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People say it’s good to share, but not if you’re then told to “just get over it!”

How to “just get over it” is what you really need to hear.

So in this post, and a few more posts to come, I’ll be discussing how to “just get over it,” whatever “it” may be in your case.

To find the solution to a problem we need to see the problem clearly, and that means taking it apart to look inside.

What stops you “getting over” something in your past?

Probably the most important is the conversations you keep having in your mind about what happened.

This is called your “internal dialogue” if you’re talking to another person in your mind, or “internal monologue” if you’re talking to yourself.

In internal dialogue, we are usually talking to somebody who wronged us, telling them how unfairly they treated us and so on, or just venting our rage at them.

Or if guilt is our problem, we might be apologising to somebody we’ve wronged ourselves.

If it’s internal monologue, we’re generally criticising or even insulting and browbeating our self for what we did or didn’t do at some time in the past.

It’s these internal conversations that stop us moving on, because they keep our attention focused on the past, which we cannot change, rather than the present where we can make changes.

We can pull our attention away from these internal conversations by directing it at anything outside our self.

So here’s a simple method for directing your attention.

Every time you catch yourself in an internal conversation, just stop that conversation in its tracks, and look around you.

You know how to stop a conversation with another real person, so you can stop a conversation with yourself in exactly the same way.

Then look, listen, and feel what’s going on around you, at this moment in the real world.

If you’re in a city street, notice how many colours you can see on the buildings and vehicles and peoples’ clothing.

Can you see all the seven colours of the rainbow?

Then notice how many sounds you can hear, including different vehicles, voices of men women and children, dogs barking and birds singing, machinery or music.

Then notice how many sensations you can feel through your body, like the wind, the sunshine or rain, the ground under your feet, and your own body.

You can keep on walking while you do this, or you can stop a while to look around you if that doesn’t draw too much attention.

Half a minute or a minute is plenty, then move on.

You will have to do this many, many times to form a new habit of paying attention to the real world around you in the here and now.

Because repetition is all it takes to make or break a habit.

And because you’ve previously had dozens of these inner conversations every day, you now have dozens of opportunities to practice stopping them.

Try it for a week and see what happens!

What are the most common reasons for hypnotherapy not working?

This is an important question, because you could waste a lot of time and money if hypnotherapy is never going to work for you.  

On the other hand, you’d be losing even more if one unskilled hypnotherapist put you off a therapy that could have helped you if you’d seen someone more effective.

There’s a lot of misconceptions about reasons for hypnotherapy not working.

“I’m too strong-willed to be hypnotised.”

Some people, usually men, think they’re “too strong-willed to be hypnotised.”

This is a comforting belief- most people would rather be strong than weak, but it’s actually nonsense.

Very strong-willed people can experience hypnosis the same as anybody else, so long as they are not deliberately resisting.

Hypnosis is not arm-wrestling.

A good hypnotist isn’t trying to control or dominate their client.

They are working WITH the client to enable him or her to use their own mental powers more effectively.

In any case, if someone’s really that strong-willed, why can’t they just use their willpower to eliminate their problem?

“I’m afraid of going under.”

This is a more genuine reason for hypnotherapy not working, but again it’s based on incorrect ideas.

This fear can arise if you think that hypnosis is like a general anaesthetic.

But hypnosis and anaesthesia are very different experiences.

When you’re anaesthetised by gas or an injection, you lose consciousness completely and nothing you do can keep you awake.

When you’re hypnotised you’re still fully conscious.

It’s true that your conscious mind may drift off and not remember what was said to you while you were in trance.

But on a deeper level you are still listening, and you could pull yourself out of trance at any time if you wanted to or needed to.

Some clients will be happy to experience deep trance on their first session, while others may need a slower and gentler approach, especially if there’s a history of abuse or other victimisation.

A good hypnotherapist will begin with an informal conversation, in which they can assess what depth of trance their client will feel comfortable with.

“He was a bit creepy.”

If you just don’t feel comfortable with the hypnotherapist, for whatever reason, then you probably won’t be able to go into trance.

That’s good- it means that a part of your subconscious mind is looking after you, and should always pay attention to those inner warnings.

Fortunately even the less competent hypnotherapists are generally well-meaning people, so the therapist being creepy or scary is not a common reason for hypnotherapy not working.

“She was just talking at me.”

When I see a client who’s been to other hypnotherapists before but isn’t sure if they were really hypnotised, I ask them “did you feel any different when you were supposed to be in trance, or was it more like if you just shut your eyes now while I’m talking to you?”

If it was just like sitting with their eyes closed, then they were not in trance.

This often happens when the hypnotherapist has just been reciting from a script, word for word, rather than forming a real connection with the individual client as in a normal conversation.

But if the client says to me, “I don’t think I was in trace because I was still conscious, I could have moved or opened my eyes, I still heard every word,” then this means they had a wrong idea about hypnosis.

As I said already, even in deep trance you can still hear and you can still move- you probably won’t want to move, but that’s because you feel so comfortable!

Click HERE to read about the experience of real hypnotic trance.

“I’m just not receptive.”

If you look up “hypnotisability” on Google or Wikipedia it will tell you that a minority of people are very hypnotisable, and a minority are not hypnotisable, while most people are somewhere in between.

Just like height- a few people are very short and a few are very tall, but most are in between.

But hypnosis can’t be measured with a ruler!

If you’re 2 metres tall, then you’re always that height, whoever is measuring you, and whichever ruler they are measuring with.

But every hypnotherapist is a different human being, often using different methods, and some are more skilled and experienced than others.

When I started doing hypnosis over 30 years ago, I saw a lot more people who could not be hypnotised, whereas now it’s very rare for this to happen.

The human brain hasn’t changed- it’s just that I’ve got more experience and learned different methods.

The scientific research on hypnotisability is interesting, but it’s not so relevant to real life because the scientists just had people listen to an audio recording, the same for every person.

This is quite different from seeing a hypnotherapist who would adapt their methods to each individual, watching all the time how they respond.

“It felt nice but nothing changed.”

Hypnosis is not the same as hypnotherapy.

Hypnotic trance is like a tool for doing hypnotherapy.

Having a saw doesn’t make you a carpenter, and having a screwdriver doesn’t make you an electrician.

In the same way, an effective hypnotherapist not only guides you into trance, but also uses the different powers of hypnosis to help you change your thoughts, emotions and behaviours.

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.

Indeed, his own ideas about hypnosis appear to be based on stage hypnotism, and do not take account of scientific research,

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.

So checking a register is a good idea, but it doesn’t answer the question of “is hypnosis safe?”

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!

See my post HERE for further discussion of this controversial topic.

Listening to your “sixth sense.”

Once you actually meet a hypnotherapist, your intuition, “sixth sense” or “gut feeling” can be your guide. Rather than asking “is hypnosis safe?” ask “Is hypnosis safe with this particular hypnotherapist?”

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.

Click HERE to see what some of my clients say about the experience of hypnosis.

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.

Are yuo thinking of seeing a hypnotherapist, or even training as a hypnotherapist yourself? Then there’s something you should know. The length courses for hypnotherapy training in the UK varies greatly, from as little as 40 hours to as much as 500 hours of classroom time!

Length of hypnotherapy training courses in the UK.

I did a quick survey of hypnotherapy training courses. The shortest course I found was just 5 days, totalling 40 hours of classroom time! Now to be fair, I’ve attended one of this man’s other courses and I thought his practical teaching of techniques was pretty good. But is five days really long enough to learn something as powerful as hypnotherapy and to use it safely? Why would someone choose so short a course? Is it because they’re impatient? Or keen to start earning money as quickly as possible? Or did they not consider how much there is to learn?

I also looked at the UK’s biggest hypnotherapy training school, which has branches all over the country. Their course totals 120 hours of classroom teaching. That’s three times as long as the previous course, so there’s more time for studying different conditions which you might be treating. This course also enables you to get the Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma. Anyone is allowed to be a hypnotherapist in the UK, but the HPD gets you onto the professional registers such as that of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) which is approved by the government’s Professional Standards Authority.

Learning from scripts: the pros and cons.

This school bases its teaching on hypnotic scripts. Some people find this reassuring because they have the script to fall back on. But the big disadvantage is that by working from a script, the hypnotherapist would be treating every client the same, whereas every client is actually different and unique.

The Adam Eason College of Hypnosis training takes longer. This offers 160 hours of classroom training, plus a great deal of videos and other extras. Adam is an excellent trainer and is highly respected by those doctors and academics who study hypnosis. On his course you will learn about the basic workings of hypnosis so you’ll be able to devise different methods for different clients, which is essential in my opinion.

Hypno-psychotherapy Training: A step up.

A hypno-psychotherapist is a psychotherapist who is trained to use hypnosis as their main therapeutic tool. Anyone can call themselves a psychotherapist in this country, but the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) requires lengthy training to join their register. Hypno-psychotherapy training at the National College of Hypnosis and Psychotherapy (NCHP) involves 500 hours of classroom time over four years, plus hundreds more hours of private study and other activities. This is all good but much of what you need to be an effective therapist can’t be learned from a book. So a more academic-minded therapist will surely know more in theory, but that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll really feel comfortable with them.

I trained with NCHP myself, beginning back in 1987, and was on the UKCP Register for about 20 years, until I decided I wasn’t really benefiting from the UKCP, because most of the public has never heard of it. However if a hypnotherapist is UKCP registered you know they’re on the same academic level as an NHS psychotherapist, and they’ll have hypnosis skills which the CBT therapist doesn’t have.

Conclusions.

So that’s a very brief overview. Never be afraid to ask a therapist or trainer about their qualifications and level of experience. However this is not the only thing you should consider. I shall discuss the other considerations in future posts, so bookmark this blog before you go!

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.

As of 1st January 2024 I am increasing my price per session to £60. This brings my fees into line with the going rate in both Exeter and Plymouth- they were previously below the going rate. This price increase is necessary due to the big increase in the cost of advertising on Google. If I’m already seeing you as a client your session fee will not increase- you will remain at the previous rate.