Hypnotherapy: A Free Clear, Compassionate Guide
Hypnotherapy: A Free Clear, Compassionate Guide
Whether you're considering hypnotherapy for yourself, supporting someone who's trying it, already partway through sessions, or simply curious about the oldest and most misunderstood tool in Western psychotherapy, this page walks through what hypnotherapy actually is, in plain terms, with no judgment and no jargon left unexplained. Read it straight through or scroll to the section you need. There's no right or wrong way to take it in. One quick note before we go further: at the very bottom of this page you'll find next steps for going deeper, so make sure you scroll down and check them out.
Hypnotherapy rests on a quietly radical idea: the mind already knows how to turn down pain, calm a frightened body, and rehearse a different future, and a state of deep, focused attention can hand a person the dial.
1. Hypnotherapy in a Nutshell
Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis, a natural state of deeply focused attention and increased openness to helpful suggestion, as a tool inside medical or psychological treatment. A trained clinician guides a person into that absorbed state, then uses carefully chosen words and imagery to help the mind and body shift things that willpower alone struggles to reach, like pain, gut distress, anxiety before procedures, or stubborn habits. It is almost never a therapy by itself; it is a powerful amplifier added to real treatment, and the person stays aware and in control the entire time.
2. Where Hypnotherapy Came From
The roots run deeper than any other talk therapy. Healing trance states appear in temple rituals and spiritual practices across ancient cultures, long before anyone owned a couch or a clipboard. The modern story is really the story of science slowly separating a genuine phenomenon from centuries of theater.
It began with a dramatic wrong answer. In the late 1700s, the German physician Franz Mesmer drew crowds in Paris with healing sessions he credited to an invisible force he called animal magnetism. A French royal commission, which included Benjamin Franklin, investigated and concluded the force didn't exist. What the commission couldn't explain away was that people were still genuinely affected, which meant the real engine was imagination and expectation, a finding a century ahead of its time.
A skeptical Scottish surgeon gave it a name. In the 1840s, James Braid attended a mesmerism demonstration expecting fraud, found something real underneath the showmanship, and set out to study it scientifically. He coined the word hypnosis, after the Greek god of sleep, a name he later regretted because the state is nothing like sleep. Around the same era, surgeons were performing major operations using trance as the only anesthesia, with results striking enough to make medicine pay attention.
Psychoanalysis was born in its shadow. The great neurologists of the late 1800s used hypnosis to study the unconscious mind, and a young Sigmund Freud trained in it before setting it aside in favor of free association. In a real sense, modern depth psychology grew directly out of the hypnotist's office.
Milton Erickson rebuilt it for the modern era. The American psychiatrist Milton Erickson, widely considered the father of modern clinical hypnosis, spent the mid-1900s transforming the field from commands and pocket watches into something conversational, permissive, and tailored to each individual. He founded the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis in the 1950s, and his indirect, story-weaving style went on to influence brief therapy and family therapy far beyond hypnosis itself.
The laboratory finally caught up. Researchers at Stanford and elsewhere, led by figures like Ernest Hilgard, built standardized scales showing that responsiveness to hypnosis is a measurable, surprisingly stable human trait. Later generations of scientists put hypnotized brains in scanners and watched attention and pain networks genuinely change, moving the field from parlor curiosity to measurable neuroscience.
Today it lives mostly inside other treatments. Modern clinical hypnosis appears in hospitals, dental offices, pain clinics, and therapy rooms, usually woven into approaches covered elsewhere in this guide series, including cognitive and behavioral work. That adjunct identity, a tool rather than a standalone school, is the single most important thing to understand about the whole field.
3. The Big Idea: Focused Attention Opens a Door
Every therapy carries a theory about why people suffer and how healing happens. Hypnotherapy's theory starts with a fact about attention that everyone has already experienced.
Trance is ordinary, not exotic. Getting lost in a movie, driving a familiar route on autopilot, or losing an hour inside a good book are all everyday versions of absorbed, narrowed attention. Hypnosis takes that natural capacity and aims it deliberately, with consent and a purpose.
Absorbed attention quiets the inner skeptic. In everyday consciousness, a running commentary evaluates and argues with nearly everything. In a hypnotic state, that critical chatter softens, which lets helpful ideas land as experiences rather than debate topics. A suggestion to notice warmth spreading through tight shoulders can actually produce the warmth, instead of a mental argument about whether it will work.
The body listens to vivid imagination. Brains respond to richly imagined experience with some of the same machinery they use for real experience, which is why imagining biting a lemon makes mouths water. Hypnotherapy leans on that bridge deliberately, using imagery and suggestion to turn down pain signals, settle an overreactive gut, or rehearse walking calmly into a feared situation.
Suggestion changes perception, not just opinion. Research on hypnotic pain relief shows something stronger than distraction or positive thinking: the actual experience of pain can shrink, measurably, in brain regions that process it. That is the core claim of the whole field, that words delivered into focused attention can shift what the nervous system does, not merely what a person believes.
The person does the hypnosis; the clinician guides it. The modern consensus is that all hypnosis is, at its root, self-hypnosis. A hypnotherapist is closer to a skilled guide than a puppeteer, and nothing happens without the person's participation. This is also why most courses of treatment end with teaching self-hypnosis, so the skill leaves the office with the person who built it.
Responsiveness varies, and that's honest science. People differ in how deeply they respond to hypnosis, along a measurable trait called hypnotizability. Most people fall somewhere in the useful middle, a smaller group responds dramatically, and a smaller group responds very little, which is one reason hypnotherapy helps many people powerfully and others only mildly.
4. The Language of Hypnotherapy
A handful of terms come up constantly in this field, and knowing them ahead of time makes everything easier to follow.
Trance. The state of absorbed, inwardly focused attention at the center of the work. It feels less like being knocked out and more like deep daydreaming with a guide, and most people remember everything afterward.
Induction. The structured beginning of a session, where the clinician helps attention narrow and the body settle, often through a calm voice, breathing, and imagery. Pocket watches are strictly a movie thing.
Suggestion. The carefully worded ideas offered during trance, framed as invitations rather than commands. Suggestions aim at experience, like comfort, coolness, confidence, or distance from pain.
Hypnotizability. The measurable, fairly stable trait describing how strongly a person responds to hypnosis. It correlates with the capacity for absorption and imagination, and it has nothing to do with intelligence or willpower.
Deepening. Techniques that take an already-focused state further inward, such as counting down a staircase in the mind's eye. Depth matters less than people assume; useful work happens at light levels too.
Posthypnotic suggestion. A suggestion designed to keep working after the session ends, such as a cue word that brings back calm during a stressful week. Think of it as installing a shortcut the person can press later.
Self-hypnosis. The learnable skill of entering a focused, suggestible state on one's own and using it deliberately. Teaching this is standard in good treatment, because the goal is independence, never reliance on the clinician.
Emergence. The gentle, structured return to ordinary alertness at the end of a session. Nobody gets stuck; the state resolves on its own even if a session were simply abandoned mid-stream.
5. The Four Stages of a Hypnotherapy Session
Clinical training across the field teaches a session arc with four recognizable stages, and knowing them in advance removes nearly all the mystery. Some teachers add a preliminary conversation stage, but these four form the classic core nearly every approach shares.
Induction. The entry point, where scattered everyday attention is guided into narrow, absorbed focus. Common doorways include fixed gazing, slow breathing, progressive relaxation of the body, and vivid imagery, all paced to the individual.
Deepening. The consolidation phase, where the focused state is settled and strengthened so suggestions can land well. Classic methods include counting, descending imagery like stairs or elevators, and noticing growing heaviness or lightness.
Suggestion. The working heart of the session, where the actual therapy happens. Here the clinician delivers the tailored therapeutic material, whether that's pain-dialing imagery, calming messages aimed at an anxious gut, rehearsal of a feared situation going well, or work with old experiences.
Emergence. The structured exit, where the clinician guides attention back to the room, often with counting upward and suggestions of alertness and wellbeing. Sessions end with a debrief in ordinary consciousness, comparing notes on what was experienced.
6. What Hypnotherapy Actually Looks Like
Real treatment looks far less like a stage show and far more like a quiet, collaborative appointment. Here is the honest shape of it.
Everything starts with a conversation, not a trance. A first session is mostly talking: the history of the problem, goals, worries about hypnosis itself, and usually some gentle testing of how the person responds to simple suggestions. Consent and demystifying come first, because expectation shapes results.
A typical session is calm, verbal, and surprisingly ordinary. After the opening conversation, the clinician guides the four-stage arc described above, with the trance portion often running twenty to forty minutes inside a standard appointment. Most people describe it as deeply restful, like the edge of a nap where hearing stays sharp.
Courses tend to be short. Many protocols run somewhere between four and twelve sessions, with gut-directed programs typically running a structured six to twelve weeks. Hypnotherapy is rarely open-ended; it usually arrives with a plan and a finish line.
Homework means practicing self-hypnosis. Between sessions, people typically practice with recordings or learned routines, often daily and often only ten to twenty minutes. The repetition is where suggestions take root, much like physical therapy exercises between appointments.
It usually rides inside a larger treatment. The honest label for most good hypnotherapy is clinical hypnosis added to something, such as therapy for anxiety, medical care for a gut condition, or a pain management program. A clinician offering hypnosis as the entire answer to a complex problem is a yellow flag, covered further below.
Telehealth and audio formats genuinely work here. Because the work is delivered by voice with eyes closed, hypnosis translates to video and app formats unusually well, and research on remotely delivered programs, especially for gut symptoms, has found results in the same neighborhood as office visits. Live telehealth sessions with a licensed clinician are now routine.
The Hypnotherapist's Toolkit, the working techniques a course draws from, one or two lines each:
Direct suggestion. Clear, positive statements aimed at the target experience, like comfort replacing tension. The classic tool, as old as the field itself.
Guided imagery. Vivid multi-sensory scenes, such as a safe place or a healing landscape, used as both vehicle and medicine. Imagery carries most suggestions into felt experience.
Posthypnotic cues. Anchors installed during trance, like a word, breath, or touch of finger and thumb, that re-trigger calm or comfort later in daily life.
Hypnotic analgesia. The pain specialty: imagery of numbness spreading like a cool glove, dials that turn sensation down, or distance placed between a person and the hurt.
Gut-directed protocols. Standardized scripts aimed at calming the conversation between brain and digestive system, the most rigorously tested branch of the whole field.
Future rehearsal. Mentally living a coming challenge, such as a flight, a procedure, or a presentation, while calm is strong, so the nervous system meets the real event as familiar ground.
Self-hypnosis training. Teaching the person to induce and use the state independently, usually the graduation goal of treatment.
Ideomotor signaling. Letting fingers lift involuntarily to answer yes or no during deep absorption, a gentle way to check in without disturbing the state.
Ego state and regression work. Slower exploratory methods that revisit earlier experiences or inner conflicts within trance. These require real clinical skill and come with memory cautions covered honestly below.
Ericksonian methods. The indirect style built on Milton Erickson's legacy: stories, metaphors, and permissive language that invite change sideways rather than instructing it head-on.
7. What Hypnotherapy Helps With
The research picture here is genuinely interesting: a few areas with impressively strong evidence, a wide middle of promising-but-thinner findings, and some famous uses with weaker support than their reputations suggest.
Medical procedures and pain are the strongest ground. Comprehensive overviews of decades of controlled trials consistently find the most robust evidence for hypnosis in people undergoing medical procedures and in pain management, both acute and chronic. Hospitals increasingly use it around surgery, burns, dental work, and childbirth, and large health systems, including veterans' healthcare, now cover clinical hypnosis as an evidence-based option.
Irritable bowel syndrome is the flagship success story. Gut-directed hypnotherapy is recommended in international gastroenterology guidelines as an effective brain-gut therapy, with trials finding meaningful symptom relief for a majority of people and benefits that hold up years later. Pediatric guidelines in this area have gone as far as recommending it among first-line options for gut-related pain in children.
Anxiety around specific situations responds well. Fear tied to procedures, dental visits, needles, and similar concrete stressors is a natural fit, since calm can be rehearsed and anchored in advance. Evidence for hypnosis as a treatment for broad anxiety disorders on their own is thinner and still developing.
A respectable supporting cast keeps growing. Hot flashes during menopause have notably good trial support, and research backs hypnosis as a helpful addition for distress in cancer care, certain headache patterns, and some sleep complaints. Work on depression has produced encouraging trials, including head-to-head research finding hypnotherapy performing comparably to well-established therapy, though the evidence base remains young.
The famous uses are the shakiest. Smoking cessation and weight loss are what most people associate with hypnosis, and the honest reading is mixed: some people genuinely benefit, results improve when hypnosis is added to solid behavioral programs, but reviews have repeatedly found the evidence too inconsistent to declare hypnosis a reliable fix on its own. A one-session quit-smoking miracle is marketing, not science.
One pattern explains a lot. Hypnosis tends to shine where the mind-body connection is the terrain, like pain, gut function, procedural fear, and stress physiology, and to look more ordinary where the problem is primarily behavioral habit or complex mental health territory. Matching the tool to the terrain is most of the wisdom here.
8. Who Hypnotherapy Tends to Fit, and Who Might Struggle With It
Fit matters as much as evidence, and this modality has a distinctive personality.
Imaginative, absorption-prone people often take to it naturally. Those who get fully lost in books, films, music, or daydreams tend to score higher in hypnotic responsiveness, and the work can feel like finally using a lifelong talent on purpose.
It suits people seeking targeted relief more than open-ended exploration. Someone arriving with a specific aim, like calmer digestion, less procedure fear, or better pain days, meets hypnotherapy at its best. Those wanting broad insight into their whole life story usually need a fuller therapy, with hypnosis as a possible ingredient rather than the meal.
Willingness matters more than belief. Skeptics respond fine as long as they're willing to participate; active resistance is the real obstacle, since the state can't be imposed. Nobody needs faith, but everyone needs consent.
Control fears deserve respect and usually dissolve with facts. It can be common to feel uneasy about the idea of being hypnotized, and the reality, that awareness remains and suggestions can be refused, tends to settle this. For anyone whose discomfort persists, plenty of other approaches exist, and honoring that preference is legitimate.
Some situations call for extra caution and specialist judgment. Clinicians generally take particular care, or choose other tools, with active psychosis and with certain dissociative or trauma presentations, where deep absorption needs careful handling by someone trained in both hypnosis and that clinical territory. Low responders on the hypnotizability spectrum may also simply get modest results, which is information rather than failure.
9. Strengths and Honest Limitations
What hypnotherapy does brilliantly deserves naming, and so do its genuine weak spots.
The strengths:
It reaches places argument can't. Pain levels, gut function, and automatic fear responses don't negotiate with logic, and hypnosis is one of the few tools that speaks their language directly. That is a rare and valuable niche.
Relief can arrive fast. Where it works, benefit often shows up within a handful of sessions, making it one of the quicker evidence-based options for its best-fit problems.
The side-effect profile is enviably mild. Reviews of clinical trials report serious adverse events as essentially absent when hypnosis is delivered by trained professionals, with occasional transient effects like drowsiness or headache. Compared with many medical options for pain, that safety record matters enormously.
Self-hypnosis is permanent equipment. The skill transfers, lasts, and costs nothing to use for life, which fits the become-your-own-resource spirit shared by the best therapies.
Remote delivery is a genuine strength, not a compromise. Few modalities translate to audio and video as naturally, which has quietly made quality hypnotherapy more reachable than it has ever been.
The honest limitations:
The credential landscape is the wildest in all of therapy. In many places, essentially anyone can complete a short course and legally advertise as a certified hypnotherapist with no license to treat anything. The gap between a weekend-trained lay hypnotist and a licensed clinician with formal hypnosis certification is enormous, and the finding-a-practitioner section below deals with it head-on.
It's a tool, not a complete therapy, and marketing often hides that. Hypnosis amplifies treatment; it rarely is the treatment. Experts in the field say plainly that a practitioner should be qualified to treat the underlying problem without hypnosis before adding hypnosis to it.
Results vary by individual more than most therapies. The hypnotizability spectrum is real, which means two people can follow the identical protocol and walk away with very different gains. Honest clinicians say this up front.
The memory tools can genuinely cause harm when misused. Hypnosis increases confidence in memories without increasing their accuracy, and decades of research show that regression techniques can unintentionally help construct vivid, sincerely believed memories of things that never happened. This did real damage in past eras of so-called recovered-memory therapy, and it remains the field's most serious failure mode. Responsible modern practitioners use exploratory techniques carefully and never treat trance recollections as courtroom-grade fact.
The stage-show shadow is an access problem. Entertainment hypnosis keeps the mind-control image alive, which scares away people the clinical version could genuinely help and makes some clinicians reluctant to offer it at all.
Insurance coverage lags the evidence. Despite guideline recognition in areas like gut health, coverage is inconsistent, and out-of-pocket costs are a real barrier for many.
10. Myths and Misconceptions
"The hypnotist takes control of your mind." Research is unambiguous: hypnotized people retain control, can refuse any suggestion, and can end the state at will. Hypnosis is not something done to a person; it's something a person does with guidance, and nobody can be made to act against their own values.
"Hypnosis is a form of sleep or unconsciousness." The name misleads; brain studies show an awake, highly focused state, and most people hear and remember everything. Many describe it as more alert inwardly than everyday life, not less.
"You can get stuck in a trance." No documented case supports this fear. The state resolves naturally, the way absorption in a film ends when the credits roll, even without a formal emergence.
"Only weak-minded or gullible people can be hypnotized." Hypnotizability has no connection to gullibility or low intelligence; it tracks with absorption and imaginative capacity, traits found across every kind of person. Most people respond enough for useful clinical work.
"Hypnosis retrieves buried memories like a recording." This is the most dangerous myth in the field. Hypnosis makes memories feel more certain, not more accurate, and researchers who fact-check regression experiences find the details are routinely wrong. Anyone offering hypnosis to recover forgotten events deserves heavy skepticism.
"Stage hypnosis shows what hypnotherapy is like." Stage shows run on volunteer selection, social pressure, and showmanship; clinical hypnosis is quiet, consented, and aimed at goals the person chose. They share a name and almost nothing else.
"One session can erase a habit forever." Lasting change in habits like smoking typically requires a structured program, and the evidence for hypnosis alone there is mixed. Instant-cure promises are a reliable sign of someone selling rather than treating.
"Hypnotherapy is a complete therapy on its own." It's best understood as a delivery system that strengthens other treatment. The question is rarely hypnosis versus therapy; it's whether hypnosis belongs inside this person's therapy or medical care.
11. Learning Self-Hypnosis On Your Own
A clear distinction matters here, and it's worth stating plainly: learning self-hypnosis and relaxation skills is education, like taking a class, while hypnotherapy itself is a professional treatment delivered by trained clinicians. This section is about the first thing, never the second, and nothing on this page is a recommendation to treat any condition on your own.
Self-hypnosis is one of the most learnable skills in this entire guide series. Focused breathing, imagery, and self-directed calming suggestions can be studied through reputable books, structured audio programs, and courses, the same way anyone might learn meditation or stress management. Clinicians themselves teach these skills precisely because ordinary people can learn them.
Structured digital programs have real research behind them. App-delivered hypnosis programs, especially the gut-directed ones, have been studied in trials and found genuinely helpful for many users, with in-person, clinician-delivered treatment still tending to produce the strongest results. Programs built by credentialed clinical teams are the ones worth trusting.
Learning the skills is not the same as receiving the treatment. A recording can guide relaxation; it cannot assess what's driving a symptom, rule out medical causes, tailor suggestions, or adjust when something isn't working. Unexplained physical symptoms in particular deserve a medical evaluation before any self-guided program, because calming a symptom is not the same as understanding it.
Exploratory techniques are not solo territory. Memory work, regression, and trauma-focused uses of trance belong exclusively with qualified professionals, given the genuine risks covered earlier. Self-guided practice is for calm, comfort, and skill-building, full stop.
Some situations call for professional care, full stop. Where safety is in the picture, where functioning is heavily affected, or where symptoms are severe or worsening, professional treatment is the territory, and self-guided learning can sit alongside it but should never stand in for it.
None of this means growth only happens in a clinic. People build calmer nervous systems through many doors, and these skills genuinely serve almost anyone who practices them. The point is matching the level of support to the weight being carried, which is wisdom, not weakness.
12. Finding a Hypnotherapist
No modality in this series demands sharper shopping skills, because the title hypnotherapist is nearly unregulated in many places. The good news: one question cuts through almost everything.
The one question: are you licensed to treat my problem without hypnosis? The professional standard, stated plainly by the field's own major organizations, is that hypnosis should be practiced by healthcare professionals qualified to treat the underlying condition and using hypnosis within their licensed scope. A licensed psychologist, therapist, physician, dentist, or nurse who added hypnosis training is a different creature from someone whose only training is hypnosis itself.
The real credentials have specific names. The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, founded by Milton Erickson, certifies only licensed health professionals and offers two searchable levels: Certification in Clinical Hypnosis and the more advanced Approved Consultant designation. The Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis offers parallel certification, and psychologists may belong to the American Psychological Association's clinical hypnosis division. All maintain directories worth searching first.
Understand the certificate-versus-certification trap. Countless private schools issue certified hypnotherapist certificates to anyone who pays for a course, no healthcare license required. Those certificates measure course attendance, not clinical competence, and the organizations above exist specifically to distinguish licensed professionals from lay practitioners. A wall of unfamiliar acronyms is not the same as a license plus ASCH or SCEH certification.
Match the specialist to the problem. For gut symptoms, seek gut-directed hypnotherapy from a GI-focused clinician or a gastroenterology-connected program. For pain, look toward pain psychologists and medical settings. For dental fear, hypnosis-trained dentists exist, and for anxiety work, a licensed therapist with hypnosis certification covers both layers at once.
Useful search phrases: "ASCH certified clinical hypnosis" plus a city or state, "clinical hypnosis psychologist," "gut-directed hypnotherapy," "hypnosis for chronic pain" plus a region, "SCEH certified," and the ASCH and SCEH member directories by name.
Telehealth is normal here, with the usual licensing fine print. Video-delivered hypnotherapy is routine and effective, and reputable app-based programs extend access further. For live clinical treatment, the practical question is whether the clinician is licensed in the state or region where the client sits during sessions.
Questions worth asking in a first call: what license they hold and in what field, what formal hypnosis training and certification they completed, how they'd treat this problem if hypnosis didn't exist, how many sessions they expect, how they handle memory and regression work if it ever comes up, and what a course costs with and without insurance.
13. Quick FAQ
Does hypnotherapy actually work, scientifically? For its best-fit uses, yes: decades of controlled trials support hypnosis for procedural distress, pain, and gut symptoms, with growing evidence elsewhere. For its most famous uses, like one-session smoking cures, the evidence is mixed, and honest clinicians say so.
What does being hypnotized feel like? Most people describe deep relaxation with narrowed, vivid focus, somewhere between daydreaming and the edge of a nap, while staying aware the whole time. Dramatic amnesia and blackouts are movie inventions.
Can everyone be hypnotized? Most people respond enough for clinical benefit, a minority respond dramatically, and a minority respond very little. Responsiveness is a stable trait, like musical aptitude, and willingness is the only true prerequisite.
How many sessions does it take? Many protocols run roughly four to twelve sessions, with daily self-practice in between. Gut-directed programs typically follow a structured multi-week course.
Is it safe? Delivered by trained professionals, clinical hypnosis has one of the mildest side-effect records in behavioral healthcare. The meaningful risks cluster around unqualified practitioners and misuse of memory techniques, which is why credentials matter so much here.
Will I say or do things I don't want to? No. Awareness and choice remain intact, suggestions can be refused, and the state can be ended at will. Decades of research back this up.
Is hypnotherapy the same as meditation? They're cousins, not twins. Both use focused attention, but meditation generally trains open awareness as its own end, while hypnosis aims focused attention at specific therapeutic suggestions and goals.
What about those apps and recordings? Structured, clinician-built programs have real trial evidence, particularly for gut symptoms, and work well for many people. Live treatment with a licensed clinician still tends to outperform self-guided formats, especially for complex situations.
Go Deeper
Everything IFS Academy offers a free hypnotherapy course, written specifically for everyday people, that walks through every stage, skill, tool, and technique in this guide in full depth, one lesson at a time.
Disclaimer: Everything IFS Academy is an independent educational platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the IFS Institute or the official training and certification bodies of any therapeutic modality discussed here, including the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. This guide is offered for educational and self-reflection purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, mental health treatment, clinical training, or professional advice, and reading about a modality is not the same as receiving it in treatment. Only a qualified professional who knows your situation can diagnose, treat, or advise you. This material pairs well with professional mental health care but should never be used as a substitute for it.
Crisis Support: 🚨 If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, feel unsafe, feel at risk of harming yourself or someone else, or feel too overwhelmed to safely use self-directed material, please pause and reach out for immediate support. Contact a licensed mental health professional, call or text 988 in the U.S. or Canada, or use your local emergency or crisis resources.
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