"Can hypnotherapy help me?" A very frequently asked question.... In a nutshell hypnotherapy can generally help with any problem where you can't help yourself doing or thinking something that you don't want, or not being able to do something that you want to do, or where you are suffering emotionally in some way. Some physical problems too can be treated effectively by hypnotherapy.
There is nothing mysterious or mystifying about hypnotherapy. All the fears that people associate with it are quite unfounded. Please remember that I differ from "hypnotists": performers who use hypnosis for entertainment, all too often without knowledge or regard to the person's psychological background whom they are hypnotising. I am a hypnotherapist; a professional who in the very first place will regard you with respect and not as a stooge for the entertainment of others.
What then can hypnotherapy treat and how is it different to other therapies? The first thing to bear in mind is that hypnotherapy, stating the obvious, utilises hypnosis, a state of altered consciousness in which the therapist can help you to access the deeper levels of awareness, to which you are usually oblivious in your normal day-to-day functioning. More often than not, what you are experiencing as a problem, whether emotional, psychological (i.e. affecting your thinking, feelings and behaviour) or psychosomatic (i.e. actually producing physical symptoms)is only a surface EFFECT of a deeper underlying mental CAUSE. It is at these deeper levels of consciousness that we as hypnotherapists work with you, to bring about change in the way(s) you feel, think and behave. And you will find with our therapists, it is done with your co-operation and in the most caring and nurturing manner.
Left untreated the problem may bury itself deeper into the mind-body system, producing symptoms such as those listed above, and what you are left with on the surface is a way of functioning that compels you to repress those painful things while you simply cope with your everyday life. Wouldn't it be nicer if you could sort all this out and enhance your life?
Life is what you make of it. So why not make it better in the way you function on a daily basis; the way you feel about yourself and the world around you? Hypnotherapy can change things for the better. You have little to lose except perhaps your old patterns of thinking and feeling, and those debilitating psychosomatic problems? Even if it means stopping smoking or sleeping better? But what you may gain may well exceed what you can imagine or expect to gain.