What's the Difference Between Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation and focused attention. Hypnotherapy is a treatment that uses that state, with a trained therapist, to help you change something, such as a fear, a habit or a pattern of anxiety. Hypnosis is the tool, and hypnotherapy is the work done with it.

What is hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a natural state in which your attention is narrow and focused and your body is relaxed. You are not asleep, you stay aware of what is happening and you can come out of it whenever you choose. People enter similar states in daily life, for example when they are absorbed in music or driving a familiar route. On its own, hypnosis is simply the state. What happens inside it depends on who is guiding you and why.

What is hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis for a therapeutic purpose. The therapist starts by understanding what you want to change, then guides you into hypnosis and works with suggestions and techniques chosen for you. I combine hypnosis with approaches such as NLP and CBT, depending on what you want to change.

The main differences

1. Hypnosis is a state. Hypnotherapy is a treatment that uses the state.
2. Hypnosis can be used for entertainment, as on a stage. Hypnotherapy aims to help you with a personal goal.
3. Hypnosis needs a willing person. Hypnotherapy also needs a trained therapist who asks about your health first and shapes the session around you.
4. Hypnosis can be practised alone as self-hypnosis. Hypnotherapy is guided by a therapist who adapts the session as it goes.

What about stage hypnosis?

Stage hypnosis is entertainment. The performer chooses volunteers who are comfortable taking part, and the aim is a show, not a change in your life. In my work the aim is the opposite: a private conversation about what you want, and a session built around it.

Why the difference matters when you look for help

If you search for hypnosis, you may find entertainers, recordings and apps as well as therapists. If you want help with a problem, you are looking for hypnotherapy from someone who is trained, asks about your health and explains what the session will involve.

Do both help with the same things?

Hypnotherapy is used to support people with anxiety, phobias, sleep problems, habits such as smoking and low confidence, among other things. It does not replace medical care, so if you have a health condition please keep working with your GP.

If you would like to know what hypnotherapy could mean for you, you can arrange a free consultation from the home page.

I am Shahin Gurbanov, a certified hypnotherapist, and hypnosis is the tool I use to help patients change what they want to change.