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Hypnotherapy- Frequently Asked Questions

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Q. Can anybody be hypnotised?
A. Nearly everyone can be hypnotised. The exceptions are: those who are educationally subnormal or suffering from senility, very young children, and hard drug addicts, and anybody under the influence of large amounts of alcohol.

Q. How do you hypnotise somebody?
A. Usually by a voice induction, though there are various other methods such as strobe lights, rotating spirals and so on. Usually the voice is used as well, though. There is no special way of speaking, no 'incantations' or magical words, and the accent is quite often on producing a very relaxed state of mind. Mostly, a slow and soothing approach is taken but there are many therapists who use their normal speed of speech and may even step it up a bit or use a fairly 'crisp' delivery if they prefer the 'command' method of induction. Sometimes, too, they will employ - with permission - the use of touch in various different ways, commonly of the subjects hands or forehead. Mostly, the client will close their eyes fairly soon in the induction, but an individual can quite easily be hypnotised with their eyes open. After hypnosis is induced (usually in a matter of a few minutes) a deepener routine might be used to deepen the state. Many therapists work from scripts, especially when they are new to the profession, but most soon build up a store of suitable scripts and stories in memory to recall as needed.

Q. Can people be made to forget things, like suggestions or the session itself?
A. You cannot actually 'make' anybody do anything in hypnosis. Hypnosis gives nobody any power over the person who is hypnotised. Theoretically, you could suggest to a hypnotised person that they would forget the content of the session. But it is not reliable by any means, and it is most unlikely that you could create a lasting and total amnesia.

Q. Is it good for performance enhancement?
A. Hypnosis, with the right sort of adjunct work, EXCELS at performance enhancement of all types! Here are just a few of the things with which it can make profound improvement:
• Sporting performance
• Presentation/speaking skills
• Memory and Concentration
• Stage performance
• Study
• Exams and tests

Q. Is there anybody who should not be hypnotised?
A. To a large extent, it depends on the sort of therapy being employed. Some say that anybody suffering from epilepsy should never be hypnotised, but I have never heard of an epileptic fit being triggered by hypnosis. Where psychotic individuals are concerned, care needs to be exercised and regression/analytical therapy should most definitely not be employed. This type of therapy is also best avoided with pregnant women. I also will not use regression or analysis with heart attack/stroke victims.

Q. How does it work?
A. Although there has been much speculation and theory over the years, all that is truly known about the phenomenon of hypnosis is that it allows the conscious critical faculty to be bypassed, allowing a 'gateway' to the subconscious mind.

Q. What is hypnosis anyway?
A. The answer is very similar to the above question. Some people believe it is nothing more than 'social compliance' (doing what you believe you should be doing) while others insist that it is a state of altered consciousness. There is no scientifically measurable change in brain wave patterns during hypnosis, as compared with normal consciousness. An individual in the hypnotised state usually feels very relaxed, but this is not necessarily the case. They will often feel as they are half asleep and at the moment they open their eyes at the end of a session there is sometimes an awareness, for a spilt second, that 'something' had been different.

Q. What does it feel like to be hypnotised?
A. Actually, it doesn't. For the vast majority of people there is actually no such thing as a 'hypnotised feeling' - the vast majority of people would insist afterwards that they had not 'gone under'. After a few sessions, though, most people start to become aware of how the state feels to them. It may be that they feel excessively heavy or light. Their arms and legs may feel rigid, as if they have been moved into a different position, or even absent. They can sometimes feel other strange phenomena, too - sensations of floating, whirling and/or spinning are not unusual, or of some part of the body being distorted in some way or as if they have become very small/big. Most people suffer some form of time distortion, usually in the ratio of around 2.5:1, so that after the session there is a feeling that it was much shorter than it actually was. Typically, a 50 minute session would feel like 20 minutes.

Q. How can you tell if somebody is hypnotised?
A. There are several external signs, though few people show all of them. Some of the most noticeable are: A facial flush, total immobility and relaxation, rapid eye movement, eyelid flicker, enhanced salivation (causing frequent swallowing), slowed respiration, drooping lower jaw.

Q. Can you make anybody do things they don't want to?
A. In my opinion, definitely not, but there is considerable conjecture about this. It is often said that hypnosis cannot breach the moral code, though there are therapists and hypnotists who claim otherwise - but of course, we cannot truly know what another person's moral code/values consists of. People will frequently do things they would not normally do, though this does not mean it is something they do not want to do; hypnosis lowers inhibition, so it could be just something that that individual was too inhibited to do in the normal way, even though he/she was not averse to it.

Q. Can you get 'stuck' in hypnosis?
A. No, you definitely cannot! If you were hypnotised and the hypnotist just walked away and left you, you would simply bring yourself out of the state whenever you wanted to.

Q. Is it dangerous in any way?
A. Not at all, in the hands of a properly trained Clinical Hypnosis Practitioner. There are some circumstances that would be undesirable with a non-trained or poorly-trained operator, but nothing serious could happen, in any case.

Q. How does hypnotherapy differ from stage hypnosis?
A. The hypnosis is the same, though many believe it is not. But it is the 'therapy' part that is different - the stage hypnotist is out to entertain others. The hypnotherapist is out to make somebody's life more enjoyable to live. It should be noted that any Hypnotherapist performing Stage Hypnosis will not be allowed to be registered with the BSCH (British Society of Clinical Hypnosis)

Q. What's the difference between hypnotherapy and psychotherapy?
A. Usually, psychotherapy makes changes to the subconscious by using the understanding and imagery of the conscious mind. Hypnotherapy attempts to bypass the conscious mind to a large extent, working directly with the subconscious. For this reason, hypnotherapy is often quicker than psychotherapy. But it's 'horses for courses' - there are some clients who will respond better to psychotherapy and for them, this would probably be a better form of treatment. Usually, these individuals are very analytical and guarded.

Q. How long does a cure produced by hypnosis actually last?
A. It depends on how much subconscious change was brought about in the first place. If a change has been made to a flawed fundamental belief system, then the cure will be permanent and last for a life-time. If only superficial changes have been made, then it might be only a few days or weeks. This is why direct suggestion therapy sometimes fails miserably. The best therapy is where the/an underlying cause has been resolved before any suggestion work is carried out at all.

Q. What is 'direct suggestion' therapy?
A. The therapist simply tells the client, in the state of hypnosis, that whatever it is they want to do they will now be able to. Or whatever it is that they want to stop doing, they now can. It can be effective with simple problems like smoking, nail-biting, confidence for an exam/test, etc. But generally, it is best to tackle the underlying cause of the difficulty first.

Q. Is it successful with real phobias?
A. Usually immensely so, if the right sort of therapy is employed.

Q. Does it always work?
A. No, no more than any other form of medicine, complimentary or orthodox does. A responsible therapist will soon detect when it is not going to and discharge that client so that they may seek the help they need elsewhere. Another hypnotherapist might produce the desired result where the first one could not, because of the different client/therapist 'mix'.

Q. How long does it take to produce a result?
A. It depends on far too many factors to make a bald statement about this. It can be as few as one session for a simple problem, to as many as... well, that depends on the ethics and skills of the therapist involved. A responsible, properly trained, therapist will not keep a client in therapy longer than necessary.

Q. Do you really go into a trance? If so, how deep? Are you in any way unconscious?
A. I don't actually like the word 'trance', because it is easily misunderstood; it is in common use, however, and a hypnotised individual is, technically, in a trance. But you are not aware of this trance state, any more than you are aware of it when you intently watch something on TV or immerse yourself in a book or newspaper to the point where you don't hear someone calling you.
These are both trance states in which you are aware of the object of interest only, and it is almost identical to the hypnotic 'trance'. It is MOST DEFINITELY NOT the trance you see on films and TV sometimes where somebody is staring glassy-eyed with no idea of where they are or what they are doing. The depth of trance varies from one individual to another and it is often considered to be relatively unimportant from a therapy point of view. You are not unconscious in any way - unless you go to sleep, which is not unknown! Then, you would simply awake when asked to by the therapist.

Q. Can somebody's mind be too strong?
A. No. The stronger the mind the better the ability to focus and concentrate, which makes the hypnotised state easier to achieve. The statement 'My mind is too strong to be hypnotised' is usually based on fear and the individuals who say this are often the best subjects of all! It is not difficult to resist being hypnotised and needs no specific strength of mind at all. It is getting into hypnosis that takes the mental work!

Q. Can anybody learn to be a hypnotist, or is it a 'gift'?
A. Forget those stories or articles where it is stated that somebody has the 'gift' of hypnosis! It takes hardly any time at all for anybody to learn how to hypnotise another, though some people are better at it than others, just as in any other skill. It is learning what to do with someone once they are hypnotised that takes the time and training; learning how to deal with different personality types, learning how to discover what really ails an individual (sometimes different entirely to what they say or believe is their problem), learning how to decide on the right sort of therapy, and learning how to terminate therapy responsibly when it becomes obvious that in any one case it is not going to produce the desired result.

Q. Can you hypnotise someone without them knowing it?
A. You can, if you have the skills to do so. The use of 'hypnotic language patterns' and pacing and leading body language will do it. But you still could not get that person to do anything with hypnosis that they would not do without it. Hypnosis merely overcomes inhibition and the 'conscious critical faculty' - the part of our thought processes which tends to limit our behaviour or belief system.

Q. What exactly is 'Past Life Regression'?
A. Theoretically, a look back to a lifetime experienced earlier in history - this can be thousands of years earlier, or maybe only a short while back, just before the current life span began. It is claimed that there is a therapeutic value in such experiences, in that they may account for certain psychological difficulties in current life. Numerous attempts have been made to prove the validity of various PLRs, but this has never been achieved - there has always been the possibility of the experience being nothing more than the recall of a long-forgotten memory from childhood in THIS life. Many experimenters are at pains to point out that they DO NOT CLAIM that a PLR is evidence of a previous existence for the individual concerned, only an awareness of a set of circumstances that occurred before that individual was born.

Q. Can hypnosis be used to create/trigger dreams?
A. Sometimes, though this tends to be somewhat unreliable. There has been much experiment with the use of hypnosis to create 'lucid dream states' (in which the dreamer KNOWS s/he is dreaming) but there has been no conclusive evidence that it works.

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