Hypnotherapy
Planting your solutions
What does hypnotherapy do?
Do you find yourself blocked from doing what you want or need to do for no rational reason? Do you find yourself compelled to do things that are unpleasant or bad for you? Do you have emotions that make you feel bad?
If you find that you are blocked from action, or compelled to act in less-than-helpful ways, or if you have thoughts and emotions that don’t belong in your life, hypnotherapy can help.
When your behaviour and emotions are out of your control, hypnotherapy helps you to take charge of your own behaviour, thoughts, and emotions.
Hypnotherapy is about you taking control
What is hypnotherapy?
In short, hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis to do therapy.
Scientists aren’t exactly sure what hypnosis is, although they can see its results in their experiments, for example in MRI scans.
But we do know that hypnotherapy digs deep into the mind to release blocks, change behaviours, and raise your thought patterns and emotions.
Although the Hollywood image of hypnotherapy is about you falling asleep while the hypnotherapist takes complete control over you, the reality is more mundane. Our job is to help someone whose behaviour or thoughts are out of their control, and hand that control back to you.
Hypnotherapy is about you taking control.
A tiny history
Hypnosis, and hypnotherapy, became well known with Anton Mesmer, who mistakenly thought that magnets were required to create hypnosis. That’s why hypnosis is sometimes called mesmerism.
James Braid gave the name hypnosis from the Greek word for “sleep”, but later realised that it has nothing at all to do with sleep. He wanted to change its name, but it was too late: The word “hypnosis” had stuck, and is still used today.
In the early 1900’s, Milton Erickson, an American psychiatrist, realised hypnotism’s value in therapy, and was key in bringing it into the psychiatric profession. Before then, many psychiatrists rejected hypnosis was some woo-woo nonsense.
There’s much more to the history, but that gives a brief summary.
Life coaching on its own can sometimes be hugely therapeutic in its own right.
How does it work?
No one knows how hypnosis works.
One popular idea is that hypnosis connects with your subconscious mind, where “subconscious” means “below your conscious awareness”, i.e. hidden. In other words, it allows the therapist to communicate with the parts of your mind or brain that are normally hidden from sight.
Researchers are still debating the idea, but it certainly does the job.
How can hypnotherapy help you?
When you find that you have intrusive thoughts, unpleasant emotions or maladaptive behaviours that you can’t control, that is often a good sign that hypnotherapy can help.
When you find that you can’t help but do things that aren’t good for you; or you struggle to do things that are good for you; or your thoughts and emotions keep sabotaging your happiness; that is when behaviours arise from those hidden depths — that is, from your subconscious mind.
These are your automatic responses and thought processes over which you seem to have little or no control.
Trying to fix these problems logically generally ends in failure and frustration, because these problems don’t exist because of logic. They exist for other reasons.
So, instead, by using hypnosis to dig deep into the inner hidden recesses, we can find where these problems arise, and work out a solution that frees you to make better and wiser decisions.
What conditions can hypnotherapy help?
Any condition that involves automatic and unwanted thought patterns or behaviours is amenable to hypnotherapy.
That’s why hypnotherapy can help what initially seems like a bewildering array of problems.
To give you an idea of the scope, hypnotherapy can help matters like insecurity, addictions, stress, stress-related problems such as anxiety, IBS and stuttering, weight loss, relationship problems, and psychosomatic issues such as non-medical pain and erectile dysfunction. They all originate in the same place: In your subconscious mind, below your conscious awareness.
Hypnotherapy helps people who don’t have enough control over their thoughts, emotions or behaviours.
So, if you feel that you need to remove your limitations and take control of your thoughts, or that you could be happier than you are, call me to discuss your personal needs.