Can Your Subconscious Mind Influence How You See?
Updated: Aug 15
Anastasiya Zalyubovska is a certified hypnotherapist specialising in subconscious work focused on vision and visual function. Through her practice, she explores how internal states, emotional experiences, and subconscious patterns may relate to the way people experience vision.
Vision is often thought of as a purely physical process. We think about the eyes, lenses, glasses, diagnoses, and medical procedures. But through my own life experience and my work as a hypnotherapist, I have arrived at a question that has become central to my professional journey:
Can what happens within us, such as stress, emotional states, beliefs, and deeper subconscious processes, influence our subjective experience of vision?
I did not arrive at this question through theory. I encountered it first through my own experience.
When vision became personal
I was 21 when, following a diagnosis, I began receiving treatment that included injections directly into my eyes. During that period, I experienced a complete loss of vision.
At a certain point, I decided to stop the treatment. At the time, I knew nothing about hypnotherapy professionally. I had no training in the field and none of the tools I have today. Yet something happened that I would understand very differently many years later.
I withdrew from the outside world and began instinctively working with my internal state. I did not call it hypnosis or subconscious work. I simply did what I intuitively felt I needed to do.
Within approximately one month, my vision returned. For many years afterwards, vision was not a problem for me. During a period of my life connected with the US military system, I underwent regular health assessments, including vision testing.
I could have left that experience in the past. But decades later, vision entered my life again.
When vision changed again
During a period of significant stress, I began noticing changes in my vision.
I was prescribed glasses. My visual difficulties continued to progress. I experienced blurring, double vision, and a sensation like a veil. Eventually, I found it difficult to see as I had before, even while wearing glasses.
But this time, there was one enormous difference. I was no longer 21. I was now a professionally trained hypnotherapist. Instead of looking only at what was happening to my vision, I began asking another question: What was happening to me?
What was happening emotionally? How much stress was I carrying? What beliefs were operating within my subconscious? What internal limitations or resistance might be present?
Those questions gradually changed the direction of my professional work.
Do we see only with our eyes?
The eyes are, of course, essential to vision. Eye diseases and visual impairment require appropriate professional assessment, and hypnotherapy should not be considered a substitute for ophthalmological diagnosis or necessary medical care.
My professional field, however, is not ophthalmology. It is the subconscious. I work with the person and their subconscious experience.
In my practice, I pay attention to stress, emotional responses, limiting beliefs, internal resistance, past experiences, and subconscious associations that emerge during deeper therapeutic work.
I do not assume that every visual problem has a psychological cause. That would be an unjustified generalisation.
My question is different, "What can happen to an individual's subjective experience of vision when their internal state begins to change?"
The power of beliefs
One area I pay particular attention to is a person's belief system. We can carry beliefs for years without consciously recognising them.
Some originate in childhood. Some develop following emotionally difficult or traumatic experiences. Others become so familiar that we stop recognising them as beliefs at all. They simply become our perceived reality.
During deeper subconscious work, I pay attention to the limitations and internal patterns that emerge for the individual and work with them as they appear.
This is why my work is not simply a standard hypnosis script. I cannot know in advance everything that a person's subconscious may reveal. I follow the individual.
When she opened the book
One experience that significantly influenced my decision to explore this area more deeply involved a client who was 15 years old.
According to her family, her vision had been progressively deteriorating over the years. Before the session, there was a book beside her. I asked how much of it she could read.
Her answer was: nothing. Not one word. After the session, she opened her eyes. Her mother entered the room and began recording what happened.
The girl picked up the book. And she started reading. She read text from a distance and then proceeded to read smaller print.
What was particularly important to me was that this experience did not remain simply my memory of what happened during a session. Her mother recorded it and gave permission for the video and her daughter's experience to be shared.
I do not claim that one individual case proves a universal treatment for visual impairment. It does not. But as a practising hypnotherapist, it left me with a question I could not simply ignore: What happened?
Three sessions, new experiences
One of the most profound cases I am currently working with involves a blind client who is also a medical professional.
He has given me permission to discuss our work, his experience, and relevant supporting material. With him, I decided to work at a much deeper level rather than conduct a short, standardised session.
Our work involves the subconscious, stress, emotional state, internal limitations, and beliefs as they emerge during the process.
After our first session, the most significant change he initially described was internal. He spoke about a shift in his relationship with the possibility of seeing, a growing desire to see, and a subjective sense that his visual experience was opening.
After the second session, he identified the colours of objects around him, including a red cushion, a blue cushion, and a blue curtain.
Following the third session, he reported that his visual experience had become considerably clearer and that the “whiteness” he had previously experienced had diminished.
When his young daughter approached him, he described seeing her silhouette and identified her hair as very dark, almost black. But visual experience was not the only thing he described as changing. He also reported a profound shift in his overall internal state.
Following our work, he began speaking about his experience with other blind people and asked whether he could share my contact details with those who wanted to speak with me.
Our work is continuing. It is extremely important not to turn this experience into a claim that three hypnosis sessions “cure blindness.” That is not what I am claiming. I am describing what one individual has reported during our work together. For me, this is not a reason to stop asking questions. It is a reason to ask better ones.
My work is individual
My work focused on vision today is considerably deeper than when I first began exploring this area.
I start with a consultation and consider the person's individual circumstances, including whether hypnosis is appropriate for them.
If we decide to work together, I do not take the person through one predetermined script. I work with what emerges. This may include limiting beliefs, emotional responses, stress, internal resistance, or other subconscious associations.
A separate component of my sessions is energy clearing. I do not present energy clearing as the mechanism responsible for changes in vision. For me, it is a distinct part of my practice that I use in relation to the person's overall state. In my own practice, clients frequently report feeling better following this part of a session.
Within this aspect of my work, I also draw on techniques from John Hartland's Medical and Dental Hypnosis. My subconscious work focused on vision and energy clearing can both be incorporated within a session, but I regard them as distinct processes.
Why I don't promise results
When someone experiences a significant change following a session, it is easy to turn that story into a dramatic promise.
I consciously choose not to do that. Two people may arrive with apparently similar visual difficulties yet have completely different medical histories, emotional experiences, beliefs, and subconscious responses.
I therefore cannot promise a particular outcome in advance. Nor do I ask people to discontinue appropriate medical monitoring or necessary treatment.
At the same time, I do not want to dismiss what I am observing in my practice simply because it does not fit the conventional image of what a hypnotherapist is expected to work with.
My responsibility is to continue exploring, working, observing, documenting, and asking questions.
Ask a different question
I am becoming less interested in asking, “Can hypnosis correct vision?” For me, that question is too simplistic for what I am observing.
The question that interests me much more is: “What role might a person's internal state play in their experience of vision, and what may become possible when we work with that state at a deeper subconscious level?”
I do not believe we have all the answers to that question yet. But I do know that I want to dedicate a significant part of my future professional work to exploring it.
Sometimes the most interesting discoveries do not begin when we announce that we already know the answer.
They begin when an unexpected result gives us the courage to ask a question we had not considered before.
Explore your own experience
If you are experiencing changes in vision and are curious about exploring stress, emotional responses, limiting beliefs, and subconscious patterns alongside appropriate medical care, the first step is a private consultation.
My work is individual, and I work internationally through online sessions.
Follow me on Instagram for more info!
Read more from Anastasiya Zalyubovska
Anastasiya Zalyubovska, Hypnotherapist & Life Coach
Anastasiya Zalyubovska is a certified hypnotherapist specialising in deep subconscious work focused on vision and visual function. Her approach works with a person’s internal state, emotional experiences, and subconscious patterns in relation to vision. After observing significant changes in visual function through her work, Anastasiya chose to make vision the central focus of her professional practice. Her work is highly individualised, exploring each person’s unique subconscious experience rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach. Her mission is to deepen the understanding of what may become possible when we work with the subconscious mind in relation to vision.
