Talking Therapies

At Summertown Clinic we have several therapists who can help you using a range of different therapies including:

– Clinical Hypnotherapy
– Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
– Neuro-Linguistic Programming
– Mindfulness
– Emotional Freedon Technique

All these therapies can improve mental health and wellbeing, especially if you are struggling with phobias, anxiety,

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Talking Therapies at Summertown Clinic

Hypnotherapy is a valuable and effective therapy with which to address, release and resolve emotional and psychological issues, challenges, trauma and unhelpful habits.

Often, in its attempts to protect us, our unconscious can appear to be creating the opposite to what we consciously want. For example it can undermine, limit and cause us to self-sabotage. It can also raise our fears and anxieties to phobic levels, creating an avoidance of a particular activity or stimulus it perceives as dangerous, even though logically we know the opposite to be true.

Whilst our personal unconscious only ever seeks to promote our well-being it can at times be operating from out of date learning and interpretation. This can result in an unhelpful processing of and responding to situations and experiences.

Hypnosis is a naturally occurring state of focused attention and physical relaxation which we can experience in everyday life. Have you ever been absorbed in a book or TV show and simply ignored what’s going on around you? That’s a very similar psychological state – one of deep absorption and concentrated attention.

Hypnosis is not ‘mind control’ – you are always in control. It is a state which many describe as being calm, relaxed and dreamlike, although it is not like being asleep as clients are aware of what is being said.

Clinical hypnotherapy is a collaborative process in which we work together to find what works best for you to activate your inner resources and achieve realistic goals. Your hypnotherapist works using various relaxation and other therapeutic techniques, imagery and agreed therapeutic suggestions for change.

The basic premise of using hypnosis as a psychotherapeutic tool is that the conscious mind relaxes enough to allow change at the deeper unconscious level to bring about positive solutions. Clinical hypnotherapy can therefore help you to find meaningful alternatives to your current unhelpful ways of thinking, feeling or behaving. It can help you become more accepting of yourself and others and can be very helpful in encouraging personal development as well as unblocking your inner potential.

Using clinical hypnosis in therapy can enable an unconscious relearning process and an update and integration of helpful core beliefs and solutions which can then change our feeling states, behaviour and life choices.

Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy uses a combination of both clinical hypnosis and the cognitive behavioural therapy model. This approach enables us to identify our unhelpful ways of thinking and gives tools to change this for the better.

Using this approach we are able to deal successfully with the irrational fears and negative thinking patterns that prevent you from getting the best out of your life.

What happens in the session?

We will examine the sources of your problem along with the emotional issues – although we don’t get bogged down in the past because this is about finding creative solutions to bring about the change you want for the future. We work on developing effective strategies and creating positive suggestions that will help you get to your goal, and we then use hypnosis to embed these deeply into your ‘unconscious’ mind.

Facts about Hypnotherapy

The more you understand about hypnotherapy the more effective it is likely to be.

Hypnosis is a special way of using various naturally-occurring psychological and physiological states. It’s a collaborative process in which you allow yourself to follow the guidance of the therapist by using your imagination to evoke positive emotions and rehearse behaviour change.

Everyone can, in principle, be hypnotised. It has been shown to help if you relax, think positively and imagine the things being suggested.

Hypnotic trance, so-called, is an increased ability to respond to positive suggestions, usually accompanied simply by relaxed attention to the ideas being suggested.

Hypnosis is definitely not unconsciousness or a state of sleep (even though we sometimes use the word ‘sleep’ in the induction of hypnosis). Roughly 90% of people report being aware of everything that happens, and relaxation helps but it is not essential to hypnosis.

Hypnosis is definitely not a state of mind control. You cannot be made to do anything against your will. On the contrary, normally you must want to accept suggestions and actively imagine responding to experience their effects.

Hypnosis is completely safe when used in a responsible and professional manner. Nobody has ever been ‘stuck’ in hypnosis.

Stage hypnosis has very little to do with clinical hypnotherapy. Take what you see on TV with a generous pinch of salt.

Hypnotic suggestion is a means of experiencing certain helpful ideas at a level profound enough to directly influence our emotions and behaviour.

Psychological and emotional problems can be seen as the result of negative thinking, whereas hypnotherapy aims to encourage (‘suggest’) positive ideas which lead to improvement.

Hypnotherapy is not a magic wand therapy (I don’t know of one), however it is probably the briefest form or therapy and in clinical studies the average number of sessions was around 4 – 6.

Thousands of positive experimental and clinical research studies have been published on hypnosis. It was recognised as an effective treatment by the British Medical Association (BMA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) in the 1950’s and more recently by the American Psychological Association (for obesity) and the NICE guidance (for IBS) used by the NHS.

Hypnosis is a simple down to earth, common sense therapy. For example, by relaxing, thinking positively and picturing your goals, hypnosis can help you to progressively improve your habitual feelings and behaviour.

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