I began a course of education to become a Certified Hypnotist in April 2025 because I see major opportunities to heal the Queer community. Certainly, hypnosis offers benefit to all people, not just the Queer community. But we in the Queer community have particular needs only hypnosis can affect.

By the end of June 2025, I intend to offer hypnosis as an additional service to my current program of one-on-one Identity Guidance. In preparation, I will set the stage for why I chose to study hypnosis as well as why it works so well.

The major benefit offered by hypnosis is its efficacy in addressing trauma. We know every human experiences trauma simply by growing up in a social environment. Whether we realize it or not, whether we believe what happened to us was traumatic or not, each of us carries around deep-seated patterns developed in childhood.

We did not choose the values represented by these patterns - they were imposed upon us as children by our social environment. But more importantly, we cannot choose against these patterns easily. Once they are set in our developing consciousness, they become the bedrock of adult behavior.

Psychotherapy recognizes each of us experiences trauma, but typically focuses on finding the trauma and explaining it, expecting the patient's symptoms to improve through rational explanation of what occurred. Here is where hypnosis distinguishes its mode of healing.

With hypnosis, we can address only symptoms, not root causes. We do not need to relive or even remember the traumas we suffered. Instead, we develop tools to deal with the aftermath.

But hypnosis offers particular benefit to the Queer community because of the type of trauma we face. The Queer community experiences childhood like no other. Instead of major incidents of trauma sporadically sprinkled through childhood, the Queer community faces trauma on a daily basis, with even worse effects.

Growing up Queer

As children, every one of us is wounded even when well-meaning people correct the behavior we choose. Not every trauma is intentional, nor is every trauma universally wounding.

Our personal habits come under attack as we negotiate our social environment, leading to wounds that persist into patterns of behavior exhibited as adults. Queer children, however, face even more difficult times.

We Queer children behave in a way that challenges cisgender / heterosexual social norms and - worse - the Christian ethics prevailing in Western society. And when we are corrected, the pain we feel is not easily shrugged off. We are corrected not for whimsical, childhood fancy, but for the people we know we are at the core.

We are taught not only that our behavior is wrong, but that we as humans are wrong.

As we Queer children go through life, we feel this trauma every day. Our wounds become scars, and our scars become calluses, crisscrossing our bodies to become armor. But we do not build armor for ourselves. No, we build armor to protect the world from the horror we are taught to believe ourselves to be.

Every sideways glance, every father who refuses to hug us, every bully who takes our lunch money, every mean girl who sneers at our sneakers, every point, every laugh, every jeer - they fester. They echo in our ears until they join with all the rest into a silent susurration of disapproval for the despicable humans we are.

This goes on, day after day, Moon after Moon, season after season, year after year. And it doesn't stop when we reach adulthood. By the time we reach adulthood, we know very well we are simply wrong, and we choose not to engage in the world. We further hamper our lives, increasing the risks of homelessness, joblessness, disease, and suicide.

Growing up Queer is a sentence not to be considered lightly. Those who do intentionally harm us for our behavior realize not what they wreak. At least, they'd like to think they're doing the best for us as children.

What is right for us

In the name of turning us Queer children into whatever they believe we should be, those who intentionally disarm us for our behavior wound us until we can be wounded no longer. They believe they can create God-fearing, patriotic Americans who will go on to be valuable members of society, but their treatment binds us, prevents us from developing, and leaves us disabled in the very core of our beings.

Every day, we endure torture. That is, most of us endure. Many of the community cannot, and end their lives.

The blame goes not to the victim of social machinations, but to a society evil enough to consume the minds and lives of a child in order to perpetuate its own comfort. There is no charity in crippling a child. There are no winners, only losers.

Society loses the benefit of a human mind with all its capability. We Queer children lose our minds and all its capability.

The result is stark: a sector of society who cannot function completely, because we have been taught not to function completely. We are taught to hide, to mask, to push away the true feelings inside. And we are left empty husks, barely functional, and reviled for becoming what society has made of us.

To be clear, all children experience acute trauma from social backlash. Queer children are distinguished by facing not only acute trauma, but chronic trauma, every day of our lives. We have only two choices to survive: to deny ourselves or to deny our social environment.

The former is horrifying, but the latter is more horrifying. We've already been taught our social environment does what it does for our own good. We as Queer children and Queer adults must be wrong, not the social environment.

Is it any wonder most Queer adults seek psychotherapy? Unfortunately, attempting to explain our experiences in society and the feelings that result is precisely what doesn't work. There is no one experience to explain.

That never felt a wound

With all respect to the field of psychotherapy, most practitioners will never understand what I mean. Allegedly, only around 10% of global population self-identifies as Queer. But statistics alone don't tell the whole story.

Of that 10%, most of us believe we are worthless from the treatment we receive at the hands of our social environment. Most of us won't excel in school. Most of us won't advocate for ourselves at work or at home.

Most of us believe we deserve every wound, every scar, every callus. Most of us believe protecting society from our true Self is more important than expressing our true Self in society.

And while many of us don't remember every traumatic experience we faced as children, this lack of memory is more prevalent in the Queer community. We frequently assume the trauma as our due and downplay the damage done to us. The sheer volume of daily trauma congeals into a sticky brown broth we stop noticing at all.

As a result, psychotherapy misunderstands our experience, addressing only isolated incidents of our wounding, not a lifestyle of chronic destructive behavior. But here is where hypnosis shines as a healing modality.

In hypnosis, we can directly address the deep-seated patterns established in childhood. Not the people, not the events, not the trauma itself - we can address the destructive behavior.

Psychotherapists may never have felt the wounds we in the Queer community have. And we in the Queer community may not distinguish the wounds we once felt. But we know something traumatic happened, because we exhibit symptoms of destructive behavior.

The tools of the trade

How does hypnosis affect us so profoundly? Further details will follow, but a summary will suffice at present.

Our minds are composed of conscious and subconscious. While the conscious mind focuses on the present, the subconscious is rooted in the past - in our experience.

The events we experienced manifest as behavioral patterns in the subconscious mind, to be delivered as action in response to what the subconscious sees through the lens of the conscious mind.

These behavioral patterns may be healthy, but often they are unhealthy. We don't judge these patterns as we act. Our actions are simply what we know to be "true" and "right" from what we learned as children, even as we observe the destruction we cause in our lives through our behavior.

But it is possible to speak directly with the subconscious mind while in hypnotic trance. We can find patterns of worthlessness and teach the subconscious that every baby is born pure, innocent, and worthy of love - yes, even you when you were a baby.

In hypnotic trance, we can find patterns of self-sabotage and teach the subconscious that every human mind is capable of far more than we ever imagine - yes, even your mind in your future.

We in the Queer community are particularly vulnerable to feelings of worthlessness and patterns of self-sabotage. We also carry trauma our whole lives for simply being the people we are in the society in which we live.

There are many more techniques in the hypnotist's tool belt to address particular patterns of behavior and specific acute traumas. When we bypass the conscious mind, we can effect major changes in behavior within very short timeframes.

One of the almost magical tools we develop within hypnotic trance is called the anchor - a topic worthy of its own discussion in my next article.