Overcoming bedwetting with hypnosis
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’re considered to have bedwetting if you wet the bed at least once a month and are older than seven years old. This is contingent on the condition not being caused by neurological problems, abnormalities in the ureters, or epileptic seizures. Boys are more likely to experience bedwetting than girls. Compared to girls, boys also wet the bed more frequently when they have bedwetting than girls who have the same condition. Boys are therefore affected more often and to twice the extent.
Bedwetting affects both the child and the parent. Children who wet the bed may experience problems with their self-confidence and exhibit different behaviors than children who do not wet the bed. Parents may also experience increased stress due to their child’s bedwetting, as well as the child’s reduced self-confidence and altered behavior.
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, the way you, as a parent, handle bedwetting is crucial to stopping it. It’s important for your child to understand that bedwetting is a normal part of the process of eventually learning to stay dry at night. Encouragement and compliments for a dry night and for the steps they take 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 hold about the bedwetting process—and when and how it stops—influence their child’s bedwetting. If you believe that bedwetting will stop on its own, your child is more likely to actually stop wetting the bed than if you’re convinced that it will require a great deal of effort on your part. This can also cause your child to experience stress, and in some cases, stress can 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, for example, help you feel in control of your body—and thus also of whether or not you urinate while sleeping. For children between the ages of 6 and 9, this can be done, for example, by imagining that they can put a lock on their bladder. They can picture guards standing by who send a signal to the brain to wake up when the bladder is full. They can then go to the bathroom to unlock it.
If stress is the cause of bedwetting, hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis can provide tools to manage stress, even at such a young age. The hypnotherapist can work with your child to identify the source of his or her stress. Especially if your child was previously continent, stress may be linked to the incontinence. This could be related to a move, a new sibling, the 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 addition, they can develop new beliefs that reduce stress. This can be achieved, for example, through cognitive behavioral therapy or neuro-linguistic programming while under hypnosis.
Hypnotherapy can also help build self-confidence, especially if your child wets the bed after turning10 and blames themselves for it. This can cause them to feel ashamed, depressed , react irritably when asked about the problem, and simply refuse invitations to sleepovers.
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, emotional issues—such as acute anxiety—can cause bedwetting in adults. However, if you’re an adult and suddenly start wetting the bed, always get checked out by a doctor first before assuming there’s a psychological problem. In that case, hypnotherapy can be a solution. 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.
Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and what it can do for you? Then check out the seminars and training programs offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.
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
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/8/908.short