June 9,2026 Chronic Stress, Anxiety & Pain: What Your Nervous System Needs
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Crystal: [00:00:00] Hi, this is Crystal and I'm here with Christy. Today we're with Calm Collective Conversations, and today we're gonna talk about nervous system regulation with hypnosis. Is that right, Christy?
Christy: Sure. That sounds like a great conversation.
Crystal: Wonderful. So first of all, what got you interested in hypnosis?
Christy: Oh wow. I think really my interest in hypnosis was its [00:01:00] ability to use that part of our mind, the unconscious part where that, we can get hijacked by our emotions so we can feel really anxious or really fearful. How we can interrupt that and start to create more calm, more ease within our body system.
Our mind and body are really connected. I know in, some of our healthcare models, we like to divorce the two, right? There's mental healthcare and then there's physical healthcare. But one doesn't happen without the other. And when I. I knew that intuitively and then when I would see it in action as a nurse, I really wanted to find a way to have an instant language that would help change the person's inner state.
The way they felt about something. And so I think that really started for me in my first few years of nursing, just playing around with language learning a little bit more about the tools and the [00:02:00] techniques of the hypnotic language approach and being able to really utilize that, especially in times when.
Maybe I didn't have the medication there, or it wasn't time yet to offer the medication we needed to get through X, Y, Z, and how to help the client or the patient really regulate their nervous system. To really bring everything down a notch. So that's a, I guess that's a vague answer, but that's when I first got interested in that.
And that was in around 2003.
Crystal: Ah, yeah. So some time ago.
Christy: Yeah, some time ago. I was formally trained in hip hypnotherapy. In 2020. It was really the slowdown of the pandemic, which was a gift for me. The operating rooms were closed. I worked in outpatient surgery at the time we were slowed down and it gave me an opportunity to pull out some of those ces that were on my shelf and really dive into 'em.
And a lot of 'em that I had. Been really attracted to, were around the mind body [00:03:00] connection and use using these tools. And I just continue to go down more and more of a rabbit hole and really learned the power of some of these tools that have in my, my, my experience been neglected in our healthcare space.
Crystal: Yeah, absolutely. I know, I think it's, I don't know, it's really amazing. How hypnosis and language can make such a difference.
What are some of your favorite ways to regulate the nervous system through hypnosis?
Christy: Yeah. I think the easiest one, the most accessible one, the most personal and portable one for people is the breath.
Yeah. We're breathing. All the time, eight to 16 times per minute. That's part of our way to sustain this life. And the breath is something that our mind body does all by itself. And when we can consciously take control of that breath, just notice how it feels [00:04:00] to breathe in and then exhale out, that shifts the way that we feel, right?
Yeah. And. Following the line that hypnosis is the way of the emotions, the way of the feelings, the felt sense in the body.
That's my favorite tool is just slow down, pause, take a breath, and allow that breath to really nourish the nervous system.
Crystal: Yeah.
Christy: And so I, what I love is now we know so much more about the mind body connection.
So the breath to me is the first tool.
Crystal: And I love that nourishing, the nervous system and the breath. It's always with us. We can use that tool and no one else even has to know about it.
Christy: Exactly.
Crystal: I think it's just amazing. What kind of clients do you attend to work with?
Christy: At this point in my [00:05:00] practice I'm at a unique intersection where I've spent 20 years in anesthesiology as a nurse anesthetist.
So obviously in that role I was working with people who were experiencing pain or discomfort sometimes in the surgical ar arena. Otherwise I also was an expert in non-surgical pain management, so I'd work with people with chronic pain. Now I've shifted and pivoted to more of psychiatry based practice.
So I am a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. So I work with people with anxiety, depression, chronic pain and trauma.
And those just tend to be the areas that I've spent the majority of my nursing career in. And I think that actually probably encompasses. Most all of us at some point in our life, we can, our nervous system is really great at being able to handle stress until we get stressed and stressed repeatedly, and our [00:06:00] nervous system never goes back to that nourishing
Crystal: yeah. So
Christy: I like to work with people who really are starting to notice like I am, tired. My, in my bones, I just feel tired.
My nervous system is tired and reconnecting 'em back to the meaning or purpose that they have in their life.
Crystal: Yeah, absolutely. I know hypnosis and coaching really did that for me. It was really transformational. When you talk about nervous system regulation, we hear about that all the time lately.
Do you. Think is really going on. When we talk about hypnosis and the mind body connection, the use of language to regulate the nervous system, when people start to feel more regulated, what do you think they can expect or experience with that? For some of us who have had decades being dysregulated?
Christy: Yeah, so I think that's a [00:07:00] really great question, crystal and. If we've spent decades feeling dysregulated, sometimes feeling regulated, feeling calm, feels really uncomfortable.
Because we have gotten so used to being in this sa, stressed, or overwhelmed state of being. That being calm can feel like, oh, something's wrong.
So there is that, and that's not uncommon especially with US nurses or people who've been in the healthcare field for a while. We've been taking care of others for so long, we have sometimes forgotten to nourish our own nervous systems, right? We're holding the emotions of our patients.
Once we get over the fact that calm. Is good. And we get back to the fact like, this is actually good. What I find is that in kind of short order, right? By just practicing these tools for just a couple of days, things [00:08:00] start to shift.
Our poor starts to elevate. Or if we feel somewhat low and depressed, our mood will start to lift.
If we have a lot of. Discomfort or inflammation in the body that starts to become less inflamed, less uncomfortable. And these shifts are really noticeable, right?
Crystal: Yeah.
Christy: There's something that the client can really measure. And oftentimes what we'll do is, is we'll have people measure their, you know how uncomfortable their body is or how intrusive the thoughts are in their mind, or how much they're in a dis-ease during the day. And then we can always tell after just one session of hypnosis, right? One 20 minute guided. Meditation, if you will, can really start to move that needle in the right direction, right?
It might not stay there because we all go back into life, but now we at least have a path on how to get back [00:09:00] there,
Crystal: right?
Christy: And that's something again, just like the breath is portable and personal. So once you start to learn these tools, they just click right in the place when you need 'em.
Crystal: Yeah. Absolutely. Do you have any stories that come to mind of either personal experiences or experiences with people that you've worked with that you wanna, for those who aren't familiar with hypnosis and still wondering what it is?
Christy: Yeah. I think that's a great question.
So to be fair if I'm working with somebody who's has experienced a lot of chronic pain, and that's probably one of one of the clients that usually seeks me out right, is somebody who's had that lived experience and sometimes they've been through a lot of procedures, a lot of medications, sometimes other ways to alleviate pain, and they'll start to work with me.
And the process of hypnotherapy. The very first thing that they'll learn [00:10:00] is the breath, right? Hands down, they'll learn the breath, they'll learn some new techniques of how to engage in some more helpful language within their own internal mind, right? Because we can be oriented towards like, how am I feeling now?
Almost bracing for the next. Twinge of pain in our body, right? So we need to shift that focus into how comfortable am I today? What am I able to do today? Even so we can do that simultaneously with the breath.
And work on just getting ourselves back into our body, right? Because when we're experiencing something like pain, like anxiety or depression, we feel it in the body.
That makes it hard to be in our body.
So we tend to try to distract, to not feel our body when we can get back in there and really [00:11:00] take that breath and nourish the body. The somatic. Design of just so the soma is the word for the body. So breathing is a somatic experience and when we shift our orientation to the breath, to take a deep breath in, to allow new thoughts to come that way, that and words have so much power.
Crystal: Yeah.
Christy: Words. They used to say, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Are you kidding?
Crystal: Yeah.
Christy: Sticks and stones break my bones, but words will keep me in counseling for the next 30 years. Yeah.
Crystal: The
Christy: words we say
Crystal: to ourselves.
Christy: Yeah. We have to maybe start to recognize the power of the words and by that I don't just mean words that other people are saying to you.
What are the words that we're saying to ourself?
Crystal: Yeah.
Christy: The hypnosis experience or being in a hypnotic state is like being in a daydream, right?
We're very aware when we're daydreaming, [00:12:00] staring out the window. We know that we're here maybe at work or in the classroom, paying attention here, but we're also dreaming about.
What we're gonna have for dinner or what that next vacation looks like. We can do both. It's a yes, and we can be here and our mind can also be somewhere else.
And that's what it feels like when you're in hypnosis. You know that you're in hypnosis and you also can be exploring. Other spaces, other times, other perspectives.
And when you can see both perspectives, all of a sudden your perspective that you are holding onto of, I have so much pain starts to shift to and I have other parts of my body or mind that aren't in pain. So then you start to have this ability to have different perspectives, which. Oftentimes just start to melt away some of that tension that we're holding [00:13:00] onto.
Crystal: Yeah. Yeah.
Christy: So what this, what the evidence shows us, because there's been a lot of studies of hypnosis as related to chronic pain. Eight sessions of hypnotherapy really start to change the chronic pain trajectory, so for some clients that's gonna happen after three sessions. For some it's gonna be eight.
But what we know is that eight is that space, that's eight hours that's only a day long investment, if you will, in nourishing your nervous system differently. That kind of hits that control, alt, delete, if you will, on our nervous system. And it then reboots and refreshes the nervous system so that.
The pain, emotional or physical starts to dampen, right?
Now, you know what I'll say to the listeners is this is not medical advice here, right? This is, we're trying, we're having a conversation about [00:14:00] what does the science show around the mind body connection and how we can start to help the body to repair itself, and every body.
Is different and everybody's body is, has specific nuances. But what we've found is eight is the space where we are definitely seeing some major influence from that mind body connection in learning to toggle that nervous system differently.
Crystal: Yeah,
I know. I think it's just amazing and
Christy: yeah.
Crystal: Boy, I wish I knew about this so many years ago, but I'm really thankful that I know about it now.
Christy: Yeah,
Crystal: it's pretty remarkable. What else do you want the listeners to know about hypnosis and the work that you do?
Christy: Yeah, I think everyone has a perception of hypnosis. It it [00:15:00] has this.
Mystical sometimes perspective behind it, or somebody thinks I'm gonna pull out a watch and have their eyes drift back and forth. And certainly there's some wonder about that. It might feel good to just focus on a watch move, going back and forth just as well as it feels good to watch the leaves of the trees blow back and forth in the breeze or the flickering flame of a candle dance around, right?
That can be somewhat what we call mesmerizing, right? It allows us to capture our attention and just hone in. So in that light. That is what hypnosis is asking the mind to focus on something new. Or focus on a memory of something old. Something that, that feels good.
That changes our ability to broaden the perspective. And hypnosis can be done [00:16:00] conversationally. It can be done as a closed eye process, meaning we can close our eyes and really shut down that visual processing, which allows us to be more in tune with our other senses, right? Our feelings.
Or hearing even our smell and taste by just closing our eyes are enhanced because we're turning down one of the senses of the human body. So hypnosis can be an open eye kind of conversational tool, or it can be a closed eye process. And the biggest side effect, if you will, is relaxation. That's the biggest side effect of just being able to change the state. You can do hypnosis in as little as three minutes, one minute, 30 seconds. You can do it as long as hours days. And that's another thing that we have research to show is that in this, there was a study that was done with women who were experiencing breast cancer.[00:17:00]
As part of their holistic component of their medical pr process of healing, they were invited into a space where they took three minutes a day to close their eyes, connect with the breath, and start to think how their body was already starting to heal itself. Just using the imagination, right?
Maybe imagining, if they had a biopsy, their breast tissue healing, if they were low energy, just imagining that their body was building up more and more energy, just imagining that the medications were working. So three minutes a day. And compared to the people who didn't engage in that mindfulness practice, the cohort that spent those three minutes a day. Saw more wound healing, saw a better immune system response, had more energy. Were oriented more towards an uplifted mood, even though they were still going through the same [00:18:00] diagnoses, the same journey, if you will, right? It oriented them towards feeling better.
And that's an important tool. I'm not here to paint any sort of toxic positivity. If we do this, we're always gonna be happy. If that were the case, I think more and more people would do that. We're still human having an experience in this world. But it does, it nourishes the nervous system.
It gives us more capacity or more of a window of tolerance for those things that are frustrating, those things that are hard.
Crystal: Yeah. And three minutes a day. That's really interesting. I think so many people feel like they don't want more to dos, and more work to do, or something else to not do quite right.
So I think that's where hypnosis can be a wonderful tool because. It can fit into your life and actually
Christy: yeah,
Crystal: give you the energy or [00:19:00] joy interest and focus that you've been knowing was there, but you didn't know how to access it yeah.
Christy: Exactly.
Crystal: Anything else you'd like to add today?
Christy: You know me, I could probably talk for hours about this topic.
I could get into all the neuroscience and the logistics. But I think for today, I think I'd really like to just have listeners know that we can nourish our nervous system and it can be as simple as one breath, right? And that changes our nervous system. It goes from fight or flight freezer, fawn.
To rest, digest. It toggles from the sympathetic approach to a nourishing part of the parasympathetic. And that's important to know, right?
Crystal: Absolutely. Yeah.
Christy: And I think working with any of, any of the amazing nurses who are part of the calm collective care team, right? We all have been trained and educated in the art [00:20:00] and science of hypnosis, hypnotherapy.
Some of us have other modalities that we bring into place with energy work or somatic healing, but also we have our nursing background, right? So we can understand the human body and the mind body. And I think. It's a beautiful place to have practitioners who are backed by science and who understand this whole art.
Of being human, and also if they've found their way to exploring hypnosis, like you and I, we've also been on our own healing journey, right? We've also been applying these tools to self, so we know what it feels like to use them or to even say what you mentioned, crystal, which I think is. So clever.
Some people think I'm doing this wrong, right? You cannot do breathing wrong 'cause you're the only one who can do it for yourself. You can't do imagination wrong. Because whatever you imagine, whatever you think of is the right thing, [00:21:00] right? The only thing that you could possibly do wrong is by not doing anything at all.
Taking one breath. Saying one kind thing to yourself is gonna do nothing but help you.
Crystal: Yeah.
Christy: And I don't think there's anyone who would argue with that.
Crystal: Exactly. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time today to
Christy: Thank you.
Crystal: Explain some of this, you're so knowledgeable, and how can people find you?
Christy: You can just go to the Calm Collective Care and there'll be a list of practitioners that, that you can search for.
Crystal: Wonderful.
Christy: All right.
Crystal: All right I'll see you next time.
Christy: Sounds good, crystal. Thank you. Thank
Crystal: you
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