Vanessa Herrera: Hypnosis for Court Anxiety and Staying Calm

Hypnosis has an image problem, so Vanessa Herrera starts by pointing out how ordinary it is. Driving on autopilot and arriving somewhere you did not intend to go. Losing yourself in a film you know is fiction. The groggy half hour before you are properly awake. All of it is the same altered state, and so, she argues, is what happens to you under years of sustained stress from an abusive partner.

Vanessa Herrera is a hypnotherapist based in Los Angeles who works with clients over video, in English and Spanish, using hypnosis alongside imagery, NLP, EFT tapping and mindfulness. She helps people find their own footing again rather than handing them someone else's answers, and this conversation is aimed squarely at people going through the legal system with a high-conflict ex.

Her central point is that the critical mind, where logic, reasoning and decision-making live, switches off under fear. Suggestions delivered in that state get filed as truth, which is how an ex's voice becomes your internal voice. The remedy is not to avoid the state but to recognize it and use it deliberately: choosing the responses you want in advance, and rehearsing them until they are what comes out.

Vanessa and Lisa work through the myths, the difference between hypnosis and meditation, and whether analytical people are harder to work with. Then the tools: writing down before bed exactly how you intend to feel and act tomorrow, because the half hour before sleep and the REM hours after are when it lands; the 4-6-8 breathing pattern she credits to Richard Nongard, inhale for four, exhale for six, statement repeated eight times; and a daily two minutes of sitting still, noticing each impulse to respond and responding to none of them. She also covers EFT for the older emotional charge, and why hypnosis is dissociative by design, which is what lets you see your own situation the way you would see a friend's.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why sustained stress puts you in the same state hypnosis uses, and how an ex's voice gets installed
• The myths worth dropping: mind control, getting stuck, and what stage hypnosis really is
• How to write down tomorrow's response the night before, and why the timing matters
• The 4-6-8 breathing pattern, and why counting stops the spiral
• A two-minute daily exercise that trains you to sit still under provocation
• How to buy yourself a minute in a settlement conference without losing ground
• Why a calm, unreactive party reads well to a judge while the other side escalates
• What EFT tapping adds when the charge is older than the current case

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why you are already being hypnotized, and by whom
5:00 Choosing your responses instead of reacting, and meeting Vanessa
7:00 Myths: mind control, getting stuck, and stage hypnosis
12:30 How it compares to meditation, and who it works for
16:30 The night before court: shields, writing it down, and daily practice
20:30 The 4-6-8 breathing pattern
22:00 Staying centered inside a settlement conference
25:00 The two-minute wall exercise, and the power of doing nothing
30:00 EFT, perspective and releasing the older charge

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Vanessa Herrera at Hypnosis with Vanessa: https://hypnosiswithvanessa.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.