To help UF students overcome stress, Carol Perrine hypnotizes them.
“Your mind is like a blank Microsoft Word document,” she said to an audience at a public library in downtown Gainesville this week. “You can impress upon it anything you want.”
The certified hypnotherapist receives dozens of calls from students and Gainesville residents every week.
One recent caller, a student in UF’s College of Dentistry, wanted help overcoming a phobia that caused her to faint every time she saw sharp dental tools. After a few sessions with Perrine, the student was able to perform a root canal without flinching.
Part of the demand for hypnotherapy may be due to the fact that levels of stress and anxiety among students reached an all-time high this year.
In January, the University of California, Los Angeles, published a study revealing that about half of all college students felt dissatisfied with their emotional health. At the same time, students reported feeling more pressure to succeed in school.
“I feel like I barely have time to go to classes and finish all of my homework,” said Erin Harris-Parks, a 22-year-old anthropology and geology senior.
Perrine, 57, alleviates stress through workshops and personal hypnosis sessions.
Perrine, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UF, used metaphors to juxtapose conscious and unconscious thought during her library lecture. When the mind wasn’t a Word document, it was a piece of software, ripe for hacking, or a double-decker bus, driven by consciousness. Understanding secret desires of the brain and staying optimistic are keys to changing deep-rooted behaviors, thoughts and feelings, she explained.
At the end of her session, Perrine instructed audience members to close their eyes and breathe deeply, in unison, for a few minutes. Then the hypnotist started her customary countdown to reality. Four. Three. Two. One.
Don Heller, 67, opened his eyes and blinked a few times.
“Almost didn’t want to come back,” he said, grinning.
