Method
What is hypnotherapy?
When people hear the word “hypnosis”, they often imagine a swinging pendulum, sleep, or someone losing control. In reality, hypnotherapy is very different.
You remain aware and in control
Hypnotherapy is not about putting you to sleep or taking control of your mind.
During a session, you remain aware of what is happening. You hear me, you can speak, make your own decisions, open your eyes, and stop the session at any time.
In my work, I mainly use a non-directive, Ericksonian approach. This means I do not tell you what to think or give you ready-made answers. Instead, I use questions, imagery, and focused attention to help you explore your own thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and reactions.
You remain aware of what is happening and in control throughout the session.
What does hypnosis feel like?
Think of a moment when you were completely absorbed in a book, a film, music, or your own thoughts. You were still awake and aware, but your attention was focused so deeply that everything around you seemed less important for a while.
Hypnosis can feel somewhat similar.
Your attention becomes more focused, making it easier to notice thoughts, emotions, memories, images, or physical sensations that may normally pass unnoticed.
I do not control what happens in your mind. My role is to guide your attention, ask questions, and help you explore what comes up.
This focused state is often called a hypnotic state or trance.
Why can past experiences still affect us today?
Imagine a child standing at the blackboard.
He makes a mistake. The teacher responds harshly. Some classmates laugh. He feels embarrassed and afraid of making another mistake.
Years pass. He may barely remember that day.
Now imagine him as an adult preparing for an important presentation. He knows the material. He is well prepared. But as the presentation gets closer, something changes.
His heart starts racing. His stomach feels unsettled. He becomes increasingly anxious and one thought keeps coming back:
“What if I make a mistake and everyone judges me?”
There is no classroom anymore. No teacher. No classmates.
But something about the situation feels familiar.
The circumstances have changed, yet a similar emotional and physical reaction may still appear.
This does not mean that every reaction we have today comes from one childhood event. Usually, our patterns develop through many experiences over time. But some experiences can influence what we expect, what we fear, and what we come to believe about ourselves.
Working with earlier experiences
This is where hypnotherapy may sometimes help.
When appropriate, we can explore earlier experiences that seem connected with a reaction that is still causing difficulties today.
The goal is not simply to find an old memory. What matters is understanding how that experience may still affect you today.
Perhaps, somewhere along the way, a person learned:
“If I make a mistake, I will be humiliated.”
“I am not good enough.”
“I must always get things right.”
“If I disappoint people, they may reject me.”
Years later, you may logically know that these beliefs are not necessarily true. And yet your emotions — and sometimes your body — may still react as if they were.
Hypnotherapy gives us a way to explore that difference between what you know and how you still react.
The goal is not to recover a perfect memory
Memory is not a video recording.
What comes up during hypnosis — an image, feeling, memory, or association — should not automatically be treated as an exact record of what happened in the past.
The goal is not to prove exactly what happened years ago.
What matters more is understanding what the experience means to you today:
What did I learn from it? What did I start believing about myself? Does that belief still influence the way I react today?
We cannot change what happened in the past. But we can change the way we relate to it today.
More freedom in the present
These patterns do not always look like obvious fears.
Maybe you keep postponing something you really want to do.
Maybe you stay silent when you want to say what you need.
Maybe you avoid opportunities because you are afraid of failing.
Or perhaps you put enormous pressure on yourself to do everything perfectly.
You may even understand why you do it — and still find yourself repeating the same pattern.
Hypnotherapy can help explore the emotions, beliefs, and automatic reactions behind these patterns.
The goal is not to erase your past or change who you are. It is to understand why certain situations still affect you the way they do — and to create more freedom in how you respond to them today.
One of the goals of hypnotherapy is simple: to understand what drives your reactions, so that old patterns do not have to keep making your decisions for you.