256: Healing with Hypnotherapy (with Juliet Obodo)

You’re listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast, episode number 256. We’re talking about hypnotherapy and how you can use it to let go of stuck emotions and limiting beliefs. Stay tuned.

Hi, I'm Jen Riday. This podcast is for women who want to feel more vibrant, happy, aligned, and alive. You'll gain the emotional, physical, and spiritual tools you need to get your sparkle back and ensure that depression, anxiety, and struggle don't rule your life. Welcome to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast.

Hey there my friends, Jen here. If you’re listening to this podcast, whether it’s your first time or you’ve been here before, you’ve been around the block with me you probably are interested in personal development in self-help, in growth, in being your best self. Well, you’re in the right place and I want to share that I was thinking back and I’ve been interested in self-help topics since about age 15.

The first self-help book I remember owning was a book by Tony Robbins. And it blew my mind because I grew up thinking like everyone else in my small, small town in southwest Iowa, a farm town, the thoughts primarily were work hard, be honest and you will succeed. Well, there was this whole world of think positively and you can be something better than you are now, change your thinking, change your life, change your physiology, change your state. Stand up, pull your shoulders back, say something with a confident voice, it will change what’s going on in your body.

And my mind was blown because wow, I’d never heard that before. So here we are how many years later? 30 ish, oh my gosh, almost 30 years later, I still love that topic, I feel like self-help, personal growth, Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, all those amazing people are my jam. And I hope you feel the same.

Well, I’ve been thinking a lot lately, you know how sometimes a message keeps knocking on your brain? You see it over, and over, and over again in different places. Well, the message knocking on my brain lately is all the different ways that we can change the way we think and the way we feel.

So you’ve heard me talk about many, many tools before. My favorite is thought tables which is the idea that all our feelings are generated by a thought. What we think generates a feeling and if we feel positive we’re likely going to take action and get a result. If we feel terrible we feel a sense of shame or sadness, we might choose to lie in bed or eat that half gallon of ice-cream and get a less than desirable result. One of my favorite tools.

Well, I’m going to be talking over the next few weeks, not every single week, but just notice a theme with several guests about different ways you can change your thoughts and your feelings. One of those ways is through hypnotherapy. My guest today, Juliet Obodo is a hypnotherapist. And many of you have heard about hypnosis before. You’ve heard about it in high school.

A story, I have been hypnotized in a presentation twice. It’s really embarrassing, the first one we were having babies on the stage. I’ll just leave it right there. The second time I didn’t even know. I know there was a rollercoaster involved and my family was in hysterics. So my mind is easily suggestible. I like it. So we have that idea of hypnosis.

But there’s also the form of hypnotherapy where your hypnotherapist relaxes you deeply. I have done this before here in Madison where I live. And you’re really dropped into an almost dreamlike state, relax, relax, relax. And then in that safe, safe state you are more suggestible, almost like you can burn a deeper neural pathway in that state of mind. It’s also a very safe space for discovering some of the thoughts you’ve been having. Your hypnotherapist can ask you questions, you can respond and it’s not like the hypnosis you might have seen in your prom after party, in other words.

Well, Juliet Obodo is going to talk about hypnotherapy today. And I just want to present this as one additional tool you can put in your tool belt maybe to help you with a sticky situation. I know many, many people who have used hypnotherapy to quit smoking or to lose weight, using hypnotherapy to change their mindset around money. And just stay open and see what you learn. It’s kind of fun. So without further ado let’s dive in to my interview with Juliet.

Jen: Hey everyone, I’m talking with Juliet Obodo today. And Juliet, I’m going to go ahead and let you introduce yourself.

Juliet: Thanks. Hi everyone. I’m Juliet Obodo, I am a master hypnotherapist. I work with Gen Z and millennial entrepreneurs who are dealing with ADHD, burnout, anxiety and depression when they’re trying to hit their first six figures or multiple six figures. So they don’t realize that a lot of it with the blocks that they encounter are usually mental. And so with hypnosis they’re able to have a powerful and natural solution to removing those blocks.

I am based in New York City but I see my clients who are based all over the world. And my mission is really to let everyone know about this powerful method.

Jen: Awesome. So hypnotherapy brings us back to hypnosis and a lot of people may have seen a hypnosis performance, an entertainment style of hypnosis maybe at a high school prom. We all have some stereotypes about it. Tell us more about what hypnosis and hypnotherapy, how those actually work, what’s really happening?

Juliet: Sure. So I’m a hypnotherapist so I use it in a clinical setting. So the session is specifically designed to relieve any mental issues that you’re experiencing. So with hypnotherapy you are put in a trance and you’re given suggestions to create a transformation at a deeper level. So a lot of times we don’t realize but we are hypnotized throughout the day, when you’re driving you kind of go into autopilot.

And so a lot of our behaviors or issues that we experience are automatic or things that we’re simply used to which create certain self-sabotaging patterns or feelings of imposter syndrome or guilt. So hypnosis allows us to go in at a deeper level and reset those automatic patterns to more empowering ones.

Jen: That’s great. So is hypnosis causing essentially a rewiring of the brain or what’s happening physiologically if it’s even explainable? I mean these things get really detailed, I know.

Juliet: Yeah. No, yeah, so there are a lot of studies that are, especially Stanford University is big on hypnosis experiments and seeing the clinical basis and clinical benefits of hypnotherapy. So in one instance they saw that within the brain regions the rewiring essentially of the neural pathways, them firing off, versus, at another emotion to release certain neural chemicals, versus something else. For example, if you have bad social media addiction for example, it’s because you consistently get your dopamine hit every time you open up the app.

So under hypnosis we would replace that dopamine hit with something that doesn’t give you much dopamine hits. And then we would replace it with something like opening a book.

Jen: Okay. Well, how did you come to get involved with hypnotherapy, do you have a story that led you to discover this really awesome technique?

Juliet: Yeah. So I was running my two businesses at the time and I was really experiencing burnout. And so it wasn’t even about money, it was just that I was extremely tired and felt like I hit a wall, every time I would try to take time off I wouldn’t feel any better. I even had a therapist but just the feeling, the energy and the drive and everything just I couldn’t tap into it, even though I would talk about it every week in a session, it just seemed like we just kept talking about it but it wouldn’t improve.

And so I saw an ad for a program that had a hypnosis in it and doing the hypnosis actually helped me do a lot of inner child healing which released a lot of the blocks, and a happiness I felt that was tied to how much I made.

Jen: Interesting. That’s so fascinating. So you’re mentioning trauma, tell us more about inner child work and trauma and how that relates to hypnotherapy.

Juliet: So with hypnosis we are really speaking to your subconscious mind versus your conscious mind. And your subconscious mind holds all the emotions and the memories that essentially your inner child experienced because all that programming, everything was set before the age of seven, so when you were a child. So with inner child healing it’s essentially consistent, us going back and finding a particular memory that’s causing you present day block because that emotion is tied to a memory and your interpretation of that memory.

Jen: Yeah, it makes sense. On the topic of trauma I’m kind of infatuated with this idea and it ties into our conversation. I recently learned about shaking. Now, let me explain, it sounds crazy but it’s a therapeutic technique that we figured out from animals. There’s a video online, you can all Google it, of an impala being kind of captured by a cheetah. Well, animals will often automatically turn into this, you know, we all know about fight, flight or freeze.

Animals just before they’re about to die will go into this freeze response. Well, in this particular video the impala is in a total freeze response. It looks dead. It’s not even breathing. And the cheetah doesn’t seem to even be hungry. It’s just kind of standing over its kill. A hyena comes up and scares the cheetah off. The hyena and the cheetah run off and the videographer is filming the impala, there’s no breathing, there’s no breathing.

Eventually though you can tell that the nervous system of the animal comes back online, starts to breathe and then it gets up and has this full body shaking response. And it’s so fascinating but the therapeutic idea behind that is we can store, our body can store experiences and traumas in our nervous system. If you think about the wisdom of these nerves, you touch a hot stove; your nerve has its own little mini brain that gets you to respond quicker than the message getting to your full brain.

If you think about all these messages being stored, not just in the muscles of the body, but in the nerves, it suddenly makes sense to use therapies like shaking to get that movement out. And hypnotherapy like you’re doing to rewire the nervous system, it’s a real thing. And science is just starting to understand it. But can you share a story, Juliet, of how you have helped someone get past that low energy, another story similar to yours or a few stories. Maybe we can get inspired here and think about how we could apply this technique in our own lives.

Juliet: So it’s interesting that you brought up the story of the animal that went into freeze mode, so humans often do that as well. In particular I had a client that was running a successful business but they wanted to start to run Facebook Ads. And then every time an ad set or something didn’t do well, they would just like just stop or they would just try to figure out what was going on, they just had this fear.

And so during the session we went back and we found a memory of them as a child where they were in front of a dog and they just froze and felt this intense fear. And this is the same fear that they felt when they were running ads, it was they felt this. And so relieving the feeling in their body was to give them a new interpretation and understanding of the memory in their mind. So once he received that information that it was really for this instance, not every instance where you feel this, where you freeze and it’s a different type of experience he was able to essentially reset that filter of fear.

Jen: That is so cool. So hypnotherapy provided him a safe space to relax enough so he could discover a past memory that had been wired in his nervous system that was affecting a current day situation. Is that kind of the essentials?

Juliet: Yes, exactly.

Jen: That is so cool. So can regular people do any kind of version of hypnotherapy for themselves, is there such a thing?

Juliet: Yeah. They can do self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis is a great method. I teach self-hypnosis for people that are able to book a one-on-one session with me because it’s still – I don’t want people to feel like they just have to see a hypnotherapist to do this change work especially if it’s something that they can consistently practice and eventually get the same result as a one-on-one session. So if you’re consistent with your self-hypnosis and you’re focused and you have information and the knowledge to be able to perform it, it’s a very powerful experience.

But if self-hypnosis isn’t something that you can also invest in then you can start to meditate because the effects of meditation are also pretty powerful if done consistently. Because I feel like the way that meditation, there are different avenues that you could go at meditation. But the particular meditation that I offer for example on my YouTube channel for free is designed to relieve certain particular issues versus you sitting and thinking about that. So it’s guided, so can give you a more structured approach to meditating to relieve a certain emotion.

Jen: So therapeutic meditation, how would we find it on YouTube?

Juliet: So you would just search Juliet C.

Jen: Juliet C and then therapeutic meditation?

Juliet: Just meditation.

Jen: Meditation, okay, very cool. So what are some examples of the areas people can do the work, do the self-hypnosis or the therapeutic meditation to see an improvement? For example, weight or I don’t know, you tell us, what are some of the areas, the topics that this works on?

Juliet: So I’m not sure about weight but for public speaking, for flying, for motivation, any financial anxiety that you experience, you can do it for that as well. I focus a lot on performance for entrepreneurs because that’s usually – entrepreneurship is holding a mirror to where there are blocks in your life if you’re not able to do certain things in your business or get certain results. So you can really see and have something to focus on when you’re doing the meditation or with hypnosis.

Jen: Cool. So everyone, I’m going to be the guinea pig and Juliet has graciously agreed to walk me through a lighter process, not necessarily hypnosis here. That might be dangerous. I’d never turn off the podcast mic. She’s going to walk me, I’ll be the guinea pig, walk me through a process of changing my emotional states. So this’ll be fun. Thanks, Juliet.

Juliet: No problem. So how are you currently feeling?

Jen: I am feeling tired but also calm.

Juliet: Okay. So what would you rather feel?

Jen: I would love to feel energized and enthusiastic.

Juliet: Okay, good. Now, can you remember a time where you felt both energized and enthusiastic?

Jen: Great question. Of course, a Tony Robbins event with the loud music and the jumping up and down, yeah, for sure.

Juliet: Great. And so can you kind of see the picture in your mind of the event?

Jen: Yeah, totally.

Juliet: And you can hear the music?

Jen: What’s fascinating, I have an immediate thought of my kids aren’t here. I have no one to be responsible for but myself.

Juliet: And that makes you feel energetic and enthusiastic?

Jen: Yeah, I think so.

Juliet: Exactly, yeah. So you can really tap into past emotional states. If you felt it before you can feel it again.

Jen: So just remember, recall the memory and recreate it. Maybe I turn on some music right here right now to go with it?

Juliet: Exactly, yeah.

Jen: Move my body in the same way, give my kids away. No. I’m kidding. It has been a long pandemic with virtual schooling, can you tell?

Juliet: Yeah, I can imagine. Some people are hopping on Zoom, and they’re like, “This is like the virtual school.”

Jen: Totally. That’s so fun. Well, so, Juliet, tell us your story, kind of your life story, the quick version.

Juliet: Basically with my background it’s been a very interesting journey to becoming a hypnotherapist. It’s not something that I would have imagined I’d become as a child. I did study psychology in college. And I was planning on becoming a psychiatrist but I didn’t go to medical school, instead I went into research, pharmaceutical research. But the pay wasn’t fulfilling, especially just seeing how much I owed in school for school and then the amount of money I would make. And I remember doing a lot of work in trying to make sure that I went above and beyond.

And then something happened where I couldn’t get a raise and then the next time I would get it, would be the following year and it would just be like an additional $100 or $200 on my check. And I said, “This cannot be sales, tech sales.” And so that was most of my career was in tech sales before I left to start my own business, my own agency. And from there I discovered hypnosis when I was [inaudible] and I wanted to be able to offer it to my clients. So I became certified but then I continued the certification. So now I’m able to train other hypnotherapists.

I’ve been running my practice now for about two and a half years almost. So it’s been very interesting. And I’m really glad that I did experience a lot of that stress in corporate and with my business. So now I’m really able to empathize and relate to my clients.

Jen: Your story, your mess became your message kind of. You’ve been there, you overcame it, now you share what you’ve learned.

Juliet: Exactly.

Jen: It’s great. So what do you think is the future, how do you see hypnotherapy becoming more and more popular? How do you see it changing in the therapy and mental health industry?

Juliet: So with the research that’s coming and it’s really interesting, if you look up Dr. David Spiegel, he’s one of the – he’s a second generation hypnosis researcher. And he said that unless we can make it profitable, funding for more research is going to be difficult. So it’s slowly improving. We know the benefits, we see the benefits. But it’s not mainstream for a reason, because it’s not profitable unfortunately. If someone is able to resolve an issue in a year versus years of therapy and having to pay, copay and all that stuff then it’s not as profitable.

And then in terms of therapy we’re aware of the inpatient facilities and how much money they get by admitting a certain number of people. So it’s really shady. So it’s really important that when you think about your mental health and you think about your health in general, you really try to take the time to examine all options. And then make a decision based on the results that you want. Because I’m really seeing just the – and then my education, my undergrad in psych, we were really studying how to treat disorders versus prevent them.

Jen: Yes. That’s why self-care and all the mental health work is so important.

Juliet: Yeah. And then even now running my hypnotherapy practice, I’ve had several clients, women actually, that actually should have been diagnosed with ADHD. They were being pushed into being bipolar because the medication was more expensive. And these women aren’t bipolar, after working with them, you see them thriving, calm, they’re not experiencing, because sometimes you’ll get, like this with ADHD, you’ll get this moment of hyper flow. And sometimes it’s not ideal.

So you’re focusing on planning an imaginary vacation. So people might think you’re in a manic state versus using that energy to do your business plan or create something for your business. So being able to use hypnosis to shift and help them shift that attention and that flow for things that were actually aligned with their goals, now make them super productive and super successful. But imagine if they didn’t know that this doesn’t sound like them, this doesn’t sound like me and this isn’t really how I feel, they would be on medication now.

Jen: Yeah, that makes sense. It’s almost like a pendulum, it kind of swings both ways. Well, what are your thoughts on depression, versus bipolar, versus all the other things that could be happening when women are feeling low mood, low motivation, what are your thoughts?

Juliet: Yeah. So a lot of – in terms of mood stabilizer, most of the serotonin in our bodies is produced in our gut. So really looking at yourself holistically, even if you are seeing a doctor and you are taking medication, you still should be taking care of yourself in other ways, your diet, your consumption of media every day, your consumption of relationships, who is in your life as well because it’s all connected. So, just working on one part versus really continuously trying to change the tires on your car when you need to just replace them all at once and get full alignment.

Jen: Yeah, wow, that’s great. So doing our work, all the self-development work comes back around to higher mood and higher energy in the end.

Juliet: Yeah. And then I feel like, too, with self-development, I feel like people think that they need to add stuff when it’s really you’re shedding, you’re removing a lot of the stuff that was put on to you, so you’re lightening your load. You don’t really need to seek or add anything, you actually need to release and remove in order to get that energy and that sense of freedom that we had when we were toddlers.

Jen: Yeah, letting go of all the shame and the shoulds and the expectations, yeah, for sure.

Juliet: Yeah, because that forces you to, because a lot of times when my clients come and we look at their goals that they want to hit, I ask them, “Why do you want to hit this? Why do you even want this?”

Jen: And what do they say?

Juliet: Sometimes they’re very clear, they’re like, “I want it because x, y, z.” I noticed that a lot of the parents if they have children they are clear on their goals. But with my single clients it’s usually because they feel like that proves that they’re an adult or that proves that they’re successful, that proves something else. So we’re able to really dissect that and say, “What do you actually want?” Once they determine what they actually want they hit it immediately.

Jen: Yeah, that’s great. What do you really want? Well, I love that. Let’s leave that as our question to the listeners today, what do you really want? And kind of what you said before, what can you let go of to be more focused on what you really want? Really it comes down to saying no to more so you can say yes to what you really want.

Juliet: Exactly.

Jen: Juliet, where can people go to learn more about your hypnotherapy?

Juliet: So you can visit me on Instagram at Juliet C. Obodo. I post a lot of content because I want to just demystify hypnosis for people. And then you can also learn more and read blogs on fwrdinstitute.com fwrdinstitute.com.

Jen: Awesome, Juliet, thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate you.

So I’ve been thinking since I spoke with Juliet about the power of deep relaxation. If a deep and relaxed state helps us to analyze and change our thoughts more easily than when we’re in a stressed out, freaked out state, then it would stand to reason that we need to do more of the things that help us relax, slow down those brainwaves. And hit that state of bliss and peace that for many of us has been lacking over the past year.

Well, I want to remind you, if you want some more relaxation of the Vibrant Happy Women online retreat that is coming up soon, three days, you can get a hotel or you can do it from home, just lock your bedroom door and tell everyone you’re off for three days. Have your significant other take care of the kids. Do what it takes to bring that cortisol down and come back to the state of relaxation, a state of finding ourselves. The theme of the retreat, the online retreat is, get your sparkle back.

So you are cordially invited, details are on my website or you can go to jenriday.com/events, it’s going to be a lot of fun. I can’t even wait. Women, no kids, my cortisol is coming down already.

Well, I want to thank you all for listening. I will see you again soon, until then go make it a vibrant and happy day, okay? Take care.

If you enjoy this podcast, you have to check out the Vibrant Happy Women Club. It’s my monthly group coaching program where we take all this material to the next level and to get you the results that will blow your mind. Join me in the Vibrant Happy Women Club at jenriday.com/join.