Hypnosis carries with it a range different perceptions. This offering is not the same as Stage Hypnosis, men in top hats with piercing eyes and swirling cloaks. Leave behind your thoughts of being zapped or flipping a switch in your head to change your behaviour. It is also not about other people having power over the vulnerable. It should also be understood that this style of hypnotherapy is not a power play and that going into a trance is not a sign of weakness.
The trance state has been compared to day dreaming or getting lost in a good story. The use of hypnotherapy offers a different way of looking at your life and skills and the combination with strategic psychotherapy has been shown to have great benefits with a wide range of issues.
This was developed by Jay Hayley who worked with Milton Erickson. The principles built on Erickson’s work and is characterised by the offering a brief therapy which is future focussed, short term treatment.
The intervention focusses on you. The therapist will explore the idea that the problem is not a fixed or permanent thing and will help to uncover the resources you already possess and may also assist in identifying and exploring any skills gaps, this will help you to develop strategies and resources to learn the new skills you need for behaviour and perception change, learning new patterns to move through and away from the problem area.
You are the expert in what the problem is and how it looks in your life and this, along with an exploration of the non static, fluid nature of the problem, informs the intervention, which is tailored to you in setting out the resources you have so that you can work out which are helpful to you in and as a result can be expected within a handful of sessions.
This intervention cannot change the past, but can change the way you view it and assist with planning the future in a way that reduces the impact of the problem.
The use of individualised hypnotherapy addresses the issue in terms which are meaning full to you. Helping you to develop the tools to review the ideas and resources you have, in a relaxed and positive way.
The therapist acts as guide to point to you at your capabilities but you are the one who chooses if and how the resources and experience are brought to bear on the issue.
The altered mental state achieved during trance allows review your actions and capabilities in a new light and explore the resources you have to plan the next steps or give insights into the problem and new ways of seeing it.