How can hypnotherapy help sweating?

Your subconscious is your control centre. It monitors everything, keeping all systems running smoothly so you can live healthily and happily. Your organs, your nervous system, your hormones; everything happening in your body has a general command HQ, a control centre that keeps it all regulated and working at optimal levels.

That is your subconscious – it beavers away ceaselessly so that our conscious minds need not be bothered. We don’t have to think about blinking, swallowing, breathing, digesting or any of the myriad other functions required to keep our bodies working.

If you need fuel, it will cause you to feel hungry. If you need hydration, it will cause thirst. Need to recharge, you’ll feel tired. Too cold, it will cause your goose pimples to raise hairs and maintain heat, and if you’re too hot, your subconscious will cause you to sweat.  

Cooling sweat 

We all sweat, to varying degrees, when our body needs to cool down. Mostly, this is a natural and necessary reaction whenever our internal temperature is too high, such as

• weather or overheated room
• exertion or exercise
• illness or fever 
• or even a highly spiced meal

If that control centre senses that we are overheating, it sends messages (from the hypothalamus, via the sympathetic nervous system), to our sweat glands to produce sweat. As moisture evaporates, it cools the skin. A brilliant system and all conducted subconsciously without any conscious input from us. More often than not, we don’t even know it has occurred unless we happen to notice the result. 

Emotional sweat 

But what of emotional sweating? Why do we sweat when we’re not overheating? What is the purpose of sweating when we’re nervous, embarrassed, or afraid?  There are several theories, but no one knows the answer to this.

We know that when we get stressed or anxious, our blood pressure rises and the adrenalin in our body triggers the sweat glands; it is part of the ‘fight or flight’ response.  Likely, its purpose is again to cool us down and regulate our temperature to allow us to fight or to flee more efficiently. 

Excessive sweat 

But then there is a third type – hyperhidrosis. This is excessive sweating with no obvious cause and the kind that people often seek hypnotherapy treatment to address. 
Sometimes this is localised – for example

• sweat pouring from their hairline
• covering their top lip or
• dripping from their hands

For some, it is general (sweating in several places or all over their body). It is unconnected to overheating and while it may not be due to stress or nervousness, it can certainly cause the sufferer a good deal of anxiety. 

In these cases, the subconscious is sending the wrong messages to the hypothalamus, which then sets off the sweat glands. Managing these symptoms can be hugely stressful in itself: 

• Keeping a plentiful supply of drying clothes close by
• Only wear black clothing so the sweat marks don’t show
• Not shaking hands
• Wearing only loose-fitting clothes 
• Having to avoid certain foods and drinks 
• Needing to keep a distance from other people -

Not to mention the discomfort and skin issues that so much sweat can create. 

Hypnotherapy for hyperhidrosis 

The reason hypnotherapy is beneficial is because it works directly with the subconscious – tackling the hyperhidrosis at the root of the issue. Simple hypnotic treatments might be used to encourage the subconscious not to send out so many of these ‘wrong messages’, or curative hypnotherapy can be used to address the reasons why those messages are being created. If the subconscious is not sending out wrong messages, the systems are not incorrectly activated, and the excessive sweating can be reduced or eliminated.