I felt unsafe during hypnosis, and the practitioner used my personal disclosures to dismiss my concerns
I lost confidence in how this practitioner handled both the session and my feedback
I booked an online hypnotherapy session with Navjyoti Upadhyaya at Path to Self Wellness. I found her sales approach high-pressure. Despite an extensive intake, she never asked about my background with hypnotherapy or parts work, both of which I’ve experienced over six years.
I had concerns almost immediately, but I gave the process a chance. I know difficult feelings can surface in hypnosis, and I took that possibility seriously. What concerned me was her judgment in using the techniques themselves. She repeatedly used negative framing, spoke about her own life while I was in hypnosis, and supplied words for me to repeat after identifying part of me as defensive. The way she used these tools left me questioning whether she had the clinical training to use them safely. I raised my concerns and asked to stop less than 15 minutes into the hypnosis portion.
Afterward, Nav thanked me for advocating for myself. I asked for a partial refund to recognize the time she’d spent on intake, since we hadn’t completed the session I booked. She declined. What disturbed me most was that she then drew on things I’d shared in confidence to explain away my feedback. She described her interpretation as the “clinical reality” and told me that my own dysregulation explained why her conduct had felt like a boundary violation.
That felt like gaslighting. She had praised me for trusting my judgment, then used my personal disclosures to call that same judgment into question. I would not recommend this practice.