Hypnotherapy for Students with Learning Disabilities and Attention Deficits

Have you ever tried to wake up your child who just didn’t want to go to school?

Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and/or Specific Learning Disabilities find themselves in circumstances of anxiety in school. Every day. These students need to know strategies to help themselves become peaceful and relaxed. Restless and bored students win from learning techniques that help them relax their minds. Guided imagery in the classroom empowers students with feelings of calm and discipline. Hypnotherapy sessions from a therapist for students have been used to treat hundreds of behavior disorders, worries and anxieties, and even pain and discomfort. Middle school students especially respond well to hypnotherapy and have had amazing results.

Breathing Techniques, hypnotherapy and guided imagery can help the ADHD and learning-disabled student to master their behavior in the classroom and at home. A teacher or therapist can guide a group of students or a student can receive individual sessions. There are amazing CD’s for sale that contain specific words and music to create positive therapeutic imagery. The images used stimulate the imagination and can have a real influence on overall student performance. The student’s brain recognizes images as if present.  The pressure of standardized tests can even diminish.

As a middle school teacher, college professor and hypnotherapist, I found the best way to begin breathing exercises is to lead the students in a guided imagery before starting. This routine seemed to calm them down and to relax their energies in the afternoon. At times, the imagery would stem from literature recommended by state standards, such as Tuck Everlasting, Esperanza Rising or The Egypt Game.

Students enjoy an exercise we call “The Journey Within “where we see in our mind's eye our Inner Garden. We think about the garden’s foundations and what we want them to be like. Do we have a strong foundation in place upon which to build the rest of our garden? If not, what more needs to be done?

Adolescent Stress

Today’s families are under constant worry from an assortment of problems. Students are often anxious and not able to self regulate.   There are many fears that can plague students such as fear of the potential danger in our schools today. Some adolescents can find moving to a new school or classroom, having to make new friends, handling bullies, falling behind in a subject, and being teased for being the “wrong” height or weight embarrassing.

For students with learning or behavior deficits, the struggle to belong and rejection by peer groups become especially hard in middle and high school. Helping students learn to self regulate is a first step in the process of behavioral change and helping the brain recover from the effects of stress and trauma. These changes lead to more success in adolescent lives and in the lives of the adults with whom they live.  

“This Guided Imagery Stuff is&%$#@” Resisting Imagery

The majority of my students and adolescent clients resist the breathing and imagery at first, although the payoff is enormous. One student insisted that it wasn’t necessary and that she didn’t have enough time in her day after school to do breathing. She would,”rather struggle with homework”. Then she went through the divorce of her parents, and had such trouble coping that she couldn’t even drag herself out of bed. Terrified and bewildered, my student started her imagery exercises and, in a few days, found that she could face school again. After that, whenever she was in an overwhelming state of grief or so distracted that she couldn't focus, she would ask me to lead her in an hypnotherapy exercise.

Some students feel practicing guided imagery or hypnotherapy will conflict with their religious beliefs. These students are told imagery is a pathway to discovery that any of us can use, regardless of our religious or spiritual beliefs.

My hyperactive students sometimes say, “I’m too restless and busy to learn to be quiet”. After convincing them to just do the breathing or come to hypnotherapy sessions for a month, they find they are more productive, less distracted, and have fewer disagreements with their parents, siblings and peers. Their grades start improving. They are friendlier and more generous to others, so their social lives tend to improve.

Results

Guided imagery, breathing and hypnotherapy seem to ground restless adolescents, transforming their energy from chaos to productivity. By cultivating balance, especially in the classroom, their parents and teachers seem to appreciate these students and that makes everyone happy.