• COGNITIVE-BEHAVIOURAL HYPNOTHERAPY (Hypno-CBT) combines hypnosis with CBT  (cognitive-behavioural therapy). It goes beyond either treatment modality alone as they both enhance each other. CBT helps you identify and move beyond limiting beliefs and thoughts that result in unhelpful emotions and behaviours, while hypnosis accelerates this process of change immensely. Traditional hypnosis that does without a CBT-like approach is largely limited to the delivery of suggestions that are not nearly as effective as when they are presented to a mind adequately prepared for the experience within a cognitive-behavioural framework of self-discovery and problem-solving. Hypno-CBT, also sometimes simply referred to as ‘cognitive hypnotherapy’, is safe and effective for many issues.

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• It is a powerful tool for eliminating stress & anxiety, including panic attacks and phobias (e.g. fear of spiders or other animals, fear of flying, fear of heights, fear of the dark, fear of needles, fear of dentist visits, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, social phobia, etc). It can also bring relief from stage fright, fear of public speaking, exam nerves, excessive worrying, procrastination, low self-esteem & the low mood often accompanying such feelings as well as tension headaches and other physical pains, chronic insomnia, IBS and sexual issues (such as erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation) that may be rooted in anxiety or stress, provided a medical cause has been ruled out by a qualified medical professional. Another common medical application of hypnosis is to help with pain control and relaxation in dental treatment and childbirth (hypno-birthing). Hypnosis will enable you to rediscover how to physically and mentally relax, which in and of itself will bring great relief as it is in every way the opposite of stress and anxiety.

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• It is also indicated for breaking habits such as nail-biting, smoking, overeating or abuse of alcohol and other recreational drugs (if it is not a medically diagnosable chemical dependency or advanced addiction requiring the intervention of  a medical  professional).  To some extent, habits and anxiety are inseparable: anxiety is a learned mental and physical response to external stimuli that over time became habitual, and the emotional aspects of a habit are also rooted in anxiety and stress.

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• Hypnosis is a powerful way of releasing negative emotions that have been pent up for too long, and to make space for cognitive-behavioural change work to take place. Once stress and anxiety are released, emotions can flow unobstructedly again instead of causing energetic blockages. It then becomes easier to accept them and respond to them in more wholesome ways rather than suppressing them, which is counter-productive.

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• Cognitive-behavioural therapy techniques can help you understand how it is your view of things rather than things themselves that create your emotional landscape, and hypnosis can help you take this understanding deeper and reframe certain life experiences as well as achieve powerful emotional release. While I do not use regression to retrieve repressed ‘bad’ memories (the supposed ‘root causes’ of psychological problems in Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis), I successfully use regression to help people retrieve positive emotions associated with ‘good’ memories they may have been neglecting, and to help them integrate these into their present-day lives.

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• It is equally effective for people who do not suffer from any of the above issues but who simply wish to enhance a particular aspect of their lives, such as identifying and focusing on goals, for instance improving their sports performance, unlocking their creativity, strengthening their motivation in a particular area of their lives, boosting their powers of concentration, etc.

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• Cognitive hypnotherapy (Hypno-CBT) goes far beyond the mere administration of hypnotic scripts and (either direct or indirect) suggestions. Instead, it tackles any of the above issues from a multi-modal perspective to address their cognitive as well as their behavioural aspects using multiple evidence-based techniques such as fractional and progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive restructuring, behavioural rehearsal, systematic desensitisation, habit reversal, socratic questioning, and much more. This is why the success rate for many of these issues with a treatment that combines hypnosis with cognitive-behavioural therapeutic approaches is higher than it is for either treatment modality alone. The applications of this therapeutic framework are many, and if I can help you, I will. If I cannot, I will refer you to someone who can.

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• There is some overlap with NLP, of which I am also a certified practitioner with the American University of NLP.  I integrate selected successful NLP techniques within the Hypno-CBT framework when I feel they will enhance  the therapeutic outcome. Many experts consider NLP to be of questionable value since there is little beyond anecdotal evidence to vouch for its efficacy in therapy, and certain practitioners (some of them best-selling authors in a multi-million dollar industry targeted at the gullible) have contributed to its questionable image in the scientific community by making unsustainable claims of 10-minute phobia cures or that you can become rich by reading their book or listening to their recording, etc. You have probably seen those publications on mainstream bookshelves. Don’t believe the hype! Much of what goes under the wholesale banner of NLP (and hypnosis too, by the way) nowadays is quite adulterated and basically a watered-down ‘pop’ misrepresentation of a field which has over time generated (and indeed still is generating) very valuable techniques that, when in the right hands, do work very well. Incidentally, the vast majority of the original ideas of NLP are directly derived from traditional hypnotherapy and cognitive-behaviour therapy and were then re-packaged as something new simply for market value. You can currently observe this particularly in how NLP is sold as ‘executive coaching’ to the corporate world. Still, because of its meticulous focus on the use of language patterns, NLP really does allow a new perspective on some of these tried and tested techniques so well-known to cognitive hypnotherapists. This, along with the fact that I used to be a language teacher, is why I remain astutely curious and continue to study NLP.