SC10 – Depression and Obesity: How Can Hypnotherapeutic Short-Term Interventions Help?
Location: Grand Peninsula E-G
The interaction of depression and weight problems is complex. There are people with strong overweight showing no visible depressive symptoms despite considerable stress. Likewise, there are people who gain excess weight from emotional overeating in an episode of depression or people whose helplessness was increased by repeated failed attempts to lose weight.
The question is: How can hypnotherapeutic short-term interventions help with the complex interplay of depression and overweight?
The control of body weight is largely remote instinctively. When conscious efforts go nowhere, hypnotherapeutic strategies can open new possibilities. Presented is a model of hypnotherapeutic strategies of weight regulation introduced on the M.E.G. Congress 2018 in Bad Kissingen (Germany) based on the following questions:
• Which positive functions does the current (over)weight fulfill?
• How can the internal desired value be positively influenced and the damaged self-esteem be strengthened?
• How to negotiate with the subconscious interests responsible for the overweight?
• How can patterns, which stand in the way of goal achievement, be interrupted?
• Which inner pictures can support the way to the desired weight?
Educational Objectives:
- Discuss meaningful weight goals with their clients and explore which other goals need to be realized so that the inner desired value of the weight can change,
- List the critical points that currently prevent better set point setting,
- Describe appropriate short-term interventions (for example, assessment of disease gain, target progression, age regression, negotiation with inner saboteurs, use of direct and indirect post-hypnotic suggestions), and tailor them to the goal of weight reduction.