WHAT IS HYPNOTHERAPY?

One of our most asked questions in the practice is “What actually is hypnotherapy?”.

The practice has a lot of preconceptions which surround it, a lot of which come from hypnosis stage shows, of swinging pendulums and people dancing like chickens.

As you can imagine, this is only one side of the practice, which is glorified for entertainment purposes.

Hypnotherapy is, in a nutshell, a very deep state of relaxation where your subconscious mind then becomes receptive to accepting suggestions, and then the hypnotherapist will give you suggestions for your benefit surrounding the area that you are searching for help with.

Changing our beliefs

What tends to happen when we’re looking to change a habit is we do everything we can consciously do to get the results we want.

Typically, this is successful for a while, but then a lot of people report that they start to self-sabotage. This is because they internal beliefs that we have that are deeply set, haven’t been addressed or changed, and they start to creep back in!

Let’s take losing weight as an example. Someone may start with all best intentions to eat healthily and nutritiously and to move around more, but a few weeks down the line, some doubt might start to creep in. This could be down to the internal beliefs the person has about themselves, without even realising it!

“I’m not worthy of losing weight”, “People know me as their overweight friend” or, “I need food to comfort myself”.

These internal beliefs are not normally addressed in a traditional ‘diet’, there’s more focus on the conscious and external behaviour.

This is where hypnotherapy comes in. If we imagine our brains like an iceberg, with the tip above the water being our external beliefs and the much larger part under the surface being your internal beliefs. There’s then the line of water which splits the two in half. This is called our Conscious Critical Faculty (CCF) and its job is to filter through all the experiences we have and everything that we are told and reject anything it believes is false or won’t be beneficial to us.

If we start to put ideas into our heads which don’t match the beliefs that we already have, our CCF will reject it and they will never become our new beliefs.

What hypnotherapists do is bypass this CCF, and works on changing our existing, limiting, internal beliefs to make way for the new and more beneficial beliefs to take their place.

So, to go back to our example, hypnotherapy would work on changing the beliefs that we need certain foods to feel better, or that we aren’t worth losing weight, and give the suggestions that we will be healthier, and that we do deserve this. It can also reinforce that we don’t need food to comfort us and give us suggestions of other ways we can get this feeling without turning to food.

What to expect

People often ask us what to expect during a hypnotherapy session, especially if it isn’t something that they have experienced before. The truth is – expect a lot of relaxation! Most sessions consist of some information gathering at the beginning, followed by the hypnosis. Most people just feel extremely relaxed and calm, and some people zone out of the therapist’s voice completely.

Some people get so relaxed, that they fall asleep. This is absolutely fine. The hypnosis is there to work with your subconscious mind to help you and it’s alert and listening all the time - it will wake you up if something needs your attention. Anything that's being suggested to you is taken on board by your subconscious mind and then it will help you to do what you want to do: change the behaviour that you want changing!

There’s a whole plethora of things that hypnosis can help with – most popular uses include helping people to lose weight, to quit smoking and to overcome a phobia. Hypnotherapy can also help with anxiety, low mood and stress.

Hypnotherapy can typically be used on children aged 5 and above (child and therapist dependant), and is reported to have brilliant results. This is mainly down to how vivid a child’s imagination is when you are talking them down into relaxation. For a full list of what we can offer hypnotherapy for, click here:

You are in control!

Hypnotherapy cannot make you do anything you don’t want to do. Entertainers that use hypnosis play off the audience’s belief that they are the one in control, and not the individual in hypnosis. This is absolutely not true, and the person in hypnosis has complete control over their thoughts and behaviour the whole time. They also have the ability to wake themselves up if they needed to. 

An example of this is, if we had a client in for a hypnotherapy session here at our practice, and during their hypnosis, the fire alarm was to go off – their subconscious brain would alert them that there was something that needed their attention, and the individual would wake up with no problem. 

The whole process of hypnotherapy is very safe, natural, and relaxing. The majority of people come back feeling very calm and peaceful, but fully alert. Most people also report that after their sessions they always have a wonderful night’s sleep!

Hypnotherapy should not be used on anyone with a psychosis diagnosis.

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