Cognitive Hypnotherapy

What is Cognitive Hypnotherapy?

Quest Cognitive Hypnotherapy is an evidence-based therapy for the treatment of Anxiety, Stress and Depression founded on a set of principles that we believe best support the potential for lasting change in any individual. Cognitive hypnotherapy uses a number of base principles aimed at enabling you to reframe your problem state in order for you to achieve your solution state.

How does it work?

Cognitive Hypnotherapy uses our natural trance states that most people experience many times during the day, spontaneously and without thinking about it. For example, I am sure you have driven somewhere and when you arrive you realise that you have been on autopilot and arrive at your destination without any real memory of the journey. This is called a trance state and you spend 90% of your day in this state, whereas you are only fully conscious for 10% of the day.

We can make the most of these trances in a safe and calm environment. We help the unconscious mind to access and assist in uncovering the thoughts, feelings and memory patterns that led to your problem. We can then release the anxiety connected with it and reframe the attached memory, allowing you the freedom to create a new path, happier and more in control, which will allow you to grow and maintain this new frame of mind.

How does it work?

An Evidence-Based Approach

Quest Cognitive Hypnotherapy (QCH) launched a unique research project in 2011. Using a team of QCH therapists, clients with anxiety and depression were assessed using the same outcome measures currently used to assess the effectiveness of talking therapies within the NHS. The pilot study was published in the Mental Health Review Journal in 2015.

It recorded that, using 118 cases measuring the effectiveness of Cognitive Hypnotherapy for the treatment of depression and anxiety, 71% considered themselves recovered after an average of 4 sessions. This compared to an average of 42% for other approaches using the same measures (like CBT). To our knowledge, this is the only hypnotherapy approach to have been validated in this way.

For further information concerning the research project and pilot study released in the Mental Health Review Journal please visit the evidence-based therapy research page.

Cognitive Hypnotherapy considers each client to be an individual. We don’t label people, but work together to achieve the client’s chosen solution state. Treatment is tailored to each individual, bearing in mind their needs and model of the world. Having studied at the Quest Institute I have a focused, structured approach that remains flexible. The Quest Institute is run by the founder of Cognitive Hypnotherapy, Trevor Silvester.

Have you noticed times in your day when you are “in a trance”? For example, when you are driving somewhere and arrive, barely remembering your journey? Or perhaps you are so engrossed in a good book, or film, that you don’t hear your partner asking if you fancy a cup of tea? Cognitive Hypnotherapy believes that we all go in and out of trance every day. When we are “doing” our problem we are in a trance as well. By using techniques drawn from NLP, CBT and Traditional Hypnotherapy we seek to alter or disrupt your problem state trance.

An Evidence-Based Approach

What will it feel like?

Some people see the word “hypnotherapy” and are unsure as to what will be involved. Will you have a pocket watch waved in front of you? Will you lose control? Will you burst into bouts of spontaneous chicken impressions at a later date?

The answer to all these questions is “no”. Cognitive Hypnotherapy is just a conversation between you and me. You will be in control at all times. You will not do anything that you don’t want to do. It might be that you close your eyes and listen to my voice, but at all times you will know where you are, what you are doing and you can open your eyes and talk whenever you feel like it. Cognitive Hypnotherapy helps you to reach a state of deep relaxation which can you help you to feel calm and comfortable.

The great thing about this therapy is that people often leave the first session feeling different. In a way it’s like the butterfly effect – little changes starting to happen in your life, which gradually grow into big changes. Before you even realise, you begin to think differently, behave differently. And the reassuring thing is that I am talking to your unconscious mind, so there is no pressure on you.

What will it feel like?

Do you think you could benefit from Cognitive Hypnotherapy? Get in touch today!

Get in touch

More about cognitive hypnotherapy

Cognitive Hypnotherapy differs from traditional Hypnotherapy as it draws on leading-edge research in neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, positive psychology, cognitive theory and NLP.

Trance is an everyday Phenomenon

Research suggests that about 90% of our behaviour is automatic. In other words we’re on a kind of behavioural autopilot – or everyday trance – for large parts of our day.

Many of these everyday trance states are useful. Thanks to them, we don’t have to start from first principles every time we tie our shoelaces or drive our cars. Instead our unconscious learning takes over, so that we can listen to the radio and think about our upcoming meeting as we go about our daily routines.

But these everyday trance states are also the reason why it can be so difficult to change problem behaviours. Consciously we may know there’s no need to be anxious about giving a presentation to a group of friendly colleagues, for instance, but unfortunately our conscious minds aren’t running the show in this situation!

All behaviour has a positive intention

In cognitive hypnotherapy we say that every behaviour has a positive intention. Even though shaking like a leaf and feeling sick with adrenaline before a big presentation may not feel useful, your unconscious truly believes that these symptoms are saving you from a far worse evil (giving the presentation). The harder you push against these negative trance states, the more they push back.

So what’s going on? The answer is that occasionally – and especially when we’re young – our brains make processing errors. Somehow, your brain has equated standing up to give a talk with certain destruction. No wonder it does everything in its power to stop you from doing it!

Often we don’t even remember the initial events that triggered these programming errors and set in motion the consequent negative behavioural patterns. We only know that we’re stuck with really unhelpful behaviour patterns that are getting in the way of our lives.

Cognitive hypnotherapy updates our unconscious programming with our conscious mind’s understanding of reality, leaving you fully in control.

You’re an individual

Because everyone’s unconscious programmes have developed differently, cognitive hypnotherapy doesn’t use labels or diagnoses.

Whereas a traditional hypnotherapist might decide you ‘have anxiety’ and read you their ‘anxiety script’, in cognitive hypnotherapy we look at the elements of your individual problem and devise a plan to take you towards your solution state.

You might say that cognitive hypnotherapy helps you wake up from negative trances, or that we de-hypnotise you, giving you back control of your life.