Hypnosis Unleashed: How I Finally Beat PTSD When CBT Couldn’t

Ryan DeJonghe
Nov 18, 2025
5 min read

Why Hypnosis Outpaced Traditional Therapy (and Gave Me Back My Life)

The Day My Heart Stopped: A Crash Course in Losing Control

On February 19, 2011, I died. My heart stopped pumping blood, and my blue-turning, lifeless body slumped over on top of my 4-year-old son. It was sudden, a shocking departure from the normal rhythm of a Saturday afternoon. I was revived (spoiler: still here), but something else jolted awake inside me. A deep, lingering terror. My own body had betrayed me, and with that betrayal came an overwhelming fear of losing control. Again.

This was the not-so-charming origin story of my PTSD. It wasn’t bang-bang combat or a classic horror scene. No, mine was a silent, internal malfunction that left my mind replaying the event, scanning my body like a neurotic airport security officer searching for the next imminent threat. I was afraid to be alone. Afraid to sleep. Afraid to have my heart beat too fast, or too slow. The world, once about possibilities, became a minefield. My own pulse—enemy number one.

The Therapy Gauntlet: CBT and Its Logic-Heavy Shoes

Like any good, modern-day, traumatized person, I turned to therapy. It’s what you do, right? You talk it out. You process, make meaning, try to wrangle chaos into neat stacks. My first stop was the shining star of psychology: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT.

CBT is logical. Structured. The therapy world’s sensible shoes. The idea: thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all connected. Change distorted thinking, everything else will follow. Sounds so neat, so tidy.

So, my therapist and I sat down and dissected my terror.

“I’m afraid my heart will stop again.”

“What’s the evidence for that?” she’d ask.

Well, it had stopped—kind of a big data point, right? We worked on reframing. “What’s the evidence it will stop right now?” Worksheets galore. Cognitive distortions—catastrophizing, magnification—untangled. I learned to debate myself, to challenge the anxiety.

And honestly? It helped. Sort of.

It was like putting a lid on a boiling pot. The water, still boiling. The lid, keeping the steam in. I could get through the day. But damn, holding down that lid was exhausting. A full-time job, managing my own mind.

Digging Deeper with CPT and DBT: Getting Real with the Chaos

We tried Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), a CBT cousin built for PTSD cleanup. More worksheets, more analysis—why was I broken? Why was my sense of safety shattered? My rational brain loved the structure, but the chaos? Still squatting rent-free in my nervous system.

Then, deus ex therapy: Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

DBT was a different animal. Created for emotional hurricanes like me, it didn’t just try to change my thoughts. It taught me to accept them. Tolerate distress. Sit with discomfort without needing to “fix” it straight away. Mindfulness. Emotional regulation. Radical acceptance. For the first time, I had tools that weren’t just intellectual sparring.

DBT was the life raft that kept my head above water. Allowed me to breathe, to hold moments of peace against the storm. Invaluable. If CBT was denial, DBT was confession—permission to be a mess.

But the weather? Still there. The trauma scored a groove in my subconscious the size of the Grand Canyon. DBT helped me ride out the storm, but it didn’t change the climate.

The Hypnosis Curveball: Outrunning the Tornado

Then—cue dramatic music—I found hypnosis.

Let’s get this out of the way: My preconceptions about hypnosis were formed by Saturday morning cartoons and Vegas stage shows. Pocket watches. Barnyard noises. “You’re getting sleepy…”

But therapeutic hypnosis is none of those things. It’s not about surrendering control; for me, it was the sharpest tool to take it back.

Hypnosis? It’s just focused attention and heightened suggestibility. You’re not a zombie. You’re not asleep. You’re not going to start reciting your social security number to a stranger. You’re deeply relaxed, and your critical mind—the one that loves CBT worksheets—steps aside. In this state, your subconscious (the behind-the-scenes director of your reactions) is finally listening.

Imagine your mind as a wild overgrown garden. CBT is a trowel, scraping up weeds one at a time. Hard work, progress… but those roots? Persistent.

Hypnosis is the backhoe.

It goes straight for the root system. Instead of arguing with my conscious fear, I finally spoke directly to the part where the terror lived. The part playing Beavis and Butt-Head with my "fight or flight" buttons.

Rewiring Reality: How Hypnosis Worked for Me

In my first session, the therapist’s voice led me into a state of almost impossible calm. I actually felt safe in my own body—something I’d forgotten how to do. We rewrote those old narratives, not with arguments, but honest-to-goodness, felt-in-my-bones suggestions:

You are safe.
Your body is strong and resilient.
You are in control of your healing.

Research shows that hypnosis can impact PTSD by directly altering subconscious responses. Where CBT required endless repetition to wear a groove in my neural pathways, hypnosis stamped a new trail in minutes. After one session, a decade of anxiety dissolved. The constant hum—gone.

Why Hypnosis Is Faster Than CBT (and, Sometimes, Smarter)

The difference in speed and depth? Wild.

CBT: Conscious. Labor-intensive. Requires months and years and a never-ending stack of worksheets. You are manually chiseling away at old, stubborn belief-sculptures.
Hypnosis: Subconscious. Efficient. Works directly where the beliefs live—deep, automatic, visceral. Changes installed with the subtlety of poetry, the sharpness of a laser.

Studies have noted that hypnosis helps people not only access but shift traumatic response patterns, often more quickly than traditional cognitive methods.

For the first time, I didn’t have to talk myself out of a panic attack for hours or days. I could “install” serenity in real time, with a hypnotic cue. My relationship with my body? Transformed from suspicion and fear to something that felt—miraculously—like trust.

Should You Ditch CBT for Hypnosis? The Honest Take

Let me be crystal clear: CBT, CPT, and DBT aren’t garbage. Far from it. If anything, DBT is my backup generator. It keeps the lights on when storms rage. For some people, CBT is the medicine. For others, it’s not enough.

But trauma lives in the body as much as the brain. Sometimes you need to talk to the “animal self,” the part that isn’t interested in logic. For me, for the biology-rooted trauma of cardiac arrest, hypnosis was the first thing to make that conversation possible.

Want more proof? The American Psychological Association and VA PTSD Center both recognize hypnosis as an evidence-based tool for trauma and PTSD. If you’re sick of fighting your own thoughts, maybe it’s time to dig deeper.