Sometimes in one-on-one hypnotherapy, especially when you’re working with NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), a person may experience feelings of change instantly. They might see a change in the way they feel about something during or immediately following their hypnosis session. With self-hypnosis recordings, however, change is more likely to occur over a period of time. Everyone’s experience with hypnosis is unique of course, so each person will experience change at different speeds and levels.

Some people might get real results after a few days and for others it might take a few weeks of hypnosis before they notice a change. It’s not always an “Aha!” moment or some eureka experience. It’s more often something that happens without us really even noticing, such as when someone develops more self confidence without consciously noticing at first – which is very common.

Say someone has a problem going to the supermarket, then one day they go to the store and do their shopping and it’s not until they get to the car do they realise they managed it without any difficulty at all. That’s the funny thing about change, and about hypnosis really, you aren’t always immediately aware of it taking place.

I know this may sound ambiguous, but as I said, it really is different for every person. I can work with someone for five minutes and they may notice a change while they are still in hypnosis. For others, it is more of a progressive thing. Little by little, changes take place until the issue has been resolved. If the problem takes place at an unconscious level, and it is resolved at an unconscious level, why then do we expect we will automatically or immediately become aware of that change?

There have been times when I’ve had what I call a really, really good hypnotherapy session with a person. They come back the next week and they don’t express any change in the way the feel or behave. I had been absolutely 100 percent sure that they had done the work in the previous hypnotherapy session. We continue with what appears to be a relatively average hypnotherapy session, then they come back a week later and their life has changed. You just never know.

We all have our own unique world and we each have our own timeframe for change. It’s impossible to predict when and how change will occur, but it does happen. Hypnosis is by far the most effective means of bringing about permanent and lasting behavioural and emotional change, even if we aren’t immediately aware of it.