Further Insight into Hypnosis

Ailsa Frank

Hypnotherapist

Sunlit chair and journal in a calm reflective room

Hypnotherapy is a collaborative process, not an automatic switch that guarantees change. Clear personal goals, suggestions that make sense to you and appropriate practice may support the work, but people’s needs and responses differ.

Older explanations often describe motivation, repetition and realistic suggestions as fixed rules. They are better understood as practical considerations to discuss with a practitioner, alongside safety, evidence and regular review.

Start with a goal that matters to you

It can be useful to identify what you would like to change and how you would notice progress. A goal such as “feel calmer” may become more workable when it is connected to a specific situation or behaviour.

Personal readiness may help somebody engage with treatment, but it is normal to feel uncertain or ambivalent. A responsible practitioner should explore that uncertainty without blame or pressure. Lack of immediate progress does not mean that a person has failed or did not “want it enough”.

Use collaborative, realistic suggestions

Hypnotic suggestions should be relevant to the agreed goal, compatible with your values and phrased in a way you can engage with. They might invite you to imagine responding differently, notice a useful sensation or rehearse a manageable next step.

Suggestions are not magic instructions. Extreme or implausible claims may be unhelpful, while specific and achievable ideas can be easier to explore. You remain able to accept, adapt or reject any suggestion.

Practice can build familiarity

Some approaches include self-hypnosis, imagery practice or an agreed recording between sessions. Repeating a skill may help it become more familiar, but there is no universal rule that everybody must listen every day or complete a set number of repetitions.

Never use a hypnosis or relaxation recording while driving, cycling, operating machinery or doing anything that needs your full attention. Stop and seek advice if an exercise causes distress or unwanted symptoms.

Review progress instead of promising results

Agreeing an observable outcome can make it easier to review whether the work is useful. This could involve a behaviour, a symptom diary, a confidence rating or how someone manages a particular situation.

If there is no meaningful improvement, the practitioner should reconsider the approach, discuss alternatives or recommend an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.

What does the evidence say?

Evidence for hypnosis is condition-specific. Some applications have encouraging evidence, while other claims are uncertain. Research on hypnosis for stopping smoking, for example, has not shown a clear advantage over other behavioural support.

Hypnotherapy should not be advertised as a guaranteed way to lose weight, stop smoking, eliminate anxiety, remove a phobia or improve memory. Appropriate medical and psychological assessment remains important.

Questions to ask before beginning

What qualifications and relevant experience does the practitioner have?
What is the proposed aim, and how will progress be measured?
What evidence supports this approach for the issue concerned?
When would another treatment or clinician be more appropriate?
What should happen if the exercises feel uncomfortable or are not helping?

Common questions

Do I have to believe in hypnosis?

You do not need unquestioning belief. It is more useful to understand the proposed process, give informed consent and be willing to test whether the approach is helpful.

Is one session always enough?

No. The appropriate number of sessions depends on the person, the goal and the treatment context. Avoid practitioners who guarantee success within a fixed number of sessions.

Must I listen to a recording every day?

No universal schedule suits everyone. Follow an agreed plan, review its effect and never listen during activities that require full attention.

As previously explained Hypnosis is used to change drinking habits, build self-confidence, stop smoking, eliminate anxiety, phobias and fears, lose weight and improve memory. Hypnosis and other hypnotic methods have been an important role in the pursuit of healing for thousands of years. In order to experience the successful use of hypnosis to reach personal growth and self-improvement, there are 3 key factors involved: self-motivation, repetition and realistic suggestions.

Hypnosis can only truly achieve its full objective when the subject is motivated to change. By this we mean the person seeking hypnosis MUST personally want to change. If a subject seeks hypnosis because family or friends want them to, it will not have the desired effect. You have to want to change within you. Many Hypnotists have written about people wanting hypnosis for weight loss or quit smoking because their husband or wife have asked, or their doctor has instructed them to do so. Often people do not respond as well to the hypnosis as those who really want to change for themselves. The clearer one's own desire for self-improvement is in their mind, the easier and more effective the hypnotic suggestions will change their everyday life and achieve the results they are looking for.

For Hypnosis to work well, repetition is vital. Fears, phobias, habits, memories are embedded deep inside our subconscious mind which is why repetition is so important in the process of hypnosis. One can not simply 'tap' into the subject's mind and access the feelings and emotions that cause habits such as smoking. By hearing the hypnotic suggestions on a daily basis, can one start to experience change? It is this process that explains why subjects are given a tape recording of their sessions so that they can listen back to it on a daily basis.

The third key factor in Hypnosis is that the suggestions must be realistic and believable. In order for the subject to consider a suggestion, it must be believable so that the mind can grasp it and accept it as a real possibility. For example, telling a subject seeking weight loss that all food is disgusting will not work. Their mind will not accept this as a real possibility because it is such a stretch of the imagination. Instead, it is more effective to say, certain foods will not taste as good as the time before. This is far more acceptable and believable for the subject to grasp. With repetition and self-motivation, certain foods will lose their taste and the control they have over the person will begin to break down.

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