Why your immune system declared you the enemy
The immune system exists to destroy our enemies. That's the simplest explanation. It uses various strategies for this, which could fill pages, but let's keep it simple.
Autoimmune diseases from a hypnotic perspective
To fight enemies, you first have to recognise them as such. That's a delicate matter for the immune system. Miss certain enemies, and they can do a lot of damage. Recognise something harmless as an enemy, and you're firing cannons at sparrows — we call that an allergy. Recognise friends as enemies, and destroying them does a lot of damage. And that's exactly what happens in autoimmune diseases.
If you have an autoimmune disease, your immune system has declared you — or at least a part of you — its enemy. It's a fundamental confusion about who the enemy actually is.
We don't fully know the reasons autoimmune diseases develop, and where we don't know, we can at least have a working hypothesis. If we don't assume "bad luck" or "chance" here, the self-damaging immune response might be understood as "becoming your own greatest enemy" — perhaps also as self-criticism or self-rejection taken to an extreme. This doesn't mean you're to blame yourself. Quite the opposite: most higher beings punish whoever they see as guilty, and no one arrives at the idea of punishing themselves this way voluntarily. What's behind it is more a topic for a therapy session than for this page. What matters is this: if there's a cause that can be influenced, there's also hope for improvement.
When you're no longer the enemy yourself, there's no reason left to attack — a simple thought, but possibly a helpful one.
The role of hypnotherapy in autoimmune diseases
The current state of science: there's no cure for autoimmune diseases right now. Standard treatment aims to ease symptoms, reduce inflammation, and dampen the immune system — usually with immunosuppressants and corticosteroids. Among the best-known autoimmune diseases are rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis, but also Hashimoto's thyroiditis, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, Sjögren's syndrome, celiac disease, or type 1 diabetes. Lifestyle changes — stress management, regular exercise, healthy eating — can help prevent flare-ups and keep symptoms in check.
That's exactly where hypnotherapy comes in on the stress-management side: it speaks directly to the subconscious to bring about a positive shift in experience. The immune system can't be consciously controlled, but it can certainly be influenced through the psyche and deep states of relaxation — self-hypnosis and meditation work through the same mechanism here.
Studies suggest that people with autoimmune diseases can benefit from accompanying hypnotherapy^1 — for instance through relief of joint pain, swelling, and stiffness in rheumatoid arthritis^3, improvements in skin-related conditions like psoriasis, or symptom relief in multiple sclerosis^4. Self-hypnosis-adjacent practices like meditation show similar effects^2. These are indications of a supportive benefit, not a substitute for medical treatment.
Hypnotherapy takes a complementary approach here: it doesn't replace conventional medical treatment, but additionally addresses the psychological and emotional aspects of the disease — and can help you regain a piece of the sense of agency that a chronic illness otherwise easily takes away.
