What Is Clinical Hypnotherapy?
Clinical Hypnotherapy uses focused attention, therapeutic communication, imagery and suggestion to support learning and change.
Rather than giving someone control over you, hypnosis is a collaborative process. It can provide an opportunity to reduce competing distractions, engage imagination more fully, strengthen useful emotional resources, rehearse new responses and reinforce desired change.
You remain involved in the process throughout. Hypnosis does not override free will, and any approach used should remain connected to your individual needs and desired outcome.
How Hypnotherapy Can Support Change
Understand Patterns
Explore thoughts, emotional responses, beliefs, habits and learned associations that may be influencing your current experience.
Access Resources
Reconnect with useful strengths, experiences, emotional states and capabilities that may not currently feel easy to access.
Rehearse New Responses
Use imagery, focused attention and therapeutic suggestion to practise and strengthen more useful ways of responding.
What Can Hypnotherapy Support?
Clinical Hypnotherapy does not replace medical diagnosis, psychiatric care or other healthcare where this is required. Where another professional is better placed to support an issue, or collaborative care would be beneficial, this will be discussed openly and an appropriate referral may be recommended.
Explore triggers, associations and reinforcement behind familiar behavioural patterns.
Support behavioural change, motivation and alternative responses to familiar triggers
Explore habits, emotional associations, motivation and behavioural choices around eating and lifestyle.
Strengthen focus, confidence, preparation and effective responses in important situations.
Not a Script. A Personalised Process.
No two people experience a difficulty in exactly the same way, so Clinical Hypnotherapy at HMCY is not based on applying the same script or technique to everyone.
Your sessions are shaped around your desired outcome, current patterns, beliefs, emotions, behaviours, resources, circumstances and readiness for change.
The aim is to understand what is relevant for you and select an approach that supports meaningful progress.
The HMCY Method™ combines Clinical Hypnotherapy, NLP Coaching, behavioural understanding, belief exploration, emotional regulation and practical personal development.
What Happens in a Session?
Understand
Clarify
Therapeutic Work
Reinforce
We explore what you are experiencing, relevant patterns and what may be influencing or maintaining them.
We establish what you would like instead and what meaningful progress would look like for you.
Appropriate hypnotherapy, imagery, therapeutic communication or complementary approaches are selected around your needs.
Useful learning is strengthened through rehearsal, future pacing, practical action and review where appropriate.
Understanding the Conscious and Unconscious Mind
Much of what we do involves both deliberate thinking and processes that happen automatically outside immediate awareness.
Within HMCY, the term unconscious mind is used as a practical way of describing mental processes that occur outside immediate conscious awareness. It is not treated as a separate mystical entity or an infallible source of truth.
Hypnotherapy may help people engage imagination, automatic learning and existing resources while remaining actively involved in the process.
Conscious Mind
May include:
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Deliberate attention
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Reflection and reasoning
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Clarifying goals
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Evaluating beliefs
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Making choices
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Planning purposeful action
UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES
May include:
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Automatic learning
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Emotional associations
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Habits
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Implicit memory
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Familiar responses
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Perception outside immediate awareness
Evidence & Research
HMCY takes an evidence-informed approach, drawing on relevant research alongside professional training, clinical judgement, your individual circumstances and ongoing feedback.
The evidence for hypnotherapy varies according to the issue being addressed, the intervention used and the quality of the available research. We aim to represent this evidence clearly, recognising both where research is supportive and where conclusions remain more limited.
RESEARCH-INFORMED APPROACH
We consider findings from relevant research alongside professional training, clinical judgement and your individual needs, preferences and circumstances.
GROWING EVIDENCE BASE
Research has examined hypnosis across a range of applications. Evidence is stronger in some areas than others, and the quality and quantity of available studies varies.
DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EVIDENCE
Hypnotherapy does not have the same level of research support for every difficulty or desired outcome. We take these differences into account when discussing what may be appropriate for you.
YOUR EXPERIENCE MATTERS
Research is one part of evidence-informed practice. Your goals, preferences, circumstances, experience and ongoing feedback also help shape the work we do together.
SELECTED RESEARCH
A selection of research relevant to clinical hypnosis and its applications. This is not an exhaustive review of the evidence.
Chronic pain
Jensen, M. P. & Patterson, D. R. (2014). Hypnotic approaches for chronic pain management: Clinical implications of recent research findings. American Psychologist, 69(2), 167–177.
Sleep
Chamine, I., Atchley, R. & Oken, B. S. (2018). Hypnosis intervention effects on sleep outcomes: A systematic review. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 14(2), 271–283.
Anxiety and stress
Hammond, D. C. (2010). Hypnosis in the treatment of anxiety- and stress-related disorders. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 10(2), 263–273.
Medical procedure distress
Schnur, J. B., Kafer, I., Marcus, C. & Montgomery, G. H. (2008).
Hypnosis to manage distress related to medical procedures: A meta-analysis.
Contemporary Hypnosis, 25(3–4), 114–128.
Surgical procedures
Holler, M. et al. (2021). Efficacy of hypnosis in adults undergoing surgical procedures: A meta-analytic update. Clinical Psychology Review, 85, 10200
Irritable bowel syndrome
Schaefert, R., Klose, P., Moser, G. & Häuser, W. (2014). Efficacy, tolerability, and safety of hypnosis in adult irritable bowel syndrome: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychosomatic Medicine, 76(5), 389–398.
Understanding Clinical Hypnotherapy
Watch this short introduction to Clinical Hypnotherapy, what happens during hypnosis and how focused attention, imagery and therapeutic communication may support positive change.
