October 2024 - Pete Luce Hypnotherapy

Three Best Rated hypnotherapists: Why am I not listed?

When looking for hypnotherapy or any other service, you’ll have noticed a new website which is prominently placed in Google search results. This website is called “Three Best Rated.” It claims to show the three best rated hypnotherapists, garages, plumbers, hairdressers, or whatever in each city. So you might be wondering why Phobia Help is not listed on the three best rated website?

The short answer is because I have not submitted details of my website to Three Best Rated. But you might be wondering why that is, especially as it costs nothing. So here’s the reason.

It’s because I respect my clients. My clients are intelligent people. They would not rely upon a computer to “rate” hypnotherapists or any other service, because a computer cannot understand the difference between good hypnotherapists and bad.

Why you should not take advice from a machine.

A computer is a machine. Machines cannot be hypnotised. Machines do not need phobia hypnotherapy, because machines do not have phobias. Machines do not get anxious, have panic attacks, relationship problems, or low mood. They do not lack confidence. They cannot be traumatised. All a computer can do is to detect information and pictures on a website.

What Three Best Rated looks for.

There’s a long list of items which Three Best Rated uses to pick the three “best” hypnotherapists, plumbers, physios, gardeners or whatever in your area. This includes whether the business offers online booking, whether it has a business logo, whether it has pictures, updates social media pages every day, has an online chat facility, and seasonal gift vouchers.

What I provide.

I don’t do online booking because it’s too impersonal. My clients prefer to discuss with me in person when would be the ideal time for their next appointment. Different clients have different needs.

I do not have a business logo, although being a skilled artist I could easily create one! Clients pay me for my skill and knowledge of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy, based on training and long experience, not for a fancy logo.

My website does have pictures, but that’s just to improve my ratings on Google- another computer! Three best rated just counts the number of pictures, because it can’t tell one picture from another.

However there are three pictures on my site which would interest potential clients. There’s a picture of me with a huge dog, to prove that I overcame fear of dogs. There’s also a picture of a much younger me in my white coat with blue shoulder flashes, from when I was a nurse, as evidence of my professional background. And a picture of my first hypnotherapy diploma, dated 1993, to show how long I’ve been doing hypnotherapy.

I’m about to create a Facebook page. But I certainly won’t be updating it every day! What’s the point of writing just for the sake of writing? I’ll write something on it when I have something interesting to say.

I don’t have an online chat facility because my clients prefer speaking to a human being, and obviously I can’t be available 24/7 to speak to people in person. I’d have to rely upon a chatbot. Most questions that my clients have could not be answered by a machine.

As for seasonal gift vouchers, starting hypnotherapy is an important decision. Sometimes the best time is the present, other times it might be better to wait a bit. And it’s not always a good idea for one person to decide that someone else needs therapy. Therefore, gift vouchers are not appropriate in hypnotherapy.

So that’s why you won’t find me on the Three Best Rated hypnotherapists results, even though the therapists who do feature on it are far less experienced than me.

IS HYPNOTHERAPY A GOOD CAREER IN THE UK?

If you simply Google this question, you’ll find a lot of very upbeat answers. But as always when you are online, you need to check where those answers are coming from. You’ll find that most information quoted comes from hypnotherapy training schools, and the rest is largely from websites comparing different careers.

Surveys of Hypnotherapists

The information on these websites is mostly from surveys conducted in the USA, and is therefore WORTHLESS for a UK audience. This is because the UK and the USA are very different cultures. For one thing, having therapy has been normalised in the USA for many years. Also, Americans have no NHS and are accustomed to paying for treatment either directly or through insurance.

UK Hypnotherapy Training

What about the information from UK hypnotherapy training schools? This at least refers to our own country. But you do need to ask yourself- “what do these people want me to believe and why do they want me to believe it?”

Obviously like everyone in business they are trying to sell their product, and their product is hypnosis training courses. These courses typically cost at least £2,000, so running two classes of 15 students each would provide a decent average income for the trainer. (The overheads are just room hire and printing course materials, and some courses don’t even need a room as they are done online). Course fees are paid upfront, whether as a lump sum or an instalment plan, so once you join they’ve made their money. The trainers can still make a living even if none of their students succeed as hypnotherapists!

The Truth about Hypnotherapy as a Career

You may be told that hypnotherapy is “a career where it is easy to be self-employed.” What this really means is that you HAVE to be self-employed. Hardly anyone employs hypnotherapists. There is one NHS hospital (in Manchester) which uses hypnotherapy for IBS, but their therapists are health professionals like nurses who have also trained in hypnotherapy.

As to whether it’s “easy” to be a hypnotherapist, let’s look at some real research. In 2019 I surveyed most of the hypnotherapists in the UK, checking how long their websites had existed. You can see the results HERE.

How many Hypnotherapists succeed in their careers?

Notice that 44% of hypnotherapists had been in business for five years or less, and 72% for ten years or less. Less than 3% had practiced for 25 years or more. There are two reasons why most hypnotherapists are so inexperienced. Firstly it’s because more recently there are many more training schools churning out hundreds of newly qualified hypnotherapists each year. Secondly, it’s because most of these hypnotherapists go out of business within three years. I check my local area each year and I see them come and go. Most of them never stay in business long enough to really build their expertise- because in this profession, as in most professions, you learn most of what you ever know by seeing clients, not from books or lectures.

The rapidly growing number of hypnotherapists are competing for potential clients whose numbers are not growing so rapidly. Most insurance companies do not pay for hypnotherapy, and the NHS remains generally uninterested in it. So those hypnotherapists who stay in business are mostly not seeing very many clients. Surveys of hypnotherapists have shown that most are seeing ten clients or less each week, and many are only seeing one or two.

In a later post I’ll discuss why hypnotherapy CAN be a good career in the UK, despite the difficulties I’ve referred to. In the mean time I’ll just say, “Don’t believe the hype!”