With a plethora of therapies and modalities available, it can be confusing and challenging to identify which type of therapy will suit your needs and how to find a therapist thats right for you.
Counselling and solution-focused hypnotherapy (SFH) are both forms of therapy, but their emphasis and methodology differ.
While counselling works on the emotional problems a client is facing and their history, solution-focused hypnotherapy works on the desired outcome, facilitating clients identifying incremental achievable goals towards positive change. This is combined with hypnosis which augments the process. Regardless, both aim to harness neuroplasticity, which helps us build more positive neural pathways in our brain and disrupt the negative ones unhelpful for our mental well-being – stop negative thinking patterns.
Rewiring the Brain: The Power of Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity, which refers to the brain’s capacity to reorganise or “rewire” itself by forming new neural connections, is helpful in counselling and solution-focused hypnotherapy. Both reflective dialogues in counselling and Solution Focused Hypnotherapy sessions seek to:
- Capture negative thinking and reframe that thought into a positive one.
- Strengthen the ability to manage stress and anxiety.
- Encourage optimistic thinking and new experiences.
- Foster change that is behavioural and long-term.
Every time we think, feel or act in a specific manner, neural pathways corresponding to that action respond by strengthening. Engaging more and more in positive actions makes it easier to perform them again in the future. Over time, less productive pathways deteriorate, letting more constructive ones take over.
Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy: Where Solutions are the Focus
Unlike traditional counselling, solution-focused hypnotherapy (SFH) works on the principles of future aspirations rather than delving into past troubles. This strategy integrates psychotherapy with hypnosis to enable clients to achieve their goals by:
- Encouraging positive thinking and visualising success.
- Reengineering negative self-image and self-imposed obstacles
- Utilising the somatic experience of the nervous system calm during hypnosis.
- Improving sleep to enable the processing of difficulties and reduce stress and overwhelm.
SFH works on solving the issue instead of the problem itself. This, in turn, helps a person break free from the grips of overthinking. The state of hypnosis augments suggestibility, thus encouraging the embedding of positive thoughts into the brain, making it more straightforward to evoke new thought processes.
Counselling: Where Problems are the Focus
During counselling, people share their thoughts, actions, and feelings in an environment of acceptance, empathy and non- judgment. The primary focus of counselling includes:
- Identifying and understanding emotional challenges
- Looking back on life’s experiences and determining how they influence behaviours and patterns of relating with others.
- Understanding thoughts and feelings about self and reframing.
- Reading emotional states and managing them during trying times
Counselling is helpful for people who want to explore how the past can aid in making sense of emotions and their behavioural patterns. Unresolved issues often linger subconsciously, and counselling assists the client in expressing these issues so they can be worked on in a more conscious state.
Which Approach is Right for You?
The choice of a client between counselling and solution focused hypnotherapy is primarily dictated by your needs:
If you feel trapped with emotions that remain unresolved or would like to deal with a trauma you experienced, then counselling may hold the depth of exploration you need.
If you want to start from the here and now and shift your mindset to concentrate on concrete, practical solutions, then SFH can help you make positive changes more efficiently with the processing of emotional memories happening in the background.
Both approaches can lead to positive change. Whichever approach you opt for, you are significantly restructuring your brain to facilitate a more positive and constructive life.
Final thoughts
The human mind is remarkably flexible and transformable with the right tools. You can change how you think of things, the emotions you associate with events, and the behaviours you undertake more permanently. If you feel lost as to what option may suit you, we can discuss how either might fit your needs and support you in making positive changes.
©Tracy Uttridge Solution Focused Hypnotherapist & Therapeutic Counsellor
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