Cognitive Hypnotherapy is a short-term, solutions-focussed therapy which helps to uncover your unconscious thinking patterns, giving you more choice about how to respond.
What happens in hypnotherapy?
The ‘deep trance’ that you might have seen in stage hypnosis is not what we’re going to do. You will remain completely aware throughout the process. You can’t be made to do, or say, anything that you don’t want to. You’ll simply be in a very relaxed state, often with your eyes closed, but that’s not a necessity, while we have a conversation. This relaxed state allows the more creative aspects of your mind to come to the fore and can enable you to reach understandings about your experience that might be more difficult otherwise. You might find that you can see some meaning in your thinking or behaviour that you hadn’t previously realised, even while it had an unconscious influence in your life.
What’s so interesting about our unconscious?
Often some of our behaviour or feelings don’t make a lot of sense to us, yet we find it almost impossible to make changes in a sustainable way. That’s because there’s an unconscious influence at work - a part of you that you’re not necessarily unaware of, trying to do what it thinks is best for you in whatever the particular situation is. When you’re smoking, eating too much, eating too little, choosing bad relationships, becoming angry, anxious or depressed for ‘no reason’… even biting your nails, or other compulsive and unconscious behaviours: it’s because part of your mind thinks that’s the best thing for you to do in that moment. Exploring those unconscious beliefs affords you the opportunity to make changes.