What can hypnotherapy help with? We know it helps with anxiety, fears, and phobias and giving up vices like smoking. These are the stereotypical things that come to mind when we think of hypnotherapy. But this is just the start, hundreds of struggles can be overcome through the power of hypnotherapy.
If you’re going to practice and learn hypnotherapy, it’s essential to understand the breadth of its capabilities. Otherwise, you’ll limit and undersell yourself. Understanding the scope of its potential can also help you niche into a specific area.
Niching might be a new term for you; it’s when you advertise and provide your services to a very specific set of people. Marketing teaches us that this is super effective, because when people are looking for the ‘expert’ in an area, they come directly to you.
For example, when you understand that hypnotherapy can help people overcome imposter syndrome, social anxiety, and a fear of public speaking, you might decide to target your services to those who need these three things, typically entrepreneurs, leaders, and business owners. Some people worry that doing this will prevent people from coming to them with other problems, which is rarely the case; you’re not excluding other people, you’re just making it known that you have a speciality.
Just like GPs cover all medical problems as generalists, they also have their own areas of special interest, such as menopause or neurodiversity.
Let’s dive into 10 things that hypnotherapy can help with that most people don’t even realise. Then you can become an expert in a niche you’re passionate about and begin your journey in one of the most rewarding careers.
1. Imposter Syndrome
Hypnotherapy can help with impostor syndrome. If you’ve never heard of this term before, it’s defined by Britannica as ‘a persistent, unjustified feeling that one’s success is fraudulent, characterised by self-doubt and a fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evident achievements’.
I think we can all relate to that experience at some point in our lives when we worry that someone might ‘find us out’, like our boss or our colleagues. We somehow convince ourselves that we’re not as competent as people perceive us to be.
For some people, this feeling is crippling. Imposter syndrome isn’t something they experience from time to time, but every single day. It holds them back from taking promotions or moving jobs and creates overwhelming anxiety.
This can be overcome with hypnotherapy.
2. Social Anxiety
You might think that it’s only ‘introverted’ people who experience social anxiety – but ANYONE can. It’s a common experience that causes struggles in relationships and mental health. This isn’t just someone who prefers cosy nights in. Social anxiety is characterised by someone experiencing sweaty palms at the mere thought of being in a room full of people. Constantly cancelling appointments and overthinking every single conversation and encounter. Hypnotherapy can help and gives people back their power. It’s not going to turn them into a social butterfly; instead, it’s going to remove those symptoms and anxious feelings that are manifesting alongside those thoughts, so they have a choice.
3. Creative Blocks
Whether you’re a writer, designer, or artist, anyone in the creative industries relies on their creativity to do their job. Consistent work equals consistent income so those creative blocks can be highly detrimental. Especially when you have no idea why or where they come from. It’s normal to get creative blocks from time to time. And most people have strategies they use to help get them out of those blocks. Like stepping away, going for walks, or doing something entirely different. But what happens when those usual strategies no longer work? That’s where hypnotherapy can help, getting to the source of the problem and restoring someone’s creative flow.
4. Teeth Grinding
Teeth grinding is often linked to stress. An underlying issue causes you to grind your teeth at night, which then has a knock-on effect of a myriad of other symptoms like painful jaw, earache, disturbed sleep and headaches. Sounds incredibly debilitating doesn’t it? As with all things related to the brain, hypnotherapy can help address these issues. Hypnotherapy isn’t simply a case of sitting someone on a couch and wishing the struggle away. Through conversations with the client and within trance, we can pinpoint where that stress is manifesting, which in turns alleviates the teeth grinding. We’ve had clients able to entirely remove their mouth guards and partners who are now sleeping more peacefully too!
5. Pre-Surgery Relaxation
Whether a person is experiencing anxiety about surgery for the first time or the 20th time, hypnotherapy can help to ease their anxiety and help their brain understand that the surgery isn’t a threat. Who wouldn’t love to go into surgery feeling calm and relaxed? We know that for some people, it puts them off surgery altogether, cancelling operations time and again; essential operations. Imagine being part of someone’s success story and helping them receive life-changing surgery?
6. Skin picking and Hair Pulling (and other body-focused repetitive behaviours BFRBs)
Hypnotherapy can help with a multitude of compulsions, and these are two that are not as well-known. Skin picking and hair pulling are also known as BFRBs, where people feel compelled to pick at their skin or pull their hair. People who suffer from these conditions report feeling either anxious before they do the behaviour, or experience a feeling, tingling or sensation that feels like it can only be fixed by pulling or picking.
Hypnotherapy has been proven to help reduce and eliminate these struggles.
7. Screen Addiction (excessive and compulsive use of digital devices)
We’re probably all guilty of picking up our phones a bit too much. But when does it become a problem? The addiction centre says that it’s when it becomes so excessive a person relies on it. There’s a compulsive need to use the device regardless of how it negatively impacts on family, friends, our wellbeing and work. Although it’s not a registered disorder in the DSM-5 (the official diagnostic manual) it has very similar characteristics to things like gambling addictions. Hypnotherapy can help lessen those compulsions which is pretty powerful when you consider how intense and life limiting addictions can be.
8. Insecurity
Insecurity can cause you to doubt your abilities, question everything, your instincts and relationships – it can have a huge detrimental effect on your mental health. When we’re insecure, it can lead to unhelpful thoughts and behaviours, especially in relationships, such as constantly checking up on a partner when you’re not with them, seeking external validation, and feeling jealous of other people and their lives. It’s not a fun place to be. People don’t realise this is precisely what hypnotherapy can help with. Tracing back to the experiences that caused the insecurities in the first place, we can change the story and improve self-confidence, helping someone understand their worth. Powerful right?
9. Tinnitus
Tinnitus UK talk about how hypnotherapy can help as an alternative treatment. Tinnitus is a condition where someone hears noise that doesn’t come from an outside source – instead it’s an internal noise such as ringing, buzzing or humming. Although it doesn’t remove the tinnitus, it can help with the ‘reaction’ to it. So, the anger, anxiety and stress someone might feel can be lessened. It’s a lesser-known therapy for Tinnitus, and although there aren’t vast amounts of research specifically into it, we do know that some people benefit from hypnotherapy as a treatment.
10. Childbirth
You may have heard of the term ‘hypnobirthing’. This is where you can use self-hypnosis techniques, guided imagery and deep relaxation to help you feel calmer and more in control during childbirth. These are excellent techniques you can learn alongside regular sessions with a hypnotherapist. This is especially helpful for anyone who is particularly anxious about giving birth and/or worried about the pain they might experience. KGHypnobirthing surveyed 700 people, and 76% of those who used hypnotherapy rated their birth experience as “extremely” or “quite” calm compared to 46% of those who didn’t use hypnotherapy.
In summary
With many of these struggles, taking the first step to share that your problem is extremely hard for an individual. Some people can feel a significant amount of shame and embarrassment. So, having these struggles listed on your website, with clear empathy around them, will undoubtedly help people to come forward and contact you for the help and support they need.
Hypnotherapy can help with so many different things – this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you have a strong desire to help people, then the Hypnotherapy Diploma is the perfect next step for you. Book a call here to get booked onto our next in-person cohort, or start your journey right here, right now, with our online hypnotherapy study option and get immediate access to all materials and modules.