Month: April 2025

So today’s post was inspired by a video I just saw, from a very famous and wealthy hypnotherapist, answering the common question “can hypnosis make you do something you don’t want to do?”

Speaking in a gentle and reassuring tone, she reassured her viewers that “hypnosis can’t make you do anything that you don’t want to do.”

Most hypnotherapy websites repeat this claim.

But I’m here to tell you that it’s nonsense.

The original question was a good question, and it deserves a better answer.

But the true answer begins with another question.

It depends on what you mean by “make” and what you mean by “want.”

What does “make” mean anyway?

If we say “persuade” or “influence,” instead of “make,” that feels different already, doesn’t it?

But how different is it really, if the end result is the same?

Can you really say that you’ve never been persuaded or influenced to do something that you previously didn’t want to do?

Other people are influencing your feelings, your thoughts and your behaviour all the time.

Even when you’re alone, you’re still thinking over things that people said or did earlier, even their expression and their tone of voice.

Now it’s true that most people, and most hypnotists, can’t “force” you to do anything without physically laying hands on you.

By giving you an order they would be announcing that they want to dominate you or control you, and this triggers your resistance, unless you’re very submissive.

A skilled manipulator never gives orders or threatens anyone.

Instead, they create an impression in your mind that you would be happier and better off if you simply did what they suggest.

We want people to like us and approve of us, especially if we find them attractive.

We want to fit in with other people by doing what they do and meeting their expectations.

We don’t want to look mean or ignorant or stupid.

And there may be things that we like to imagine doing, but we’re normally inhibited from doing those things by embarrassment or fear.

Just watch some of Derren Brown’s TV programmes if you want to see how easily some people are persuaded.

Yet Derren Brown doesn’t use hypnosis, except sometimes at the end to help people return to reality.

And what do we really mean by “wanting?”

As for “wanting” or “not wanting,” again this is not a simple matter.

Most people have “wants” which they never think about, besides the “wants” which they are actively seeking to achieve.

You already want all sorts of things.

Some wants are in the foreground of your mind, other lurking in the background, but they’re just as real.

You want to lose weight but you also want to eat that doughnut.

You want to break out of the rut and be successful but you also want to stay inside your comfort zone and not feel like an imposter.

If you’re a man, you want a beautiful woman but you don’t want other men to admire her and make you feel insecure.

Your problem is that the different things you want are incompatible.

There are two solutions to that problem.

One solution is what Napoleon Hill advocated in his famous book, “Think and Grow Rich,” based on the multi-millionaire Andrew Carnegie.

This book says that the most successful people have narrowed their wants down to just one thing, concentrating all of their intelligence and energy upon it, like a powerful hose or laser beam.

They have clearly defined their goal and specified a time frame in which they will achieve it.

Because they are obsessed with this one goal, they automatically notice every opportunity and every person who can help them to reach their goal.

Of course, this means simply deleting every other want and need.

For instance, Napoleon Hill advised his readers to “transmute” their sex drive, focusing all that energy into their ambition. His hero, Carnegie, had no sexual relationships until he married at the age of 51, already a multi-millionaire.

Most of us don’t want to live in such a narrow and obsessively self-centred way.

And maybe there’s a better way in any case?

Is their a better way?

What if our different “wants” were more compatible and less in conflict?

What if all our energies could work together to achieve a variety of goals which need not disagree with one another?

There are things you want to do and can do easily, like making a coffee. You just do it without thinking.

Then there are things you want to do but are afraid of doing.

What is that fear and where is it located?

In your imagination, obviously- when you imagine doing the thing, you immediately imagine something bad happening because you did it.

This imagination may be based on your real past experience, or on someone else’s past experience, or on something that somebody told you.

Or your brain may have connected the thing to a fear arising from some other thing- this is called “conditioning” and is very common.

Along with the imagination there’s a thought, almost like a voice in your mind saying “be careful now… don’t go too far… don’t get above yourself… you’ll fall if you’re not careful…”

The fear is also located in your body as a physical sensation.

You want to do this thing but you also want to avoid fear, because fear is unpleasant.

We take that for granted, but again, is it really that simple?

Don’t people pay to go on funfair rides, the scarier the better?

Don’t people rate a horror film or novel by how much it scared them?

Actually, the physical sensations of fear and excitement are much the same, which is why very fearful people avoid excitement and have very boring lives.

So let’s sum up my answer to the question of can hypnosis make you do something you don’t want to do?

Yes, a hypnotist could get you to do something you don’t want to do, but so could most other people.

I am going to leave it there for now.

Maybe I’ll write more about this interesting question in another post.

In the meantime, I hope this one has made you think.

A lot of people wonder “is hypnosis safe?”

And if they look to Google for an answer, they’ll probably read that hypnosis is very safe, so long as it’s done by a competent and ethical practitioner.

This is a misleading answer.

Now it might surprise you that I’d say this.

After all, I’ve been a hypnotherapist for over 30 years, so wouldn’t I want to reassure the public about hypnotherapy?

Of course I would, but effective reassurance must be based on truth.

Telling someone “this won’t hurt” before jabbing a needle into them isn’t good psychology, and only loses their trust in the long run.

In any case, how would you know if a hypnotherapist is “competent and ethical?”

Does hypnotherapy registration guarantee safety?

One common is “by checking that they’re on a professional register.”

Sure, if a therapist is on a register, you could raise a complaint against them if they broke the code of conduct of that register.

But there are numerous registers that hypnotherapists can join.

And there’s no legal obligation for a hypnotherapist to be on any register at all.

Suppose your complaint is upheld and the hypnotherapist is struck off their register.

In most cases they’ll just carry on regardless.

The public generally doesn’t care if someone’s “registered” or not, and doesn’t know one register from another, so the bad therapist won’t lose much business.

Should only health professionals do hypnotherapy?

More “official” sources like the NHS website advise you to get hypnotherapy from someone who’s already registered with a legally-recognised health profession, such as medicine, psychology or nursing.

Medical and nursing registration has more clout, because it’s a criminal offence to claim to be a registered nurse or doctor if you’re not one, so being struck off these registers would seriously damage anyone’s career.

But we know that incompetent or unethical doctors and nurses often do a lot of harm before they are found out.

I was a registered nurse for 30 years myself, so I’m well aware that there is good and bad in any health profession.

Educate yourself: the only key to safety.

When I volunteered at an advice centre, we had many clients who had been overcharged by garages.

They were always people who knew little or nothing about cars, and barely looked under the bonnet of their own vehicle.

Whether it’s motor mechanics or hypnotherapists, the best way to guard yourself from bad practice is to educate yourself.

So what should you look out for when you see a hypnotherapist, or talk with them on the phone before making an appointment?

What are the dangers of hypnotherapy?

The most common danger is to your bank balance.

I’ve known a client who spent over a thousand pounds on over 20 sessions of hypnotherapy, with no result.

In fact this person hadn’t even been hypnotised, as she realised when she came to me and experienced the real thing!

For the vast majority of problems you should expect to see some improvement after three sessions, and usually sooner.

A competent hypnotherapist should give you a rough idea of how much you’ll be spending and how many sessions you will need.

They should also explain very clearly what you’ll need to do to help yourself, because hypnotherapy is never just a passive process.

They should also be able to explain exactly how they propose to help you, in language you can understand.

It’s not actually a good sign if the hypnotherapist agrees to see you straightaway without knowing much about you.

If a hypnotherapist takes on everyone who calls them, this is often an inexperienced person who is desperate for business.

Personally I would never see any practitioner who didn’t quote their prices upfront on their website.

Of course, some hypnotherapy is worth a lot of money.

Which is more valuable- a new car, a foreign holiday, or freedom from a phobia which has limited your life every single day for many years?

I don’t criticise anyone for charging a high fee, if they really think they’re worth it.

But if someone charges ten times the going rate, you might want some evidence that they’re really ten times better than the competition!

False claims about hypnosis.

Before even contacting a hypnotherapist, check their website for misinformation.

Do they claim that hypnotherapy has an “80% success rate for stopping smoking?”

Dozens of hypnotherapists repeat this claim which they simply copy from other websites.

In fact this claim is based on a single piece of research published in Turkey in the 1960s.

No other scientific researcher has ever claimed this success rate.

Do they assure you that “you cannot be made to do anything against your will?”

This is nonsense, because people are persuaded every day to do things they didn’t want to do, without even being hypnotised!

There is a whole science of persuasion, used in marketing, politics, religion, and personal relationships.

It is true that most people could resist hypnosis- but only if they know they’re being hypnotised!

Listening to your “sixth sense.”

Once you actually meet a hypnotherapist, your intuition, “sixth sense” or “gut feeling” can be a valuable guide.

The same goes for any relationship.

Women who end up in controlling relationships often tell me that they had a bad “gut feeling” on their first encounter with the man, but were later persuaded to ignore this instinct.

If a therapist just feels “creepy” to you then they’re best avoided.

Hypnotherapy does not involve much physical contact.

I might raise and lower a client’s arm when using some methods of inducing trance, but that’s as far as it goes.

There is never any need to touch more intimate areas of the body during hypnosis and you should absolutely get up and leave immediately if this is attempted.

Fortunately this is very rare.

Beware of the emotionally needy therapist.

A much more common problem, in counselling and psychotherapy generally, is when the therapist becomes the client’s friend or even takes over the role of the client.

The therapy relationship is very different from a friendship, because you’re paying the therapist to help you.

This is different to a friendship where you’d help and listen to each other.

So it’s a very bad sign when the client gets to know all about the therapist’s own problems.

The danger here is firstly that the therapist gets to rely upon the client, and will tend to prolong the therapy for longer than the client needs.

Secondly, the client may avoid telling the therapist how they’re really feeling for fear of upsetting them.

It can be very helpful for a therapist to share with a client how they personally overcame a similar problem to what the client is experiencing.

Even then, the therapist must remember that the client’s situation and resources may not be the same as theirs.

But when your “stop smoking specialist” stinks of cigarettes, or your “weight loss specialist” is morbidly obese, or your “phobia specialist” becomes visibly shaky at the mention of spiders, then you might want to look elsewhere!

According to Google search prompts, “is hypnotherapy real?” is the most common question asked about hypnotherapy.

Likewise, “is hypnosis real?” is the most common question asked about hypnosis.

The University of Oxford, one of the oldest and most respected universities in the world, publishes the Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis: Theory Research and Practice.

This contains a hefty 791 pages of scientific information and discussion.

The team of senior doctors and psychologists who produced this work certainly believe they’re dealing with a “real” phenomenon!

The British Medical Association likewise recognised the value of hypnosis as far back as 1955. In a report they recommended that all medical students should be taught a basic understanding of it. Sadly the medical schools never followed this recommendation and doctors’ interest in hypnosis has declined since then. (Source: Guardian newspaper 22^nd April 1955).

The NHS also recognises hypnotherapy as a potentially useful therapy. (Although the information given on the NHS website is very inadequate and potentially misleading.)

So based on the word of these authorities, the short answer to the question is “yes of course hypnotherapy is real!”

But let’s dig a little deeper, and analyse why some people doubt the reality of hypnosis.

There are three main reasons for these doubts.

1) LACK OF KNOWLEDGE.

Most people have never been hypnotised, and have never seen anybody else being hypnotised.

They probably know people who have been hypnotised, but these people may never have discussed it with them. British people are still quite secretive about anything to do with their mental health.

2) MISINFORMATION IN THE MEDIA.

Most peoples’ ideas about hypnosis come from what they’ve seen on television, movies, online or in live stage shows.

People are rightly suspicious of anything they see in these media, because they know the content is produced for entertainment rather than for education.

For this reason, the people being hypnotised are always chosen from the most highly suggestible members of the audience.

Some people are so suggestible that they can even be hypnotised accidentally in a normal conversation!

Also, the people who volunteer for these performances are natural actors who enjoy being the centre of attention and amusing others.

So these performances give a very false impression of hypnosis, which could seem unbelievable to many people.

3) MISINFORMATION FROM HYPNOTHERAPISTS.

It’s understandable that hypnotherapists’ own websites concentrate on their successes.

After all, hypnotherapy in the UK is a “saturated market,” with far too many hypnotherapists competing to attract clients.

Most British people do not really prioritise their own mental health, and are reluctant to spend money on anything that’s not guaranteed to work.

Successful hypnotherapy depends largely on the client’s commitment, and other factors.

So however good the hypnotherapist may be, the therapy can still fail for various reasons.

(I’ll discuss the common reasons why hypnotherapy doesn’t work in a future post or mailshot, so bookmark this site and join my mailing list to learn more!)

Unfortunately, some hypnotherapists go way beyond emphasising their own actual successes.

They repeat claims that are not based on real evidence.

The most common example is claiming an 80% success rate in helping people to stop smoking.

The vast majority of hypnotherapists who quote this do not give any sources for their claim, and have probably just copied it from other hypnotherapists’ websites.

But I have traced the original source of the “80%” claim and it’s really not reliable.

It comes from a study made in Turkey in the 1960s, so a different culture and a different time.

Furthermore, we know that many people tell their doctors that they’ve quit smoking when they actually haven’t!

We can only trust research on stopping smoking if the researchers use an instrument to detect tobacco chemicals in the patient’s breath, which the Turkish doctors did not do.

These kinds of exaggerated claims may attract business in the short term.

But in the long term words gets around that the treatment has been much less successful than was originally claimed.

And this casts doubt on the whole field of hypnotherapy.

To conclude, asking “is hypnotherapy real?” is like asking “is surgery real?” or “is medication real?”

Of course they’re real, but that doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to work!

Hypnotherapy, like any other treatment, is most likely to work if the client is motivated and the therapist is competent and honest.