Emily Rose has worked with more than ten hypnotists this year because she wants to experience their approaches herself before deciding what to bring into her own work.
That gives me somewhere to start. What actually happens during hypnosis? Are you aware of what someone is saying? Can you talk? And how does a person decide which experiences they are comfortable helping someone else explore?
In this episode of Maxwell’s Kitchen, Emily and I discuss hypnosis for anxiety, childhood conditioning, and her approach to inner child work. She shares the personal experiences that brought her to the subject, while I ask about the process, its boundaries, and the spiritual ideas that inform her perspective.
We also spend a considerable amount of time on phones, parenting, dating profiles, and the difference between enjoying your life and arranging it for a photograph. Eventually, her father enters the conversation wearing unicorn shirts and writing songs after retirement. It covers some ground.
In This Episode
What Emily means by hypnosis and everyday trance
Her experiences working with other hypnotists
Anxiety, childhood conditioning, and inner child work
Imagining different responses to painful experiences
Her boundaries around clients and referrals
Parenting, boredom, and creativity
Phone habits and being present with other people
Social media and the lives outside the photograph
People-pleasing, honesty, and fear of criticism
Marriage, parenthood, and expectations about adulthood
Her father’s creative life after retirement
Guest
Emily Rose
Emily Rose is a hypnotist and artist with an interest in childhood experiences, relationships, and the patterns people carry into adulthood. She describes herself as a human enthusiast and nature freak.
Her approach draws on her own experiences with hypnosis, inner child work, and spiritual exploration. She is particularly interested in anxiety, family conditioning, and mother-daughter relationships. During our conversation, she also explains that she is not a therapist and discusses the importance of recognizing when someone needs a different kind of support.
What Does Hypnosis Actually Feel Like?
Emily begins with familiar experiences: driving somewhere and barely remembering the journey, or becoming so absorbed in a movie that the room around you disappears from your attention. She uses those examples to explain what she means by trance.
Intentional hypnosis, in her description, involves entering that focused state with something particular to explore. That might mean responding to a hypnotist’s questions, following imagery, or noticing an emotional reaction.
I want to know how much control someone has. Emily describes different levels of awareness and different styles of sessions, including approaches that involve conversation throughout. Some people remain conscious of everything being said.
She has sought out a range of practitioners because their methods vary. Experiencing those differences helps her work out what she finds useful and what feels appropriate for the people she works with.
Revisiting a Story Without Changing What Happened
Emily tells me about a session connected to her fear around pregnancy and childbirth. After talking with her mother about the circumstances of her birth, she explored those feelings with a hypnotist over a video call.
Part of the session involved imagining a different birth experience, including a bathtub and rose petals.
The distinction she makes is that the exercise did not change the event itself. She describes changing how she related to it through imagery.
That leads into her understanding of inner child work. One example involves imagining a conversation with someone who bullied you, giving yourself room to express something you could not say at the time, or considering an explanation beyond the one you carried as a child.
Emily sees these exercises as ways to explore emotional patterns. Experiences and images that arise during regression are discussed here as personal interpretations, rather than verified memories.
Recognizing the Limits of Her Work
Emily is interested in the reasons a person might keep repeating behavior they dislike. She describes procrastination, for example, as something she might explore through questions about exhaustion, fear, or an unmet need.
Her language sometimes draws on the idea of different parts of a person wanting different things. Someone may want to move forward while another part of them is trying to avoid discomfort.
I ask how that becomes useful in a session and how she decides which concerns to take on.
She is clear that she does not work with every issue. She discusses referring people elsewhere and avoiding areas that feel too close to experiences in her own family. She also explains why she prefers working with adults rather than children.
Those boundaries matter to her account of the work. Having an interest in someone’s experience does not automatically mean she feels equipped to help them with it.
When Did We Stop Letting Ourselves Be Bored?
Our conversation about childhood moves into parenting and the difficulty of knowing when to step in.
How much discomfort should a child be allowed to experience? When does helping become removing every opportunity to figure something out?
Emily talks about boredom as a place where imagination can begin. She describes making up a story about sheep and clouds for her young nephew when he would not settle down to sleep. Creating stories for children is something she would like to explore further.
Then we turn the question on ourselves. A quiet moment in a waiting room barely begins before a phone comes out. I recognize the habit immediately.
It is easy to wonder why children need constant entertainment while reaching for your own screen every time nothing is happening.
The Photograph and the Rest of the Day
Emily describes stepping away from her personal social media and paying closer attention to how she uses her phone. When time with a friend is limited, she wants to actually spend it with them.
She also talks about posting photographs that made her relationship look happier than it felt.
One story involves visiting a garden center and taking a photograph near a little hobbit house. The picture suggested a lovely outing. Her memory of the day includes an argument and leaving without the flowers.
The photograph did not have to be fabricated to leave out most of what mattered.
We follow that into dating profiles, attraction, and our speculation about virtual worlds. I tell her about someone on Bumble asking which of my photographs actually looked like me. Unfortunately, they were all me.
Emily is interested in the things a profile cannot easily communicate, including how someone behaves around other people. Watching a person interact with a server can tell you something a carefully chosen photograph cannot.
Being Honest When You Want Everyone to Like You
Later, Emily describes a history of people-pleasing and lying to avoid criticism. She connects it to being afraid of another person’s reaction and trying to give the answer that would keep her out of trouble.
Recognizing that habit has meant learning to tolerate the possibility that someone will dislike an honest answer.
We also discuss the expectations attached to getting older. Emily is 28 and married, and her plans for having children have changed as she has become clearer about the life she wants to build first.
That opens up a conversation about parents as people. As children, we know them through the role they occupy in our lives. Eventually, we begin seeing their fears, interests, and unfinished ambitions too.
Her Dad’s Next Chapter Involves a Band
Emily’s father gives us a particularly good example.
After retiring from a government career in child protective services at 55, he begins putting more time into music. By her account, he writes around 60 songs in a year, joins a band, and prepares for a move from Washington to upstate New York.
There are unicorn shirts. There is a cosmic cowboy element. Emily sounds delighted by the person he is allowing himself to become.
After a conversation about early conditioning and the expectations people carry, his story offers a different view of adulthood. Retirement gives him room to pursue interests that do not fit neatly into his daughter’s earlier picture of him.
Emily shares personal experiences and spiritual interpretations throughout this interview. The conversation is not medical advice.
Useful Links
Watch Emily Rose’s Interview on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-g0zPvObWY
Emily Rose’s Website
https://mysticrosemedicine.com
Explore More Maxwell’s Kitchen Interviews
https://maxwellskitchenpodcast.com/podcast/interviews
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