How Can Hypnotherapy Help Me?

If you’re reading this article, you may be curious about hypnotherapy, perhaps wondering if it could possibly be of help to you or to someone you know. The use of hypnosis is still not considered a mainstream treatment option, so you may feel that it needs further explanation before you could consider it as a viable approach.

If so, then hopefully this article will help. Hypnotherapy is fundamentally about change, and change is not always an easy path to walk. One of hypnotherapy’s core strengths is about helping clients to realise the changes that they want to make in their lives.

You see, often we have some ideas about the changes we need to make. If we are suffering from anxiety, we probably know that better risk assessments can help to alleviate our worries and concerns. If we are dealing with depression, we probably know that regret and self-criticism are not helpful to our progress. If we are dealing with phobias or trauma, we probably know that the actual immediate threat to our survival is not as real as it feels.

But there is a real difference between having some ideas about how to deal with our problems in theory, and actually taking the steps that are needed to make the changes we want. In addition, we may not actually know the causes of our problems, and the experience and support of a trained professional can be of real help.

Modern hypnotherapy approaches, as practised by Powerful Perspectives, use a strategic approach to hypnotherapy in seeking to help clients. This approach recognises that there are relatively common patterns of thinking and beliefs that can easily be adopted as coping mechanisms. These patterns can be helpful in their original context, but often outlive their usefulness and can become limiting patterns in our lives.

For example, a core element of anxiety is an over-active orientation towards the future, combined with an unwillingness to objectively deal with uncertainty, often assessing risks as more likely to occur or more likely to have catastrophic consequences. Each of these elements – future orientation, discomfort with uncertainty, and conservative risk assessment – has its place and is useful in other contexts. So a strategic approach helps the client to use their skills and resources in more useful ways, making more conscious decisions about when certain approaches are appropriate, and when other approaches are less appropriate.

Hypnotherapy can help because our subconscious mind tends to follow established patterns of thinking, feeling, behaviour and beliefs, even when those patterns are outdated and not longer useful. Hypnosis communicates more directly with our subconscious programming and can help change these patterns, often much more quickly than traditional psychological therapies.

You should be aware, however, that hypnotherapy is not a magic pill of any kind. While clients can and do make substantial and lasting changes much more quickly than other techniques, at the core of making any change is the client, and their willingness to commit the necessary time, patience and persistence to follow the changes through. These are most often changes in long-standing beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviour, so it’s unrealistic to expect major changes without a corresponding degree of commitment.

Change requires that the client actively desires the change, actively believes that the change is necessary now, and also that the client themselves is instrumental in the change. As long as the desired change is in line with these three elements, then a hypnotherapy approach can definitely help.

In our practice, we often help clients with the following conditions and challenges:

For more information, you can book a free online or in-person consultation to learn more about our approach, and how we can help you deal with your challenges and concerns.