56 year old Chris Carter from Woodley has two children aged two and six years old and having been a cigar smoker for 35 years, he decided it was time he put his family first and improved his health.

Methods such as chewing gum, nicotine patches and going cold turkey using willpower alone do work for some smokers but for many, these just mean bad moods for days on end before finally giving in to the pull of smoking again.

Using hypnosis, Chris Carter quit smoking with the help of a clinical hypnotherapist.

Hypnotherapy to quit smoking is one of the most well known reasons for using a hypnotherapist although other issues it can help with are becoming better known nowadays especially now it is available on the NHS.

Curing someone of their smoking habit can be done in as little as one session using hypnotherapy but only if the smoker themselves has decided they really do want to quit because hypnosis cannot make you do anything you really don’t want to.

As the recession continues, hypnotherapists are seeing more clients who want to quit smoking because it is such an expensive habit as well as being dangerous to your health.

Often in real life, people have grown accustomed to believing that they have to live with pain and hypnotherapy is renowned for changing people’s beliefs, whether that is their belief that something they have a phobia of is harmful or scary, that they cannot give up smoking or lose weight, so why can’t it change their belief that healing is impossible?

By changing this belief, possibilities that people would have thought impossible become possible. They find they can break old thought processes and the physical body is very much affected by our emotions as has been proved time and again; this is why scientists talk about the mind body connection so frequently. Hypnosis is no different and is a large driver in the mind side of the mind body connection.

We talk about the placebo effect and how people’s minds and bodies react just because they believe in something. When we want to believe in something, such as getting better and healing is possible, our conscious mind often battles with our unconscious because deep down we have doubts bred by modern society. Hypnotherapy helps our unconscious mind to overcome those battles and allow healing to take place more easily.

Hypnosis is also particularly useful in the area of healing. In no way is it suggested that hypnotherapy should be used instead of conventional medicine and treatments, but it is a valuable alternative method of treatment that can work alongside conventional treatment and it is now available on the NHS too.

Hypnotherapy can be used to overcome emotional problems and mental blocks. It is often said that laughter is the greatest medicine and that being stressed does not help anybody. Using hypnosis simply as a relaxation and visualisation tool helps to relieve stress and that can allow conventional medicine and treatment to work twice as effectively. Contrary to popular opinion, people do experience the feeling of hypnosis; they don’t black out or forget everything that was said. It is relaxing and helps the unconscious part of a person to work in coordination with the conscious part and stop us battling with ourselves and in this way, hypnosis allows the healing process to take place.

According to reports in the media this week, one mother has had hypnosis to help her believe she had had a gastric band fitted. It took five sessions with a hypnotherapist to help Marie Corns after she had ballooned in weight to 15 stone and 6 lbs.

After hypnotherapy, Marie found she felt full following small portions of food and in the space of only four months she lost just under 4 stone and went from a size 22 to a size 14.

Marion, 35, from Whiston, Merseyside, said: “I have tried every other diet and exercise plan the world has to offer. I’ve tried tablets, Weight Watchers, Atkins, SlimFast, even a personal trainer but none of them helped me. I can remember every part of the ‘procedure’, including being wheeled into theatre, the clink of the surgeon’s knife and even the smell of the anaesthetic. Now if I try to eat a large portion I feel a pulling sensation in my tummy.”

Marie decided to try hypnotherapy after her friend had hypnosis to help her stop smoking.

Naturally, when having hypnosis for weight loss it is important that people do follow dietary advice and see a properly qualified hypnotherapist.

During a robbery at the Bookers Cash and Carry in Wrexham earlier this month, two members of staff on duty were threatened by the criminals.

Although nobody was hurt during the ordeal, events such as this can be alarming for anybody and all staff members at the Felin Puleston Booker site have been offered counselling by the company. One patient from the site was taken to nearby Maelor Hospital with symptoms of shock.

A Booker spokeswoman said:

“We take matters of security very seriously and are fully co-operating with the police who are now investigating the incident. No colleagues were hurt and all have been offered counselling.”

Psychotherapy and counselling are often used in matters such as this and the earlier the better. Sometimes clients do not even realise how they have been affected until months or even years later so on occasion it is better to be safe than sorry and take time out to examine how you might feel.

Post-traumatic stress is something that perhaps we may expect our police force to suffer from with the things they have to see and do in their day to day work but over reasons given included depression and anxiety.

The figures are from the period of April 2006 to March 2009 and show 959 police force staff from the West Midlands police force, ranging from constables to operations centre offices and telephone operators.  West Midlands police explained some of these absences were for external reasons such as bereavement and they have a counselling section to help staff.

A retired police superintendent John Mellor, aged 80, told the paper that counselling and psychotherapy didn’t happen in his day.  He said:

“I understand that modern police officers like those in my day suffer from stress and it seems everything these days seems to be done to assist them.  Back then when officers got sent to incidents such as murders or bad road accidents, which could be causes of stress, they didn’t seem to notice it.”

As a nation, it seems we suffer from stress and related depression much more, perhaps because of the expectations of the society we live in and perhaps because of the publicity surrounding murders and bad road accidents we are more aware of the number.  With therapies such as hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and psychotherapy, a greater awareness of our feelings and early intervention, we can use the tools therapists have nowadays to help combat our problems.

Over the last few years, even employers have started to add healthcare programmes for employees in their benefits packages although not all include alternative treatments yet.  Employers benefit from healthier, happy employers and a lower sickness or absence rate and employee gain access to alternative treatments or faster health treatment than they may otherwise have done.

One such company is Avanta.  Avanta is a firm specialising in offering office space to small and medium sized businesses.  The company has introduced a range of improvements to its benefits as it reviewed its entire benefits structure earlier this year.

Amongst new benefits such as salary sacrifice pension contributions, increases to maternity and paternity pay and medical insurance is an innovative offer to help its staff to quit smoking.  For any member of staff who wants to stop smoking Avanta is offering an incentive to reimburse them on aids, and this includes any hypnotherapy treatment.  Not all companies recognise alternative therapies in programmes such as this, which is a shame especially when hypnotherapy is recognised on the NHS as being a valuable aid for many people.

In terms of money, if you consider two separate clients who have come to a hypnotherapist to help them quit smoking: one has saved their money for the smoking cessation session and another has been given the money by their parents to stop them from smoking. From this simple analogy, who do you think would have the greater chance of success from the session?

For psychological reasons, the chances are that the first client who saved their money probably has the better chance of success.

A hypnotherapist is not just there to take your money. Self paying clients generally are more motivated and want the results more. Using your own money makes you motivated. A hypnotherapist wants the results for their client too and it is not in their interest to take your money if the hypnosis is unlikely to be effective so usually, if a client comes along who is not paying for their own hypnotherapy, the therapist will ask additional questions to find out whether they really want hypnotherapy.

Trance is actually something that we all experience regularly if not on a daily basis. Without hypnosis, you go into a trance whenever you are focusing your attention solely onto a single thing or feeling for some time. Being in a trance is a really nice feeling and having a hypnotherapist to guide you into one is just the same.

Examples of when you may experience a trance include:

• When you are absorbed into reading a good book or watching a great film. The phrase ‘getting lost in a book’ is a good once to demonstrate when we are in trance
• When immersed in exercise, you can often see that people are in trance. Again, we have a phrase to demonstrate this trance when we say someone is ‘in the zone’
• When we daydream, we can experience some vivid images and feelings; this too is a form of trance

These are just a few of the normal, every day things we do whilst experiencing a trance-like state. As you can see, trance is not some mystical dreamy state of mind but is influenced by what you are focusing upon. The hypnotherapist will help ensure you feel safe and relaxed.

The number of sessions that an issue will take depends largely upon several factors, including the hypnotherapist themselves and the client, but in general hypnotherapy is a relatively fast solution.

Perhaps it is because when psychotherapy and counselling is used, the therapist often focuses on why an issue is there and where it came from. Hypnosis, on the other hand, is more focused on the results. However, having an insight into where it came from can often help achieve the results we want too.

Naturally the number of sessions will also depend on the problem in hand; for instance, curing a phobia or quitting smoking will often take just a single session, however, for something more serious such as an eating disorder, you should expect to have more sessions depending upon how serious the problem is.

Before you have your hypnotherapy, if you are at all unsure of the number of sessions and the cost, or have any other questions, then your hypnotherapist should explain their estimate and be happy to answer any questions you might have.