CaptainCanuck

Hypnotherapy has an excellent track-record of getting to people to quit smoking. That surprises me, because there aren’t a lot of good hypnotherapists out there! As a hypnotherapist, I want people to have a good experience, so I thought I’d give you a few tips on how to choose a hypnotherapist, and what to expect from hypnotherapy. These are my personal opinions.

When choosing a hypnotherapist:

• Ask the Hypnotherapist (HT) if they do rapid inductions. If they don't, your hypnotherapist is probably incompetent. A slow induction is okay during the first few sessions, but after that it's a waste of time.
  

• Ask your HT if they do 'regression' or 'parts therapy'. If they don't, they are, in my opinion, lacking some of the most powerful tools that HT's can use.
  

• Ask how long it will take to see results. If you aren't promised results within 6 - 7 sessions, then your HT is probably incompetent.
  

Be wary of psychologists/psychotherapists who use hypnotherapy. Often they feel that hypnotherapy is just one of the 'tools' in their toolbox. This means that they might not be as proficient at using it as a regular HT. However, if you find a psychologist or psychotherapist that really loves hypnosis, you've probably struck gold.

What to expect in hypnotherapy:

• The most common misconception is that you loose consciousness in hypnosis. You don't. You can see, hear, talk, and think in hypnosis. Occasionally some people forget parts of their sessions, but it's not that common.
  

• Hypnosis feels great! Most of my clients come out of a session feeling fantastic. Try scheduling an appointment during the low-point of your day (afternoon for most people) and you'll come out of it very refreshed.
  

• Hypnosis can be emotional. Sometimes we go back to painful memories using hypnosis. This can often be quite un-emotional, or it can be very dramatic. It's a purge, and always at the end of the session clients feel much, much better than they did.
  

With regards to smoking, a hypnotherapist has to uncover and address all the needs that smoking fulfills, even if it’s just a false perception that smoking fulfills these needs.

For example, many smokers feel like smoking relaxes them. It doesn’t matter that smoking technically does the opposite (it’s a stimulant); the perception is that it’s stress relieving. That perception – and the need to relax - has to be dealt with in hypnosis.

Also, it’s important to address each and every situation where a smoker smokes automatically, such as in the morning with a coffee, in the car, on the telephone. This is where hypnosis shines, because these are such ‘automatic’ behaviors, and hard to address without hypnosis.

If needs and automatic behavior aren’t specifically addressed, then hypnotherapy may not last. Many hypnotherapists have high initial success rates with quitting smoking, but if you follow their clients for a longer time, they relapse. This is because the hypnotherapists haven’t been thorough.

Another key area that a hypnotist has to work with is the feeling that many smokers have those cigarettes will be ‘missed’ in the future, or that life won’t be as good or enjoyable without cigarettes. In other words, they feel like they’re depriving themselves. As a hypnotherapist, I can create a very vivid and motivating image for the subconscious mind to focus on - an image of the future where everything is better without cigarettes: food, sex, energy etc. etc.

There are more techniques involved in getting people to give up smoking, but I’ll leave it there for now. If you have more questions, please message me; I love discussing hypnosis and hypnotherapy.

Hypnotherapy is effective for weight-loss. If you want to read a recent article, google 'gastric band' and hypnotherapy'. As hypnotherapist, I wouldn't use this method, but shows how effective hypnotherapy can be.

However, most people have a bad experience with hypnotherapy. This frustrates me, so I'm going to post some pointers on how to choose a good hypnotherapist. What follows is my own personel view.

• Ask the Hypnotherpist (HT) if they do rapid inductions. If they don't, your hypnotherapist is probably incompetent. A slow induction is okay durring the first few sessions, but after that it's a waste of time.
  
• Ask your HT if they do 'regression' or 'parts therapy'. If they don't, they are, in my opinion, lacking some of the most powerful tools that HT's can use.
  
• Ask how long it will take to see results. If you aren't promised results within 6 - 7 sessions, then your HT is probably incompetent.
  

Don't pay too much attention to accreditation. Good training is, from what I can tell, relatively rare. Use your intuition about the HT, and question them closely.

Be wary of pyschologists/psychotherapists who use hypnotherapy. Often they feel that hypnotherapy is just one of the 'tools' in their toolbox. This means that they might not be as proficient at using it as a regular HT. However, if you find a psychologist or psychotherapist that really loves hypnosis, you've probably struck gold.

What to expect in hypnotherapy:

• The most common misconception is that you loose conciousness in hypnosis. You don't. You can see, hear, talk, and think in hypnosis. Occassionaly some people forget parts of thier sessions, but it's not that common.
  
• Hypnosis feels great! Most of my clients come out of a session feeling fantastic. Try scheduling an appointment durring the low-point of your day (afternoon for most people) and you'll come out of it very refreshed.
  
• Hypnosis can be emotional. Sometimes we go back to painful memories using hypnosis. This can often be quite un-emotional, or it can be very dramatic. It's a purge, and always at the end of the session clients feel much, much better than they did.
  

I believe that most people over-eat because they don't want to feel negative feelings. If these feelings aren't dealt with there will always be a problem; there will always be a battle within the self. Using hypnosis I've had fantastic results in lessening or even eliminating these 'intolerable' feelings that drive people to eat. If clients stop feeling bad, they don't over-eat. It's as simple as that.

I hope this information will help anybody looking for a hypnotherapist.

I've been doing some great work with hypnosis and alcoholism. It addresses the spiritual and psychological side of the addiction.

My approach is simple: people drink because they don't want to feel bad. It's amazing, but in hypnosis we can go back to the root causes of the 'bad feelings' and release them. Sometimes this can be as simple as being a baby, wanting to be picked up and held by mother, but the baby is ignored. Many of these causes happen before the age of 5.

Now, I'm not sure that all these memories are completely accurate; there's no way to say without some kind of independant verification. Really that's not the point. The images/memories are a powerful representation of emotional pain that can be released in deep trance.

This work is cathartic - which means that while in trance, my clients my often begin to shake, or there body might begin to hurt, or they may even start to sob and cry very dramatically.

When it's over, they feel good. The urge to drink is less, and their sense of 'aliveness' and spiritual connection has grown. Sometimes dramatic results can happen in a few sessions, sometimes it takes more time.

Much of this work is based of of hypnotherapy that was done after WWII, in order to help people with battle fatigue (now called post-truamatic stress disorder). It works, it's proven to work.

I enjoy the work I do, and this post in not really meant as an ad... I just want to show that there are other paths that can help.

Addiction has pshychological as well as physical components. The physical symptoms can be treated by a variety of drugs and the muscle relaxant baclofen might be a nice addition to this group of treatments.

Unfortunately the reasons why many people turn to drugs or drink can't be cured by another drug- at least in my experience. These reasons for the original fall into addiction will still be there once the person has entered recovery and in my experience this is the reason why so many addicts/drunks fall off the wagon.

I agree Garro.

My alcoholism is/was three-fold - Physical, Psychological and Spiritual.

There was a drug that took away the physical cravings - Naltrexone - but I never got sober.

There was a drug that helped the psychological problems - valium - but I never got sober.