There is a new movement to Hypnotherapy as a successful treatment for those experiencing mental health concerns. A wonderful adjunct to Strategic Psychotherapy.
Strategic psychotherapy essentially helps you take back control of your life, getting back in charge of yourself and get out there do better and living again. It’s safe and Drug free.
Most are seeking support with their mental health to improve emotional and psychological wellbeing, overcome emotional distress and suffering.
Life happens and hypnotherapy is an effective and long-lasting approach that most people, once tried, really understand its power for change.
When hypnosis is used in conjunction with the strategic psychotherapy approach the effect is even more powerful. It is about putting yourself back in charge of you. You are not broken, and you aren’t the labels given to you.
Many types of therapies, such as counselling, psychology or psychiatry focus more on where a person has an issue or problem, they may investigate a person’s past and childhood. They often seek to ask 'why' a person is experiencing the issue.
Strategic psychotherapy helps people focus on ‘how’ they are doing certain patterns of thinking and behaving. Putting a treatment plan with the desired solution as the goal a plan to address the issue and find better patterns and pathways of thinking and behaving facing forward. There is no need to relive and go over in detail the past, the traumas and pain. We will ask questions to understand How it presents and where gaps in cognitive patterns, exist. Most people will be familiar with being asked ‘why’ they have a particular problem. This conversation is often had on a daily basis with family and friends and understanding the why doesn’t always help you change or perceive things differently. More often than not you need a therapist away from your friends and family circle to have that friendly conversation but with a purpose and an agreed goal and treatment plan for things to change.
The Strategic Psychotherapy model helps people realise that asking Why is not necessarily a useful question. It teaches people how to get curious about ‘how’ they are making certain distinctions in their lives and exposes the knowledge and skill gaps that maintain the person’s problem. These skill and knowledge gaps may simply be a result of having never learned something in childhood or adulthood. Or may be a result of forgotten skills and knowledge. We teach people how to recognise their un useful patterns and processes, interrupt them and apply something more effective.
We teach people how they can build resilience-not the form of resilience against life events, but a type of resilience that ensures that a person’s internal processes and experience supports their goals and increased their mental agility to bend and shift regardless of life’s adversities. The most successful and happy people are those that are highly flexible in their approach to life, when things change or go wrong or turn out as not expected, they pivot quickly and approach the issue in a different way.
We often refer to this as cognitive agility.
This approach uses specific discriminating questions that reveal problematic thought patterns that a person may be running unconsciously. These questions help you uncover what you know, what you don’t know, and what you think you know that just isn’t so – (Dr. Michael Yapko Ph.D.).
Dr Michael Yapko describes Hypnotherapy as a powerful way of using our mind to influence our perception and our bodies, and has strong evidence based backing up its effectiveness. Researchers and medical professionals have been exploring the use of Hypnosis for medical treatment and behavioural change for hundreds of years. In fact, according to Dr Spiegal of Stanford University, “hypnosis is one of the oldest forms of Western psychotherapy”.
Essentially hypnosis is just a state of relaxed and focused absorption, where your mind is more open to suggestions. The brain has different levels of consciousness, or awareness, ranging from fully alert to drowsy to fully asleep, with variations in between. Hypnotic states are one of those variations and can occur naturally and spontaneously, including: daydreaming, doing mundane tasks (like driving), and being absorbed in a pleasant task (like a good book or a movie).
Dr Michael Yapko also explains, Clinical Hypnosis deliberately induces this kind of relaxed state and focused state, therapeutic suggestions can have a significant effect on attitudes, perceptions, and behaviours.
Hypnosis is typically integrated into psychotherapeutic treatments like strategic psychotherapy or Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Hypnosis is a vehicle and it’s what happens during the session in terms of the suggestions and developing new and helpful associations. Hypnosis acts as a way to amplify these treatments, and there is plenty of evidence that shows that hypnosis generally enhances psychotherapy for this very reason. A study comparing CBT with hypnosis, found that the addition of the hypnosis enhances therapeutic efficiency by 70 - 90%.
The use of Hypnosis can be used to manage symptoms ranging from pain to rumination, can improve sleep, and can drastically affect your life and health. You can learn to manage your pain, your anxiety symptoms and much more
For people who have experienced and benefitted from hypnosis it doesn’t make sense why people haven’t been using it.
There have also been a lot of myths surrounding it and this has affected people adopting it. People have generated the perception that its mind control where you go under. These myths portray hypnosis in the wrong way. For many years some therapists have also used scripts as well which isn’t personalised and a lot less effective. Modern Neo Erickson hypnosis which is becoming more widely adopted and is being used at Me Therapy as well as Gordonian Therapy. These approaches have been used in the studies and research mentioned previously are more indirect and permissive utilising the clients’ unique resources, this hypnosis is especially beneficial. Researchers Hill & Dahlitz are saying 87% effective.
The interesting thing about what’s happening now is the world is already moving in the direction of hypnotherapy rather than away from it. This movement will continue to grow. I’m happy to be part of this movement and I know you will be too. (Ref: mindset app Dr Michael Yapko.)
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