Hypnotherapy as a Form of Couples Therapy

Couples are known to argue and fight from time to time.

Many of us have had long arguments with our partners that made us want to pull out our hair out of sheer frustration.

However, due to how common this is, several techniques or forms of therapy were developed to resolve these issues. Couples therapy is one such method that is widely relied on. 

Put simply, couples therapy is a form of psychotherapy practised by mental health professionals. It covers a wide range of relationship issues ranging from extra-marital affairs, recurring conflicts that affect your relationship to problems regarding sex, feelings of detatchment from your partner and toxic behaviours and patterns.

If you’re looking to learn more about this technique, we’ve got you covered. We’ve put together an article that covers all you need to know about hypnotherapy as a form of couples therapy.

Let’s take a look!

Couples Therapy – What Does It Include?

A therapist may use various forms of therapy to come up with an integrated approach that addresses whatever issues a couple may be facing. This means that the therapist uses several techniques, which also includes anxiety hypnotherapy, in their sessions.

Through this approach, they ensure that every couple is able to better understand and identify issues within their relationship and solve them together.

Some of the techniques commonly used during couples therapy include:

1. Putting a Spotlight on Feelings 

In this technique, partners actively work on acknowledging their feelings for each other. The therapist helps them identify what exactly it is that they feel for each other and how they can put it into words. This helps build a base for healthy communication in the relationship.

2. Taking a Trip Down The Memory Lane 

Couples are often asked to revisit the past during a couples therapy session. Exploring their pasts helps them better understand their own fears, insecurities, motivations and their core-beliefs about themselves and others. 

Being able to comprehend the core aspects of their partner’s personality, including their perspective and worldview, can help them develop a more understanding approach to their relationship.

3. Being Solution-Focused 

Many times, issues stem up in a relationship because both individuals are focused on their partner’s problem behaviours. This pattern can often lead to the development of a negative view of the relationship, which is usually when one starts to think – “I absolutely cannot stand them!” and expresses the same to their family or friends. 

With techniques one learns during therapy, they can develop a solution-focused approach that helps them address issues. It can help couples shift their focus to how they can solve a problem and also develop positive and healthy behavioural patterns.

Hypnotherapy For Relationships – Here’s How It  Works

Hypnotherapy is a technique that makes use of hypnosis to help you detach from external circumstances, delve deeper within yourself and become more aware of your own inner experiences. 

In situations where you are triggered to automatically respond with anger or resentment, hypnotherapy helps bring more clarity to your own perception of certain situations to respond in a more positive, healthier manner. It can also help you identify and heal inner disputes with your own self or deal with anxiety.

This can be done in several different ways, depending on the techniques used by different therapists.. Some techniques that are often used in hypnotherapy include: 

1. Relaxing 

A hypnotherapist helps you relax your mind by asking you to engage in guided visualisation exercises. This usually involves imagining yourself in peaceful and relaxing scenarios that trigger the release of relaxing hormones in your body and can help an individual calm down. This is especially helpful when confronting triggers, fears and problematic behaviours. 

2. Modelling and Anchoring 

Modelling and anchoring are techniques based on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). 

In modelling, a person is asked to pick someone they consider a role model or someone who has achieved the goals they want to achieve, and then do their best to be just like them. Modelling the people you want to be like can help bridge the gap between you and the goals you want to achieve. 

Similarly, anchoring involves linking feelings of confidence, energy and positivity, based on specific life events that you experience, to situations that you experience in the future. This helps in the development and rehearsal of those specific traits in problematic situations and being able to deal with them better.

3. Mental Rehearsal 

Mental rehearsal is another strategy that is based on visualisation. Let’s say your goal is to be able to confidently deliver a speech to an audience. For this, you’ll want to overcome your fear of public speaking. Mental rehearsal would require you to mentally rehearse the speech while visualising yourself facing the crowd, over and over. This technique is often used in workplaces and has proven to be effective in improving performance. 

Benefits of Hypnotherapy As A Form Of Couples Therapy

When hypnotherapy is used to address relationship issues, the focus of the therapy becomes the relationship, instead of the individual. 

It usually starts with an individual 1:1 session with the hypnotherapist, where both you and your partner can talk about your concerns and issues in the relationship. The therapist might ask you to establish goals that you want to achieve with the help of the sessions and use techniques that will help you achieve these goals. 

You would then have joint-sessions with the therapist where you would actively work upon problem areas with techniques used in hypnotherapy. Some themes that the therapist  might touch upon include –

• Accepting that neither of you are perfect
• Choosing what you “allow” to affect you
• Identifying your primary love-language
• Understanding your partner’s style of confrontation 
• Working towards the problem in a solution-focused manner

The goal of hypnotherapy for couples is to bring both partners to an awareness of the other, and how they can have a deeper understanding of each other. 

The therapist may make use of suggestions as a technique to help couples look at a problem through each other’s perspectives. With these sessions, you will also learn about how to effectively communicate with each other, how to convey your feelings and be able to express yourself. 

To Sum Up

Couples therapy, whilst usually involving people in romantic relationships, does not necessarily restrict itself to these types of relationships. It can be utilised to address issues within friendships, the relationship between a parent and a child or an issue in any sort of relationship between two individuals. The bottom line being, relationships require work and if you want to make it work, you need to put in the efforts.