyzing them and understanding them, we're talking directly to them and getting them to shift, getting them to feel better. Once that change occurs, it's permanent. There's no reason why that part would ever go back to a dysfunctional way of being once they discover a new, healthier way of being. So you could say when you're healed, you're truly healed. It doesn't have to be repeated, but we do have to get to the root cause in the subconscious, or the change most likely isn't going to be long-term.

Wow. So the, um, the thing that, that intrigues me about what you're saying, I think that I can certainly relate to having different voices in my head. And so the fact that you can say concretely, yes, that is what's happening, I'm, I'm amazed. And, and of course, having a 'well of course' moment that hypnotherapy is one of the very few— if, if not the only discipline where that could be seen and analyzed in a scientific basis, that this is what we're experiencing.

I mean, I'm sure there are other ways of working with the mind that have merit here, yet I can say the reason I chose this as my life path, really, uh, and then open one of the major schools of hypnotherapy in the country, is I just believe in it so strongly. And there's ample evidence now showing that hypnosis, hypnotherapy works. It's not about, oh, I don't believe in that. It's— we're way past that in this profession now. And, uh, I like to think we're way past the, oh, you're gonna make me cluck like a chicken. Um, there's some people who still have a lot of myths and misconceptions about hypnosis, but generally it is becoming more mainstream. It's becoming more accepted. And when you talk to people in the personal growth field, they catch on at some point. It's not just about fixing me. It's not just about changing my behavior. It's not just about this cognitive behavioral approach to change. It's about getting to the very root cause, which is the subconscious. So yeah, behavioral therapy can be effective, but if you're not talking directly to the root cause the way we do in a hypnotic state, you're probably taking more time than you need to make the change.

That's what I was thinking, is that it's a really expedited way to get to the root and get this behind you. Now, I've experienced hypnosis in 3 different forms, and so I'm going to describe those 3 different forms, and then I'd like you to maybe tell the audience what they might expect from a hypnotherapy session.

Sure.

So the first way that I experienced hypnotherapy was not dissimilar from the chicken clucking. It was a hip— hypnosis entertainer that came to my college in 1989. Yes, that's how old I am. And and, um, had, you know, somebody singing like Elvis and somebody selling roses out in the crowd, and people were doing things that they wouldn't normally do. And when they snapped out of it, they were embarrassed by what they might have done. Oh, and somebody else was, was programmed to do something a half hour later, and sure enough, everybody, you know, it happened. That was my first experience with hypnosis, which blows my mind. I think that's, that's proof right there that it's, it's an amazing thing. The second one was my own performance anxiety issues where I had a hypnotherapist who went through a book of numbers. So she combined a numbers system of getting to the bottom of my root cause along with hypnosis. And it took 2 or 3 1-hour sessions, I think, before we really got to a point where I'm like, oh, oh, that was it. And once that was uncovered, then I was able to go out and do exposure therapy with my performances and just like, that's, that's nothing. I don't care about that. That had nothing to do with what I'm doing right now. And then the third was a family member who took hypnotherapy for pain, for chronic pain. And that seemed— I sat in on those sessions, and that seemed to be more of a suggestive coping mechanism, not nearly as effective or aggressive, I thought, as the other two that I witnessed. So what might we expect from a reputed hypnotherapy school like yours?

Yeah, well, the stage hypnosis— I hear the three aspects. One is just stage hypnosis that shows a lot about how powerful the mind is. Then there's hypnotherapy. The session you had seemed to be more in-depth. And then there's just basic pain management, which can be, you know, wonderful. And as far as the stage hypnosis side of things goes, it really shows us that when we're in the altered state, we tap into a power that we didn't realize was inside of us, right? Because you could sing like Elvis or whatever you saw those people doing, But why are we inhibited, right? Why are we embarrassed later?

Exactly.

So yeah, that's just basically a good example of put someone in hypnosis, tell them how they're going to be, and as long as we know it's positive and beneficial, then the recipient, the participant, or the client can just say, okay, I'm going to take those suggestions. You're telling me good things. I'm going to sing beautifully. I'm going to speak beautifully. Just say yes, right? So once you know you're safe and the practitioner is ethical and only operating for your best interests, just take the suggestions and let it happen. And those stage hypnosis shows really demonstrate just how powerful the mind can be, uh, and we teach that to a degree in our school, but we are much more on the professional clinical side of things. So when you go for hypnotherapy, there will be a thorough intake, there'll be a lot of rapport building, educating you to help you to understand what you're getting into. And then my first sessions, and what I my students to do is make a hypnotic programming recording so that the client can go home and listen to it again every day for like 2 to 3 months. Because it doesn't have to be just come to my office, I will program it in once, and we hope it works. We know repetition influences the subconscious, and with modern technology, it would be a shame for me to say, well, you're gonna have to come back for 10 sessions for me to keep reprogramming this. As long as you use that recording on your own at home, you should be getting the same essential benefit of doing a session. So that's usually a good first session. After that, we would start getting into root cause. But even while you're working through root cause, it's good to have that recording to go home to and listen to, because as we clear the block, that recording is there to program in the positive again. But a lot of the work is looking for where are the blocks, right? Were there traumas in childhood? Is there just low self-esteem? Did that come from a situation, or is it characterological? Right? You might be very confident a lot of places, but in this one situation here, you have low self-esteem. So that's situational self-esteem. But then there's characterological, which is maybe just across the board. You just concluded— and again, I go back to all these beliefs— a lot of negative things about yourself. If you believe you're stupid, unlovable, ugly, and then we can get to the real challenging beliefs: dirty, disgusting, I'm disgusting, powerless, trapped, helpless, out of control. You ask somebody who believes that about themselves to go present in public, that characterological low self-esteem is going to get in the way. So it's not always looking for one past event that influenced us. In our model of hypnotherapy, which is interpersonal hypnotherapy, we put a lot of focus on the relationships within the subconscious mind. So again, The big one is the parent-child conflict. What is that inner parent voice telling you about why you're not good enough? And how is the child ego state believing that? So a lot of hypnotherapy will get into working on those levels. And then the pain management work, you can actually get to root cause in so many incredible ways. So we can use direct suggestion to reduce pain. Uh, in our school, we teach a good 16 basic pain management techniques. Uh, but the work I specialize in is called Healing the Mind, Healing the Body, because what we find is past memories are what— which past events which are now memories lead to those negative beliefs and negative emotions. And often that manifests as psychosomatic illness or just pain. So sometimes you have an accident that occurred, let's say when you were a kid, you fell and hit your head, you have chronic headaches to this day, but you have no physical reason why you should still have those headaches. Sometimes just a memory is what's causing the pain, and we can desensitize and clear that often in just one short session. But if there's more to the memory than just a physical trauma, uh, but some kind of emotional upset, we can get in there and help to resolve that too. I will say, since we're talking about therapeutic and clinical uses of hypnosis, you have to be sure the person you're working with has the right credentials, or that person has to have you get a referral from a physician if they're working on pain or any type of mental health condition. So with that disclaimer said, yeah, just be sure you check with their credentials of who you're working with and be sure they're operating within the scope of their practice and within the law.

And also, having a recording of that first session would help with anyone's concern about, I have no idea what they're doing to me. I would imagine a person could record any session and listen to it again later.

Uh, yes, and we always tell our clients, you're going to remember the entire experience. Experience. So post-hypnotic amnesia in a clinical setting is actually rare. We do see it more on stage, but generally when I work with a client, they remember 100% of the session, as much as memory is capable of remembering, right? We don't remember every single detail, nor do we need to. But you do want to know when it's done. You don't come out of the state and go, oh, did we do it? It's like, you'll know you're in hypnosis, you know what was said to you, and if you're told you remember the whole experience, then do. And 90% of people would anyway.

Fabulous. All right, so you started— you read my mind by starting to talk about finding a hypnosis expert. Um, can you go a little bit more into that? I would imagine it's not too hard if you're in a big city, but if you're in a small town, is telehypnosis a thing?

Uh, telehypnosis is absolutely a thing, especially since COVID Uh, our school, which was 70% online and 30% in-house training for the practical hours, we applied with the Department formed education to be 100% online and still keep our in-house practical hours. But we started beta testing, can we teach and do hypnotherapy, like really in-depth elaborate training? We can do it online. Uh, all of my sessions whenever I see clients, which is not that much these days, uh, as I'm running the school and whatnot, but I can say all my client sessions online are great. I mean, the results are just as good. As far as finding a reputable, respectable hypnotherapist, Uh, it's not everybody out there is going to be at the standard that we hold, so I can only tell you what our standards are and encourage people to look for those. At least 500 hours of training. And you should just ask, you know, say to the hypnotherapist, how much training do you have? Because this is such an unregulated profession, you can literally get a book on Amazon and call yourself a hypnotist, and nobody would be stopping you from doing that. People who use the term hypnotist, um, most likely have around 100 hours hours of training. You don't necessarily want somebody under the hood, you know, really getting into your mind with only 100 hours of training. Nobody's really a professional and certainly not a master with that amount of work, uh, training. So 500 hours. Be sure they've graduated from a state-licensed school. This is a federally acknowledged occupation, and trainings that are not licensed by the Department of Education are actually operating illegally, because you can't train someone an occupation unless you're licensed by the DOE to do so. So 500 hours of training minimum, state-licensed school for sure, uh, and then we are the Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy. So if somebody really wants a very high-level practitioner who has many years of experience that we could recommend with good faith, then instituteofhypnotherapy.com, uh, you just give us a call, we can refer you to a high-level graduate. And if you want somebody with a background in medicine or psychology, then we can hone in on like who's the right person to help you out. So I wouldn't just go to the internet and just find anyone because I'm telling you they probably have 100 to 200 hours of training and they may have graduated within like the past year, and that could be okay. But you get somebody with like— I've been doing this for 25 years now, uh, and I have literally— I stopped counting, but it's now over 30,000— yes, over 30,000 hours of clinical and classroom experience. So it's not apples to apples, uh, when you start find— trying to find the practitioner. So I would call a very high reputable school and ask them for a referral specifically for what the person wants to work on. Because then I— like, for instance, I could say, oh, I have this graduate in your area, they have these degrees, they have this much experience, they specialize in that, that's the right fit. And then be sure to get a free consultation because you have to have a rapport, you have to feel good with the person. If you don't feel safe, if you don't feel like your practitioner is ethical, if you don't believe in them and trust them, it won't be as effective. Regardless of their training. So be sure the relationship is really good, really a good one. And if they don't offer a free consultation to help to establish that, I would move on and find someone who would.

Fantastic. Wow, you're a wealth of great information. I really appreciate it. When it comes to the voice, people experiencing stage fright, they may feel— they may say that, that their voice locks up, like they're literal throat, right? Maybe that there are other body symptoms like shaking or nausea are too strong for them to go on, right?

Right.

And so the, the gift that hypnotherapy can bring to relieve this instead of beta blockers or just pushing through, I'm super excited about that.

Yeah, yeah, the closing the throat thing is much more significant than people may realize. The subconscious mind is very much your emotional mind, and it's very much your heart. Your conscious mind is your intellectual reasoning, rational mind, and it's very much your head, right? So when we hear that voice in the head, it's more of your adult sense of self. The subconscious emotional inner child is very much in your heart. But what's in between your head and your heart? Your throat. And when you don't consciously want to experience the negativity that's in the subconscious mind, what do you close? Your throat. So when a negative emotion comes up, we don't just close our hearts, we close our throats. We tense all through this area. When somebody feels insecure, this area locks down, right? Don't speak. That's when you got yelled at, right? When you were singing that song and Dad was stressed and he yelled at you. Like I said before, the moment the inner child starts to come up, the inner parent comes in and says, nope, nope, nope, and closes that down. So I've noticed when people are anxious, it's quite often because they're pushing down their emotions. And anxiety, in that way of looking at it, you can see that as just fear of your own emotions, but it goes right to your throat in the area that gets closed. Depression— not clinically speaking, but just when you feel really depressed, you have emotion that wants to come up, but you keep pushing it down. So opening the throat in my work has a lot to do with opening the heart, right? Letting your subconscious inner child be him or herself fully with out that critical, negative, suppressing voice. If you have a practitioner who focuses on that, you would absolutely find your own natural voice.

Wow, fantastic, fantastic. I think that's probably a, a great final thought. I really appreciate you being here. Uh, the, uh, the website address for people to get more from you?

Yeah, it's instituteofhypnotherapy.com.

Okay, and you've written several books on the topic as as well?

Uh, I have, and yeah, you can find them at the bookstore at instituteofhypnotherapy.com.

Okay, well, thank you very much for joining us today, Matthew.

Thank you, Nancy, my pleasure.

I know that you got a lot out of this conversation with Matthew Brownstein. I bet some of you even want to become hypnotherapists now because, wow, what a powerful field, what a difference, what a quick difference it can make in people's lives. And more power to you. For those of you who are considering hypnotherapy or are desperate for any way to treat what is blocking your voice or getting to the bottom of your personal stories that are holding you back, follow Matthew's recommendations on how to find a great hypnotherapist, and let's get this done. My name is Nancy Bos. I am your host. Bye-bye now.