What Can Hypnotherapy Help With? 21 Surprising Issues You Didn’t Know It Could Treat
- Lee Busby
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering “What exactly is hypnotherapy used for?” you’re not alone. Many people have heard of hypnosis, but few truly understand the range of issues it can help with. The truth is, hypnotherapy is far more versatile than most people realise.
In this article, we’ll explore 21 common and often surprising issues that hypnotherapy can help treat, and explain how it works to create lasting, positive change through the power of your unconscious mind.
How Hypnotherapy Works
Hypnotherapy is a focused, natural state of awareness that allows you to access your unconscious mind the part of you responsible for habits, emotional responses, automatic behaviours, and deep-seated beliefs.
Rather than “putting you under,” a skilled hypnotherapist helps guide you into a deeply relaxed state where your unconscious mind becomes more open to helpful suggestions, insights, and transformations. This can lead to powerful shifts in thinking, behaviour, and even physical health.
It’s not mind control. It’s a gentle, client-led process that allows you to tap into inner resources you already have but may not be using to their full potential.
21 Issues Hypnotherapy Can Help With
Below are just some of the problems that clinical hypnotherapy can effectively support.
1. Anxiety and Overthinking
Hypnosis can calm the nervous system and help retrain anxious thought loops by accessing the root causes held in the unconscious mind.
2. Stress and Burnout
Regular hypnotherapy sessions can reset the body’s stress response, improve resilience, and help prevent emotional or physical burnout.
3. Insomnia and Sleep Problems
Whether you struggle to fall asleep or wake during the night, hypnosis can help regulate your sleep cycle and promote deep, natural rest.
4. Confidence and Self-Esteem
By replacing limiting beliefs with empowering ones, hypnotherapy can help you feel more confident in work, relationships, and daily life.
5. Public Speaking Nerves
Hypnotherapy can reprogramme the automatic fear response around speaking, helping you stay calm, clear, and confident under pressure.
6. Fear of Flying (and other phobias)
From heights to spiders to lifts, phobias can be resolved by accessing and neutralising fear at the unconscious level.
7. Panic Attacks
Hypnosis can teach the brain and body a new response to triggers, reducing or eliminating panic attacks altogether.
8. Weight Loss and Eating Habits
Rather than diets, hypnosis works by changing your emotional relationship with food, cravings, and self-image.
9. Smoking and Vaping Cessation
Hypnotherapy helps break the mental and emotional habit of smoking, often in just one session, by shifting identity and belief patterns.
10. Alcohol and Sugar Cravings
Cravings are not just about willpower, they’re patterns. Hypnosis helps change those patterns from the inside out.
11. Chronic Pain Relief
Using techniques like visualisation and dissociation, hypnotherapy can reduce the intensity and emotional suffering related to pain.
12. IBS and Digestive Issues
Gut-directed hypnotherapy is an evidence-based approach to soothing IBS symptoms by calming the gut-brain axis.
13. Sports Performance
Hypnosis can enhance focus, reduce performance anxiety, and boost motivation and belief for athletes and gym-goers alike.
14. Exam and Study Focus
Whether you're studying for GCSEs, A-Levels, or professional exams, hypnosis can sharpen memory, focus, and confidence.
15. Creative Blocks (Art, Music, Writing)
By bypassing self-doubt and accessing creative flow, hypnotherapy helps artists and creatives reconnect with inspiration.
16. Grief and Loss
Hypnotherapy offers a gentle way to process grief, release emotional pain, and reconnect with a sense of peace and acceptance.
17. Relationship Confidence
Whether it’s insecurity, jealousy, or fear of rejection, hypnosis can help you feel more grounded, trusting, and secure.
18. Fertility and Childbirth Preparation
Hypnosis can reduce stress, support natural fertility, and prepare the mind and body for a calmer, more empowered birth experience.
19. PTSD and Trauma Recovery
Hypnotherapy can gently process past trauma without needing to re-live every detail, helping to release stuck emotions safely.
20. Nail Biting and Skin Picking
These automatic habits can be undone by accessing the unconscious triggers and replacing them with healthier behaviours.
21. Overwhelm and Decision Paralysis
Hypnosis helps bring clarity, reduce fear of failure, and strengthen your ability to make confident decisions with ease.
What Does Hypnotherapy Feel Like?
Most people describe hypnosis as feeling deeply relaxed, calm, and present, almost like being in a daydream. You’re still aware of your surroundings, but you’re more focused inwardly.
You are never asleep or under anyone’s control. In fact, hypnotherapy is about giving you more control, by changing patterns that once felt automatic.
Clients often say things like, “I felt completely in control the whole time... but something shifted.”That’s the unconscious mind doing its work.
Is Hypnotherapy Right for You?
If you’ve read this far and something has sparked your curiosity, trust that. Hypnotherapy isn’t just for “serious problems” it’s a powerful tool for growth, healing, and transformation.
Whether you want to overcome a habit, change how you feel, or just feel more like you again, there may be something incredibly valuable waiting beneath the surface of your unconscious mind.
Ready to Try Hypnotherapy?
At Hypnotherapy Berkshire, we offer clinical hypnotherapy for anxiety, habits, weight loss, confidence, smoking, sleep, and more available in Newbury or online.
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