You may be surprised to learn:

Hypnosis is:

• Experienced as a relaxed conversation with a friend.
• Boundaries are softened so that change is more likely to happen.
• It can tap into areas of your brain that promote change in thinking and/or experiencing something.

Hypnosis is not:

• Something that is done "to" a person wherein the hypnotist gains control over that person.
• When in trance, a person loses his/her willpower and becomes dependent on the hypnotist.
• Something to be used to "remember" repressed or past-life experiences.

Hypnotherapy is useful for:

• Relieving anxiety
• Reducing performance anxiety
• Reducing or eliminating pain
• Reframing past experiences to reduce their current impact
• Altering patterns of behavior that are not useful anymore

Quoted from Douglas Flemons, Ph.D., LMFT:

It thus makes more sense to view hypnosis as the creation and maintenance of a special relationship with oneself and/or another (or others), where, to varying degrees, the distinctions common to conscious awareness--demarcations between mind and body; self and other; inside and outside; etc.-become more or less irrelevant. The associative aspect of cognition becomes highlighted and the mind-body gap is bridged, making possible a variety of changes in--

• The everyday boundaries of the conscious "self"
• The exploring and experiencing of ideas, images and possibilities
• The functioning and experiencing of emotions and body processes