This episode features Sharron Magyar, a hypnotherapist specializing in PTSD and substance use. She discusses the healthy mind/body connection and the positive impacts an individual may have when combining hypnotherapy with traditional mental health practices.

Alexis Clark:

Hello everyone, welcome back to From The Front Row, brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. My name is Alexis Clark, and if this is your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they are relevant to anyone, both in and out of the field of public health. We’re excited to welcome Sharron Magyar onto the show. Sharon is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, the author of the book 50 Shades of Grief: Putting The Pieces Back Together Again, and a co-author of Writing Is Our Superpower. Sharron owns and operates Golden Heart Hypnosis in Chatham, Illinois, where she combines her hypnosis techniques, energy realignment, Reiki, and professional coaching. Sharron, welcome to the show.

Sharron Magyar:

Thank you for having me today.

Alexis Clark:

Let’s start off with, Sharron, what has been your journey to get to your current role?

Sharron Magyar:

So I always have to laugh and say hypnosis chose me, I didn’t choose it. I went back to school later in life and I got a degree in fine art. And through working with my art projects, I started using hypnosis with someone, helping them get off drugs. And that started me working with hypnosis, and it opened up this whole door of people knocking on a door and saying, “I heard what you did with Raymond. Can you help me?” And at that point I realized I actually need to get my certification and take this a little more seriously.

Sharron Magyar:

And so my door was a revolving door for quite some time, people who were addicted to drugs and under that addiction was sex abuse. I personally had a daughter that was addicted to drugs, and that was a long, hard journey and that was sort of tied up and connected with my hypnosis work. And my first book, which is My Golden Heart: Putting The Pieces Back Together, is that whole story of the journey that I took with her and how it brought me to hypnosis, and the changes that it made in my life and my family’s life. It’s like a spirit has just touched me and said, “This is where you’re going, and this is how you’re going to go.” And it included hypnosis.

Alexis Clark:

That is very interesting to hear. I think a lot of times when people are able to have a personal connection to anything, it makes everything more impactful for you and the people you’re helping. Going back to your hypnosis work with those that are suffering from drug addiction, how does your service or hypnosis, what is the goal or what is end results when trying to get people off of these drugs and through the spiritual work that you do?

Sharron Magyar:

Well of course, naturally the end goal is to help them get off the drugs. But not just, drugs is a symptom, it’s a symptom of what’s in their subconscious mind, the soul wounds that’s in their subconscious mind, and what’s driving the drug behavior. And so a lot of the work that we do is helping them to take out that garbage that is driving the behavior. And a lot of times people say I’m doing that, but I don’t know why I’m doing that and it’s just wreaking havoc in my life. And so hypnosis is a great tool for dealing with so many issues and not having to relive anything that’s really, really painful. But just be able to take all those things out because any kind of soul wound that you have consumes a great deal of energy that you would be using in your daily life.

Sharron Magyar:

And you want to live, we’re all hardwired to live a healthy, promising life, but that’s not the route a lot of us take. And so what we try to do is unload the garbage so that it’s not consuming all of your energy and you can make good choices and decisions and live a fulfilled, happy life.

Alexis Clark:

So historically, individuals can be very hesitant about seeking out for help, whether that’s with drug addiction or mental health services due to the stigma around it, how do you help combat the stigma that is around seeking help?

Sharron Magyar:

Well, this is true, but what I’m finding is times are changing. The internet has made it a broader world. And so there’s a great deal of information on the internet that people can find out. Like currently there are, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of scientific studies supporting the use of hypnosis and those studies have proven out that it’s good for addressing anxiety, alcoholism, weight reduction, pain, OBS cancer, depression, PTSD, stress. PTSD is a big one, right now they’re doing specific studies with veterans and the use of hypnosis. And so the science is out there, and if someone is hesitant about even any kind of mental health, what you really want to think about is how can I make good choices? How can I live a joyous life? Because a lot of people go through life and there’s just no joy in their life.

Sharron Magyar:

So I can just encourage them, whether it’s a mental health practitioner, a psychologist, it’s a hypnotherapist. A lot of times, as a hypnotherapist, we work hand in hand with traditional therapy, which is the most promising way I think, to use it. If there’s any mental health diagnosis, we would have to have a referral in our case. So I would just encourage anyone that is struggling with making good choices, good decisions, hypnosis is a non-invasive, easy way to address issues. But the cool thing about it is with hypnosis you can make change quickly. And I think that that’s what attracts people to hypnosis. When I first started in business, my biggest surprise was I kept, I thought that most of my clientele would be women because women just, that was just a belief I had, I guess is the way I want to say it.

Sharron Magyar:

The biggest surprise for me was most of my clientele was men, particularly when I first started. And I was so surprised about that. I didn’t anticipate that and I think I had the realization that for a man, they see a problem and they want to take a straight line to the solution. They don’t want to talk it out a million years where women are a little more open to the idea of talking. So to a man, hypnosis just seems to be a really great match because they’re just going, “Here’s my problem. Here’s my solution. Let’s just go straight for the solution.” And so that was the most interesting thing to me of all, today, still today, I work with more men than I do women, but that may be just particularly what I draw into my office. I don’t know.

Alexis Clark:

So since the beginning of your career in this, would you say since there are more online resources, the stigma or the will to get help is improving? Or would you say social media and the internet is actually making it worse?

Sharron Magyar:

Well I think the will to get help is improving. People are, I’ve been doing hypnosis for 17 years now. So I believe that from the time I started to now, there’s less misperceptions about it because you can actually get some good data, some good education. And as I said, it’s a broader world. So I think people are more willing to think about alternative healthcare, but mostly people don’t really want to drug themselves up. They don’t want to spend a hundred years in trying to find a solution. And so I think that that makes them more willing to say, “There’s alternative ways to do this.” And I believe that they’re more willing to say, “I have the power to make changes.”

Sharron Magyar:

And the cool thing about hypnosis is it puts the power in the individual’s hands. And so I think that people are more open to the idea of hypnosis now because they liked the idea of having autonomy and the control over their own lives and making choices and decisions and changes, and hypnosis is all about making changes. So I think that people are more open to the idea of hypnosis now because they’ve learned a lot more. And of course, the science is supporting it now. And that also, I think has made a big difference.

Alexis Clark:

Yes. I think there’s always hesitancy until there is actually research done about anything. So the fact that there are proven research studies now out there is I think a positive move in the right direction to get people off of relying on these-

Sharron Magyar:

Absolutely.

Alexis Clark:

Prescription drugs to make them feel normal.

Sharron Magyar:

Here’s the truth of the matter, a lot of our traditional ways that we address things through the medical world, over prescribing drugs, that’s not a good thing. And most people don’t want that, they really don’t want that. And don’t misunderstand me, there’s a time and a place for drugs, I want to make that really, really clear. But we have had a past history of just anesthetizing people, to their feelings. And you can’t get better if you just shut off your feelings, you have to stop, take a look at it, unload it, and then move forward to get better. The cool thing about hypnosis is you can make change easily and quickly with it. And I think that that’s what attracts most people to it. Your conscious mind says, “I want to do this.” But there’s resistance, and no matter how much willpower you put toward it, it’s hard to do it.

Sharron Magyar:

But your subconscious mind, it’s like a two year old child, if you get its attention and you say, “This is what I want you to do.” Your subconscious mind goes, “Okay, I can do that.” And it instantly, it automatically makes changes. And so the willpower doesn’t even enter into it, and that’s what’s really very nice about hypnosis. It’s not magic, you have to do work on your end. You have to make a commitment. If you’re coming in to quit smoking, you have to be committed to quit smoking. It’s not magical, but it does help. It helps you to not be pulled back into wanting to continue that habit. And so people find it, that’s why lots of people come to a hypnotherapist to quit smoking, because it takes the willpower element out of the picture.

Alexis Clark:

You when you see different cases, is it normal to see someone on a weekly basis? Or what’s the timeline normally?

Sharron Magyar:

Well, I think that it’s different for, it depends on your working situation as a hypnotherapist. Personally, in my office, I don’t see people less than two sessions only because I want to make sure that we’re successful in whatever habits they’re wanting to change. If they come in for one session, that’s a big question mark for me. So I want to make sure that we are right where you’re supposed to be, and that they’re having success with it. And I’m more than a hundred percent invested in getting results, hypnosis is all about getting results.

Sharron Magyar:

So in my case, if someone scheduled an appointment with me and let’s say they were just dealing with anxiety, then I would start out with three sessions is what I would do. And in three sessions, I would reevaluate whether that they may choose to continue, or they may say I’m done. But here’s the thing that I do know, everyone that walks in the door knows when they’re done. And in my personal world, I don’t spend any more time with people than what I feel like they need to be successful at what they’re doing. So I don’t string it out over a year’s time or anything like that. It’s more of a shorter term process.

Sharron Magyar:

But it depends, if someone comes in and they say, “I want to lose 75 pounds.” Obviously it’s going to be a longer program because you don’t lose 75 pounds in two weeks. So for someone like that, it’s going to be longer. If somebody comes in and they say, “I need help getting off of cocaine.” For that person it may be longer because it may be some underlying things that are underneath that that need to be addressed. So it can be more complex. So it kind of depends on the situation. If somebody comes in and they say, “I’m afraid of flying.” I may do one or two sessions with them. So it sort of depends on the situation.

Alexis Clark:

So turning to COVID 19, since that has been on everyone’s radar, have you noticed a shift or a change in the needs of your clients since the beginning of the pandemic?

Sharron Magyar:

I absolutely have. I have seen a lot of changes in what people are coming in for. One of the things they’re coming in for is they’re highly stressed, and the stress is from being quarantined. And of course, all of the world is changing so fast. And I think that there’s a lot of fear that’s attached that stress — Is my life going to be the same? How am I going to earn a living? What’s the world going to be like when this is all done? There’s so many questions.

Sharron Magyar:

And just the whole political conflict back and forth, I think that that has stressed people. So I’m definitely seeing more people coming in with stress and anxiety and more people coming in with grief. A lot of people lost people with COVID. And so there is grief about the loss of their loved ones, but it’s not just about the loss of their loved ones, it is about the loss of our way of life. And so I’m seeing more people struggling with grief and I think that what is going to happen now is after a year of being in the pandemic, we’re going to have a wave of grief that are actually going to hit the practitioners because people, they have to resolve it in some way to move forward, and they have to address their fears to move forward. So I definitely think that there are changes.

Sharron Magyar:

Here’s the good news, one thing that happened with COVID is we were forced on doing our work online. I did a hundred percent of my work online for the year with COVID, I was very busy. Busier than I’ve ever been in my career. The good thing about that is I felt like that was very successful. I didn’t know how I would feel about it in starting it. But the nice thing about online, like you and I are facing each other, it narrows down the focus to just, you’re so focused on that person that’s in front of you. And the person that’s in front of you is in their own environment where it’s comfortable and they’re relaxed. And I think that there’s some real advantage to that.

Sharron Magyar:

So that’s the surprising thing that I think came out of it in my personal practice. So now I’m combining more national work, working with people from all states. So I’m combining a lot more national work along with my traditional work. And I’m also mentoring quite a few people at the moment. So that has been the pleasant surprise. That whole grief thing, I think is probably our most pressing issue right now, collectively as a country, we need to deal with it. We don’t need to shove it underneath the rug, because if we do that, what happens is the grief will then be passed forward through the future generations. And they’ll have to carry the burden of the grief. And we don’t want to do that, we want to resolve it in good and healthy ways now.

Sharron Magyar:

And I see hypnosis as a way to help do that. It’s non-invasive and people can make changes rapidly. So that’s sort of the most pressing issue that I see at the moment. I also think the second most pressing issue is the whole issue that we are having with drugs. There are hundreds of children they’re dying of fentanyl, hundreds. And nationally, I can’t imagine what the statistics are on that. And as a nation, we need to be addressing that. We need to be speaking up and we need to be saying, as a country, “We’re not putting up with this anymore. And we’re going to take action, we’re going to do something about it.” And I see hypnosis as perhaps playing a role in that.

Alexis Clark:

Absolutely. Recently you presented at the Heartland Hypnosis Conference on grief and COVID-19. Is there any advice you can give to frontline healthcare workers that have experienced over a year of consistent grief concerning COVID-19 even though you might not know your patients well, it’s still a concept [crosstalk 00:16:23]?

Sharron Magyar:

Yes. What I highly recommend is that even if they think that they are not grieving, it doesn’t hurt to schedule an appointment with a healthcare practitioner or a hypnotherapist. Everybody carries soul wounds, and you don’t know what they are. So you may be grieving and you may not be aware that you’re grieving, but it will have an impact on your life and your life choices. And it will cause anxiety, panic, attacks, depression. And if you’re experiencing any of those things, what might be underneath it is the grief. And so until you take that grief out and look at it, I have lost my daughter and two of my grandsons. And I have a very personal relationship with grief, the year that I lost my daughter, I lost my father within three months and I lost 17 of my relatives. And so I really do understand what grief feels like.

Sharron Magyar:

Although I don’t understand what your grief feels like, because it’s individual for everyone. So, but the problem is if you don’t address your grief, it’s going to spill over into your life. And it spills over in panic attacks, anxiety, depression, anger, if you’re having anger and rage issues, probably what’s underneath that is grief. And so I think that having an awareness that you might be suffering from grief and having a willingness to really look at that and take it out and release it. I think that that’s, what’s really important and it can make tremendous changes in your life. And if you’re unhappy, if you are depressed, if it feels like life is made down on you, more than likely you’re struggling with grief on some level.

Sharron Magyar:

And so my advice about that is if you suspect that you’re struggling with grief, definitely give hypnosis a try, but I’m not saying hypnosis is the only answer. Maybe it’s therapy, maybe it’s counseling, maybe it’s both. but I am saying you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by scheduling an appointment, following through with it and just make sure that when you do schedule an appointment, do your research and make sure that whoever you are working with is qualified to work with you, has experience with whatever your issue. So do your homework and make sure that they have experience with whatever your issue might be. But you change your life. You can go from having panic attacks and anxiety and depression to live a joyous, happy life. We’re all hard wired to heal ourselves. And so, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah. I think that is a great sentiment. How would you describe the relationship between your spiritual practice and traditional medicine?

Sharron Magyar:

I think there’s a role for both a spiritual practice and traditional medicine. My mom was a psychiatric nurse, and so I really have an understanding and I have a sister that is a doctor of psychology. So I do have an understanding of the scientific role that it plays in mental health. And there’s definitely a role for both a spiritual practice and the medical practice. And I think that the best scenario for people is that they work hand in hand. I don’t think one is better than the other, I think that they’re complimentary to each other, and that we need to be open to our idea of, I think what’s important is to realize that we have it within ourselves to bring healing to ourselves. And so to me, it makes more sense to lean toward that. But I feel like both they’re both have roles.

Sharron Magyar:

Personally, myself, I have a very strong relationship with God. I know that the work that I do is hand in hand with him. And to me that’s important, and to me there is no conflict between hypnosis and my relationship with God, that he has opened the door. He has sent me the people to work with, he continues to send me people to work with and I find it fascinating, I love working with people. Everyone is different and to me that is so fascinating. And so to me, I don’t see a big divide between the two. I think that there’s a room for both of them. And I think they’re both really important.

Alexis Clark:

I agree. And I think there is more research backing up the fact that with a healthy mind, then you’ll have a healthier body and vice versa. You can’t have one-

Sharron Magyar:

Absolutely. Well for one thing, all illnesses, it starts in the energetic world and then it manifests itself in the physical body. So with working with hypnosis, a lot of times, I don’t know if you saw on my website that we do energy work in our office. And the reason that we do energy work in our office as well as hypnosis is that many of the issues that people manifest, they manifested in the energetic world first. And so we tried to address that first and that can prevent it from manifesting as a disease. Because if it goes unaddressed, eventually it will manifest as a disease. The subconscious mind is very literal and so it can manifest a disease out of something, a literal belief that it holds. And so what’s really cool about hypnosis is hypnosis speaks the language of the subconscious mind. And so it can very quickly find out, dig out what that literalness is and just make corrections in it, and help people to release some beliefs that they develop and they create that just doesn’t serve them well. And so that’s really neat about hypnosis because it helps people to do that.

Sharron Magyar:

In our office, we do sound therapy and we do hypnosis, we also do Reiki and of course we do our coaching, but we have someone that works in our office that does energy work, who is amazing, absolutely amazing. So I think that there is a role for all of it. And we basically do not advertise, I have my website, but we’re a full-time office. And we have a lot of people. We have Chantal Renee, who is amazing and Raymond who also are very gifted. So I think that there’s different roles, people who’ve been into hypnosis, or they will draw, they will draw up different clienteles to them, according to what their skill set is. And I don’t think they have to worry too much about what that is, I think it will just develop as their career moves on sort of like mine developed along the line of PTSD and stress, that kind of thing, and of course working with drugs and alcohol.

Sharron Magyar:

And of course my interest in that is because I had a daughter who was addicted to drugs. And so that was sort of an extension, and that may be the perfect person to work in that area. But for someone else, it may be that they’re interested in doing sports hypnosis, or they might be interested in working with weight, or smoking cessation. So it’s different for each practitioner. If you’re seeking out a practitioner, you just have to find out if they’re the right match for you. Because not every practitioner will be the right match. It’s like finding a doctor, you have to find a doctor that’s the right match. And so you have to find a practitioner that’s the right match as well.

Alexis Clark:

So the last question we’d like to ask here on the podcast is, and this can be in relation to just general life, this can be in relation to your professional practice, anything. What is one thing you thought you knew, but were later wrong about?

Sharron Magyar:

Well, there’s two things. So I’ll answer this, there’s two things. One thing that I thought I knew was I thought I knew a lot, and then I found out I knew nothing, who worked with people. So I really tried to approach any work that I do with people with that blank slate, I know nothing. And here is what I found out, and I found out that all healing is, any kind of healing is done, the body is hardwired to heal itself. And so I don’t have to know anything because the person already knows what it’s going to take to heal them. And so that was one thing was, I thought I knew how to help people, I did not. But what I found out was people know how to heal themselves.

Sharron Magyar:

And so that I think it was a great learning for me. And I think that that’s really helped me along my career, because it’s helped me to realize I don’t have to know everything. I don’t have to have all the answers. I’m just a true guide and I have to help the person that I’m working with, find it within themselves, how to heal themselves. So the great thing about that is the individual that comes into the office, autonomy. They are driving their own process. They are making their own changes and they’re making their own realizations. And because of that, change is lasting and enduring. And if you try to put the outside force on something to make change, the minute you take outside force off, the change reverts back to the old behavior. But if the change comes from within, the change is permanent and lasting. And so that was the one thing that I thought I knew and I found out later, I didn’t know anything. And I still know that I don’t know anything.

Sharron Magyar:

So it’s a great experience, it is a great journey in life that I’m having, because I’m learning more and more, I don’t know anything, what a wonderful thing to be learning. So I don’t know if that makes any sense to you at all, but it seems because I don’t know anything, it seems like a pretty fascinating world. And every day I get up, wonder about just the whole fact of living and everyday I get up and I feel very grateful that I’ve been given the honor of being part of people’s lives and their journey through life and that I can help them make positive changes in their life. And I think that every hypnotherapist that you talk to will probably agree with that sentiment, for sure, because you don’t get into hypnosis unless you’re really a people person and you really want to help them make change. So for me, that’s the biggest learning.

Alexis Clark:

That’s great, yeah. I think going through life with that humbleness and wonder about life is a great way to live. And I hope to continue to try to live my life similar to how you’re living yours. Sharron, thank you so much for being on the show. I really, really appreciate it. We loved having you.

Sharron Magyar:

I just wanted to leave people with my new book is going to be coming out soon. It’s going to be Many Shades of Grief: Honoring The Broken Hearted. So it’ll be out in about two months. My first book is written for anyone who has a loved one that is struggling with addiction or someone who is struggling with an addiction. It’s a perfect book to read for that. So those are a couple of resources that I think will be helpful. And for people who are interested in more in hypnosis itself, on my website are some videos about hypnosis and different things like anxiety, stress, and things like that. You can go to my website, they constantly change. And there’s a page that says Resources. All you have to do is click that Resources page and then click on the video of your choice and you can listen to it. And so those constantly change, and it’s a really good resource. And that whole page changes a lot, there’s a lot of different resources on it.

Alexis Clark:

Great. And I will provide the link to Sharron’s website in the description of today’s episode.

Alexis Clark:

That’s it for our episode this week, big, thanks to Sharron Magyar for coming on with us today. This episode was hosted, written, edited, and produced by Alexis Clark. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues. Our team can be reached cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode was brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Stay happy, stay healthy, and keep learning.