Cognitive Behavioural Therapy / Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy

Cognitive Behaviour Hypnotherapy – CBH uses the structure and philosophy of cognitive behavioural therapy, CBT, as well as hypnosis to enable clients to identify, challenge and change their unhealthy beliefs.
The premise of CBT is that unhealthy beliefs are at the core of psychological problems, disturbed feelings, unpleasant thoughts and physical symptoms as well as unhelpful behaviours. I help clients learn to identify and challenge their unhealthy beliefs and their new, healthy beliefs are then strengthened to bring about changes that they desire.
According to Kirsch et al. 1993, the average client receiving cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy, improved further than at least 80% of clients receiving cognitive behaviour therapy only.
When a person experiences an unpleasant event, their beliefs dictate the outcome of their experience. This means that the unpleasant event is not the root problem; it is how the person sees themselves, the event and the world around them that causes and maintains the emotional disturbance. An example of this is below:
Three wives have cooked a meal for their husbands and their husbands are over 40 minutes late. The husbands have not called their wives to say they are running late.
Wife Number 1: Assumes the worse, that her husband must have had a car accident. She experiences panic related symptoms in her body she is very anxious and calls him several times to seek reassurance that he is ok.
Wife Number 2: Assumes he has not kept his promise to be on time and therefore does not respect her because he is late. She is very angry and her body is shaking with anger. She then throws his dinner in the bin.
Wife Number 3: Assumes her husband’s meeting is running late and that is why he hasn’t been able to tell her he’s running late. The dinner is placed in the oven while she waits patiently for him to arrive. She does not experience unpleasant thoughts and feelings or symptoms and her behaviour is helpful.
In all three examples, the situation is the same however:
Example 1: we can see that the wife’s belief that the worst thing has happened, i.e. she is catastrophising because she believes that the world is not safe and that resulted with her feeling very anxious, having unpleasant thoughts and unpleasant physical symptoms in her body.
Example 2: the wife’s belief that she is not respected by her husband resulted in her feeling angry and experiencing unpleasant physical symptoms as well as unhelpful behaviour.
Example 3: the wife does not have an unhealthy belief therefore she does not experience emotional disturbance or unpleasant physical symptoms and she does not behave in an unhelpful way.
These examples show clearly how beliefs triggered unwanted, unpleasant emotions and feelings, symptoms and unhelpful behaviour. It is our beliefs that are at the heart of emotional disturbance.