Cognitive Hypnotherapy uses a phenomenon known as a trance state which has been utilised in some form by most societies since the dawn of recorded history. The ancient Egyptians had 'dream temples', Yogi's perform amazing feats using deep level meditation, and the Native Americans used sweat lodges to induce a changed state for ritual purposes. Hypnosis uses mind-states that we all enter voluntarily on a daily basis. Who hasn't lost themselves in their thoughts on the drive to work? For me the interesting question is 'who was driving the car while you were lost in those thoughts?'

My answer would be 'your unconscious'. Cognitive hypnotherapy views the unconscious acts as a protective device whose purpose is to keep you safe. Moment to moment it is processing millions of bits of information received from your senses and filtering them with the purpose of determining what in your environment is likely to bring you pain or pleasure. Without our ever realising it, we will find ourselves motivated to move towards things (people, activities, behaviour) which our unconscious believes are good for us (on the basis of past experience), and avoid things it believes bring us harm.

The problem is that for 99% of the time the human race has existed we lived a Stone Age existence where 'harm' was obvious and physical. Our nervous system (mediated by the unconscious) is geared to protect us from saber-toothed tigers, not modern stresses.

If any aspect of modern life is viewed by the unconscious as stressful it treats it like a threat (the tiger) and the fight or flight response is triggered to get you away from it. So, for example, going to pieces in an interview is actually the struggle between your unconscious trying to get you away from that situation and your conscious arguing to stay .

When the fight or flight response is triggered your body is flooded with hormones that perform certain functions, like increasing respiration, body temperature and moving blood to the muscles from any area of the body that isn't involved in fighting for survival. That accounts for the butterflies in the stomach.

It also takes blood from the brain because you don't need to think to fight or run away. So you can basically think or feel, but not both at the same time. The moment the feeling of anxiety or nervousness reaches a certain level, you become physically less able to think - that is why your mind goes blank and you struggle to put together a sentence. But boy could you run from a tiger!

This model of mental functioning can be used to explain the basis of many problems, even smoking. If you had an experience when you were younger that led your unconscious to believe that smoking was a good thing (like it made you feel like you 'belonged'), then it will continue to motivate you to crave cigarettes, no matter how much you consciously wish to stop.

It can be a mystery to us why we get locked into behaviours, beliefs and habits which we know reduce the quality of our life. It is because the unconscious tends to keep the thought patterns that generate them out of our awareness.

In a nutshell, Cognitive Hypnotherapy uses your own Natural States of trance, to assist in uncovering the thoughts and memory patterns that have led to the problem, and which continue to maintain it. Cognitive Hypnotherapy employs techniques to modify these patterns so that you are able to take control of your behaviour.

It is an interactive therapy where the therapist acts as a guide. The principle is that the client can find their own solutions with skilled assistance. The hypnotic state makes such solutions acceptable to the unconscious, so the change wrought in the client is ongoing and permanent. It does not involve me acting as a 'controlling' agent, or someone who dictates what is 'best' for you.