Ever feel nervous before giving that big presentation and wish you could somehow channel the confidence you feel when you’re snowboarding? Or feel as relaxed as you do in your hammock while taking that bumpy flight? Hypnosis can help.

With hypnosis the hypnotist can take you back to a time where you felt confident, whether that was last weekend when you were snowboarding down Mt. Hood or when you were in high school and star of your team. The hypnotist will take you back to those times when you felt your most confident and connect, or anchor, that feeling to a specific gesture such as pressing your thumb and index finger together, or a word you can chant or even a piece of jewelry. So then whenever you need to feel that confidence again you can trigger it by pressing your thumb to your index finger, or chanting that magic word to yourself or wear that special piece of jewelry to bring back that feeling of being confident.

Removing that negative connection, or trigger and turning it into a positive one works much the same way. If rush hour traffic stresses you out every commute, then the hypnotist can take you to a relaxing time and anchor it to the trigger of pressing together of your fingers or even deep breaths. When it comes to anxieties or phobias to activities such as flying, the process is a little different. Instead of going back and finding a relaxing time and anchoring it to a trigger gesture, the hypnotist takes you back to find what is triggering the anxiety and why.

In this process, instead of going back and finding a relaxing time in your past, you go back to when you felt the same anxiety and explore why. Perhaps as a child there was an event in which you had no control and it caused you duress, which was triggered again when the plane hit the turbulence and you once again felt you had no control over your situation. So what the hypnotist will do is have you as an adult, talk to the you as a child and re-assure him/her that it is all going to be all right and he/she will grow into a successful adult. There by alleviating the duress from the past it no longer carries into the present and future.

Using hypnosis to help ease anxiety caused by lack of confidence in one’s ability to speak to groups or caused by a fear of flying or any number of reasons, a hypnotist will typically use the anchoring of triggers to gain the desired emotional response. This in turn makes one feel more confident, or more at ease in one’s situation.