Hypnotherapy & Your Nervous System | Garrett Wood, NBC-HWC

Forget the swinging watch. We go straight into the lived reality of burnout, broken sleep, and the quiet tug-of-war between what you want and what your body will allow. Garrett Wood—clinical hypnotherapist, board certified health and wellness coach, and founder of Gnosis Therapy—joins us to unpack how hypnotherapy restores the nervous system, reshapes memory, and turns grit from a struggle into a side effect of safety.

We explore why the most effective therapies leverage memory reconsolidation, how hypnosis differs from stage tricks, and what actually changes when you revisit a charged memory in a regulated state. The payoff is practical: fewer triggers, steadier energy, and decisions that feel easy because they match who you are becoming.

We also zoom out to the environment. Sensory thresholds—light, sound, scent, texture—can make or break executive function. If your world overwhelms your system, self-control drains fast. Garrett reframes “self-sabotage” as a protective part guarding immediate safety, not a flaw to fix. Through hypnotic work and tools like cognitive belief inventories, we surface hidden beliefs (I’m not enough, I’m not safe) and pair them with real, embodied evidence of worth and capability. That’s where identity-level change happens: not “I should be calm,” but “I am calm and confident.”

If you’re curious about hypnotherapy for sleep, stress, trauma, or that stubborn gap between goals and behavior, this conversation offers clear explanations, real stories, and next steps you can use. Listen, share it with someone who needs steady ground, and subscribe to get more grounded, practical conversations each week. If it resonated, leave a review—what belief are you ready to update?

Connect with Garrett at https://www.gnosistherapy.com/ or on IG @gnosistherapy 

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xx Hannah

Transcript

Meet Garrett And Hypnotherapy Myths

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Hello and welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. My name's Hannah. I am, I feel like I say this every time because I just absolutely love all of my guests that I have on the podcast, but I am particularly excited to chat with Garrett today because he is a hypnotherapist and we have not talked about hypnotherapy on the podcast before. So welcome to Garrett Wood. He is a also a nationally national board certified health and wellness coach, clinical hypnotherapist, executive functioning specialist, and founder of Gnosis Therapy. He's also a 3-5 sacral generator. So we talked a little on our connection call, Garrett, about looping in human design into the conversation. So we might do some of that in today's podcast. But as always, Garrett, thank you for coming. And I'm gonna turn the reins over to you and let you introduce who is Garrett, who do we have the pleasure of learning from today, and anything else that you'd like to share?

Burnout, Sleep, And A Surprising Fix

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Yeah, thanks for having me here today. I'm excited to be here, Hannah. Um, thanks for that introduction. I do, I opened my clinic uh Gnosis Therapy in 2018 in downtown Long Beach, and then we transitioned into remote first um in about 2019. And I think that surprises a lot of people because most people don't think of hypnotherapy as something that can be done remotely, which is untrue. Before the internet, before Skype was a thing, um, there was a lot of phone hypnotherapy that was out there before and seemed to be really powerful. Um and everybody's experienced some type of recording, um, you know, mindfulness, calm app, those very similar. So um yeah, it's interesting. I think that kind of surprises people.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I would think of hypnotherapy as definitely an in-person thing. I also want to break down what hypnotherapy is and some of the stereotypes around hypnotherapy, because we all have those thoughts of, you know, the magician that comes in and comes to an event that makes you do all these crazy things. And um, one of my very, very dear friends that I co-host a retreat with, she does hypnotherapy. So we kind of break that down a little bit to anyone that's interested in coming on the retreat because it's like it's not, it's not that maybe what your initial thoughts are or what the stereotypes are. So I want to start with that and then give a little teaser kind of of really moving into how hypnotherapy correlates to nervous system regulation, which is one of my absolute favorite things to talk about. So we will get there. But I'm I'm curious what got you interested in hypnotherapy, and then if you could maybe break down a couple stereotypes or things that you come across when you meet with new clients that you are able to educate on, that maybe you find a lot of people have these thought processes about, but that might not be true about hypnotherapy or or might be true about hypnotherapy.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I was a lot like most people. Um, I didn't grow up wanting to be like, what do you want to be when you grow up a hypnotherapist? Wasn't on the list. That wasn't even a possibility. Um, how I got exposed to it is I was burned out. I was in a pretty high-powered corporate job with like lots of um production reports, lots of people, lots of personalities, um, hiring, training, developing a team of like a hundred-ish people. We were trying to grow it bigger than that over seven locations that I had to be in person driving to each location. Um and it was hospitality. So we were open on the weekends. We were open Monday through Friday. We were open at five in the morning and 11 o'clock at night. So it felt like you always had to be on. Um, and for a while I really enjoyed it. It was super like um enticing. I was excited to see the work that we could do and how much impact it would have, not just in our practitioners' lives, but in the people that they served. And then you could see that on the numbers. And so you could see an initiative that you like came up with, delivered, and then you would see the results of and then how much that impacted the company. So it was really fun to be able to be in that environment. But the hours, the time, the personalities, I didn't have all the coping mechanisms that I do now then, um, and it took its toll. So in that company, we did a study where it found out that the people that were getting the biggest lift in their health and benefits from strength training, meeting with a trainer two to three times a week, going on a meal plan two or three times a month where they were getting meals delivered to them. None of that seemed to be the difference in them reaching their fitness goals. It seemed like the more sleep they got and the higher the quality of sleep that they got, uh, the better the results were, regardless of how many sessions they met with their trainer, regardless of how many meal plans they signed up for and decided to eat or not. Um, that was pretty shocking for me. And my sleep at the time was horrific, um, sporadic, challenging, um, not restorative. And so I started doing some research. I didn't feel like I could commit to the actual nine hours that I was supposed to need. That just felt like unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Yeah.

What Hypnosis Is And Isn’t

SPEAKER_00 7:45

So it seems like the most restorative part of sleep is kind of a theta-alpha state. And that when we're in that state, we get this restorative process that our body needs to really do what sleep is doing. So I was like, oh, that's cool. How do you do that? So non-sleep, deep rest or yoga nidra seem to be a way of doing it. But how do you get into that? Do I have to go to a class? How does it show up? I don't have time for this. Uh and so hypnotherapy seems to be associated with that state. So I called up a hypnotherapist, I raised my hand and said, like, hey, I'm having some stress, I'm burned out, I need some support. I'm more focused on sleep than anything else. So we did five sessions. After the first session, we got through it, and I was like, okay, I guess that's what hypnotherapy is. Cool. Um and then by the end of our fifth session, um, I really enjoyed the process. It was really relaxing, it was fun. Um, it was not stressful, which a lot of therapeutic interventions tend to be like distressing for a lot of people. So that was a nice change than um, you know, traditional therapy or like even EMDR. Um, and then at the end of 90 days, the reports were better. We were doing better on our goals, my sleep was better, my relationship was better, my dog was cuter. Um and then not only for myself, but the people that I worked with that I was in charge of or responsible for, they were better. Their personal relationships were better, they were less stressed. So I found out that, you know, that was the fun way of finding out that I was being a jerk, that I was the bottleneck in the success for all these people, that my own burnout, my own stress had this like very real ribble effect that I wasn't aware of that wasn't reflected on the PLs in these people's lives and how they felt every day going home and their own sleep. So that was pretty eye-opening for me. Um, it was so powerful that I was like, wow, what is going on here? This seems to be something extra special that's happening. Um, so I went back to school and it's like a five-year process of being able to like learn, incorporate, understand, and then be able to help other people with that.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

So what a great story and what what fun, we'll say fun, insight that you learn of this ripple effect. And it's so interesting because I've worked in so many different fields and environments, and I've heard over and over again and and experienced that it really the culture of your team leader or your boss or your manager, whatever they're called, and your your job, um that affects you tremendously. And how cool for you to take that initiative as someone in that team lead position to explore your own recovery and and your own burnout, really just exploring it. Uh, and the other thing that I wanted to point out that was just so profound is learning, seeing that kind of qualitative data of it's not just because the nutrition is very important and the trainer is very important and weightlifting, they all have their benefits, but to not really be seeing that needle being moved unless we have that conversation of sleep, which I did have a conversation about sleep on my podcast because I had someone that actually developed um a sleep mask. So I will try to remember to link that down below if you're curious to learn more about the importance of sleep. But super important uh and and a really cool way to explore sleep and not sleep in a way, because we're, I mean, we are sleeping, but right, we're putting ourselves in that theta and delta wave brain state. So that's a little bit of what hypnotherapy is. Um, can you please maybe give a brief introduction of what hypnotherapy is? And then for those of us that know what non-sleep, deep rest, and yoga nitra are, I'm curious what the differences between those are and um and hypnotherapy.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah. So I like to say all hypnotherapy is self-hypnosis, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis because a lot of the time it's about giving yourself permission to relax into that state. So if most people's first experience with hypnosis is what they've seen in movies or on stage shows, um there's this impression that the person has this power and they're doing something to that person in front of them. Um which is very not true. It's interesting. Um with the stage hypnosis, the trick that the person up there is doing is there are people that walk around in and out of the state of hypnosis pretty regularly throughout the day. There's introverted people and there's extroverted people. There's people with really high inhibitions and there's people with no inhibitions. And so what that stage hypnotist is looking for is who has no inhibitions, who wants to be on stage and wants the spotlight, and who's already in a state of hypnosis. And that's all they're looking for. So they ask for volunteers, they put them on stage, they give them a command, the ones that follow it, they stay, the ones that don't, they leave. And so you'll see like a crowd of 50 people. There'll probably be five on stage. And out of those five, three will be like the stars for that stage show.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Right.

Memory Reconsolidation And EMDR Parallels

SPEAKER_00 13:15

But that person isn't doing anything. They're just sorting for the people that are already in that state, ready to go to provide that show for the rest of our benefit. So instead, another way of thinking about hypnosis is if you were to think about like a big, sour, yellow, juicy lemon, our body starts to respond to that image. We start getting our salivatory going, it's going, we got to like swallow, it's like almost ready for that tartness. Because we've been so conditioned in our life that even that thought, that image, is enough to trigger a physiological response. And it just shows how closely those two things are tied together, our imagination and our physiology. There's arguments out there that like all of our reality is constructed by our brain, and so we're not having a direct experience. So there's this argument that images are just as powerful as reality, um, and sometimes more so, because when we make a memory and we go back to that memory to inform what we should be doing now or how we should act in the future, we're actually not recalling the first time that that experience happened. We're recalling the last time we recalled that memory. So, like for me, McDonald's sounds amazing because when I was a kid, the happy meal with a little toy, so cool. All of that excitement, joy, enthusiasm is like in that burger. But then I taste the burger as an adult, and I'm like, this is trash. This does not taste good to me at all. But in my mind, my memory, it tastes good, right? And so from there I can make new decisions about like, oh, McDonald's doesn't taste good. Okay, I'm not gonna go to McDonald's. It sounds good, it's interesting, but I can update that memory. So a lot of people that have been through some painful past learning, when they encounter a new environment, they don't really respond to what's in front of them, or responding to their experience before. And so with hypnotherapy, the benefit of it is we can make those feelings a little bit different. So if we had a really painful past learning and we go and recall that memory or version of it, but we change the lighting with it, we change the soundtrack of it, we change the tone of voice of the people there. The reality that you lived through still happened, but the way it feels to your nervous system when you recall it the next time is a little bit easier. It's just a little bit less intense. It makes your heart rate elevate just a little bit less. So you can stay present, respond to what's actually in front of you instead of taking the past and bringing it into the present and then making your future decisions based upon that event. You can actually just be in the moment and decide for yourself without your body getting in the way what is the best thing for me in this moment.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

This is so interesting to me because I've definitely had a few experiences now that I'm getting older and experiencing more trauma and pain. I feel like a little bit that I didn't experience. I experienced more like of the bigger T trauma in like my 20s than in my childhood. I had, I was very blessed with an overall wonderful childhood. And my parents got divorced, and I have stuff from the past. Of course I do, everyone does. Um, but it's a little interesting that it's kind of like more recent history. But in that, within that recent history, I've definitely had experiences of that nervous system reaction, which is a little bit alarm or disarming when it first happens because you don't really know what is happening or why it's happening. Because of course, we could always get triggered by something that like we don't always cognitively understand, and it can be like a subconscious trigger. And then your body, right, your nervous system starts responding in a way that maybe you don't fully understand. And and this has certainly happened to me. I'm trying to think of examples, but I think as we continue to talk, I'll be able to, I'll be able to give more concrete examples. But um but a very interesting, really interesting tool that I haven't explored is hypnotherapy, and it sounds like it can be, it sounds similar to EMDR, of course, a very different approach, but is it a is it a similar therapy outcome that you are targeting?

Goals, “Self-Sabotage,” And Safety

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, so it seems like a lot of the most beneficial therapeutic interventions out there that we have to handle adverse experiences that we've lived through that are like creating maladaptive behaviors now. Like we have a goal and then we have our behavior, and that gap there is serving that painful past learning, not necessarily getting us closer to that goal. And so that maladaptive behavior, we can go to therapy for. And anytime you're in therapy, the benefit seems to be a memory reconsolidation. That would be like the big umbrella. So we're taking that memory, we're bringing it up, we're changing it, and then when we reconsolidate and put it back, when our mind naturally goes to it, we can alter our behaviors without effort, without this like top-down, okay, I'm gonna do the different thing today. Listen to me, it just is a natural response, which is how most of our lives are. Um, and we're operating at our best and we're in that flow state. That's how we feel. And so EMDR is very similar. It's trying to trigger that memory reconsolidation, where it's putting your nervous system into an altered state of consciousness to be able to experience that thought, that feeling, that memory internally, but not have your nervous system be hijacked by it. So that way we the next time you're in an environment and it naturally subconsciously or consciously triggers some of those experiences, those emotions get triggered. It's just less overwhelming to your nervous system in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

It sounds very like all of the all of the movements that you're doing, like you're really giving me kind of this image of, and and and I want to also kind of open this up because I love talking a big about big T trauma, but but we kind of open the conversation of just speaking about burnout and and your functioning in your job. So I kind of want to make that connection that this really can apply to all ends of the spectrum. It doesn't always have to be this big traumatic event that we're that we're dealing with. I assume maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but that's what I assume from what I've learned from you. Um so it sounds like really one of the one of the things is we're working more with our system than like trying to overpower it. And that it's also bringing to my attention of like goals. When we say goals, even I mean silly, like weight loss goals, right? Like I want to lose 20 pounds. And my goal is to, because we're getting into the new year, so this is probably not even a silly goal. I shouldn't have even worded it like that. I'm sorry. It's not silly to want to lose 20 pounds. It's that's a very real goal. So I retract that. But I want to lose 20 pounds. My goals might be I'm gonna eat more salad. I'm gonna maybe focus on my sleep after looking, listening to this podcast. I'm gonna go for a walk a couple of times a week, whatever your like how-tos are. But we all have experienced this gap that you're mentioning of here is where I want to be. Here's what I know my goals are. And and maybe I've done some research and now I know that sleep really helps in weight loss or plays a role in weight loss, but we still can't get there. Is that that kind of gap that we're talking about, that gap lapse that we're talking about here?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah. And if you're scrolling, you'll probably come across that as self-sabotage, is kind of how it's commonly talked about. And I take personal contention with that. I understand I'm gonna be a jerk here for a little bit. Uh there's no such thing as self-sabotage because there are different versions of yourself. So it'd be like playing a game of chess with yourself. One of you is going to win. Like there is no losing. Um now, the winning may not be the side of that long-term outcome future goal that you have. It may be more an immediate need of trying to protect you, trying to create some sense of safety. Um, and we can have competing goals. Sometimes our goals are really like let's do a silly one. A silly one, let's say we light a candle and I'm gonna have a show of stoicism. So I'm gonna move my hand as close to that candle as I possibly can, and I'm gonna use my top down, overriding my body's natural instinct to want to pull away from that. I can put myself in harm's way. I can put myself In front of that candle and actually cause pain and discomfort to my body. Our body doesn't like that. It's naturally always trying to move us away from threats, away from danger, towards safety, towards longevity. And when there's a goal that has a conflict, in the long run, it's beneficial, but in the short run, it compromises the sense of safety that we may not be aware of. That's where we get this cognitive dissonance. We get this feeling of what I want to do, what I believe I could do, what I know would actually work, but then my behavior doesn't match. Okay. That is interesting. But instead of going into like self-sabotage, blame, shame, guilt, fear, it'd be interesting to get compassionate and curious and be like, okay, well, clearly this behavior is serving us. It's doing something for us. It's a solution for something. What is that part of me that appreciates this or needs this or likes about it or benefits from it? Oh, okay. If we can call that forward and like work with it a little bit and we can understand what it really needs. And now we can actually accommodate it and account for it in how we choose to pursue our goal. We don't just go from that like comfort zone to the growth zone. We like take that center zone of the safety zone and like really expand it. And then it makes it really easy to take steps forward towards whatever that long-term, you know, aspirational goal may be, whether it's losing 20 pounds or getting a PhD or something ridiculous like that.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

And is this nervous system regulation? Is that what you call nervous system regulation?

Sensory Thresholds And Executive Function

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, I would argue that if you are noticing that cognitive dissonance, that gap in from what you know would be healthy and helpful for you with your goal that you're committed to for good reasons, and you don't see your behavior lining up, that itself is gonna cause some dysregulation in your nervous system, or it's evidence that there is some in there, or the way you're working isn't aligned with what your needs actually are. And in that gap, we're gonna have a lot of nervous system dysregulation. And the longer we're there, the more intense it's gonna be. And burnout is often exactly that. We have a job to do, we have our resources to be able to do it, we have our needs, and the wider that gap is between your own unique nervous system needs and what you're able to accomplish, and the longer you're there for, the more likely you're gonna burn out. Which is kind of a lowercase T trauma, but because you live there for so long, there really is no difference between how it shows up in your nervous system versus like a short bout of one type of intense experience. Um they both create in the long run dysregulated nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Interesting. One of the things that you and I talked about too, speaking of kind of that gap of the nervous system was sensory thresholds, I believe is the term that you use, and talking about our environmental sensory thresholds. Um so oh, the example that you gave was when we chatted was like working in Bath Body Works, which oh my gosh, we all know. We all go like sensory overloaded in Bath and Body Works, or what's the other one, like Yankee Candle or something, where you just have so many scents and you're and your system is overwhelmed with all of these like smells. Um I would imagine that this ties into like this is a example of what can turn into a nervous system dysregulation. So I think when we were chatting, we were kind of talking about it's not just the work maybe that you're doing. Like in your example, it was the work hours and maybe having just that overload of having kind of a uh a jumbled up schedule. Are these all examples of ways that we can get more dysregulated?

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah. With a work in timing example, because it's hospitality, there is a lot of research out there that swing shift workers like that aren't naturally aligned with, you know, the three or four natural variations of like a circadian rhythm that we all have. Um, you know, whether you're a night owl or an early bird, there's like variations of that, but it's only two or three hours versus like a night shift where you start work at 10 o'clock and get off at eight o'clock in the morning. Firefighters have larger rates of like cardiovascular disease and they have higher rates of type 2 diabetes, they have higher rates of trauma, they have higher rates of suicide, they have higher rates of alcohol abuse and substance abuse, and they have higher rates of other metabolic diseases. And even when you account for the stress that they have of their job and you take that out of it, it still seems like it's the shift work that's creating that stress that's overwhelming their nervous system, that's putting them at odds, just being able to get through their day, regardless of the task that they have to do, that creates that dysregulation. And so, like that's one example, just sleeps relative to not even the quality of sleep and the hours they're getting, but like when it is relative to the natural light that were naturally evolved to do it. But even more so than that, there's the study of the marshmallows with the little kids. Um, they took four-year-olds and they gave them marshmallow, and they said, Hey, if you don't eat this marshmallow, when I come back, I'll give you another one. And they followed up with these kids. And the kids that said no to the marshmallow were able to delay gratification, which they called like grittiness at the time. Um, they performed really well academically. They went to higher institutions, they sustained academic careers for longer. So most of them graduated from college or advanced degrees, their criteria point averages was higher, their income was higher, their relationships could be more successful. So everyone's like, oh, it's grittiness. It's the gritty kids. If we can make our kids gritty, then they're gonna be successful kids and they're gonna be successful adults. This is awesome. And then they followed up with the kids that didn't say no, that just ate the marshmallow. And they're like, well, what happened with these kids? Like, what do they all have in common? And it turned out that a lot of them had differences in sensory thresholds that than the kids that were able to say no.

SPEAKER_03 28:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

And the problem is they were tested in a classroom setting. So the setting that their kids are going to spend 18 to 20 years of their life in is the same environment that was closely aligned with one kid and not closely aligned with another kid. And that affects their ability to show up and use their executive functions to say no, to delay gratification, to plan in the future and be present. And if you don't have a sensory environment that's conducive to your unique nervous system's needs, that skill, that ability is heavily taxed. It just goes right out the window. And it doesn't matter how good you get at it or how well you try to learn how to tolerate Lush or Bath and Body Works or Yankee Candle, it's still taking away your ability to do math, to do emotional regulation, to be present with someone else, to be able to learn, adapt, grow, create intimacy. It makes all of those higher order tasks more challenging for your nervous system to be able to do.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Is this something that we're born with, or is this something that is developed that we it that we either have it or we don't have it?

Compassion For Parents And Ourselves

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Both, yeah. So there is like a hereditary component of it. Um, certain phenotypes of expression of certain thresholds sound light. Um, but there are other ways to acquire it. Like you can get a type of disease. Um, you know, type 2 diabetes is correlated often with like changes in eyesight, and some of that will create different types of sensities, sensitivities that you didn't have earlier. But there are people that have something called tactile defensiveness. So when you like lightly stroke their arms or anywhere on their body, they will punch you in the face. Or that's what their desire is to do. Versus other people are like, oh my gosh, this feels so relaxing. That seems to be um two things. One, if you get lots of touches from your mom when you are very, very, very small and it's maintained in a safe environment as you grow older, it's easier to have less tactile defensiveness. But even kids that have access to that doesn't stop them from developing it if there's like a genetic component in the family mind for it.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

That's fascinating. It's it's always very interesting to kind of study the way that we were right, like the love, care, attention that we receive when we're young, young kids, or lack of attention, lack of love, lack of touch. Um, and how that affects how so many things happen in our lives. And obviously, well, I guess my question would be I think that it's very easy to at least what I've witnessed with with my clients and even with myself, when we kind of have these awareness, these aha moments, it's very easy to get angry, frustrated with our parents, like you messed me up, you you know, set me up for failure and all of these things. And then hopefully we move to this point of more compassion and grace and realization that our parents are only human and we're only human. And and and really it's not, in my opinion, it's we do have to focus on the past for a minute and maybe heal or or deal with whatever feels like it needs to be addressed, and then focusing on okay, now what am I gonna do with what I'm given, where I am right now in my life. So my question is is that where hypnotherapy can come in and relearning because obviously, well not obviously, what we're really talking about is this dysregulation that we may have been experiencing from childhood or dysregulation that kind of stems and is rooted in the thing that happened in our childhood. We went out for a second. Sorry. Um Did you hear my whole question? I don't even know what I was saying.

Healing Without Knowing Every Detail

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Um there are some experiences in childhood for sure that show up and affect us, and we can look back and and think about that stuff with our parents and be frustrated in that totally appropriate response to being aware of those things and working through it. Um and then there's some things that like they went through too, and their parents went through too, and you know, there's a joke that we could continue to dig up the graveyard looking for all the people to blame and shame. Um and like it didn't start with you and it won't end with you, and so that's like good news there. But a lot of the time, some of the intensity of these interpersonal dynamics and these environments that our families create for us or don't create for us comes from their own accommod, unaccommodated mismatches. So if someone's walking around in an environment um where their nervous system needs aren't being met because they don't know what they are and they have no idea how to meet them, the type of person that they are, the patience they have, their ability to be present with anybody is really limited. And then if you have to make sure that they have a roof over their head and other people have it and clothes on their back and food in the fridge, it gets even more challenging. And the less time they have to do all those things, and the more people they have to care for, and the greater their own unique nervous system needs are, and the bigger that gap is, the harder it is for them to be able to be attuned to someone else. And then if we imagine that that child also has their own unique nervous system needs that aren't being met by that environment, they're also going to be challenging for that parent, too. And so now we have this really big gap, and it's almost impossible for people to bridge it. Those kids couldn't succeed academically, not because they didn't have the capacity to learn or understand or grow, but because the environment they're in wasn't conducive to allow them to be able to learn, for them to be able to express their ability to understand academics, because there was more important things for them to pay attention to, trying to get themselves cared for. And it's on such a subconscious level that they're not even aware of it that most of us aren't. And so it's only recently that some of this work has been coming out. So that being said, you know, maybe there's a chance to have some compassion for yourself, for your parents, for all of them. We're all barely learning what we really need to be successful and thrive well. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

And that's is so is that where when we are kind of when we have that awareness and now we want to address it and work on healing it, is that where hypnotherapy is kind of coming in? Do you have to be aware of what you are dysregulated in? Like, I'm trying to imagine even myself, like, especially when sometimes we know the traumatic event that's happened and sometimes we don't. And so I'm trying to imagine, like, if I was coming to you, what would I say? Like, I okay, I know that my nervous system is dysregulated, but I don't, you know, I don't know like all of these events. Do we have to know everything?

Belief Inventories And Identity Change

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Or no, we don't. Yeah, that's the nice part about hypnotherapy versus um other modalities. Being in that state of hypnosis is restorative in of itself. It's calming to our nervous system. And the calmer our nervous system is, the more time it spends in that regulated state, the easier it is to stay there. The less time we spend in that state, the harder it is to find it and maintain it. Um, and so that is very trainable. They talk about like the window of tolerance and like hypo or hypo and hyper arousal and being able to spend less time in those dysregulated states, more time in that zone of of like excellence and performance where like there are highs and lows in there, but it's not so distressing into your nervous system that you can continue to function for longer. And those lowercase T's never end up resulting in like a capital T trauma. Those common distressors that happen in life because life is challenging never quite reach the point where it qualifies as trauma. It's distressing, but it's not traumatic because we have enough resources to metabolize it, to process it, to integrate that experience into learning. And so just being in a hypnotic state often is restorative to our nervous system. Um, we do it before we wake up, we do it on our way to bed, if we're washing the dishes and our mind is wandering off, that is also a state of hypnosis if we're laughing or crying at a movie. Um, if we're driving home and we're like, oh, how did I get here? Excellent, I'm safe. That's a state of hypnosis. The difference for a lot of people is when they go into that mind-wandering state, they're activating the default mode network, which is where we keep most of our beliefs about ourself, the world, others, and our place in it, our roles in it. And so if in that state we have these beliefs that, like, I'm not enough, I don't matter, I'm not safe, I don't have autonomy, I'm not worthy. And we start going through all the experiences of that day that seem really important to us, and we apply those filters, we're reinforcing those beliefs and we're making it easier to feel them later. So if someone comes up to you and like, oh, nice shirt today, and you're like, cool, they didn't say that yesterday. I was wearing a shirt yesterday. They didn't talk about that shirt. Does that mean that shirt's terrible? Like, if it's so easy for us to get into that rumination state, it shows that maybe we have some of those beliefs lying around that we acquired at a young age when we weren't getting our needs met for lots of really good reasons. And so hypnosis can be a powerful tool just in itself in getting in that state, but it can also be powerful because we can start questioning some of those beliefs that we made about ourselves and looking for evidence elsewhere where we can be like, that wasn't true, right? Um, so we do something called a cognitive belief inventory. It's like a hundred questions. And at the end of it, it kind of gives you a rough estimate scale from one to ten. How true is a statement I am lovable, how true is a statement I'm safe, um, that I have autonomy in my life, that I am responsible. And if it's like a two or three, um that's challenging to live with that belief about yourself. And it's probably also not true, it's not fair. We might be judging ourselves really harshly for something that if we can now talk about it, integrate it and talk about experiences you had where it wasn't true. And then we go into a hypnotic state and we go back and experience those positive feelings where you were safe, you were loved, you were worthwhile, and you felt it. Now when we come out of that state and we're going through life, it makes it much easier to have an experience and be like, oh, they like my shirt. That's awesome. What do you like about my shirt? Oh, you like that it's blue. I have lots of blue shirts. Okay, that's data. Great. People like blue on me. Okay. And it can just stay there. It's easier to be you because when your mind wanders, it goes to less of a nightmare and more of a daydream.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Oh, I love that. That is so cool. I do really love the conversation of like we really do find what we're looking for. And what I love about this flavor of conversation is going back to like it's not just okay, stop thinking that thought. Stop thinking, you know, I'm unlovable or or whatever. I mean, oftentimes I don't think that it's like that wording that we give ourselves, right? It's like, yeah, maybe, yeah, like nobody loves my shirt. I can never wear the right shirt. I never look good enough, or my hair always looks a mess, or you know, I always look so disheveled, whatever it is. It's it's not often like I'm not lovable. So, what I love about this kind of flavor of conversation is working with the subconscious reprogramming because I have met and talked to a lot of that, like write notes on your wall in your mirror and journal and you know, your kind, and all of those are beneficial. I have not personally found huge benefit in them. Um, I think that we tend to keep going back into that default mode. And so I love anything that works with our subconscious because that's where a lot of these things are rooted in. It's not always your forefront conscious. And I and I think that you have to pay a lot of attention to your thoughts to be able to pick that up of like, oh, what I just said, that was kind of that was kind of like enlightenment. Or that was a default mode of mine. And then to be able to switch it, I yeah, it's just it sounds like a lot of work, every other tool that I've heard, whereas hypnosis, it's kind of diving to that root of the subconscious, which is which is really cool.

Where To Find Garrett And Final Reflections

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yeah, it's where those beliefs live. And so if we go there, we meet them where they're at, and then we work with them and we show them evidence. Like, hey, you have this belief, you have this story, you have this experience, but then you have all these other ones. So is that story true? Is that belief really valid? We can do that consciously, sure, and we can come up with the math, but that doesn't always translate to that like feeling of knowing the belief of action. Like it's very easy to say, oh, I'm a non-moke, I don't smoke. It's very different to be like, I'm a non-smoker. Like that's an identity level change. And like that's the difference in closing that gap of like these long-term external goals and then our current behaviors. Those current behaviors are honoring that piece of us that has those beliefs. It's trying to protect us from running into them, from feeling more of them, from collecting evidence that proves our worst beliefs about ourselves true. And so it slows us down, stops us, and creates that resistance and that inner turmoil and anxiety, even. And if we can go and address those beliefs directly, showing them, handing them evidence on their level, where they live, in a state where your body's calm and relaxed and open makes it a little bit easier to make that change.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

So fun. I'm I'm so interested. So, where can people learn more from you? Where do you hang out? I'm I'm sure you've been on other podcasts, but um, yeah, where can people continue to learn more from you and connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Yeah, if they want to be a really professional person, they could follow me on LinkedIn. Um, if they want to be more personable, they can follow me on Instagram um or they can visit me at my website. Um, there's blogs on there, there's some information and contact as well. Um yeah, but they'll usually find me at a local coffee shop if they're in Southern California. That's where I spend most of my time.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Love that. I love that. I wish I was in Southern California right now. My gosh, we just got a lot of snow. So I could use some sunshine. So, last question I always just end the podcast with one of these rotating questions. Um, I can't ask that one because uh I know your answer. Okay, if the world could only remember one feeling from your work, what do you hope that feeling would be?

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Feeling, um calm confidence.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

I like that. I love what you were saying about it's that like identity shift earlier. That's really that felt sense of this is who I am, versus yeah, knowing like we can say, I know that I'm enough, but do you actually does like your nervous system know that? Does your nervous system believe that? So this was such a fun conversation, Garrett. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate your time and your wisdom and your expertise. And I really appreciate this whole conversation. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

Thanks for having me, Hannah.