What Really Happens During A Hypnotherapy Session?

If you've never experienced hypnotherapy before, you may be curious about what actually happens during a session.

The word hypnosis can conjure up some fairly dramatic images. Perhaps someone swinging a pocket watch, making you lose control, reveal your deepest secrets or behave in ways you wouldn't normally behave.

Thankfully, hypnotherapy is nothing like that.

There isn't one universal way of experiencing hypnosis. Some people experience a very deep trance state, while for others the experience is much more subtle. You might feel deeply relaxed and completely absorbed in the process, a little like those moments just before you fall asleep, when you're deeply relaxed but still aware of what is happening around you. For others, you may be lying there listening to my voice, aware of the room around you and occasionally thinking:

"Am I actually hypnotised?"

And that's completely normal too.

Hypnosis doesn't have to feel dramatic to be useful - but it can be a remarkably deep experience. 

The depth of trance isn't what determines whether hypnotherapy is working, what matters is the shift in attention and awareness that allows you to engage with the therapeutic process in a different way.

What does hypnosis actually feel like?

One of the things I sometimes hear from people experiencing hypnosis for the first time is that it wasn't quite what they expected.

They were waiting for something to happen.

Perhaps they expected to feel completely disconnected from the room or unable to think. Instead, they find themselves lying comfortably on the chair, listening to my voice, aware of sounds around them and noticing their own thoughts.

Think about meditation, your attention can become deeply inward, then a thought suddenly appears and pulls you back into the room. You might notice a sound, become aware of your body or realise you've been thinking about something completely unrelated.

Hypnosis can work in much the same way.

You may drift in and out of awareness. At one moment you might feel deeply absorbed in what I'm saying, and the next your attention may have moved elsewhere.

You may even find that you don't remember everything I've said.

I often tell clients not to worry about this. You don't have to consciously hear and remember every word for the therapeutic process to be taking place. While your conscious attention may wander, the suggestions are being delivered with the intention of working at a deeper, subconscious level.

So if you find yourself drifting away for a moment, you haven't ruined the process. You can simply allow the experience to unfold.

What is happening in the brain?

One way of understanding changes in awareness is through brainwave activity.

When we're fully awake and actively thinking, concentrating or solving problems, beta activity tends to be more prominent. As we become calmer and more relaxed, alpha activity often takes over, which is associated with a quieter, more relaxed state.

As we move towards deeper relaxation and the borderline between waking and sleep, theta activity can become more prominent. Theta is commonly associated with meditation, daydreaming, imagery and the early stages of sleep.

With even deeper relaxation, delta activity becomes more prominent. Delta waves are characteristic of deep, slow-wave sleep, which is an important period for physical restoration, tissue repair, immune function and other processes involved in the body's recovery. This is one of the reasons deep sleep is so important to physical health and healing.

Hypnosis can sometimes bring people into a very deeply relaxed state that shares some characteristics with the transition towards sleep, although hypnosis isn't the same as sleep.

Importantly, hypnotherapy isn't about achieving a particular brainwave state. The appropriate depth can vary from person to person and according to the work being done.

The useful way to think about hypnosis is as a change in attention, awareness and mental processing.

Stage hypnosis vs hypnotherapy

A lot of what people believe about hypnosis comes from watching stage hypnosis, and stage hypnosis can look very dramatic.

People appear to lose control, respond instantly to suggestions and sometimes behave in ways that seem completely out of character.

Stage hypnosis relies heavily on suggestibility - how readily someone responds to suggestion within a particular context.

A stage hypnotist isn't simply choosing random people from the audience. Participants are often screened or tested for their responsiveness and willingness to engage. The people who respond most readily are the ones most likely to be invited onto the stage.

If you're putting on a show, you want people who will respond quickly and visibly to suggestion.

Suggestibility can also be relevant in hypnotherapy. Techniques such as the balloon and book test can give a therapist an idea of how naturally someone responds to suggestion and becomes absorbed in an imagined experience.

Some people respond very quickly. Others need more time because they have an active analytical mind, find relaxation difficult, or simply feel more comfortable with a slower induction.

Neither is better, there is no prize for going into hypnosis the fastest.

Stage hypnosis is designed to demonstrate responsiveness and create a visible experience for an audience. Hypnotherapy is different: the purpose is to use focused attention, relaxation, imagination and suggestion in support of a therapeutic goal.

So, what actually is hypnosis?

At its simplest, hypnosis is a state of focused attention and increased absorption.

You experience variations of this naturally. Have you ever become completely absorbed in a film and forgotten about everything happening around you? Driven somewhere familiar and realised you barely remember the journey? Become so engrossed in a book that you didn't notice someone speaking to you?

Your attention can become so focused that other information fades into the background.

During hypnotherapy, we deliberately create a similar state of focused attention and relaxation. You're still aware of what's happening, but less occupied by the constant stream of external information and conscious thought.

This can make it easier to work with thoughts, feelings, memories and patterns that may normally operate outside your immediate conscious awareness.

How hypnosis can help to create change

Most of us have experienced the frustration of knowing what we should do but finding it difficult to actually do it.

·         You might know that worrying isn't helping, but still find yourself going over something repeatedly.

·         You might know that you're safe, but still experience anxiety.

·         You might genuinely want to feel more confident, but automatically criticise yourself.

Understanding something consciously doesn't always change an automatic response.

Our brains learn from experience, over time, thoughts, behaviours and emotional responses can become well-established patterns that operate quickly and automatically.

Think about learning to drive, initially, everything requires concentration. Eventually, much of it becomes automatic. You don't consciously talk yourself through every movement.

The brain has learned the pattern.

The same principle applies to many of our emotional and behavioural responses.

These patterns aren't necessarily signs that something is wrong with you, often, your brain is simply doing what it has learned to do.

Anxiety, for example, is a protective response, your nervous system is designed to detect potential threats and prepare you to respond. Sometimes, however, the alarm system becomes overly sensitive and something that isn't actually dangerous begins to trigger the same response as something that is.

A response may have made sense at one point in your life, but no longer serve you.

·         Perhaps worrying helped you feel prepared.

·         Perhaps avoiding something helped you feel safe.

·         Perhaps perfectionism helped you feel in control.

The problem is that a strategy that once helped you cope can eventually become the very thing that keeps you stuck. This is also why simply understanding a problem isn't always enough.

You can know that your fear isn't rational and still feel afraid. You can know that you're safe and still experience anxiety. You can understand where a pattern came from and still find yourself repeating it.

The conscious mind can understand something long before the automatic response has caught up.

This is where suggestion becomes important.

We're all influenced by suggestion. The things we repeatedly hear, experience and tell ourselves can shape the way we perceive situations and respond to them.

If you've spent years telling yourself "I'm not good enough", that belief can become incredibly familiar.

Hypnotherapy can introduce alternative suggestions and associations while your attention is focused and receptive. Over time, repetition and new experiences can help reinforce different patterns.

It's not about fighting your mind, it's about helping it learn something different.

What actually happens during a hypnotherapy session?

During a session, I'll guide you into a state of physical relaxation and focused attention.

You may feel deeply relaxed, notice your body feeling different, experience vivid imagery or simply become absorbed in your thoughts.

There isn't one "correct" way to experience hypnosis.

Some people feel a very noticeable shifts, others notice very little difference at the time. What matters isn't how dramatic the experience feels, but the therapeutic work taking place within that state. And despite what stage hypnosis might suggest, you're not handing control of your mind to someone else. You don't lose your ability to think. You don't surrender your will. You won't reveal your deepest secrets because you're in a trance.

You can reject a suggestion, speak, open your eyes or stop the session.

The process works with your participation.

In fact, the aim is ultimately the opposite of losing control: it's about developing greater choice over responses that currently feel automatic.

What hypnotherapy can - and can't - do

It's important to be realistic about what hypnotherapy is - and what it isn't.

It isn't a magic button. It can't erase difficult experiences, guarantee that you'll never feel anxious again or make you immune to stress.

What it can do is provide a structured way of working with the patterns that may be contributing to how you think, feel and respond. For some people, change happens quickly. For others, it takes time and repetition.

Often, the most sustainable change comes from combining the work we do during a session with the things you continue practising between sessions. Because ultimately, the aim isn't simply to feel different while you're lying in a therapy room, it's to take that change into your everyday life.

Hypnotherapy isn't about losing control. It's about understanding the patterns that have been running automatically and developing more choice in how you respond to them.