Bedwetting is something normal when you're little, but when it doesn't stop it becomes a problem. As a child, you can't have fun at school camp in eighth grade. You prefer not to go on sleepovers, and you should not think about going on a date. You want to do everything you can to stop bedwetting.
Therefore, in this article I will discuss bedwetting and what treatments, including hypnosis, are available.
Officially, you suffer from bedwetting if you wet your bed at least once a month and are over the age of seven. This comes with the conditions that it is not due to neurological problems, abnormalities in the ureters or seizures. Boys suffer from bedwetting more often than girls. Compared to girls, boys also urinate in bed more often when they suffer from bedwetting than girls who suffer from it. So boys suffer from it more often and twice as much.
Bedwetting affects the child and the parent. Children may experience self-confidence problems due to bedwetting and exhibit different behaviors than children who do not wet the bed. Parents may also experience more stress due to the child wetting the bed and due to the child's decreased self-esteem and other behaviors.
There are several treatments to combat bedwetting, namely:
- Alarm Therapy
- Motivational Therapy
- Hypnotherapy
Alarm Therapy
Alarm therapy is mainly used with children over the age of 8 who suffer from bedwetting. A moisture sensor is then placed in the pajamas or underpants. If the sensor senses moisture, such as when you start peeing, an alarm goes off, waking you up and possibly still holding back the pee.
It may take four to six weeks for your child to wake up to the alarm and urinate on time. In severe cases, it may take up to about three months for the alarm therapy to have the desired effect. Namely, that the child wakes up before having to pee or can sleep through an entire night without problems.
The alarm is also loud enough to wake up a parent who can then help the child go to the bathroom. It is important that the parents take an active role if the child does not independently wake up to the alarm to successfully complete this therapy.
If you are older and still suffer from bedwetting, you can also get a vibrating alarm that requires you to respond completely independently and not wake up roommates.
Motivational Therapy
For children between the ages of 5 and 8, how you as a parent deal with bedwetting is important in stopping bedwetting. It is important that your child understands that bedwetting is a normal process in order to eventually learn not to pee at night. Encouragement and compliments on a dry night and for the steps he/she takes to stop bedwetting may be all your child needs to stop bedwetting.
In doing so, it can also help if you let your child help clean up if an accident did happen.
The beliefs parents have about the process of bedwetting and when and how it stops affects the child's bedwetting. If you believe that bedwetting automatically passes, your child is more likely to actually stop bedwetting than if you are convinced that you have to put a lot of effort into it. This may also cause your child to suffer from stress, and stress can in some cases be seen as a cause of bedwetting.
If you find it difficult to let go of such a belief or have given up hope, hypnotherapy can be a solution to regain motivating beliefs.
Hypnotherapy for bedwetting
There are multiple ways hypnotherapy can help with bedwetting. Multiple studies also show that hypnotherapy can provide significant improvement in bedwetting, i.e., personalized hypnotherapy reduces bedwetting compared to without therapy. In these studies, participants are usually between the ages of 7 and 18. Thereby, it is also found that children with hypnotherapy do not urinate in bed longer after the treatment than children who received, for example, medication or with alarm therapy, urinate less in bed.
For hypnotherapy to work, it is important that the patient wants a "cure" and has a good relationship of trust with the hypnotherapist.
Hypnotherapy can then help, for example, with feeling in control of your body and thus whether or not you urinate when you sleep. In children between the ages of 6 and 9, for example, this can be done by imagining that you can put a lock on your bladder. That there are guards near it that give a signal to the brain to wake up when the bladder is full. Then on the toilet they can open the lock.
If stress is the cause of bedwetting, hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis can provide tools to master stress, even at that young age. The hypnotherapist can work with your child to find out where his/her stress is coming from. Especially if your child was continent before, stress can be linked to the incontinence. This may have to do with a move, new sibling, loss of a loved one or something else.
Stress can be reduced with several techniques. First, by using relaxation exercises. Next, by giving the child tools in how to deal with stress. For example, if he/she is in a space that stresses him/her, he/she can imagine that there is a bubble around him/her that deflects the stress energy from him/her.
In the process, he can also gain other beliefs that will create less stress. This can be done, for example, with cognitive behavioral therapy or through neuro linguistic programming while under hypnosis.
Hypnotherapy can also help build self-confidence, especially if your child wets the bed after age 10 and blames himself or herself. This can make him/her feel ashamed, depressed , irritable when asked about the problem, and just plain done with it when invited to a sleepover.
By building self-confidence, your child will again be able to enjoy his/her friends during the day. To have a rebuttal when someone does make a comment about the problem.
In addition, self-hypnosis can help enhance the effects alongside normal hypnotherapy. It is important then that the self-hypnosis is tailored to the child. In the study comparing alarm therapy to hypnotherapy, only a standard audiotape to be listened to at bedtime was used. That, of course, did not address personal issues at all.
Especially when self-hypnosis is tailored to the person, hypnotherapy can make a big difference in bedwetting and children's self-confidence and behavior. The researchers also indicate that this study did not look at the person enough before hypnotherapy and that may explain the difference they found in effectiveness.
Adult bedwetting
If you are an adult who suddenly starts bedwetting, it is important to see a doctor. Adult bedwetting generally has a medical reason. These may include:
- Bladder Cancer
- Diabetes
- Drug side effects
- Neurological malfunction
- Sleep apnea
- Prostate Cancer
- Prostate enlargement
- Urinary tract infection
- Kidney Stones
Very occasionally in adults, emotional problems can be the cause of bedwetting, such as acute anxiety. But as an adult, always get checked if you suddenly start bedwetting before looking for a psychological problem. Then again, hypnotherapy can be a godsend. Hypnotherapy works well against anxiety, for example.
In short:
Bedwetting is very annoying for the whole family. Bedwetting is a normal part of becoming a continent, but is often considered problematic if it takes longer than the seventh year of life to stop. Bedwetting is more common in boys than girls, and boys are more affected by it than girls who bedwash.
A popular treatment for bedwetting is moisture sensor alarms. It then usually takes three months for your child to wake up independently before having to pee. Motivational therapy can already help children between the ages of 5 and 8. It is therefore important that parents have confidence that bedwetting will automatically pass.
Hypnotherapy can also help against bedwetting by giving your child a sense of control before going to sleep and increasing overall self-confidence. In doing so, hypnotherapy can also help against stress and identify stressful situations or moments for your child.
Self-hypnosis is the final step that can be taken to enhance the effects of hypnotherapy with therapist at home.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and what it can do for you? Then check out Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' seminars and trainings.
Sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722618/
http://www.webmd.com/children/tc/bed-wetting-primary-nocturnal-enuresis-treatment-overview
http://www.hypnotherapyawareness.com/article_hudson_bed_wetting.html
http://search.proquest.com/openview/cca4266b06b98ed155a3e5c47ba0c24e/1?pq-origsite=gscholar
Diana
on11 Apr 2016