People can get stuck in a trance and never wake up (when did you last hear of someone dying ‘frozen in a trance’)

Hypnotherapists can turn you into a killing machine (yeah, that old chestnut)

They can make you do anything (if that were true, I’d be rich – see our article on this one)

When you’re in a trance, the hypnotherapist will make you dance like a chicken for their own amusement (firstly, they can’t and secondly, I have far better things to do) See the same article as above

These myths are so ridiculous and stupid, I’m getting bored of writing them.

Your hypnotherapist can often still help.  By asking questions and using hypnosis to find the specifics, your problem can often be pinpointed.

Before you go for your first session, you may find it helpful to ask yourself a few questions:

If you had to briefly describe your life, what would you say?
How is your life affected?  Is it your home life, work life, social life?  Do you feel restricted in some way?
What thoughts follow you through your life?  Sometimes we have little niggles that hold us back and make us worry or doubt ourselves
When did you start feeling like this and what was going on in and around your life at the time?
What makes you feel good or what are you proud of in your life?  This question is just as important as the others.  It’s important to make sure we spend time thinking about the positive side of our life as well as our problems

Through answering these questions before you see the hypnotherapist, it will help you get to the root of your issue faster and give you both some sort of form to start with.

Both use hypnosis but I believe that the term ‘hypnotist’ should be reserved for stage hypnotists, i.e. they use hypnosis for entertainment, whereas a ‘hypnotherapist’ as the name implies uses hypnosis for therapeutic purposes.

Having an NHS Provider Number doesn’t mean or guarantee that the hypnotherapist will receive any work from the NHS or that the NHS approves or intends to use them at any point so just having an NHS number doesn’t really mean anything. In fact, they’re quite easy to get. All the therapist has to do is apply to the National Administrative Codes Service (NACS). There are not even any checks on the qualifications, all the applicant has to send is:

Name & address
Contact details – telephone and email
Name of therapy provided

The form is available online so you can see how simple it is. Local GP’s have the autonomy to decide whether or not they want to recommend complementary treatments and who they choose to recommend.

Having an NHS number is a good thing as the hypnotherapist can accept referrals from your GP and you can get hypnotherapy on the NHS. However, nobody should be using their NHS number as a status symbol.

It all looks very impressive, doesn’t it?  Although it looks impressive, it doesn’t mean they’re all good though.  Some letters represent qualifications and some represent the organisations they’re a member of, so technically, someone could do one qualification in hypnosis, join ten organisations and look much more impressive than someone who did a diploma and their masters and joined just one organisation.

There is such a vast range of letters available, it’s difficult to de-mystify them all but here is a short list of just a small selection:

Dip. Hyp / Dip Hypno – this is a diploma in hypnotherapy, but there is likely to be one or two letters with this indicating the training school.  It’s important to ask the hypnotherapist about their training – see our earlier article on How to Choose a Good Hypnotherapist

Masters Hyp / Ma Hypno – this is a masters in hypnotherapy, the highest qualification available.  Again, letters with this indicate the training school

MBIH – Member of the British Institute of Hypnotherapy

NRH – National Register of Hypnotherapists (with the Working Group for Hypnotherapy Regulation)

NRAH – National Register of Advanced Hypnotherapists

GHR Reg – registered with the General Hypnotherapy Register

GQHP – General Qualification in Hypnotherapy Practice (with the GHR)

SQHP – Senior Qualification in Hypnotherapy Practice (with the GHR)

We could go on but they are the main ones.  Some letters are worth their weight in gold, but many sadly there are also some that aren’t.  In the UK, anybody can create a training company and dish out a diploma, so we recommend asking the hypnotherapist about their experience and training instead.  Similarly, only use hypnotherapists on one of the two main registers, as detailed in our article on choosing a hypnotherapist.

Firstly, everyone is capable of visualisation to one degree or another, although if you do find it difficult then there are different techniques available that hypnotherapists can use.

To test if you can visualise, try this exercise.  Close your eyes and try to describe to someone how your kitchen looks.  Or, close your eyes and tell someone how many windows there are in your house.

How well did you do?  I imagine you managed to complete the exercises to some degree.  If you found it very difficult, visualisation is not the only technique a hypnotherapist can use and you can still experience hypnosis.

Although the answer is yes, anybody can learn how to hypnotise someone there is more to hypnotherapy than simply putting someone in a trance. Learning to put someone in a trance safely and learning how to terminate the trance is surprisingly simple.

If you aren’t sure, many training organisations offer short courses or taster workshops so you can make sure that it’s right for you and find out what the training is like before you commit to a full course.

Within hypnotherapy, there are many techniques to learn. It does take practice, which is why you must find a classroom course with plenty of practical training hours. Similarly, it is a skill so you must ‘use it or lose it’.

Common problems such as stopping smoking, losing weight or overcoming phobias tend to be just one or two sessions because the underlying issues and methods to resolve them are similar for the majority of people. The processes are also well documented for hypnotherapists and one of the first things someone learns when they train as a hypnotherapist.

More unusual or complex complaints depend on several factors. They can depend on the type of person you are, how familiar the hypnotherapist is with dealing with the issue and sometimes, depending on the issue, if the hypnotherapist can find the right approach for your unconscious mind. For example, ‘reframing’ is a common method and is used to ask the unconscious mind to think about a situation in a different light, but the hypnotherapist needs to reframe the situation in a way that makes sense to your unconscious. In reframing, what makes sense to one person may not work for another.

I think what you have to remember is that the hypnotherapist doesn’t actually ‘do’ anything. What the hypnotherapist does it to communicate with your unconscious mind and help your unconscious to find the solution within yourself. So, sometimes a hypnotherapist uses several methods and it’s just one of those methods that just ‘clicks’ and makes sense to your unconscious mind. For complex issues, each session can reveal a little more to the hypnotherapist.

In my opinion, it’s important to find a hypnotherapist that you can relate to and feel you can trust. To answer the question, I would say that most issues can be resolved in a maximum of about 12 sessions but I wouldn’t expect the hypnotherapist to be able to give you a concrete number of sessions at the first meeting because each person is different.

Imagine a worker has been moved from a large, busy department to a smaller department or maybe asked to work alone on a project.  This worker may start feeling undervalued and subsequently lose confidence.  However, one day his boss makes a passing comment that he’s so glad this worker is in charge of that project as he couldn’t trust just anybody to do it.  All of a sudden, the worker realises that he isn’t undervalued at all and that the move is a vote of confidence in his ability and he now sees it as an opportunity to impress and prove himself.

The situation is still the same but the worker feels differently about it.  The situation has been reframed.

Our present frame depends upon our perception of a particular situation or event and so reframing is about changing our perception.

To give an example more in line with the context of hypnotherapy, imagine that a client visits a hypnotherapist to help them with weight loss.  This particular client can’t seem to motivate herself to start again and complains that she ‘just keeps putting it off’.

Under hypnosis, a hypnotherapist could communicate with the client’s unconscious mind and suggest that putting things off could be a great skill to have and that she could use this skill to put off over-eating or eating desserts (or whatever food the client most wishes to stop eating).  If the client’s unconscious mind accepts this, the client will have no problem starting on their diet.

Hypnotherapy is when a hypnotherapist uses hypnosis for therapeutic purposes.  Hypnotherapy is very different to stage hypnotism, when hypnosis is used for entertainment purposes and to make others laugh.  Our earlier article The Big Difference explains the difference between stage hypnotism and hypnotherapy.  In fact, the two are so different that if you were to ask a hypnotherapist to go on stage and perform stage hypnotism, 99% of them probably wouldn’t be able to.