Cognitive/Behavioural Hypnotherapy Theory

Cognitive / Behavioural Hypnotherapy Theory

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a form of treatment which requires clients to look at the importance of thinking in what they feel and what they do. Traditionally this treatment involves the identification of negative thoughts and how they effect the client’s behaviour. Once this is done then strategies are looked at as to how overcome these thoughts for a more constructive way of thinking and living.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy theory is that thoughts mediate between stimuli (eg. external events and emotions). In this approach and theory, it is not emotion which causes a direct emotional response but it is the evaluation of the emotion which causes the response. The therapy itself is designed to help the client to become more aware of distorted thoughts and how these thoughts cause psychological distress. It also looks at the behavioural patterns of the client which reinforce the distress. The outcome is not to correct every distorted outlook. As NLP Practitioners know distortion is one of the three primary filters which information must go through to be processed. Rather it is the goal of CBT to get the client to understand these distortions in order to make effective behavioural change. Much of the therapeutic intervention occurs between sessions in the form of tasks the client is set to carry out in order to help their own recovery process.
This approach fits well to hypnotism in that when we work with clients it is possible to utilise the formal trance state in order to determine the roots of our client’s thoughts and once this is done

Theories of hypnotism a hypnotist can then assist the client in making changes in their thoughts through the use of hypnosis. Once this change in thought occurs it is far more likely that the client’s attitudes and beliefs will be changed. Change the attitudes and beliefs and you change the behaviour, even when this is not specifically discussed. There is much research which has shown that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy efficacy is increased when hypnotism is employed as part of the treatment. There is also much research into the use of hypnotism and CBT in the treatment of anxiety disorders, hypertension, the relief of pain, IBS, phobias, OCD’s, tension and stress. It should be noted that with most of these interventions, the use of self hypnosis appears to help make the treatment more effective.