Whether you want to lose weight and manage your eating regime, stop smoking or be cured of your phobic fear of spiders, open spaces or even unwelcome irritable bowel syndrome, hypnotherapy can set you on your way.
The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH), with more than 1,800 licensed and fully trained therapists on its books, can offer treatment to deal with your ailment, phobia or anxiety.
Hypnotherapy uses advanced methods of hypnosis and other techniques to treat a variety of medical and psychological problems and research has shown that more than 85 per cent of people will readily respond to clinical hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy may even succeed where other, more conventional methods of treatment have not produced the desired results.
The UK’s NHS says hypnotherapy is a type of complementary therapy that uses hypnosis, an altered state of consciousness and it is widely promoted as a treatment for various long-term conditions and for breaking certain habits.
It says hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis for treating such conditions as addictions, anxiety, depression, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, phobias and stress. It now includes a list of hypnotherapists in its Directory of Complementary and Alternative Practitioners,
And the NCH’s directory lists all the active NCH registered therapists. By simply entering your postcode, it will give you a list of therapists near you and detail what their ‘specialities’ are – like smoking cessation, childbirth hypnosis, treatment for stress, anxieties and so on.
The NCH maintains a high standard code of conduct from its members who are also fully insured.
Simpler problems can sometimes be overcome completely in just one session with a therapist as hypnosis can be extremely effective.
And, the therapist, as an NCH member, is committed to helping the client as swiftly and effectively as possible.
But there can be considerable variation in the difficulty of the various problems and there is no general rule which makes it impossible to say how much improvement can be achieved and how many sessions are required.
The therapist could be able to give an assessment of how much improvement can be expect and how many sessions may be needed by the end of the first session but if the problem is more complex then a joint review of progress might be necessary from time to time.
NCH therapists can deal with phobias, anxieties, problem behaviours, hypnobirthing and even irritable bowel syndrome.
But it is important the therapist and client are comfortable with each other.
This is of particular importance in hypnotherapy as the value of the treatment is greatly enhanced when you have confidence in the practitioner.
For this reason the NCH recommends booking a single session at first and only afterwards decide if you want to proceed with further treatment. Some therapists offer a free initial consultation.
