Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis for more therapeutic benefit to the client and would be used for issues such as low self-esteem or phobias through positive suggestions made to the unconscious mind. Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy will concentrate very much on the ‘solution’ to the client’s issues, without much emphasis or understanding of how the problem was created.

What's the difference between Hypnotherapy & Psychotherapy?

Have you ever been driving your car along a motorway, or a duel carriageway and your mind has been a million miles away? Perhaps you’ve been thinking about work or family or what you’re going to eat for supper and suddenly it’s your exit and your mind comes back to driving. Maybe you’ve been watching a film, or television programme or perhaps you’ve been half sitting, half lying in a comfortable chair in the back garden on a summer afternoon. It’s Sunday, you’ve had a large lunch and you just lie there and allow your mind to wander. You can hear everything around you; bees buzzing in the flowers, the neighbour several houses away mowing the lawn and it’s just so warm and comfortable. Maybe you want a drink, but you just can’t be bothered to move and suddenly several hours have slipped by.

Each of those instances, and lots more you can think of, are examples of when you’ve allowed your mind to wander off from what’s going on around it. It’s perfectly natural and safe, if a car braked ahead of you when driving you’d immediately notice and spring into action and yet while you’re in this altered state of awareness you feel very relaxed. This altered state of consciousness is commonly known as trance, or being ‘in the zone’ and when a relaxed state is induced in a person, change work can be done at the subconscious or unconscious level. This is known as Hypnosis and the deliberate inducement of this state to change a person’s behaviour is Hypnotherapy.

Since all learning, behaviour and change takes place in the unconscious mind, most forms of therapy are looking to effect change at the unconscious, rather than the conscious mind. When thinking about Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy as a modality of therapeutic change, it is as well to be aware of some of the similarities as well as differences with psychotherapy.