Is hypnotherapy sessions better than traditional counselling?

Many people – not only potential clients but people whom I meet elsewhere – are very curious about what hypnotherapy is.

Some are positive and intrigued, while others are more critical or skeptical about it.

A third group has been misinformed or just imaginative about it and has formed some very strange ideas about what it entails. B

ut the most common question I get asked by far is this: “Is hypnotherapy better than counselling?”

Accordingly, I thought that I would provide here a more complete answer than I might be able to off the top of my head.

As a hypnotherapist, you might expect my answer to be simply “yes”, but if I am being honest the answer is more complicated.

First of all, the expertise of the therapist, along with the cooperation of the patient, is generally more relevant to the success of the treatment than the form of the treatment itself, and it would be dishonest of me to deny that counselling can and has been very fruitful for many people.

Counselling involves having a trained therapist listen to a patient’s anxiety over a traumatic event like a bereavement, a divorce, or the loss of one’s job. Counselling comes in the form of one-on-one treatment but also includes group sessions, and in some cases it can be conducted over the phone or internet.

There are also some options for free counselling services, as a number of charities offer counselling for free. The majority of counselling is done as a private service and accordingly involves a fee, however.

The psychological issues surrounding hypnosis

Ordinarily hypnotherapy also includes elements of counselling, and is actually a sub-category of psychotherapy (the latter being not a single entity but an umbrella term encompassing different forms of treatment for psychological issues).

One of the main advantages of clinical hypnotherapy is that its results are achieved far more quickly than those of more traditional counselling. This does not imply, however, that for some people traditional counselling will still be preferential.

Additionally there are some psychologists – including both counselling psychologists and clinical psychologists working in hospitals or rehab units – though not hypnotherapists exclusively will still use some hypnotherapy withing their treatment programmes.

At Perth Hypnotherapy Clinic, we treat patients for a wide range of conditions through CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy for starters. This therapy lets patients better understand their own condition, and then this insight is integrated into the unconscious mind of the patient through the process of hypnotherapy.

All of us, like it or not, are governed by our unconscious mind. And though the primary function of our unconscious mind is to keep us alive, in some cases it can misinterpret our environment.

Because of this many people believe that they act they way that they do for the wrong reasons – for example why they smoke, why they get angry, why they lose control emotionally, why they worry, are afraid, or are depressed, and so on.

The main virtue of hypnosis is that it allows communication with the unconscious mind. So for instance if someone has unconsciously decided on a certain reason for their behaviour, it can be difficult or even impossible to convince this person to change their mind by communicating with their conscious mind.

By making contact with the unconscious mind, however, the hypnotherapist can help to reset a person’s misunderstandings and allow them to react better or more rationally to future events. Hypnotherapy is also able to enhance a patient’s overall sense of well-being by removing negatively reinforced messages, or by inserting positive ones.

No matter what psychological issue a client brings to us at Perth Hypnotherapy Clinic, we do not judge.

Instead, we assure our patients that hypnotherapy can be a successful treatment for just about any psychological problem. When other forms of treatment are preferable, however, we advise our potential patients accordingly

Easing anxiety with hypnotherapy vs counselling

Again, “is hypnotherapy better than counselling?” It is certainly true that for many people, talking about their issues with a counsellor will help to resolve or at least ease their anxieties. For others, however, hypnotherapy can be more effective, especially when dealing with long-term issues like smoking, weight problems, OCD, or phobias.

Change your mind; Change your life