Evidence-based psychological therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy
Modern evidence-based hypnotherapy has a solid foundation based on thousands of clinical research studies and is entirely compatible with current theories of psychology. It is recognised for its therapeutic value by the British Psychological Society and the British Medical Association. Hypnotherapy is the harnessing of our natural pre-disposition to being suggestible for therapeutic gain.
When a person ‘enters into hypnosis’, this is done in a highly collaborative manner, after a lengthy, discussion with the therapist about goals. The hypnotherapist then uses this discussion to create a series of suggestions for changing thoughts, feelings and behaviours combined with suggestions of confidence and relaxation. The client only accepts the suggestions that they want to. In this regard, it could be stated that all hypnosis is actually self-hypnosis.
Hypnosis dovetails extremely well with the therapeutic model of CBT which explores how patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviour are interconnected. In CBT, the client and therapist discuss where unhelpful patterns have developed and what changes could be useful. Hypnotherapy then offers a useful technique to make these changes. For example, hypnotherapy can offer the practise of ‘imaginal rehearsal’ , i.e. where a client begins the process of changing responses to certain situations by first practicing these in their imagination whilst in hypnosis.
Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy also offers an interesting development on the ideas of CBT by describing unhelpful thoughts, beliefs and behaviours as forms of ‘negative self-hypnosis’ that we have acquired through our early experiences.
There is evidence that the combination of hypnosis and CBT is more effective that CBT alone. Every time there has been a comparison of the effectiveness of CBT versus CBT combined with hypnotherapy, the latter has proven to be more effective