What is Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy (CBH)?

CBH is the full-integration of social, cognitive and behavioural psychology with clinical hypnosis.

It’s a practical intervention based on common sense. It’s rational, realistic and includes a good sprinkle of scepticism!

Most importantly, your collaboration, participation and imagination are crucial for the speed and effectiveness of this therapy!

CBH is evidence-based, makes use of well-researched methods, skills and techniques from different disciplines and incorporates them within a consistent framework.

This framework can be easily adapted to fit around your lifestyle and help you resolve or better manage a variety of current distressing, psychological issues. And, you can keep using it to overcome different problems throughout your life.

The myths about hypnosis

Clinical hypnosis is often confused with stage hypnosis, pseudo-science or fiction, in books and films, about mind manipulation.

Where someone is able to control their subject’s unconscious mind, put them in a sleep-like trance, make them act against their will and then wipe their memory!  This has nothing to do with clinical hypnosis! All hypnosis is self-hypnosis.

Have you ever been so absorbed in a book, or a film, or doing a task, that you haven’t heard, seen or noticed anything else going on around you? And time has just flown past? Well, this is a form of self-hypnosis! It’s something you do….not something that’s done to you! 

Matter teaches you the skills to induce and hold this fully focused, fully conscious mindset. And then to use self-suggestion to properly relax the body, notice intrusive, negative thoughts and feelings you might want to change, to review events and situations more objectively and to rehearse new skills and techniques before applying them in real-life.

And research shows that integrating hypnosis with cognitive and behavioural skills and techniques increases the efficacy of using CBT alone for between 70-90% of clients (Kirsch et al, 1995).