Hypnotherapy or Psychotherapy

By Barrie St John

Psychotherapy is an umbrella term for lots of different ways of helping people with their mind and their emotions. Most hypnotherapists use some of the models from psychotherapy. When they are used in conjunction with hypnosis, I believe it makes them much more effective and work much more quickly. I am by the way open for anyone to challenge me on this. I have a wide knowledge and experience in working with people and with hypnotherapy. 

There is no doubt in my mind that some people need lots of support, but I don’t think they need that support for months and months and years on end. I don’t work with people long-term as such. Long term for me is between six and ten sessions. At that point a person might go off, and then if need be come back in six months or even a year. I’m talking about people with profound problems here, not people with minor issues. Minor issues can be dealt with in even fewer sessions.

The problem is that we can never know how long it will take a particular person to respond to psychotherapy or hypnotherapy. Every person has their own unique model of the world, their own inner world, and their own differences. I might work with someone who has a fear or phobia and it might be a ten-minute job, but for another person who chooses psychotherapy to treat his or her phobia it might take six months for successful treatment. It’s hard to compare the two because each person is different. 

Even if you’re treating the same complaint, the response varies from individual to individual. I will say, however, that I believe hypnotherapy is faster and more effective than traditional psychotherapy without a doubt. 

I recently saw a client that had been to visit a psychoanalyst six hundred times. Then he came to see me and expressed that he was still struggling with his feelings. I said, “well you’ve been to a psychoanalyst for six hundred visits, what did you get from it?” He couldn’t really give me an answer. So it just kind of makes you wonder what was happening during those six hundred hours. That person, obviously, was not really benefiting from it. 

This is just one example, of course, but I still believe that anything that psychotherapy can achieve, hypnotherapy can accomplish much faster. I just see it as a more direct route to a resolution. You can talk about something at length and never really resolve any of the underlying subconscious thoughts and feelings that fuel your waking reactions. Hypnosis goes straight to the source.

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