Sleep!

Sleep!

Well, no...if you don't mind too much!

As a hypnotherapist, I would rather you did not 'sleep' - and especially no dribbling, please!

The old-fashioned notion of hypnosis as sleep is still around unfortunately. It does not reflect modern evidence-based approaches. In more up-to-date hypnotherapy we do not want to wield some mystical power over our clients. We do not want a client to be in a victim role, forever dependent on the wise and powerful magician/hypnotherapist. We do not want to turn one kind of robot into another kind of robot. A robot who smokes into a robot who doesn't, for example.

Hypnotherapy is a collaborative and empowering way of working that focuses on building a client's sense of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy means believing and knowing and being able to take actions to help yourself. Hypnotherapy helps you acquire and use the problem solving skills so valuable for living in this (increasingly) crazy world. 

Hypnosis skills amplify your ability to adopt and use a solution-focused approach to the challenges in life. It doesn't matter whether those challenges are changing a habit or dealing with a difficult line manager. Cultivating your self-belief in your ability to affect your thoughts, feelings and behaviour will enable you to respond differently in circumstances that had you stumped before.

Hypnotherapy, and the newer approach of hypnotic coaching, are ways you can move forward with your life by engaging with your life. You can learn to respond differently to the circumstances that are sent to try us; you can engage with your own thoughts and feelings and learn how to stop them being overwhelming and stressful. You can change the way you encounter the inevitable obstacles in life, not in some grand philosophical sense, but in traffic jams; supermarkets; when you're gasping for a cigarette and don't want to give in; when work stresses you out. You know, normal stuff.

Coming for hypnotherapy is not coming to see a wizard who will wave a magic wand and do an interpretive dance to solve your problem for you. It's about you stepping up and engaging with a process that will leave you stronger and more capable, better to be around, more focused and productive.

Now that seems worth having to me! What do you think?