Never believe a Hypnotherapist

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a pretty odd title for an article written by a hypnotherapist but it has a purpose and by and large it’s true, at least as far as claims of success are concerned.

One of the first things you might want to ask of a therapist, of whatever persuasion, is what is your success rate?

How many people with my problem have you ‘cured’? How good are you?

And being honourable compassionate people there is often an emotional need on their part to respond in a way which owes more to wishful-thinking than dishonesty and the overall impression you will receive is likely to be positive but inaccurate.

Basically you are asking the wrong question, but more on that later.

If you look at printed, or digital, advertisements the space between what the advertisers would like you to believe and the truth widens significantly. They are all misleading some more deliberately so than others rather like a politician’s answer, almost certainly not true but capable of justification because of a purposeful and unique perception of the facts.

Now, I’ve seen some claims that are absolutely untrue but the majority really attempt to present what they allow themselves to believe to be known information in the best possible light.

Sadly it seems that hypnotherapists, above all kinds of alternative health practitioners, seem to be in a class of their own when it comes to outrageous success claims and this is no more ably demonstrated than in the area of smoking cessation.

In writing this article I typed ‘hypnotherapist smoking’ into Google and clicked on the top advertisement so we didn’t have to look far before the first questionable claim: ‘one session 94% success rate’.

These claims are typical and really do the process of hypnotherapy no good whatsoever.

Systematically measured success rates for hypnotherapy are limited but there have been some studies and results range from between 4% and 30% but these results depend upon the time period between the hypnosis and when the follow up was done, the hypnotherapy method used, the therapist and most importantly the client.

Just as an aside it doesn’t get any better with alternative methods such as chemical solutions, patches and counselling all have pretty poor success rates when independently measured under some sort of controlled environment.

Now back to the questions.

What you should ask if the issue is smoking:

1. What percentage of your quit smoking clients do you follow up and at what timescales do you do this?
2. How many tell you they remain non smokers and how many have actually smoked since your session?
3. How many of those who told you they had quit did so to get rid of you, or because they didn’t want to spend any more money or thought that hypnotherapy really wasn’t for them?
4. Have you ever followed up on a client more than five years after the session

If you ask these I suspect the answers would most likely be:

1. None or don’t know
2. Don’t know
3. Don’t know and never could know
4. None

Not a good basis for claiming success rates of over 90%.

So the moral is:

The higher the success rate claimed the fewer the sessions needed and the more confident of success the advertisement or the therapist is the less you should believe it.

I suspect that what most people would like to know is will I be able to give up smoking if I undergo hypnotherapy?

What other people can achieve is irrelevant because of all the possible variables such as which hypnotherapist, which method and how many sessions attended but the most significant variable is the client so that question cannot be properly answered because again it is the wrong question.

However, you may know and it is a fact that some people do quit smoking immediately, in one session, with no side effects or anxiety and remain non smokers for the many years and probably the rest of their lives and some light up immediately they leave the session and it doesn’t seem to matter whether they smoked 60 or six per day.

Why is this?

I’ve experienced both of these outcomes and the therapist was the same (me), the method the same so the material variable must be the individual.

It is an inherent truth that hypnotherapy does not make you quit smoking you do.

You can substitute for smoking any undesirable behavioural trait that you can’t stop doing, whether that be drinking, overeating, drug abuse, OCD, the list goes on. You behave this way because you hold unconscious fundamental beliefs that trigger emotional responses that in turn are satisfied by the addiction. Change these beliefs and you no longer need the substance or behaviour.

You might be thinking at this point whether or not hypnotherapy or EFT or any other such tool is any use at all and it’s useful now to consider what question you should really be asking and in my view that is:

Do I want to change?

I don’t mean would I like to be different because that’s entirely the wrong question even it seems as though it’s the same. Wanting to change incorporates your complete involvement in the process and not as an onlooker. Nobody else can make the changes for you.

A good example of this is a recent client who came to see me for an excess weight issue. It seems that there were two remaining options, one being surgery and the other hypnosis and the hypnosis was ‘given a go’ as it were to see if ‘it worked’ because if it did the more expensive and traumatic option of surgery wouldn’t be needed.

What do you think the results might have been?

If you suspected that this client wasn’t in the ‘right place’ you would be right. The hypnosis didn’t fix the problem and was therefore abandoned for the more drastic but ‘third party’ solution of surgery.

The client wanted someone else to fix the problem thereby effectively discharging them of any responsibility for it.

In the case of gastric banding the desire to eat doesn’t subside but the ability to do so is removed. All the emotional drivers that created the eating patterns still exist yet after the surgery they cannot be satisfied and I suspect recipients of such a procedure will go through a miserable time for a while.

If the emotional issues are not addressed and the band ever has to be removed the excess eating patterns will resume and the weight will go back on. Rather like a really strict diet and ironically also rather like diets even the gastric banding doesn’t guarantee weight loss if eating behaviour isn’t modified.

Hypnotherapy, EFT and other similar therapies give you the time and space and focus to more easily address the underlying issues and change the underlying beliefs that support the unwanted behaviour and you can do that or not.

The therapies are tools that help and in many cases significantly so but your individual success is really and always up to you.

Reach David Allen on 0800 458 8014 or david@control-your-drinking.co.uk

VALIDATED PRACTITIONER REGISTERED

General Hypnotherapy Standards Council
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David Allen courses are available online for a one-off fee of £35. He also runs week-long retreat programmes in Portugal for £1,995 per person (based on single occupancy per room) including accommodation, therapy, and all meals. See www.control-your-drinking.co.uk.