If you’re intrigued by the idea of hypnotherapy but aren’t 100% sure what it is, or what it involves, please read on. If you are wondering what is hypnotherapy used for, this article will explain more. So, whether you’re keen to quit smoking, ease anxiety or encourage healthy habits, hypnotherapy could well help. As a London hypnotherapist I help people with a range of concerns, get in touch to find out how hypnotherapy could help you also.
What challenges is hypnotherapy used for?
So, what is hypnotherapy? Hypnotherapy uses the power of suggestion to encourage positive change. As a hypnotherapist in London, I will use relaxation techniques to help you reach a state where the conscious part of your mind is relaxed. In so doing, your subconscious part is then more open to suggestion. During hypnotherapy I will use suggestive techniques (which in effect ‘talk’ to your subconscious) and so help encourage the changes you’re looking for.
What’s the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy?
Hypnosis refers to the process of inducing a trance to help promote communication between your conscious and subconscious mind. This can be done with the help of a professional, or by yourself i.e. self-hypnosis.
The term ‘hypnosis’ is often used interchangeably to refer to stage hypnosis – where an audience member may be hypnotised for amusement. However, this form of hypnotic suggestion is designed to elicit a more physical/external response whereas, typically, hypnosis is used to create a more psychological/internal response.
What is hypnotherapy not used for?
There are so many myths about hypnosis, many from tv and movies. Lets run though some important facts about hypnotherapy. Remember that hypnotherapy isn’t merely a stage trick you see on TV and in the movies that makes you do silly things. It can sincerely help you with real life problems.
The following points are particularly worth noting:
- No one can be hypnotised against their will.
- You are not out cold or asleep when hypnotised; you are merely in a dreamlike state, focused, and hearing every word I say.
- During hypnosis, or afterwards, you will NOT do or say anything you do not want to.
- For your benefit, you will only accept and act on positive suggestions that are intended for your highest benefit.
- You can choose to come back to full consciousness at any time. You cannot become stuck in hypnosis; it is not possible.
- You are in and out of a hypnotic state over a hundred times each day.
What is hypnotherapy used for?
Here are 12 challenges hypnotherapy can genuinely help you with. If you suffer or struggle or just need some support hypnotherapy is here for you.
1. Do You Frequently Bite Your Nails?
Have you found yourself unaware you have been biting your nails (fingers or toes)? Are you embarrassed by the look of your nails and maybe avoid situations where people may see your nails? The subconscious uses nail biting to cope with issues like boredom, anxiety, and stress, which instead of being a solution, it reinforces the negative feelings it is meant to alleviate. Shame, isolation, frustration, anxiety, and low self-esteem are all emotions experienced by those who suffer from this behaviour creating a vicious cycle which can have a negative effect on overall quality of life and relationships, leading to further nail biting to alleviate these feelings.
Since hypnotherapy puts you into a trance-like state and delves into your subconscious, it is a good treatment for a coping mechanism (nail biting) that is used by the subconscious. It can change a negative habit into a positive one by using the habit structure and changing its subject matter. Hypnotherapy also helps you develop the determination, confidence, and patience it takes to watch your nails grow back, not pick at your growing cuticles and nails, and to keep going even if you find yourself biting or picking again.
2. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
OCD involves obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours which affects anyone at any age, but usually occurs during early adulthood. These unwanted thoughts or urges enter your mind repeatedly, usually worrying or upsetting and lead to the urge, or compulsion to carry out an action, physical (like hand washing) or mental (like counting). By carrying out the action you temporarily alleviate the feelings of the stress and anxiety, but those feelings return, and the cycle starts again.
Hypnotherapy can help alleviate OCD with techniques to help reduce your stress/anxiety, such as visualization and breathing. The goal is to reach a state of calm, as with OCD you tend to be very anxious/fidgety, we want to help you relax. Take back control of your life.
3. Does Your Child Suffer from Bedwetting?
First, take a breath. Children of all ages can suffer from bedwetting. What can happen as a result is interrupted sleep causing tiredness and irritability, excessive personal washing, hesitation to attend sleepovers and camps, concern of bullying, loss of self-esteem and/or self-confidence. They may feel a sense of shame, like it is their fault they are wetting the bed. There can be some deep emotions hiding behind it all.
Children tend to be open to hypnotherapy as they are quite imaginative to begin with, which is helpful during sessions. Using hypnotherapy can help give your child power to treat themselves and build confidence and self-esteem. It can help uncover underlying issues that have caused the bedwetting and help to bring the hiding emotions to the surface and give your child control.
4. Panic Attacks
When your body responds to fear it is an exaggeration of the natural response to excitement, stress, or danger turning into a panic attack. For those experiencing the attack and those around them, panic attacks are frightening. Typical attacks last between 5 and 20 minutes but they can come in waves, lasting up to two hours. Predispositions for panic attacks can be modelling, life experiences, circumstance, and substance abuse.
Hypnotherapy can help treat panic attacks by treating the anxiety behind them to help rebuild self-belief, boost self-confidence, and reduce your feelings of fear and worry. Using hypnosis, we can find what triggers your panic attacks and work to find positive changes to these triggers.
5. Gambling
Playing the slots at the casino can be exciting, especially when you get the rush of a win. But what about when the win starts to crash? Gambling addiction is the urge to continuously gamble, despite negative consequences or desire to stop. So, if you are asking what is hypnotherapy used for, addictions such as gambling is certainly in the list of answers.
Relationships, social life, mental health can be compromised having a big impact on your life. But you are not alone, and you can get help. Take back control, rebuild your relationships and your life. Hypnotherapy can help with relaxation techniques to identify triggers that led to the addiction. We can help you work through these triggers and help you get back control.
6. Relationships
We crave intimacy, connection, and deep conversation as social beings, so when our relationships are in danger, it is no surprise we can be deeply affected. No matter if our relationships are romantic or platonic, our emotions are attached and can be complicated. Experiences we have when we are young can affect our adult relationships as we learn unhelpful behaviours and can be subconsciously affected by past events.
Conflict within relationships
Hypnotherapy helps you get to the source of your conflict and determine any patterns of behaviour kept in your subconscious that may have contributed to the conflict. If there are, we can offer suggestions to help encourage new ways of thinking.
Toxic Relationships
Hypnotherapy can help build your self-esteem and confidence, to address any unhelpful patterns of thinking or behaviour which can allow you to move on and reconnect with yourself and your needs.
Moving on From a Break-Up
Hypnotherapy helps to reframe your negative thoughts and behaviours and encourages you to see your break-up from a new, more positive perspective, helping you learn from the experience for you to grow.
Dating Confidence
Strong sense of self-belief is key when you are dating, allowing you to not settle for anything less than feeling confident in knowing what you want, and deserve. Hypnotherapy can help to reframe your negative or limiting beliefs you may have of yourself (like “I don’t deserve love”) into positive suggestions increasing your confidence and self-belief.
7. Low Self-Esteem
Suffering from low self-esteem? Though these thoughts may have been ingrained deep within us and may feel like they are difficult to change, it takes work and can be done. Developing self-compassion, setting small challenges and hypnotherapy certainly is used for this.
Hypnotherapy can help to change our self-esteem thoughts about ourselves by delving deep into the subconscious. We can find the root cause of when these low thoughts started and work to reframe the subconscious’ negative thoughts by offering positive suggestions.
8. Public Speaking
If you avoid things that affect your day-to-day life such as asking for directions, attending job interviews, talking to the store clerk, you may have a phobia going beyond making speeches.
Hypnotherapy can help with your fear of public speaking by getting to the root of the cause of the issue through your subconscious. Using suggestion and visualisation techniques help encourage positive thinking, boost your confidence, and reduce your anxiety to help feel calm and composed while speaking in public.
9. Quit Smoking
For many, once you start it is awfully hard to stop, even after trying many ways of quitting. The biggest challenge is being ready. If you are not ready, it can lead to relapse and having the feeling as if you are a failure. You are most likely to succeed when you are committed to the decision to quit.
Hypnotherapy can help break the negative behaviours and thinking patterns that are associated with smoking, such as using it as a coping mechanism to relieve stress. By peaking into your subconscious, we can see what any underlying issues may have caused the smoking to start in the first place. We help to focus on the change of how you view cigarettes and breaking the routine of smoking.
10. Sports Performance
For many athletes there is a ton of pressure on them to strive to be the best in their specific sport, especially if they are children coming from their parents and/or coach. Sports performance is just as much mental as it is physical.
Sports hypnotherapy integrates cognitive and sports science methodologies, including areas of biomechanics, nutrition, physiology, and sports psychology helping athletes with self-doubt, dealing with other emotional issues, focusing on positive reinforcement, especially when it comes to healing from injury, and high performance. In a list of what is hypnotherapy used for, performance under pressure and concentration will feature strongly.
11. Insomnia and Sleep Issues
Sleep? What is that? Insomnia can happen anytime, and for some people it can last for years before they seek any kind of help. It is so important to not only your physical health but your mental health as well. Long term sleep deprivation can bring on many consequences to your body.
Hypnotherapy, along with good sleep hygiene, can help ease your sleep issues. Working to understand the problem in your subconscious, we can see what triggered the insomnia. The use of post-hypnotic suggestion and imagery may help to guide you toward shutting your brain off for the night toward getting a good night sleep.
12. Eating Disorders
There are many types of eating disorders and many suffer from them. They can be extremely destructive and, in some cases, fatal. Eating disorders are not simply about the relationship with food, they stem from body image, how others perceive how we look and how we feel about ourselves. I frequently help people at my London practice with binge eating, overeating and cutting down on unwanted snacking and comfort eating.
Hypnotherapy can help by delving into any underlying issues that may have led to the cause of the eating disorder. We can use hypnotherapy with the power of suggestion to approach specific eating disorders with a multi-prong approach. Since hypnotherapy is helpful in aiding in weight loss, we can use hypnotherapy to help in achieving the target weight using a more realistic, healthy approach.
What is hypnotherapy used for? So many things!
Hypnotherapy helps us take back control of what we already had deep within us. The intellectual mind is the part that is generally positive. So, hypnosis helps give the ability to recognize the connection between the primitive brain and stress/anxiety to regulate it.
Hypnotherapy can open you up to a world of possibility helping to uncover any subconscious reasons why unwanted patterns or habits are occurring in your life, or what might trigger something. It can help to heal, bring peace and calm, and much more.
If you would like to find out what hypnotherapy can do for you, get in touch today. I see people at my London hypnotherapy practice, who wish to make all sorts of positive changes.
