About Blue Sky

What is Hypnosis?

What Can Be Treated?

Questions & Answers

Training Body

Code of Ethics

Getting there

Links

Email today

Will I lose control? Top

No. The aim of hypnosis, paradoxically, is to give control back to you. The debilitating problems, which are treatable by hypnosis, are the result of outdated or inappropriate patterns of thought or behaviour. Hypnosis provides the relaxed conditions in which your mind can see these problems in their true proportion and can confront and conquer them. The therapist is merely the facilitator in this process - acting, as it were, as a guide on a journey you, yourself, have chosen.

If the therapist were to ask you to do something that you were not happy with, or had not been discussed beforehand, you would be fully able to 'awaken' from the relaxed state and make the therapist aware of the fact.

Will I be asleep? Top

No. Hypnosis is a naturally occurring state of relaxation. Although your mind may wander, you will be able to hear all that is said and remember as much as you want to remember.

Can anyone be hypnotised? Top

Yes, if he or she is capable of focusing his or her attention on the hypnotic process.

Might I reveal information about myself that I do not wish to? Top

No. If the aim of a particular hypnotherapy session is to find out information from your past this will have been discussed and agreed beforehand, but even in this case if you do not wish to talk at any juncture you simply will not. So in control will you be of what you say that you will retain the natural human ability to tell untruths to shield yourself from revealing information that you are uncomfortable with. It is this ability to fabricate information that has made testimony obtained under hypnosis unreliable in court.

Will I forget everything that happens whilst hypnotised? Top

It is unlikely but you may if you choose to. The purpose of hypnosis is to help the client correct maladapted thoughts that impede him or her in life. The client may have repeatedly told him/herself "I'm useless - why can't I do anything right?" over the course of a lifetime, despite evidence to the contrary (- a successful career, a happy family life, a good standing in the community). It is not surprising that having been 'drip-fed' these negative, messages he or she will have low self-esteem. It won't matter how many times friends and family point out the person's merits, the person's conscious mind will continue to see him/herself through these distorted eyes. The aim of hypnosis is to bypass the conscious mind and give positive suggestion, and perhaps find and correct the root cause for this pattern of thought - some fork in the road in the person's past that set him or her on this path. If the client chooses not to consciously recall the positive suggestions given, during this healing process, then they cannot be undermined by the conscious part of the mind, and so therapy can be enhanced.

The ability to experience hypnotic amnesia such as this is not, however, prevalent and its absence does not significantly impede progress in therapy. Most people experiencing hypnosis will remember everything that was said and will, consequently, wonder whether or not they have been hypnotised (- the answer to this is that they invariably have!)

What if something happens to the therapist whilst I am hypnotised - what will happen to me? Top

You will awaken in your own good time. Nobody has EVER been 'lost in hypnosis'. If the situation is more serious than the therapist falling asleep (- this doesn't happen!), such as a fire alarm, you will awaken feeling fully aware, as will have been suggested to you during the hypnotic process.