Many people have wrongly attributed their success at weight loss or breaking bad habits to hypnosis. However, it is not the hypnotist who has the power over whether you will follow through on your goal, it is you. The hypnotist’s role is to help guide your mind into an unconscious state where it can focus on what you want most, which will make it easier for you to take action and get results. It is critical that before proceeding with a session of hypnosis, your therapist gets clearance from a medical professional. Below are the different types of hypnosis explained:
ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS
Ericksonian hypnosis is a family of techniques based on psychologist Milton Erickson’s work, who was considered one of the founders of Clinical Hypnotherapy. Erickson’s technique relied heavily on metaphors and other stories and exaggerations and contradictions used by the therapist. He would often use metaphorical language as an approach to relax people and make them feel open. He wanted people to be free of their everyday thoughts and habits to explore new directions.
Erickson rejected the idea that hypnosis can only induce ignorance with no conscious experience of hypnotic amnesia. Instead, he saw it as part of a continuum between unconsciousness and full consciousness. For him, hypnosis was simply another stage in human evolution, which allowed us to explore our thoughts and feelings without undergoing the stresses that face a modern man in his daily life.
Erickson also used devices such as the repetition of keywords, allegories or stories, confusion techniques, and many others. He is credited with having the most significant impact on contemporary Hypnotherapy and NLP.
SELF-HYPNOSIS
Self-hypnosis is a technique that helps bring about a state of heightened relaxation by encouraging the person’s attention to be focused within. It involves training the mind to block out any outside distractions and focus on one thing.
Some people may go into self-hypnosis as a tactic for problem-solving or reaction management. In contrast, others may use it therapeutically as an alternative method of aiding recovery after an accident or injury. It can also be used to help cope with physical illness or addiction.
Self-hypnosis is a powerful tool that may alleviate emotional and physical pain and psychological stress or relaxation. It allows the person to control their state of mind instead of mind-controlling them. The technique involves a deep concentration on one thing for an extended period and is different from daydreaming. Critical thinking is switched off during self-hypnosis, and there are no conscious thought processes.
COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL HYPNOSIS
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is based on the principles of cognitive science, behavior analysis, and neuroscience, which focuses on the relationship between thoughts and actions. It is intended to help people change their patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving to improve mental health.
Cognitive-behavioral hypnosis involves a therapist guiding a person into an altered state by focusing on different body parts (feeling warm or tingling sensations). That allows them to change their conscious thinking while asleep without being aware that they are doing anything other than usual. The goal is for people who may find it tough to focus on changing specific aspects of their life because it feels too overwhelming for them.
Some people may want to use cognitive-behavioral hypnosis to improve health by learning how to react differently when they get frightened. For example, it is believed that these reactions are linked to how our limbic system works. Irritability and constant worrying about whether things will go wrong are also associated with the limbic system. Hypnotherapists can teach people how to change their responses to feel calmer and more relaxed when they experience these feelings.
TRADITIONAL HYPNOSIS (BY SUGGESTION)
Traditional hypnosis is a suggestion in which a person is put into an altered state of consciousness or an increased focus on one particular sensation or thought.
Hypnotic suggestions induce a hypnotic trance state with some level of conscious awareness but without full waking knowledge or control over behavior. The content of the suggestions during this period is not accessible by the subject until they are awoken from the trance by verbal means such as “counting” up from one through five (the first three stages), “waking up,” and so on.
Suggestions are used in traditional hypnosis that places a person in an “altered state of consciousness,” aiming to increase the overall suggestibility of a person. Some suggestions are aimed at directly altering the experience of pain and other simple sensations, while others are designed to lead the person’s behavior into the desired patterns. The hypnotist seeks whatever cooperation is necessary to guide the subject’s responses into directions considered most advantageous to those objectives.
NEUROLINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING (NLP)
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is a subject that helps people use their minds to adjust the way their inner world works. NLP helps someone understand how they think about an event, can change our experience of it, and can also help us understand other people’s perspectives and beliefs. That might be on a personal level or for professional purposes.
In NLP, many techniques can help individuals learn more about what they want to achieve, how they want to achieve it, and how they feel about it. One of the most popular techniques used in NLP is the meta-model, which is a way of changing the meaning of an event using language.
NLP aims to help people to understand how their mind works so that they can manipulate them. The idea behind NLP is that a person’s current situation and behavior are determined by their programming and environment rather than by their abilities and personality. In this way, NLP “programs” people to behave differently than they have in the past.
SOLUTION-FOCUSED HYPNOTHERAPY
Solution-focused Hypnotherapy is a type of hypnosis that helps you gain a clearer perspective on different situations by providing you with new resources, ideas, and techniques to put more of your energy into solving your problems. Unlike traditional hypnosis, where the therapist would have you forget about the issue, in this therapy style, the patient is trained to focus on solutions so that when they recall their time under hypnosis, they will associate their problem with new perspectives and ways to get unstuck.
Solution-focused Hypnotherapy has long been used in clinical practice as a treatment modality for patients to either deal with their emotional problems or examine the root causes of their maladaptive behavior patterns. Psychologists and psychiatrists often use hypnosis as a non-invasive method of exploring unconscious mental processes, sometimes after a brief formative assessment period. The patient will experience limited memory recall of what they have already talked about during that session.
Hypnosis is a popular therapy used to help people overcome many different problems and health conditions, from stopping smoking or overcoming arachnophobia to overcoming insomnia or achieving better health through diet or exercise. Hypnosis can help individuals lose weight, quit smoking, and reduce stress and anxiety. While many different types of hypnosis are practiced for various purposes
