About Hypno-CBT®
What Is Hypno-CBT®?
Hypno-CBT® in brief. Hypno-CBT® is an evidence-based approach integrating modern hypnosis with CBT and mindfulness. There is no trance and no loss of control: hypnosis is taught as a skill of attention, imagination and expectation. Therapy is individually formulated from a toolkit of more than thirty methods, and clients leave with skills they keep, including self-hypnosis. Hypno-CBT® was developed at Hypno-CBT® College (formerly The UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy) and is a registered trademark of Mindease Limited.
Hypno-CBT® is an evidence-based approach integrating modern hypnosis with CBT and mindfulness.
Most people arrive at that sentence carrying a picture of hypnotherapy: a soothing voice, a client in a trance, suggestions dropped into an unconscious mind while the person lies passive. Hypno-CBT® is not that, and the difference starts with the word hypnosis itself.
Hypnosis without the trance
Researchers have been studying hypnosis in laboratories for the better part of a century, and the picture that emerged is very different from the stage version. Hypnosis is not a special state you fall into. It is something you do.
It is focused attention, imagination and expectation, used deliberately: experiencing an idea so vividly that your feelings, your body and your behaviour begin to respond as if it were real. The psychologist Theodore Sarbin described hypnotic experiences as believed-in imaginings.
Nobody takes control of your mind, because there is no mechanism by which they could. You are awake, aware and in charge throughout. And because hypnosis is a skill rather than a state, it improves with practice, which is why every Hypno-CBT® client is taught self-hypnosis.
Three ways of working
1
CBT
CBT (cognitive and behavioural therapy) is the most extensively researched form of psychotherapy, recommended in NHS guidance for problems including anxiety and depression. It works on the patterns that keep a problem alive: what you believe, what you avoid, what you practise without meaning to.
2
Hypnosis
Hypnosis gives that work experiential force. Understanding that a fear is exaggerated rarely dissolves it; feeling yourself respond differently, vividly and repeatedly, in imagination, begins to. Rehearsal in imagination is rehearsal the nervous system takes seriously.
3
Mindfulness
Mindfulness trains the other side of the skill: noticing what your attention is doing, catching the running commentary of self-talk, and stepping out of it rather than being carried along.
Not two therapies side by side
Plenty of therapists use CBT and also use hypnosis. In Hypno-CBT® there is one assessment, one formulation and one method, and the components are fused at the level of theory, not just technique.
The clearest example is what CBT calls negative automatic thoughts. Listen to them closely and they behave like suggestions. A person who tells themselves “I can’t cope”, with feeling, at every setback, is rehearsing that idea exactly the way a hypnotist would deliver it: repeatedly, vividly, with emotion. In effect, they are practising self-hypnosis against themselves.
Seen that way, the method follows. Part of the work is dehypnosis: loosening the grip of those negative suggestions, which is where mindfulness earns its place. Part is using the same machinery deliberately: rehearsing new responses under hypnosis until they are available in the situations that matter, which is where hypnosis earns its place. And part is the established work of CBT: examining beliefs, facing what has been avoided, building new behaviour step by step.
A toolkit, not a script
There is no standard Hypno-CBT® session and no script pulled from a drawer. Therapists train in a toolkit of more than thirty interventions, from relaxation training, imaginal exposure and systematic desensitisation to cognitive restructuring, assertiveness training, mindfulness and self-hypnosis.
The toolkit is technically eclectic but theoretically coherent: many methods, one underlying account of how people get stuck and how they change. Assessment and formulation come first, and the methods are chosen for the person, never the other way round.
Skills you keep
The aim from the first session is that you become your own therapist. Self-hypnosis, attention training, ways of working with thoughts and feelings: these are taught as skills, practised between sessions, and kept for life. Psychologists call the result self-efficacy, the earned confidence that you can handle what comes. Building it is not a side effect of Hypno-CBT®; it is a design principle.
How Hypno-CBT® differs from traditional hypnotherapy
| Traditional hypnotherapy | Hypno-CBT® |
|---|---|
| Hypnosis as a trance state induced by the therapist | Hypnosis as a skill of attention, imagination and expectation, learned by the client |
| The “unconscious mind” as the target of suggestion | Thinking, imagery, emotion and behaviour as the targets, understood through modern psychology |
| Something done to you | Something done with you, and increasingly by you |
| Standard scripts by problem type | Individual assessment and formulation |
| Suggestion as the main tool | A toolkit of more than thirty methods, with suggestion as one of them |
| Success = symptom gone | Symptom relief plus skills, self-efficacy and agency that outlast the therapy |
Hypno-CBT® and cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy
Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy (CBH) is the broader field: the integration of hypnosis with cognitive and behavioural theory and therapy. Its roots go back to the behaviour therapists of the 1940s and 50s, several of whom used hypnosis long before CBT had its name, and further back to James Braid’s original psychological account of hypnosis.
Hypno-CBT® is a specific model within and beyond that field, established and advanced by Hypno-CBT® College under the direction of Mark R. Davis. It grew from the College’s early foundations in cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy and has developed into a broader integrative model, with its own theoretical architecture, therapeutic methods, a large structured toolkit, and an emerging model of human growth: Being Agency Flourishing.
The field is explained in What is cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy? and the model’s development in The history of Hypno-CBT®.
Does it work?
Two meta-analyses, twenty-six years apart, asked the same question: does adding hypnosis to CBT improve results?
In 1995 the psychologist Irving Kirsch and his colleagues pooled 18 studies with 577 participants. The average client receiving CBT with hypnosis improved more than at least 70% of clients receiving the same therapy without it.
In 2021 Nicolino Ramondo, a psychologist at the University of Western Australia, and his team updated the analysis with 48 studies and 1,928 participants. They found a small-to-medium advantage for CBT with hypnosis at the end of treatment, and a medium-sized advantage at follow-up. The benefit did not fade when therapy ended. It grew.
Both papers, their effect sizes and their limitations are set out on our research page.
Beyond symptom relief
Hypno-CBT® begins where clients begin, with a problem. It also looks past the problem. The Being Agency Flourishing model, currently in active development, describes what therapy is for once the symptom loosens its grip: a steadier sense of being, a growing sense of capability, a life shaped by your own values and lived with more freedom. It is introduced on the Being Agency Flourishing page.
That is Hypno-CBT®: hypnosis returned to modern psychology, CBT given experiential force, and mindfulness training the attention that both depend on. One method, formulated for one person at a time, teaching skills you keep.
Where to go next
- Find a Hypno-CBT® therapist
- The Hypno-CBT® Toolbox
- Evidence and research
- How Hypno-CBT® differs from CBT
- How Hypno-CBT® differs from hypnotherapy
- The history of Hypno-CBT®
- Train in Hypno-CBT® at the College
Frequently asked questions
Is Hypno-CBT® just hypnotherapy with a different name?
No. Generic hypnotherapy typically relies on inducing a relaxed state and delivering suggestions. Hypno-CBT® is a psychological therapy in which hypnosis, CBT and mindfulness operate as one integrated method, individually formulated for each client.
Will I lose control? Can I get stuck in hypnosis?
No to both. There is no trance to get stuck in. Hypnosis in this model is focused attention and imagination, done by you, with guidance. You can open your eyes and stop at any point.
Is hypnosis scientifically credible?
Hypnosis has been studied experimentally for decades, and its use alongside CBT is supported by two meta-analyses (1995 and 2021). What lacks credibility is the stage version and the claims sometimes made around it. The research is summarised on our research page.
Is Hypno-CBT® the same as CBT with some hypnosis added?
No. The components are integrated at the level of theory. Negative thought patterns are understood as a kind of negative self-hypnosis, mindfulness is used to step out of them, and hypnosis is used to rehearse new patterns until they hold. One formulation drives all of it.
What is the difference between Hypno-CBT® and cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy?
Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy is the broader field. Hypno-CBT® is a specific registered model within it, established and advanced by Hypno-CBT® College under the direction of Mark R. Davis, with its own methods, toolkit and developing Being Agency Flourishing model.
What is Hypno-CBT® used for?
Commonly for anxiety, stress, phobias, sleep difficulties, confidence, habits and related problems.
Can I train in Hypno-CBT®?
Yes. The College has specialised in cognitive behavioural approaches to hypnotherapy since 2003. Start in the Training section.