Q: How much will it cost? What’s included? And how many sessions will I need?
A: Please refer to the 'Fees' page for full answers on these questions by clicking the 'Fees' button on the toolbar above.
Q: Why don’t you publish testimonials from satisfied clients?
A: Chiefly because I am not permitted to do so. Publishing the many testimonials that I regularly receive from my highly impressed clients would unfortunately breach their guaranteed protected client confidentiality, which is so vitally important to the ethical codes of conduct among my fellow members of the leading professional associations of clinical hypnotherapy and coaching. In any case, testimonials used for marketing purposes often look unprofessional as they are rarely verifiable in practice (as is required by the Advertising Standards Authority) and can so easily be fabricated.
However, if you are still undecided whether or not I am the right person to help you then please call me for a FREE initial telephone consultation on FREEPHONE 0800 619 00 60. There will be absolutely no obligation whatsoever for you to proceed with my services, and I will be just delighted to hear from you so that I can answers whatever queries you may have. Alternatively, you may wish to use the enquiries form on this website if you feel you would rather only communicate in writing at this stage.
Q: Are hypnotic trances potentially dangerous?
A: Trance states are completely natural and safe. In fact, we all enter trance states quite naturally several times a day. How often have you driven for miles and then thought, “Oops, I don’t remember actually driving here from that last motorway junction!”? All kinds of things induce trances – daydreaming, listening to music, watching movies, staring at the flames of a fire, or talking in raptures about your hobby passions to a friend, to name but a few. How often have you stared at a tree through a window and yet seen something completely different in your mind’s eye because you are ‘somewhere else’ in your head at that precise moment? These are all trance states. They are not unlike the ‘twilight zone’ dreamy states that we find ourselves in as we first awaken or as we are dropping off to sleep. The only major difference in an induced trance state is that there is a deliberate act of putting the subject into a state of ‘super-relaxation’ in which the subject focuses upon a single distracting thing, be it your breathing, a visual point on a ceiling or hand, or a swinging pendulum, etc. This momentary distraction causes you to temporarily suspend the critical and analytical faculties of the left side of your brain in favour of the more imaginative and creative right-hand side of your brain. It is a very gentle and relaxing process that allows the hypnotherapist to feed positive thoughts directly to your subconscious mind where they can begin to overwrite or bypass your negative self-programming without the cluttered and critical thinking of your conscious mind getting in the way. But rest assured, if any emergency situation were ever to occur during trance, such as suddenly needing to go to the toilet, or becoming overcome with emotion, you would always very easily be able to come back to full consciousness quickly and safely.
Q: Will I be safe to drive my car immediately following the hypnotherapy appointment?
A: Absolutely! It only takes a matter of seconds to come back to full wide-awake alertness at the end of a hypnotherapy session. When the trance part of the session is brought to a close you will always be given the opportunity to have a good stretch and a wiggle of your fingers and toes, but then it is pretty much straight back to normal conversation within a matter of seconds. And there is always at least several minutes of post-session conversation and feedback before going through the closing administration of payment, setting diary dates, and so forth. You should leave the appointment feeling very nice and relaxed, but if you feel at all drowsy afterwards then I can assure you that it will be nothing to do with the hypnotherapy - it will be just purely symptomatic of your general state of tiredness. Driver safety and alertness is very much your own personal and legal responsibility, and you should therefore always make sure that you are sufficiently alert and awake before driving any vehicle (only you can judge this). You are always absolutely free to take five minutes to walk or run up and down the road in the fresh air to get the blood and oxygen pumping before you drive away if you feel you need. However, this is not generally needed in practice. Nevertheless, please note that you should NEVER EVER listen to any hypnotherapy recordings while in a moving vehicle, whether as a driver or as a passenger; nor should you ever listen to such recordings while operating machinery of any kind. Having said that, legendary stories of people walking straight through plate-glass shop windows after being hypnotised by stage hypnotists is the stuff of pure urban myth. It never happened! And even if it did happen once upon a time somewhere in the world, I can assure you that the cause and effect would likely have been far more to do with the 14 pints of lager that they had consumed before and after the show than anything that the stage hypnotist actually did to them! Remember, to a large degree all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. Clinical hypnosis is completely natural and safe process; it is about using the power of your own imagination under your own self-control in a very beneficial way via an induced daydream-like state of the kind we all have quite naturally several times a day without causing any ill effect whatsoever. But such induced daydreaming at the wheel of a car IS potentially hazardous, hence my previous warning against using hypnotherapy recordings in moving vehicles.
Q: Could hypnosis make me do things against my will?
A: Despite what you may think you have witnessed in stage and TV hypnotism acts, you have to bear in mind that the subjects for stage hypnotism are always willing and compliant volunteers that are often whittled down to a select few (who are particularly compliant) by a skilled, experienced, highly confident and somewhat forceful performer. The truth of the matter is that you cannot be made to do things against your will, nor can you be made to compromise your personal code of morality while in trance. I can guarantee you that you could have Paul McKenna on one side of you and Derren Brown on the other and that neither one nor both of them could hypnotise you if you really did not want to be hypnotised. And I hasten to add to this that one cannot be a clinical hypnotherapist AND a stage hypnotist; you have to be one or the other. My professional associations for clinical hypnotherapy quite rightly expressly forbid clinical hypnotherapists to perform as stage hypnotists.
Q: Is it true that hypnosis only works on weak-minded people?
A: If anything, the exact opposite is true. Generally speaking, the very best subjects for hypnosis are the more intelligent ones who have a strong, creative imagination and good powers of focus. However, almost anyone can be hypnotised, just so long as they want to be. Indeed, it is often said among professional hypnotherapists that “all hypnosis is fundamentally self-hypnosis” and this, in essence, is very true. Hypnosis is not really something that I DO to my clients; it is something that THEY largely do to themselves, but just with my gentle guidance. In fact, my approach is to be as transparent as possible and to avoid all the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of stage hypnotism. Indeed, I teach my clients certain relaxation and self-hypnosis techniques such that they can practise them to stay calm and relaxed under pressure, or even to help them go to sleep at night. However, once my clients are in a good state of trance, I am able to feed the kinds of positive suggestions that fit my clients’ problems, issues, wants and needs, as agreed with the client beforehand in the consultation and review parts of the sessions. The subsequent bespoke CD recordings of the sessions that I provide then allow my clients to listen to the positive suggestions over and over again, in their own time, to compound the constructive and helpful effects of sub-conscious re-programming.
Q: Would hypnosis force me to tell the truth?
A: No, if anything, people are more adept at lying when in hypnosis than when not. This is because a trance state is more likely to give free reign to the imagination and the possibility that we might just imagine something has happened in our past, when in truth it hasn’t. This is why the revelations of any kind of childhood regression therapy have to be considered and handled in a very balanced and careful manner to avoid the possibility of taking ‘false memories’ as being fact.
Q: Could hypnosis cause me to get stuck in trance and never come out?
A: No, this has never happened and is simply not possible. If I put you into trance and then left the room you would eventually come out of trance in your own way and your own time. It might take some people five minutes, and it might take others half an hour, but I guarantee that you would eventually open your eyes and think, “Where’s that Neil Williams gone to?” (Not that I ever would leave your side while you are in trance). Likewise, in the unlikely event that all my radio-controlled smoke alarms ever went off, regardless of how deep a trance state you were in, I equally guarantee that you would likely be heading for the door even before I would have a chance of doing the same!
Q: Following hypnosis, might I not be able to remember anything?
A: This would never be true unless it were agreed upfront by both the client and a very talented hypnotherapist. Even then it is most unlikely. Good trance states for hypnotherapy rely on the client remaining awake but in an altered state of consciousness in which they will daydream in a state of ‘super-relaxation’ and drift in and out of meandering conscious thoughts while listening to background sounds, music and the general sound of the hypnotherapist’s voice. Certainly, it is unlikely that you will ever remember everything in a live session, but equally unlikely that you will not remember anything afterwards. In fact, when clients come to listen to their recordings of their sessions on a repeated basis, they often still consciously hear ‘new material’ (previously only heard by the subconscious mind) even after listening to the CDs several times over. Nevertheless, there are a number of techniques that can help you to forget, degrade or diminish painful or troubling memories in a very pleasant, positive and pain-free manner.
Q: Could hypnosis take away my self-control?
A: Much as hypnosis cannot make you do things against your will, nor can it make you lose self-control and do things that you wouldn’t be happy doing. Hypnosis cannot make you relinquish your moral codes or powers of judgement because you always retain the power to accept or reject the suggestions put to you while you are in a hypnotic trance state. If anything, the hypnosis puts you in a more resourceful state of mind in which you will be more aware and focussed about what you are thinking than when you are in a conscious state. With deep trance comes deep focus of thought.
Q: Could hypnosis cause me any mental strain?
A: Achieving a state of super-relaxation is the order of the day and the hypnotherapy will require you to exert little or next-to-no effort in this calming and soothing process. Sensations in hypnosis can vary from one person to another: some might feel heavy while others feel like and floating on air. Some people try to listen but then let their minds go off at tangents while others just sit back and let it all happen. Your mental journeys and fantasies are only limited by the power of your own imagination. For the most part, hypnotherapy is something of a mental treat – a ‘healing facial for the mind’. Pretty much all my clients leave my practice feeling substantially better and more relaxed than when they arrived. In fact, a high percentage of clients have said to me words to the effect of, “Do I HAVE to go home now? ... I’m sooo comfortable and relaxed.” However, a few stretches, yawns and several minutes of de-briefing conversation is always enough to ensure that my clients are fully alert and awake and ready for the journey home.
Q: Will hypnosis still be effective for me if I fall asleep?
A: Whereas it is true for hypnotherapy that the best and most useful hypnotic trance states are ones akin to ‘focussed daydreaming’, all is not lost if clients fall asleep either during the live session or during listening to session CDs. Fortunately, your subconscious mind never really goes to sleep; it looks after your body and mind even when your conscious mind goes to sleep. Surgeons and anaesthetists have discovered this phenomenon in certain medical operating situations. That is why parents can sleep through thunder storms but then awaken at the slightest cry of their baby. In between processing and storing the day’s facts, figures and visual images, your subconscious mind always maintains a certain level of alertness, including your powers of hearing. And because of this fact, you can receive much of the positive mental re-programming of hypnotherapy even when you completely drop off to sleep. That said, hypnotherapists are required to observe their clients’ responses while in trance and also have various ways of varying the tone, speed and volume of their voices to pull their clients back from the brink of dropping to sleep and back towards the more ideal daydream state of trance for the most beneficial levels of hypnotherapy.
If you wish to understand more about the processes of hypnosis then please read my article titled
“Perception & Reality: How the Power of Hypnosis and NLP Can Help You”.
Q: What is the extent of the geographical area for which your services are available?
A: I am happy to see clients from any village, town or city as long as they are willing and able to travel to my home-based practice, which is conveniently and centrally located only three minutes' drive from Junction 10 of the M42. I will also be happy to travel daily commutable distances for corporate-level hypnotherapy and coaching. However, disabled members of the public should please note that access to my therapy room may be problematic for wheelchair users and people with certain types of physical disability, in which case I will be happy to offer my services on a home visit basis. Generally speaking, I am looking to attract clients from the following Midlands cities, towns, villages and surrounding areas:
Acocks Green, Aldridge, Alrewas, Amington, Armitage, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Atherstone, Attleborough, Baddesley Ensor, Balsall Common, Barwell, Bedworth, Bentley Heath, Birchmoor, Birmingham, Bonehill, Bromsgrove, Brownhills, Burbage, Burntwood, Burton-upon-Trent, Cannock, Castle Bromwich, Castle Vale, Chasetown, Chelmsley Wood, Coalville, Coleshill, Coventry, Derby, Dordon, Dorridge, Dosthill, Drayton Bassett, Earl Shilton, Edgbaston, Elmdon Heath, Erdington, Fazeley, Fordbridge, Four Oaks, Fradley, Glascote, Great Barr, Grendon, Hall Green, Handsacre, Harborne, Hartshill, Henley-in-Arden, Hilliard’s Cross, Hinckley, Hints, Hockley, Hopwas, Hurley, Ibstock, Kenilworth, Kingsbury, Kingshurst, Kingstanding, Kitts Green, Knowle, Leamington Spa, Leicester, Lichfield, Little Aston, Loughborough, Mancetter, Market Bosworth, Marston Green, Measham, Mere Green, Mile Oak, New Oscott, Nottingham, Nuneaton, Perry Common, Polesworth, Pype Hayes, Queslett, Redditch, Roughley, Rugeley, Shard End, Sheepy Magna, Sheepy Parva, Sheldon, Shenstone, Shirley, Solihull, Stechford, Stockingford, Stockland Green, Streethay, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, Sutton New Hall, Swadlincote, Tamworth, Tile Cross, Two Gates, Walmley, Walsall, Warwick, West Bromwich, Whittington, Wilnecote, Wood End, Wylde Green, Yardley, Yardley Wood.
If you have any other questions about hypnosis or any of my services in hypnotherapy and NLP coaching then please either call me on FREEPHONE 0800 619 00 60 or drop me a line using the enquiries form on this website.
© Copyright Ace Brains Consultancy Tamworth. All Rights Reserved
Home | Contact Us | FAQs Managed by Cocoonfxmedia