The Truth about Hypnosis
I recently came accross a website The-Truth-About-Allen-Carr.com which explains how Allen Carr, famous for his books and courses on stopping smoking, stopped smoking many years ago by seeing a hypnotherapist. Despite this he never publicised hypnotherapy as a successful method for smoking cessation, probably because he saw it as competition for his method which, incidently, includes hypnosis as part of the programme.
I recently overheard a conversation between an employer and an NHS stop smoking advisor. The employer was looking for some advice on how to stop smoking for one of his employees and mentioned hypnotherapy as a possible option. This was quickly dismissed by the NHS advisor along the lines that there is no evidence to support hypnosis as a successful method to quit smoking!
Later on that same day I met an old acquantence whom I hadn’t seen for a few years and during our ‘catch up’ conversation she said “are you still doing that weird hypnosis stuff” whilst pulling a face and recoiling as if I were a threat to her. It reminded me of a time when I attended a business meeting and a man asked me what I business I was in. When I announced myself as a Hypnotherapist he looked scared so I said, jokingly, “whatever you do don’t look into my eyes”. From then on he avoided eye contact whilst continuing our conversation. Proof indeed that suggestions can be very effective!
Whilst explaining my stop smoking method to a potential client I mentioned that hypnosis forms part of the treatment and she said “I’ve tried hypnosis before and it doesn’t work for me”. At the time she was struggling with a combination of willpower and patches. When I asked her about her past experience of hypnosis she said that she had stopped for 1 month afterwards with no effort or negative side effects. “How did it not work”? I asked and she replied “because I started smoking again a month later”. In other words it was very effective at helping her to stop smoking but it didn’t prevent her from starting again. The question is whether or not you could call that a success or a failure on the part of hypnosis as a method for smoking cessation. This is one of the reasons I never quote success rates, because how do you define success?
The hypnotherapy industry needs to do more to educate the public on what we do, how we do it and how it works. The ignorance and misunderstanding is not helped by the use of hypnosis as a form of entertainment. Perhaps its time to re-open the debate on banning hypnotic stage shows in order to help us create more credibility and so that we can help more people who could be missing out on a great opportunity but fear and ignorance prevents them from seeking help.
