Placebo Effect?

I had a conversation with a disgruntled hypnosis client yesterday that brought up an important idea. She told me that hypnosis was a bunch of bull and that it actually had no real world application. She had come to quit smoking and still had the cravings to smoke so decided that there was nothing to hypnosis that she couldn't do herself.

Most people forget, even after being hypnotized several times, that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis.So in essence, every hypnosis client is changing themselves and could do some of these things without the help of me. However, one important piece of information is left out. That is the fact that hypnosis doesn't create change in the concious mind. It works directly with the unconcious mind.

People don't realize what benefit change in the unconcious mind compared to the concious sevres. Change in the unconcious mind will happen automatically because the unconcious mind does not include the part of the mind that deals with critical thought. The part of the mind that includes critical thought is the concious mind. So if you want to change yourself without "reprogramming" the unconcious mind, you will have to conciously think of changing all the time. It won't happen automatically.

That is all very fine. Some people can change themselves without the use of hypnosis. If you are one of those people, I praise you for being able to do so! Yet, there are people out there that are having trouble bringing about change in their lives. My job is to help them change themselves. Does this make them weaker than those who can do it without the help of hypnosis? No it doesn't. They are still changing themselves with the help of hypnosis. I would argue that the people who come to see me are very strong people because they are comfortable enough with themselves and know their problem well enough that they ask for help.