I studied hypnosis a lot while going after a psychohistory degree. A hypnotist doesn't really hypnotise a person as much as take over and manipulate a pre-existing state. Indeed at demonstrations they have all sorts of techniques for testing who are most suggestible people in the room.
Hypnosis is actually a part of PTSD. A shock or trauma causes a person to lose what hypnotists call "critical functions" or "critical factors". Those are a persons reason and defensive skills to protect psyche. When critical factors are suspended all sorts of impressions and suggestions get in the subconscious - where they drive the intellect and thoughts.
A flashback etc is at heart a hypnotic event, where elements of a person subconscious overwhelm a persons mind and even body. There is a "body memory" or conditioned reflex response. People's bodies can feel past events as if they were going through them anew. Cues can trigger a response.
Struggling with these things actually drives them deeper. Concentration is a factor in hypnosis. When people focus and concentrate on mantras, and breathing, and rythmns, and imagery of calm lakes etc they are creating a trance state they can subject themselves too. They can seem to lose conflicts that way in a kind of absolutions by absorption. However a person in that state can also lose awareness to a lot of other things and create other problems.
Some counseling can even make people with PTSD worse because these people need to "de-focus" but counselling can make them focus more in the wrong way. There are even studies that showed police and fire fighters who had trauma counseling were worse in 5 years than the ones who didn't have it.
I came across a hypnotist who realized people were already hypnotized to act self destructively and -de-hypnotizing them worked much better. Think of a kid who has their parents shock and upset them by calling them "no good" .."should never have been born" etc (happens all the time). When the kid gets upset and angry the negative suggestions get into her head. She thinks "I'm no good..I'm no good" etc over and over. If she gives in to that thinking she resents herself and her life. If she struggles against it she makes the suggestion stronger. In time she can feel demoralised and exhausted and want to just give in to apathy and ennui. The real way of getting free is to stop feeding root cause via fixations to emotions and lreactions that feed thoughts that feed emotions again - and drag the body with it
I used a method of "de-hypnotising" years ago and gave up 7 years of smoking with no withdrawl struggle at all. Other times I tried and makde smoking worse.
What was curious about it is a lot of past thoughts and feelings (many forgotten) bubbled up for review as they left. These were not a hardship since I saw them objectively without reacting to them. A lot of people get upset with any memories and emotions from past that bubble up - a reason they don't go away.
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