Traditional Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is based on replacing thinking errors with more appropriate thoughts. Traditional CBT is well accepted amongst the psychiatric world. CBT is based on what is known as the ABC model, it’s quite simple and easy to learn, all clients will be taught the model and treatment will not continue until I am convinced the client knows how the ABC model works.
It goes like this A + B = C How simple is that????
This is where A stands for activating event, B stands for belief and C stands for consequence.
So if a client has a fear of balloons the activating event will be the balloon and the consequence could possibly be to run away or have a panic attack. However, it is not actually the balloon that scares the client, its the belief that the balloon will burst or represent danger or whatever the client wishes to believe. the consequence THEN is to run away or panic etc.
My role as a therapist is to analyse that belief and expose it to practical truth, then once the beliefs have been exposed as untrue and harmful these beliefs will be replaced by a more appropriate belief, as a hypnotherapist I will help you to believe that new idea at an emotional level so that you know it as a gut feeling with total conviction, thus creating a new consequence C.
For example, a smoker knows on an intellectual level that they are harming themselves and spending a lot of hard-earned cash and would be much better off to stop smoking rather than carry on smoking. However, at an emotional level, they may truly believe that they need a cigarette. With hypnosis, the client would believe at both an intellectual AND an emotional level that smoking is just a waste of time and money.