What Is Hypnotherapy?
There are many ways to find your way.
If you always take the same path, you will always arrive at the same destination.
Time to try a different route!
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is a “talking therapy” where hypnosis is used to help you access, explore, and change unhelpful thoughts, feelings, fears and behaviours that are stopping you from living your life the way you want to.
It is basically the provision of a comfortable, confidential, safe space where I bear witness to your exploration of self within an atmosphere of openness and safety for you to consider your life experiences, responses and behaviours. Even those parts of you that you may ordinarily prefer to hide from the world are safely considered without judgment. The therapist’s role is not to give advice but to receive the insights made and then knit together a bespoke therapy to support the client in clearing out the unwanted and embracing the new healthier, helpful way of being.
I help you get to the foundation of your own truth. I take what is shared to create a hypnosis experience tailored specifically for you. I also use techniques from other psychotherapy modalities both within the hypnosis and without. For example you may be given some CBT exercises to do at home, or we might do some Gestalt empty chair work, or shell-box to help the process. In fact there are thousands of tools I may use, too many to list here. But I will only use techniques that you can embrace. I am client-led and will not make you do anything you do not want to do. Although the discoveries you make during therapy may push against the boundaries of your comfort zone, it is never for me to push you there. I observe, support and keep it safe for you to go there.
In all, hypnotherapy is a therapeutic bundle and the bundle is made up of many therapy techniques. No two clients have the exact same bundle but one element of the bundle that is always included is the hypnosis.
Therapy session
The therapy session gives you the time and safe space to open up about your deepest fears and concerns. You will be encouraged to speak your truth, without fear of judgment or repercussion. I will hold that space for you to explore your own thoughts and feelings, working at a pace to suit you.
That in itself brings about self-revelations that do not ordinarily surface which will activate a shift in some of your perceptions. Therefore, you will begin to move away from issues as alternative options begin to rise to the surface.
This therapeutic shift is then capitalised upon by using hypnosis. That means your creative mind will access the positive potential of your newly found motivations. As a result you are able to dive deeply and safely into your own psyche to access inner resources to help heal, change and eradicate any unhelpful patterns.
Our first therapy session is longer than subsequent sessions but all sessions hold time for you to disclose your thoughts and feelings and time dedicated to hypnosis. I will often provide bespoke hypno-recordings for clients to use outside of the sessions.
hypnosis
Hypnosis in therapy is not the same as stage-hypnosis although they are of the same family. My aim is not to get you to forget your name, eat a raw onion or bark like a dog and so I can only talk here about the hypnosis you will experience at my practice.
Because you are seeking hypnotherapy, you are clearly open to the possibility of hypnosis and this is massively useful although not always essential to the process. I encourage all of my new clients to practice self-hypnosis prior to coming to their first session via the free recordings I provide here on my website. This means you will tune into my voice more readily and like everything, regular practice leads to proficiency and I want all my clients to have a head start right from the beginning.
At its simplest level I will ask you to close your eyes and use your imagination to follow my voice. This will guide you to an altered state of focus where we can do some meaningful therapy work.
In the trance-like state of hypnosis most clients report feeling deeply relaxed, or a feeling of otherness and expansion, of daydreaming or simply taking time-out. Many report a sensation of shifting in and out of awareness. Quite often people feel like they have been “away” or in a sleep that is not quite the same as conventional sleep. People sometimes are aware of pleasant feelings of warmness or tingling as they go through the hypno-session. Hypnotherapy works on the basis that in this relaxing altered state a person is more open to accepting positive direct suggestion and the creative mind is able to explore and access internal resources to give meaningful insights that provide the solutions and healing sought.
In hypnosis, you will begin to explore and address the issues that you face. The hypnosis can be via a variety of modes: metaphorical narrative (story-telling), time-line work, regression, mental-rehearsal, direct suggestions, automatic drawing/writing to name but a few. The mode chosen is to suit the individual and the issue that is being dealt with. Deep and lasting change is assisted by the work done in this altered state of focus. I am the guide and have the knowledge to create a therapy for you, but you do the work.
But you will only share what you want to and only go as far as you are prepared.
You will be in control at all times.
To an observer, it would look like you are gently resting whilst I tell you a story.
What is actually happening is that you are utilising the power of your imagination to input access your inner power-house to resolve past issues where needed and set up new ways of being and pathways of behaviour. A bit like downloading a programme update.
If you are open and sensitive to what your mind delivers to you, you can make dramatic and lasting changes much more quickly than by willpower alone.
From within your inner mind-space, you will begin to make alterations to your inner programming, that will set you on a course of a brand new way of being. A happier, brighter, and more content way of being.
Whilst every person’s experience of hypnotherapy is unique, you can expect to thoroughly enjoy the experience of hypnosis.