Hypnosis vs. Hypnotherapy

What is the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy?

First of all, it helps to understand that the subconscious mind is like a machine in some respects. Using the techniques of hypnosis, you can deliver an instruction to your subconscious such as “Don’t smoke,” and for a time you will stop smoking. However, we’re not just machines: we’re living beings motivated by needs. Bad habits are “bad” simply because they don’t really meet the need they’re trying to meet. If you give your mind a hypnotic suggestion to stop a bad habit, you may succeed in stopping that behavior for a time, but the pressure of the unanswered need will eventually bring that bad habit back, or create another, equally troublesome problem to take its place.

Hypnotherapy combines the power of hypnosis and hypnotic suggestion with therapeutic understanding. Hypnotherapy helps you connect with your genuine need and design an effective strategy to fulfill that need. Your bad habit or life problem is like a dandelion in your yard. Trying to solve it with hypnosis is like pulling off the top of the weed and leaving its roots in the ground. For a time, you won’t see a dandelion in that spot on your lawn, but as the rain falls and the sun shines, that dandelion will grow back. Hypnotherapy is like digging out the weed by its root so that it will never grow back again.

Read “Therapeutic Hypnosis Defined,” an excerpt from Finding True Magic by Jack Elias, CHT

A Psychiatrist’s Findings on the Effectiveness of Hypnotherapy

In Psychotherapy, the psychotherapy journal of the American Psychiatric Association (Vol. 7-1), Dr. Alfred A. Barrios reported the following success rates:

Hypnotherapy   93% recovery after 6 sessions (about 1.5 months)

Behavior Therapy   72% recovery after 22 sessions (about 6 months)

Psychotherapy   38% recovery after 600 sessions (about 11.5 months)