What does it mean to be in a hypnotic trance?

What Hypnosis Isn’t: Clearing Up Misconceptions

When most people think of hypnosis, what comes to mind is often a stage show someone clucking like a chicken or forgetting their own name, all under the control of a hypnotist. It creates the impression that hypnosis is something done to you, a state where you lose awareness, surrender control, and become highly suggestible.

But this is entertainment, not therapy. Stage hypnosis, much like a magic show, is constructed to appear mysterious and powerful. Hypnotherapy, on the other hand, especially in the context of psychological healing, is something very different and far more meaningful.

The Fantasy of a Quick Fix

Many people come to hypnotherapy hoping for a kind of psychological reset button: the idea that the therapist will put them into a deep trance, make a few powerful suggestions, and the problem will be resolved instantly. This fantasy is understandable but if healing emotional pain could be that quick and clean the world would be free of suffering.

Change doesn’t usually work like that. Cognitive hypnotherapy isn’t about putting something magical into you. It’s about helping you access what’s already there, underneath the surface.

What Is Cognitive Hypnotherapy?

Cognitive Hypnotherapy draws on modern understandings of how attention, memory, and suggestion work. It views hypnosis not as a rare or mystical state, but as a natural human experience, one that we drift into and out of every day.

Any time your internal world becomes more vivid than the external one, you’re in a kind of trance. Whether you're daydreaming, reliving a past argument, catastrophizing about the future, or so absorbed in driving that you miss your turnoff you're experiencing the kind of altered focus that cognitive hypnotherapy works with.

Emotional Distress as a Trance State

From this perspective, strong emotional states such as anxiety, panic, rage, hopelessness can themselves be seen as trance-like. When you’re overtaken by emotion, your present awareness narrows. You’re no longer fully in touch with what’s actually happening around you; instead, you're caught up in old patterns of meaning, memory, and reaction.

This is where hypnotherapy can be especially powerful: it helps make the unconscious patterns within these states more visible. Not to control or suppress them, but to understand and shift them.

Therapy That Helps You Understand Yourself

Rather than handing your power over to someone else, cognitive hypnotherapy is about regaining agency. It helps you become more aware of the internal maps that drive your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours often outside your conscious awareness.

And once you can see what’s been happening beneath the surface, you're in a much better position to change it. The work isn’t always instant, but it can be deep and lasting.

Is Cognitive Hypnotherapy Right for You?

Cognitive hypnotherapy can help with a wide range of problems from anxiety, phobias, and compulsions to confidence issues, stress, and emotional blocks. If you're looking for a grounded, evidence-informed approach to therapy in Berkhamsted, and you're curious about whether this could help you, feel free to get in touch.