How to choose the right therapy for you
If you have never been through therapy before it can be difficult to know what kind of therapy you should go for.
Most people tend to choose talking therapy and I personally find this a very good starting point on your healing journey. Talking therapies involve talking about your emotions, behaviours and concerns to a professional. Sometimes, just knowing that you have someone to talk without being judged can be already very beneficial.
The most common types of talking therapies are psychotherapy and counselling. Both can be very effective in helping people discover more about themselves and understand their behaviour patterns, why they keep constantly attracting the same circumstances to their lives and why they can’t change no matter how much they try. It can be very insightful.
I personally had talking therapy and the insights I had motivated me to study counselling. The aim of counselling is to provide a safe and non-judgemental space so one can feel comfortable to open up and talk about their concerns and feelings. By talking to a professional, the person can get a fresh perspective of their problem.
My personal experience with counselling and psychotherapy was that despite understanding myself much better and having amazing insights, I got stuck at certain point and was still repeating my patterns without being able to let go of them. And I have seen this happening with a lot of people. Of course, no one size fits all and there are also many people who greatly benefit from talking therapies.
Like me, if you have been there and at certain point felt stuck with talking therapy, then hypnotherapy might be the missing point on your therapeutic journey.
After years struggling with anxiety and insomnia, hypnotherapy was the approach that helped me release my traumas and reframe memories on an unconscious level. It’s a powerful intervention that can be used for a variety of issues, specially if you have something very specific that you would like to achieve.
It helps us reach the unconscious, the part of the mind that we are normally not aware of and once we change things on an unconscious level, transformation happens. Differently from what most people think, hypnosis is not a special state but simply a very relaxing one. For this reason, there is no such a thing as “I can’t be hypnotised”. If you can relax, you can go on a trance.
Besides, it’s a safe intervention where you are always in control. My clients normally report the experience as relaxing and very interesting. Sometimes it can be intense depending on the traumas the person experienced throughout their lives but it’s always safe.
Which one should I choose?
If it’s your first time looking for therapy and if you don’t understand why you behave the way you behave, counselling might be a good starting point. Also, if you only would like to have someone to talk to and gain a different perspective to your problems, then counselling can be very effective.
I normally offer counselling and when I feel the person is ready for a shift, I use hypnotherapy to allow for deep change to avoid the person feeling stuck, like I did in the past.
Now, if you have done therapy before and have good awareness of your patterns then you are certainly ready for hypnotherapy. I personally find that my clients who have done therapy before tend to see transformative results very fast with hypnotherapy. Not that it doesn’t work if it’s your first-time doing therapy, but it might take a little longer. This is what I have observed by offering these two therapeutic approaches.
Counselling provides a safe and nurturing space in which you can feel supported to share and explore your feelings and concerns and hypnotherapy helps to bypass the unconscious resistances that created the problem on the first place. It’s a great tool to get to the root cause of any emotional and behavioural problem.
Another difference is that counselling and other talking therapies tend to be more long term and hypnotherapy is a short-term solution (between 4 to 8 sessions).
I offer both approaches and my uniqueness is to combine them with the healing aspects of the Yoga system. My approach includes breathwork and meditation to help people release traumas and to become more aware so they can cope with their emotions in the best possible way, becoming their own healers