The terms hypnocounseling and hypnotherapy were coined many years ago, and the proliferation of hypnosis institutes to train counselors and other helping professionals, attests to the immense popularity that hypnotherapy has enjoyed among counseling clinicians.
Hypnosis in this context may be seen in several ways. It is certainly a method for uncovering hidden, sometimes non-conscious material for use in counseling sessions, though many experts caution that the revelations under hypnosis are best corroborated using other means. Hypnotherapy is also effective from a strictly behavioral point of view, giving direct suggestions to cause change in the client's unwanted actions. A third, important movement in the use of hypnotherapy is the cognitive-behavioral approach. Techniques here are used mainly to alter the thinking that preceeds the actual behavior and/or emotion. For this purpose, hypnosis is ideally suited. As decisions are made in the counseling process, identifying which ideas may successfully lead to the desired outcome, those very ideas can become the suggestions in a custom hypnosis. In this way, it is possible to re-train the client toward the thinking s/he desires. In fact, targeting an eventual hypnosis as a goal in the counseling strategy, may tend to encourage clarification of the current and needed thinking, focusing on the precise language that the client uses to describe the hoped for resolution.
Here is a link to "Rational Suggestion Therapy", a Medical Hypnoanalysis article, published in 1984, outlining how hypnotherapy may be incorporated into a cognitive-behavioral counseling strategy: hypnotherapy using RST
For more information about hypnosis as well as available self hypnosis mp3 recordings on over 40 specific topics, please visit http://self-hypnosis.org |
