Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ("CBT")
My approach as a therapist is to integrate cognitive behavioural therapy with hypnosis. Whilst cognitive behavioural therapy has been shown to be an extremely effective and quick form of therapy, a wide body of research indicates that its effectiveness is magnified when it is used together with hypnosis and hypnotherapy. The same techniques are used, but the suggestions and ideas given by the therapist are made whilst the client is in hypnosis. The average number of sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy needed to successfully overcome the client’s problem is 20 – 25; Cognitive Behavioural Hypnosis takes on average just 3-6 sessions to achieve the same results, and CBT with hypnosis can achieve success even more quickly for habit reversal (such as smoking cessation and weight loss).
What is CBT?
Cognitive behavioural therapy is a broad term which covers therapies dealing with those thoughts, beliefs, behaviours and assumptions which cause and are otherwise linked with negative and unhelpful emotions. Cognitive behavioural hypnosis teaches you to identify such thoughts – for example, panicking, worrying and always assuming the worst, over-generalising in a negative way, and jumping to pessimistic conclusions – and replacing them with positive, realistic, and helpful thoughts. A cognitive behavioural therapist concentrates on removal of symptoms, rather than in going back and examining the root causes; the evidence based approach of CBT has been found to be more effective than those treatments, such as psychodynamic therapies, which seek to ascertain why the problem has arisen in the first place – a therapist who does not use a CBT approach may treat you for many months or even years, but endeavouring to find the cause of a problem does not necessarily help to alleviate it – if I have a stone in my shoe which causes me pain, my aim is to remove the stone, not to work out how it got into my shoe in the first place!
There is a huge amount of evidence supporting the use of hypnosis and hypnotherapy with CBT for cases of stress and anxiety. Relaxation and hypnotherapy are excellent ways to achieve stress relief. CBT encourages you to develop ways of reducing stress by looking at problems and life events from a fresh perspective. Stress management is facilitated by the use of various techniques, all of which are rational,easy to learn and simple to use.
If you do however feel that you wish to examine the underlying causes of your symptoms, this is also something that hypnotherapy can deal with. The majority of clients find it much easier to concentrate on and analyse the causes of their problems once their symptoms of sadness, stress and anxiety have been alleviated; it is very hard to get a clear picture of anything when stress and anxiety are interrupting the train of thought. If you do wish, therefore, to look at how the past affects your present, CBT can help you to clear your mind to allow you to do this.
Treatment of Choice
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommends CBT as the treatment of choice for a number of mental health problems. There is a wealth of evidence that a therapist trained in CBT can quickly and efficiently deal with such difficulties as stress and anxiety, depressed mood, phobias, performance anxiety (for example public speaking and “exam nerves”), bad habits (nail biting, smoking cessation, weight loss or hair pulling for example), insomnia, substance abuse and panic attacks. In addition to treating adults, it can be used safely and effectively with children and adolescents. Unlike the drugs which are available for these conditions, there are no side effects from consulting a hypnotherapist.
