What happens during a hypnotherapy session?

A good therapist takes time to get to know the client - not only the reasons forconsidering hypnotherapy, but also attitudes, values, likes & dislikes, hopes, fears etc.. This enables the therapist to personalise the therapy, tailoring it to meet the client's needs. It is also essential to establish trust and rapport if effective therapy is to occur. Once the aims and parameters of the session have been agreed therapy can begin.

The therapist will put the client in a trance by whatever induction method seems most appropriate, and the initial session will usually be used to assess the client's responsiveness, and evaluate what adjustments may be efficacious for further sessions.

The most common methods used are likely to be guided visualization and progressive relaxation, or variations thereof. Unless a client has a high expectation that it will involve some elaborate "ritual" using pendulums, revolving spirals, instructions to "sleep!" etc, it is unlikely that such will be used: far more likely is a "conversational" approach using allusions, metaphors, and subtle suggestions.

It is not unusual for a client to become hypnotised during the preliminary discussion, although s/he may not realise that this has happened. The client may become totally absorbed in what the therapist says, and enter a state of fascination in which they're already responding to suggestion without any conscious thought. If such occurs, the therapist knows that they have a client with whom it will be easy to work.

What exactly happens once the client is in hypnosis depends very much on what the agreed purposes of the therapy are. If analytical, then gentle questions and guided discussion/ reflection will be used to tease out what the root cause of the client's issues or problems may be. If it's for some specific purpose (eg smoking cessation, phobias etc) then the focus will be on that matter, and ways and means of dealing with it. It might just be that the client wants to discuss with a sympathetic listener troubling issues (eg self-esteem, traumas etc) that are hard to discuss except when in a very "safe" and relaxed state of mind. Often, it will be a combination of all of these, and it is the role of the hypnotherapist to adjust to the client's needs as and when they emerge.

Generally, it is not the norm for hypnotherapy to involve "commands", and any therapist trying to manipulate the client or engage in "mind control" is a bad, indeed unethical, practitioner. In short, hypnotherapy is more akin to a subtle form of highly personalised "coaching" in which the relaxation, focus, and heightened suggestibility of a hypnotised person are utilised to help her/ him better manage personal issues.