Body dysmorphia took over her life, then hypnosis saved her
By Sara Novak
Jamie Curnett, 44, of Mount Pleasant, can’t remember a time that she wasn’t obsessing about her weight. As a child, she was curvy, not the stringbean she aspired to be. She remembers one friend criticizing her shapely backside. And as a result, by age 8, she was already self conscious about her figure.
In college, Curnett became obsessive about running, hitting the pavement so often that her battered and injured body had to give it up. She ran to feel sane and to have something else to obsess about.
“My body was something that was on my mind all the time,” says Curnett. Each morning she would wake up, roll out of bed and head straight to her full length mirror to critique her figure.
Understanding Body Dysmorphia
Curnett had body dysmorphia disorder, a mental health condition that happens when an individual can’t stop thinking about perceived body flaws. The disorder impacts over 5 million Americans, up to 2.4% of the general population. It most commonly occurs during teenage years or younger and is more likely to impact those with a family history of obsessive compulsive disorder and negative life experiences, like being bullied as a child and those who tend toward perfectionism.
Social media also plays a role in fueling the insecurities that lead to body dysmorphia because social comparisons can lead to increased negative self talk. A study published in the Frontiers of Psychology found that the frequency of use of image-based social media platforms was associated increased body dysmorphic symptoms. Other recent research has shown that a surge in the use of glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) agonists such as Wegovy has also been linked to increased symptoms of the condition.
For many patients, symptoms can become so severe that it takes over every aspect of their lives. These patients may benefit from a combination of therapy and medications, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Clinical hypnosis has also been shown in a wide body of research to be beneficial to patients with repetitive negative thoughts.
How Hypnotherapy Helped
Things got worse for Curnett once she got married and had children, so much so that she spiraled into a deep depression. She recalls one summer in particular when she spent the entire day exercising over and over again because it was the only time she felt in control. When her kids became older and started to overhear how she talked about herself, she worried that her negative self talk would impact how they perceived themselves, all of which motivated her to seek help. She decided to try hypnosis because she had been hypnotized once before and had enjoyed the experience. Scrolling through the internet, she came upon local clinician Debra Colangelo.
Colangelo, a clinical hypnotherapist with Hypnolife in Mount Pleasant says her technique works by getting to the root of the problem, customizing her treatments for all her clients. She says that in the first meeting, she gathers information about each client’s history, thought processes and how negative thoughts are impacting their life.
“We all have those positive and negative thoughts, but when they start to take over and they really start to impact the quality of your life, that’s when you might need help,” says Colangelo.
During the first session, Colangelo explains more about hypnotherapy because most of her clients haven’t tried it before. She runs through potential fears and misconceptions around the treatment.
“It’s really a natural process and you remember everything, but people tend to think falsely that you’re under someone else’s control,” says Colangelo.
Quieting Negative Self Talk
Once Colangelo gets patients in a highly focused, relaxed state of hypnosis, she asks questions to pinpoint the earliest root cause of the negative self talk and then works to change the belief system at a deeper level. She says that doing regression work allows clients to ask questions to find the event that started the negative thoughts.
For Curnett, it was the fact that she was curvy as a child and could never escape feeling fat as a result. Not feeling thin as a child led her to continually agonize about it into adulthood, until it was all she thought about throughout the day.
But for Curnett, there’s a happy ending. She was finally able to leave those thoughts behind. She finally realizes that she had a problem that running and beating herself up would not solve. Hypnosis changed her life and now she regularly uses it as a tool to confront what ails her. She says that she’s finally able to quiet that deep seated voice that told her she wasn’t good enough.
“I’m just so thankful. Getting help when I did changed everything,” says Curnett.
