In Depth Version

To understand how hypnotherapy works, first of all, you need to understand how your conscious and unconscious mind works.

Conscious Mind v Unconscious Mind

Your conscious mind is the reasoning mind, the judging mind, and the logical mind.

Your unconscious mind accepts what is impressed upon it or by what you consciously believe. It does not reason things out as your conscious mind does and it does not argue with you controversially. Your unconscious mind is like a bit of soil that accepts any kind of seeds good or bad.

Your thoughts are active; they are the seeds. Negative destructive thoughts continue to work negatively in your unconscious mind and sooner or later they will emerge and take shape as an outer experience that corresponds to their content.

Remember, your unconscious mind does not engage in proving whether your thoughts are good or bad, true or false. It responds according to the nature of your thoughts or suggestions.

For example, if you consciously assume that something is true, even though it may be false, your unconscious mind will accept it as true and proceed to bring about results that must necessarily follow because you consciously assumed it to be true.

You’re unconscious stores your fears, beliefs, and opinions.

Your unconscious mind does not have the ability to argue or dispute what it is told. If you give it wrong information, it will accept it as true. It will then work to make that information correct.

If you were incorrectly taught that 1 + 1 equals 3, throughout your school years, then you will grow up believing that that is true. It has now become a belief of yours. And you’re unconscious simply accepts what it has been taught and will act and react accordingly in the future.

If a child has constantly been told that they are not good enough, or pretty enough etc.. then those thoughts will turn into beliefs and the unconscious mind, again, will simply accept this as true, and will act upon how it has been taught and react accordingly in the future.

In this case, the child isn’t teaching the unconscious, it’s the parents or other people teaching it, because the child’s conscious mind hasn’t fully developed and doesn’t question or reason against what it is being told. Therefore, the conscious and unconscious minds are quite similar at a very young age. They tend to just accept what they are being told as the truth(rightly or wrongly).

This is why a lot of young adults grow up having negative self-beliefs, and this continues into later life unless it is dealt with.

Habitual Actions

Your unconscious mind also remembers and stores your habitual actions, and for good reason, so that you don’t have to think about them!

Physical

Take driving a car for example, there is a lot to think about whilst driving, remembering to change gears, remember to press the clutch, remember to indicate, remembering to look in your mirrors etc… That’s a lot of things to remember and if you had to think about it every time you drove it would be memory overload.

Thankfully, you’re unconscious allows you to do this without thinking, you do it automatically, you do it ‘unconsciously’ as they say. Therefore giving you more time to concentrate on the distractions outside the car.

Here’s a quick thought…

Have you ever driven to work one day…and after you get to work, you can’t remember how you there? You have no recollection of your drive there?

Well, that was your unconscious doing the work and driving you there!

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Unfortunately, because the unconscious doesn’t judge or argue and simply accepts what it is being taught, it also remembers things that you probably wished it hadn’t…take smoking for example!

By smoking 20 cigarettes a day over a period of time, you’re unconscious has taken it upon itself that this must be important for you, therefore it gets you to light up and smoke a cigarette almost automatically, even if you don’t want it! You just do it through habit. Again you’re unconscious doesn’t judge that it’s a bad thing for your health, It just accepts what it has been taught to do.

Mental

The same goes for habitual negative thoughts. If you have constantly worried about everything in the past, Then your unconscious will presume that this is the normal thing for you and will proceed to do it automatically for you in the future. Adversely, if you’ve ever noticed somebody is generally upbeat and positive all the time…guess what they have been teaching their unconscious throughout life!

So even though you’re unconscious is a fantastic thing to have, you can see now how it can work detrimentally for your health and well-being, against your wishes.

It’s not your unconscious mind’s fault, it’s just doing what it’s being taught.

So, hopefully, you have a grasp on how the conscious mind and the unconscious mind work.

How Hypnotherapy Works…

You may remember that we mentioned that the unconscious mind doesn’t question what it is being told. Well, for us hypnotherapists, that’s great news, because, when in trance or hypnosis we have the opportunity to talk directly to the unconscious because it is more open to suggestion than it would be in a normal state.

In a normal state, the conscious mind acts as a kind of gatekeeper and only allows in what it wants to allow in, according to its reasoning and judgmental values.

Under hypnosis, the conscious mind is bypassed.

And that leaves us free to make suggestions which may help the client.

Hypnosis is no magic wand, and we simply can’t make a suggestion and that’s it.

We can’t suddenly say “You feel great and don’t feel bad about yourself anymore” and then wake the client and hey presto….job done!

That’s not how it works, because the unconscious is still a powerful being without the conscious mind butting in.

We have to build pictures and feelings for the unconscious to decide to take up the suggestions. We have to gain its trust.

As I mentioned, in hypnosis, the unconscious is MORE open to suggestion, but that doesn’t mean it is totally open to it.

So that’s where our skills and experience as hypnotherapists come into play. We have to constantly monitor and see if the client’s unconscious is accepting the helpful suggestions or dismissing them. If it’s dismissing the suggestion, we have to find a better way so that the suggestions will stick much better.

Sometimes the suggestions stick in one session, other times it might take a few sessions before we have gained the trust of the unconscious and it allows the suggestions to stick.

And the great thing is, when they do stick, your unconscious will run these new thoughts and beliefs automatically for you.

You won’t have to do a thing, except just enjoy this newfound freedom you have acquired!

If you would like to understand more about Hypnosis and how you enter a Hypnotic state then click below.

Hypnosis And How We Enter into a Hypnotic State

Simply put, hypnosis is a heightened state of focused attention.
The best way to possibly describe it is like this…
Have you ever been so engrossed in a book or film that you haven’t noticed the kids screaming or dog barking? Or, maybe you’ve just been staring out the window ‘day-dreaming’ and haven’t noticed the phone ringing.

If you have, then you’ve been in hypnosis. Some people call it trance. It doesn’t matter, they are the same whatever you call it.
Basically, by focusing on a particular thought or image you have managed to block out any distractions automatically.

The common misconception is that you get ‘hypnotized’ by the hypnotist. The truth is that you allow yourself to go into hypnosis.

Think of the hypnotist/therapist more like a co-driver/navigator, holding the map. He/She knows which way to go to get you into a hypnotic state. If you follow the therapists’ directions, you can allow yourself to go into hypnosis easily and effortlessly.

That’s why it’s important for the client to really participate in the process and follow the therapist’s lead.

For some people, they can go into trance really quickly and for others it takes time. Everybody is different so everybody experiences the process differently. If you go into it with an open mind, and not resistant, you’ll have an enjoyable experience.

Once in hypnosis, the change-work can begin!