Make Your Hypnotherapy Session Worth It

10 September 2021

Hypnotherapy is more than just a Band-Aid or an aspirin that works for a while to cover up a few symptoms. It’s a deep dive that tries to go beyond the superficial and address the underlying cause.

Clients often ask me if hypnotherapy can really help them permanently change their negative thoughts and behaviour or if they’ll inevitably slide back into their old habits when they’ve finished their therapy sessions. Once you’ve moved beyond the comfortable, supportive routine of regular hypnotherapy, is it truly possible to stay free on your own?

It’s natural to wonder about this, especially if hypnotherapy has helped you get over certain negative behaviour quicker than you were expecting. It makes me happy when my clients think like this because it demonstrates to me that they’re taking responsibility for their thoughts and actions.

Today, we’re going to explore a few things you can do and a few to avoid to make sure your hypnotherapy sessions are worth it.

How Long Can I Expect Hypnotherapy Results To Last?

Trying to achieve true, long-lasting change can be more difficult and take longer than slapping a quick fix over your problem.

The amount of time you need to go to hypnotherapy depends partly on your mental state. If you go into them with the right attitude, hypnotherapy sessions can give you results that last for the rest of your life.

Some of my clients see changes right away. Others have to spend months or years working on their issues before they experience the results. People with new habits they’re trying to change often get quicker results than those who have been reinforcing their negative habits their whole lives.

A good hypnotherapist tries to understand your goals and needs. They’ll work with you to form a structured strategy of how many and what specific kind of sessions will benefit you and the most amount of good.

They’ll rely in part on their experience of how much hypnotherapy the average client needs and in part on your specific history. That includes:

• Your mental state
• Your physical condition
• How many things you want to change
• The intensity of the changes you want to make

Another thing your hypnotherapist will look at to help them decide how many sessions you might need is how you respond to their first session with you. If you’re highly suggestible and easy to hypnotize, you’ll probably need fewer sessions. If you struggle with allowing yourself to relax and trust your hypnotherapist, it could take a bit longer.

Remember, there aren’t many changes that both happen fast and stick around for a lifetime. The most important thing you can do is relax and trust your hypnotherapist as you progress through your sessions.

What Can I Do To Make Hypnotherapy Changes That Last?

If you’ve tried other things to change a certain negative behaviour, you may have found yourself getting better at first but later fallen back into your old habits. It doesn’t seem worth it to invest time into, for instance, reducing your anxiety or quitting cigarettes when the changes you make only last for a little while.

It’s important to talk to your hypnotherapist about any worries you have. Besides that, here are six important things you can do to make sure your hypnotherapy progress lasts.

1. Be positive! Progress sometimes looks like two steps forward and one back. Focus on your gains, and stop worrying so much about backsliding. Constantly worrying about the worst-case scenario is a form of negative self-hypnosis. The more you tell yourself that things will eventually go bad, the more likely it is to happen.
2. Whenever you notice a good change, take a second to examine exactly what you’ve done differently this time around. Looking closely at the nuts and bolts of a good change is a great way to keep it going.
3. Be aware that even hypnotherapy won’t make you impenetrable to mistakes. It’s okay to have a bad day every once in a while. The techniques and tools that you learn during your sessions encourage gradual progress, and eventually you’ll find you’re having a lot fewer bad days than before.
4. Use the techniques you learn as often as possible. The more you use them, the more of a synergistic effect you’ll see. Each positive solution will build on the one before it, and soon solving problems will come much easier to you.
5. Promise yourself that you’ll take your physical and mental health seriously for as long as it takes. Make the right choices in as many areas as you can. Eat, sleep and exercise right. Use techniques that are complementary to hypnotherapy, like mindfulness, meditation and self-hypnosis.
6. Leave yourself open. Hypnotherapy can be a beautiful, life-changing experience, but you have to be willing to change. If you’re curious about the process and open to what it can do for you, you’ll see much longer-lasting results.

What Should I Avoid?

Here are four things to watch out for if you want your hypnotherapy progress to last.

1. Avoid unregistered hypnotherapists. If they are unable to put you in a trance or they don’t work to build rapport and create an atmosphere of trust between you, the hypnotherapy is less likely to work. Same goes for therapists who have a dirty office and a poor presentation or act creepy, rude or judgmental. Hypnotherapists that don’t listen to you or act like they know everything probably don’t know what they’re doing.
2. Stay away from low-quality suggestions. If your hypnotherapist’s suggestions aren’t well crafted or are too general, they probably won’t work long term. Basic, all-purpose suggestions may work for highly-suggestible clients, but those only make up about 10% of the population. If you’re part of the other 90%, you’ll need more advanced techniques, indirect suggestions, metaphors, questions, binds, double binds and more. These things take a lot of knowledge and skill. If your hypnotherapist isn’t using all the tools in the hypnotherapy toolbox, it may be time for a change.
3. Notice conflicting suggestions. A conflicting suggestion is when your hypnotherapist suggests something but it’s accompanied in your mind by a conflicting idea or emotion. That can happen when the suggestion scares or shocks you. It can also happen when you go back out into the world and are immediately confronted by conflicting peer pressure, a boss with different priorities or even an unavoidable commercial or billboard with a conflicting message. Tell your hypnotherapist about these conflicts so you can plan together to overcome them.
4. Fight your own resistance and unwillingness to progress. It’s almost impossible to make lasting changes if deep down you don’t really want them. Hypnosis works within the battlefield of your mind, where there are often conflicting desires and goals. Your resistance may have a deep-set unconscious source. Perhaps you’re behaving this way as a result of your mind trying to protect you from a traumatic history. Maybe your mind associates change with pain, or maybe you have a corrupted reward function tied to your unhealthy behaviour. Try to dig into the reasons for your resistance, and talk to your hypnotherapist about them.

You are encouraged to relax and enjoy each session, around an hour long, clients describe the hypnotherapy process as deeply relaxing and therapeutic.

Related Articles

• Does Hypnotherapy Work for Confidence?
• Does Hypnotherapy Work for Weight Loss?
• Hypnotherapy for Phobias
• Hypnotherapy for Stress Management
• Can Hypnotherapy Help with Anxiety?