How Hypnotherapy and Counselling Help Each Other
By Adam Szmerling.
There are now more than 400 different counselling and psychotherapy approaches used by mental health practitioners! Two main paradigms of hypnosis have emerged, the older model being Traditional hypnotherapy and the more recent being Ericksonian hypnosis. However research has consistently demonstrated that the relationship between therapist and client (also referred to as the therapeutic alliance), rather than the therapists style, is what makes or breaks the successful therapy.
So if it doesn’t really matter what approach is used, why should counselling and hypnotherapy be combined?
Genius Milton Erickson, the founding father of Ericksonian hypnotherapy claimed that processing and change had to occur in the conscious and unconscious mind to really be effective. While counselling traditionally targets conscious experiences (such as thoughts, images and feelings we can access and communicate to others), hypnosis aims to influence the unconscious mind. So while the counselling process, involving respect, empathy and listening encourage conscious trust, hypnosis performed in a safe environment by a qualified and experienced practitioner helps to develop unconscious trust and rapport. Counselling and psychotherapy, whatever the approach, can help to make hypnosis and NLP more effective and vice versa, even though each attempts to address problems from a slightly different perspective.
Hypnotherapy usually focuses on changing behaviors, while counselling and psychotherapy more often help to promote self-understanding and self-acceptance. Together, breaking old habits and developing more adaptive behaviors and improving self-esteem and self-knowledge can create a much happier individual. Therefore, its impossible to really compare counselling and hypnotherapy. It would be like asking who’s better out of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones – they are both popular and well-known bands with much to offer.
Hypnotherapy can help psychologists, counsellors and psychotherapists who are wanting to help their client deepen their self-understanding and awareness of their transferences (seeing aspects of authority figures from childhood, such as parents and teachers, in perceived authority figures in adulthood) and projections (seeing disliked overwhelming qualities of themselves in other people) through establishing a secure relationship with the unconscious. It can also be one of the fastest ways to develop rapport and trust with a therapist.
On a more individual level, I use dream work and analysis with my clients to help them identify more with their unconscious and to help them better understand the messages being sent from this part of the mind. Interventions promoting relaxation, such as light trances, meditative practices and Ericksonian hypnotherapy greatly accelerates this process. Another handy by product is increasing memory recall and self—confidence.
A further common difference between hypnotherapy and psychotherapy is the number of sessions required. Psychotherapy can literally go on for years, and in some schools such as traditional psychoanalysis, therapy is viewed as a life-long endeavour. Hypnotherapy can bring about noticeable changes in just a few sessions. Of course this is an average and will vary from person to person. While both approaches can be crucial to long-term healing such as in cases of unresolved or complex trauma, there are some issues such as nail-biting that hypnotherapy alone will be able to assist with.
So why in the world would anyone think about having long term therapy that goes for months and in some cases years? In my view, NLP and hypnotherapy themselves are not able to address deep seated emotional and attachment disorders originating in early childhood. These issues are thought to arise due to parents not responding effectively to the needs of their infants and young children. This lack of response can range from the parents misinterpreting that their baby is hungry when the baby is cold, to parents overtly ignoring, neglecting and abusing their children. The relationship and responses we receive from our parents in the earliest years of our life go on to form the templates we use that guides our expectations of what we will receive from others in all sorts of relationships including platonic, professional and intimate. Almost everyone who seeks psychotherapy and hypnotherapy have an insecure attachment style which can either be avoidant (lots of conscious mind activity, but little if any conscious emotional or feeling states), anxious ambivalent (flooded with and guided by emotional feelings and states with less conscious mind activity) and disorganised (who are incredibly sensitive to threats, inherently mistrusting and find it very difficult to feel safe).
Regardless if the presenting complaint is anxiety, pain, depression, addiction, OCD, trauma or relationship problems, there will always be an attachment disorder exacerbating the emotional torment. All of these problems unconsciously have one purpose: to avoid feelings. That is why “getting rid of a behavior”, for example quitting smoking or giving up alcohol is not enough, albeit helpful, of which hypnotherapy can greatly assist. While the behavior may be gone, the underlying motivation for the behaviour lingers and eventually crops up again if the deeper reasons are not acknowledged, processed and understood for what they really are and what they represent. This is explains why I see so many people who have “tried so much hypnotherapy and NLP and CBT before”. I reassure them that there is a very valuable place for hypnotherapy within the counselling relationship but it is not a quick fix. The cause is rarely singular and often includes repeated affective ruptures in empathic attunement from primary caregivers.
Willing people work courageously to face their inner conflicts and resolve them in time. This develops an authentic self, a self which is well integrated, congruent and fully aware of all its aspects. In effect, this process transforms and insecure attachment into a secure one, helping to shield against depression, anxiety, stress and traumatic feelings.
In my view true therapeutic work comes from changing an attachment pattern to a secure attachment complex. With a safe enough therapeutic alliance and weekly sessions this can be possible. A key pillar of this process in the ability of the therapist to remain non-judgemental, to offer ongoing acceptance and respect regardless of what the client discloses. With hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis the client can learn how to do this for themselves by accepting what they experience non-judgementally – but, human beings can not primarily self-regulate their feelings, which is why counseling and psychotherapy must be combined with hypnotherapy. It takes regular practice of around two years for the plasticity of the brain to change and an adaptive secure attachment style formed. This does require a commitment of time and money, however the life waiting at the end of the rainbow is one many people can’t imagine.
Melbourne Hypnotherapist and Counsellor Adam Szmerling has been practicing since 1996. He has completed the Advanced Diploma of Clinical Hypnotherapy, an undergraduate University degree in counselling and postgraduate studies in counselling and psychotherapy. He is a Master Practitioner of NLP and takes a Mindfulness and Attachment Therapy approach to counselling, integrating clinical hypnotherapy, NLP, mindfulness, psychodynamic and experiential approaches to best support the needs of each individual client. Visit Adam at http://www.baysidepsychotherapy.com.au/
