It turns out, it’s nothing like this. 

Hypnotherapy has risen in popularity in recent years, as a way to combat negative thoughts, tackle phobias and overcome struggles with everything from weight gain to smoking. 

Teresa Badrock is a hypnotist working in Launceston and Devonport and as I walked up the carpeted stairs to her room I wasn’t sure what would face me. 

A green patterned waiting chair stood in the corner, and I knocked and waited. 

When the door opened it revealed a simple white room, with two facing black leather chairs a slim table and a selection of soft paintings. 

There wasn’t a reclining chair and I couldn’t spy a fob-watch. 

In a previous phone conversation Ms Badrock asked what I would like to work on. I chose my fear of spiders – a longstanding phobia. 

Ms Badrock began by checking if this was still my focus.

“I check in with clients and make sure that you’re really ready for the change because that means that your mind is going to absorb those ideas,” she explained. 

“Say for example, consciously you know that you need to lose weight, and the doctors told you you need to lose weight … so consciously you know all this, but theres still a little part of you thats like, ‘Oh but I'm getting something out of this’.

“You're not quite ready for the change.”

Once settled into our respective chairs, Ms Badrock began by telling me a little of how the mind worked. She said she tries to take a bit of the “hocus pocus” out of the it.

“[I] just give them that practical understanding of how the mind works and that it is possible to have change,” she said. 

She explained how the conscious is made up of our waking thoughts and logic, while our subconscious is the realm of imagination, impulses and reactions. 

As we spoke, she dropped me small ‘strategies’ to reframe the way my subconscious reacted. A key one was reframing negative to positive. 

“If you said, ‘I don’t want to be afraid of spiders’, all the subconscious gets is ‘spiders, yep I can focus on spiders for you’,” Ms Badrock explained. 

So, instead of focusing on what I don’t want, I was to focus on what I do want. 

We then got down to the nitty gritty discussing my problem.

“Do you remember when your fear of spiders began?” she asked. 

I explained, “No, as long as I can remember it has been a fear of mine.” 

Ms Badrock explained humans are born with only two fears, those of drowning and falling. The rest we learn. 

Ms Badrock wasn’t interested in the ‘facts’ so to speak, she wanted to get away from the logical and purely explanatory story and delve into the subconscious. 

She did this by asking me how I react when confronted with a spider. What did my body do? How did my body feel? Was I aware of any emotions? What happened to my breathing?

She then talked me through how I would rather react. 

Now we had the starting point. I was ready to be hypnotised. I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. 

Ms Badrock began talking me through what you might call the ‘going under’ part. It was much like a deep relaxation exercise, working through the body then the mind. Relaxing more with each outgoing breath. 

“Is this how I am supposed to feel?” I wondered. 

“Everyone does really experience different things and that's why I tend to say, ‘Yes it is really different for everybody’, even just that even between sessions it can be different so I just say, ‘Just go with whatever it is for you’,” Ms Badrock said after. 

“I sort of explain how [hypnotherapy] is that natural state of mind, like when you zone out when you’re driving, or someones talking to you and you just kind of drift off then that’s actually hypnosis, so it’s a natural state of mind so everybody goes into anyway.”

As I sat very relaxed, Ms Badrock led me through some visualisation exercises to “update and retrain” my subconscious. 

I couldn’t be certain how long I was ‘under’, but after a short while Ms Badrock gradually brought me ‘back into the room’. 

I felt slightly disoriented, as though I’d just woken from a power nap. But, I was ready to give it a go. Ready for a new fear-free me.

I am yet to encounter a spider, however. 

Ms Badrock said people mostly come to her for help, “for smoking and weight loss and then stress and anxiety and negative thinking, they're sort of my top three.”

“I just keep it really simple and say, look whenever you've got those annoying thoughts or emotions or habits or behaviours you just want to change that’s what I help you do.”