Dangers of Hypnosis

Even though hypnosis is perfectly natural and all hypnosis is in reality self hypnosis, there are still some dangers associated anytime you go to a professional. Think about it in terms of going to a dentist, lawyer, or even having your car repaired.

You want the person to be competent. Since hypnosis is a non-licence profession in California and as far as I know in most of USA, it may be difficult to know the difference between competent. and incompetent hypnotherapists.

The are education institutes which teach hypnosis or hypnotherapy (I'll write an article about the subtle difference between the two titles later) in a single weekend. In fact that's how I started my hypnosis education. I was curious to learn self hypnosis. At the end of the weekend I could hypnotize most everyone.

I know I can teach most intelligent people to be able to hypnotize people and deepen the depth of hypnosis in a weekend workshop. The difficulty is with the therapy aspect of hypnotherapy. I continued my education for many years learning NLP, Past Life Therapy, EFT, Releasing and many other techniques before I started my practice.

However, in California anyone can call himself/herself a hypnotist. You don't even need to read a single book about the subject. You do need to give a warning to each of your clients explaining that you are not licensed and you are not allowed to diagnose. My disclosure form is based on the California regulation (Business and Professions Code 2908 and California Senate Bill 577) so here it is. Please be welcome to copy it and change it for yourself.

So the questions to ask your prospective hypnotherapist are:

However ultimately you need to use your judgment and gut feelings. One ultimate test is whether the hypnotherapist accepts your view of the world or does she* push her own opinions and agenda on you. For example I have many. many different techniques in my toolbox. I'll use whatever fits the client. I have studied many different religions and I ask what type of symbology the client prefers. Thus if you like Christian symbology I'll quote appropriately from the New Testament with a few from the Old Testament. A jewish client may receive teaching stories from the Torah and Kabala and so on.

Another question maybe to make sure the hypnotherapist knows many different hypnotherapy/NLP technologies such as :

Enough about the hypnotherapist's competence. The next issue is the person's honesty. Even though you cannot be "controlled" by the hypnotherapist you are under his* influence. It is the same as your dentist or doctor. You do want an honest person. Again if you find a decent spiritual hypnotherapist full of loving kindness, compassion and empathy you should be alright. Once again trust your intuition and select someone whose personality fits yours.

There are some counter indications for hypnotherapy by non-licensed hypnotherapists. I only accept smoking cessation, weight management and life improvement success clients without a referral from an appropriate licensed professional. For example I love doing pain management but I only do that after consultation with and getting a referral for the attending physician. I would not go anywhere near a person with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). It is at this time outside the scope of my practice.

Some articles related to dangers of hypnosis:

I write his and her alternatively rather than his/her to make life easier. Persian is much better language from this point of view. Words are genderless in Persian. So there is a single third person pronoun meaning she/he/it in English. Coincidently when I ask most educated native Persian speakers about the gender of God they are aghast that someone should ask such a stupid question. Nine out of ten say, "Of course God is beyond gender." However most people who speak English, French, Arabic, Hebrew etc say that God is masculine. This to me is another aspect of the way language forms our reality. This is the linguistic portion of NLP.