Before you start with actual hypnotherapy, you will attend an initial consultation. This allows you and the hypnotherapist to get to know each other. The hypnotherapist will assess your concerns, needs and goals and inform you of the different techniques that can be used. Also, you will get a chance to see how it feels to be in hypnosis. The hypnotherapist will guide you through relaxing your body and mind. Then, the hypnotherapist will help you to establish your safe place – which is a foundation for subsequent sessions, as well as a helpful tool for many difficult situations.
2. Subsequent sessions
You and the hypnotherapist decide together how the following hypnotherapy sessions will be structured and which techniques will be used in order to reach the most effective results. Listed below are the main techniques that can be applied using hypnotherapy:
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Suggestions: Suggestions are an array of techniques that address the presenting issue in the present, such as visualizations of your ideal you, metaphorical stories that help you address the presenting issue in everyday life, etc. These suggestions are very effective because they are given while you are in a state of hypnosis, which allows for these messages to work directly in your subconscious. Generally, suggestions address the symptom rather than the underlying issue.
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Age regression: The hypnotherapist helps your subconscious to lead you to the most important event in your past that has to do with your presenting issue. This technique is very effective. The hypnotherapist will help you to address the situation in the past in a more mature way. You learn that the feelings you had during this event in the past were then valid and true, but are presently no longer necessary. In an age regression you address the underlying issue directly.
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Past life regression: The hypnotherapist helps your subconscious to lead you to a previous lifetime that has to do with your presenting issue. In our Western culture, not many people believe in previous lifetimes and the concept seems strange to many of us. However, you do not have to believe in past lives in order to make this technique successful. Rather than believing in the past life as a real event, it is seen as a metaphor your mind provides you with in order to understand the presenting issue.