Hypnosis is a special way of using various naturally-occurring psychological and physiological states. It’s a collaborative process in which you allow yourself to follow the guidance of the therapist by using your imagination to evoke positive emotions and rehearse behaviour change.

Everyone can, in principle, be hypnotised. It has been shown to help if you relax, think positively, and imagine the things being suggested.

Hypnotic “trance”, so-called, is an increased ability to respond to positive suggestions, usually accompanied simply by relaxed attention to the ideas being suggested.

Hypnosis is definitely not a state of sleep or unconsciousness. Most people report being aware of everything that happens, and relaxation helps but is not essential to hypnosis.

Hypnosis is definitely not a state of mind control. You cannot be made to do anything against your will. It actually works best if you want to accept suggested ideas and actively imagine responding to experience their effects.

Hypnosis is completely safe when used in a responsible and professional manner. Nobody has ever been “stuck” in hypnosis.

Comedy stage hypnosis has very little to do with clinical hypnotherapy and has been shown to foster misconceptions which can prevent people from benefiting from treatment. Take what you see on television with a generous pinch of salt.

Hypnotherapy, except for smoking cessation, usually requires more than one session. However, it is probably one of the briefest forms of psychological therapy, and in clinical studies the average number of sessions is around 4-6.

Hypnosis can help with an enormous range of different issues.  

Research tends to provide most support for 

1. Anxiety management.
2. Pain management.
3. Overcoming sleep disorders
4. Treating certain psychosomatic or stress-related illnesses such as IBS. 

However, hypnosis is also used to conquer habits such as nail-biting or smoking cigarettes, and for personal development in areas such as sports performance, public speaking, or creativity. 

• Thousands of positive experimental and clinical research studies on hypnosis have been published. It was recognised as an effective treatment by the British Medical Association (BMA) and American Medical Association (AMA) in the 1950s and, more recently, by the American Psychological Association (for obesity) and NICE guidance (for IBS) used by the NHS. 
• Hypnosis is essentially a simple, down-to-earth, and common sense therapy. For example, by relaxing, thinking positively, and picturing your goals, hypnosis can help you to progressively improve your habitual feelings and behaviour.

Cognitive Behavioural therapy helps people to explore how they are thinking, feeling and behaving about a situation.  It takes current trigger events and uses them as a lens to heal and grow.  For example if we take a farming metaphor;  in previous decades it was considered vital to dig deep in the soil if you wanted to grow food, but nowadays the “no drill” method is considered much better to maintain the structure of the soil. I think that is a helpful way to consider therapy too, for some things the no drill method is perfect!  That being said, occasionally we have to dig deep to plant a tree and make sure it’s properly supported but that is only ever done in collaboration and with the permission of the client.

In the first session we will explore what issues you would like to have help with.  I will ask questions and get a sense of what is concerning you.  Together we will decide on a treatment plan and sometimes there will be time for some hypnosis in the first session but most often it is mostly talking. This is a collaborative partnership and often there will be homework to help start to embed the changes into your life.  For example if you are experiencing a lot of anxiety I may suggest you listen to a mindfulness meditation that will help relax your fight flight nervous system.

This is really normal!  It can be hard for a child to believe this weird thing called “therapy” can help them.  There are three things that you can try:

1. Come and see me yourself, you are the ecosystem that your child lives in and so if you are in a good place that will help your child.
2. It can be helpful to suggest that this is an experiment; it can be part of a bunch of ideas you brainstorm together with your child.  Each idea can be tried and rated as part of the experiment.  You might aim your thinking at ideas to support their social life, physical well being, emotional life (play etc) and thinking life.  Going to school is very protective for all of these but if your child is not in school you might want to get creative.  If the conversation doesn’t go well you can come with your child and we can look at it together.
3. Check out “Collaborative Problem Solving” conversations (Check out this video) and this work sheet.