Hypnotherapy, or the use of hypnosis in therapy, has been used for many years to help people overcome any problem with an emotional underpinning.
Whether it's unpleasant emotions, behaviours that cause you problems, or a psychosomatic illness, hypnotherapy helps with problems ranging from stress and pulling hair, to IBS and sports improvement, to confidence problems and fears of public speaking.
The most popular treatments, of course, are for help with overeating and smoking.
The use of hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is simply the use of hypnosis in therapy.
Hypnosis is a powerful way to change deeply-held beliefs and behaviours. This includes the way you normally think about things, and how you respond to the world around you.
- Have you ever noticed a situation that makes one person really angry, while another person isn't bothered by it? Same situation, two different responses. If you have, then you'll realise that in fact it's not the situation that makes someone angry, but rather the response to the situation.
- If you've played sport, you'll know that it's really easy to sabotage yourself. Whether it's golf, badminton or rugby, having self-doubt or "that voice in my head" can get you to miss easy shots, and play well below your abilities.
- Do you have IBS? You might have noticed how stress worsens it.
- Stress migraines often don't respond to pain tablets. Hypnosis is good not only for the pain, but also to remove the cause of stress migraines in the first place.
- Do you overeat, or eat junk, because you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed? How do you grab hold of those feelings and take control again?
Hypnosis can help with all of these, because it addresses the place where the problems start: Your own mind.
Can you use hypnosis for everything, then?
No, of course not!
Hypnosis is good for anything that has an emotional or psychological aspect. That includes psychosomatic illnesses (illness caused by emotional problems rather than something medical).
For example, when dealing with pain, hypnosis doesn't stop the pain itself (your body still feels it), but hypnotherapy can stop the feelings of pain that you feel. That's one reason that it works so well with giving birth; it lets a pregnant woman's body continue to work as it should, without drugs, while allowing her to enjoy the experience without pain.
Some physical problems have, at their root, causes that are entirely or partly under your control. While hypnosis cannot cure cancer, it can help you to reduce stress and take control of your diet – those are both major contributing causes to modern cancer.
For some problems, such as smoking, hypnotherapy has the best overall results. In other cases, such as with OCD, hypnotherapy isn't the best choice. Some problems get best results when you use a combination of hypnosis and other therapies. You can talk to your doctor or a hypnotherapist to discuss any issues that you are concerned about.
What about stage hypnosis?
Stage hypnosis, or its relative, street hypnosis, is when you someone uses hypnosis for entertainment. The performer's task is to add comedy and mystery.
As such, although it shows just how powerful hypnosis can be, it doesn't show how hypnosis in a therapeutic or self-improvement environment works. It can be a bit misleading for that reason.
