Trevor's Blog

When Rebecca and I set up the Quest Institute we believed that there was a niche for people from mainstream backgrounds who were interested in learning more about hypnotherapy, but were put off by the poor training standards, plethora of accrediting bodies, and the old fashioned ’swing a watch’ idea of hypnosis. We felt there were enough people who believed that building the skill it takes to help someone change takes effort and time. The people we attracted, and the clients they attracted, proved us right

This blog represents another such leap of belief. We believe there’s a great interest among many therapists to move therapy forward; to translate what science is showing us about the brain into more effective ways of working with our clients and to make us all more effective human beings.

My goal is to make the practice of therapy more about the science of self-improvement. I believe there are many who share that goal, and not just those in the therapy professions. In this blog I’ll be sharing with you what I learn along the way, and hoping that you join me in the journey.

My intention is never to represent anything as being true, my yardstick is only that it’s useful. Cognitive Hypnotherapy itself is not intended to be seen as ‘the way to do things’, merely as a flexible model that provides a way of thinking about how to do therapy, and within which you can fit anything that works from any other approach. Feel free to join in its evolution.

Adapted from an excerpt of Wordweaving volume 2: The Question is the Answer by Trevor Silvester.

Please note, I’ve made this post sticky so it always stays at the top of the blog, as it’s one of the first questions that readers want answered. The most recent blogs will appear beneath.

When we’re approached by someone interested in hypnotherapy training this is the question that we have to answer most often. And it’s not surprising; the term clinical hypnotherapy is used by many hypnotherapy courses which teach very different syllabuses, and which operate from many different organising beliefs. We wanted people to be able to recognise what they’re getting from our hypnotherapy course that they couldn’t get from someone else’s, and so we called our approach Cognitive Hypnotherapy, because it borrows many of its principles from Cognitive theory, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, and uses a very different idea about the nature of hypnosis and trance than the traditional approaches that commonly fall within the labels of clinical hypnotherapy or clinical hypnosis. But, because Cognitive Hypnotherapy is a synthesis of many ideas, describing that difference isn’t easy with just a brief phase.

I could say “Cognitive Hypnotherapy is a brief approach which uses a modern understanding of trance to enable the client to let go of what restricts them, and create what would empower them.” But that doesn’t help that much, it needs more detail. So if you’re really interested in knowing what it is that makes this approach so different, read on…
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We all work from a set of assumptions – mainly without being aware of what they are. Here I talk about a recent insight that reminded me of the importance of raising them to our awareness.
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In Cognitive Hypnotherapy we teach that the brain uses what we call The Algorithms of the Mind (TAOTM) to deduce meaning from information our senses harvest from the environment. It sounds fancy but actually it’s very straightforward. Our brain is constantly looking for patterns, trying to figure out what things mean – we recognise a dog because it fits a previously stored pattern, but our response to it depends on the nature of the experiences we’ve had with them. So we don’t all experience the same dog, because our idea of dog is unique to us.

So our brain seeks causal links – if this pattern in front of me matches something from the past, this is what is likely to happen so this is the best thing to do; our brain is constantly shuffling between the present, the past, the future and then the present again (and usually in that order and all within half a second).

I’m describing the nature of cause and effect as we teach it on in our hypnotherapy training, so our students can learn to identify causal patterns that lead to the problems clients bring, often because of the classic ‘brain computing error’ of mistaking correlation for causation. Our brain is so intent on looking for patterns that sometimes it sees them where they don’t exist. As a child, if your Mum rewards you for being good by giving you chocolate your brain might well create the relationship of chocolate = love. This equivalence can lead to a causal relationship that when someone feels unloved they reach for the sweets because their brain has learnt the connection that “if I eat chocolate it means I’m loved.” No wonder the lure of it proves irresistible to so many. And there is a huge number of variations on this causal theme that clients have brought to the therapists I’ve trained.

What does this have to do with tennis players? This excellent article talks about the superstitions many of them have, and superstitions are just great examples of correlation being mistaken for causation.

As Cognitive Hypnotherapists being able to empathise with our clients is a vital skill, but recent research by the University of Peking has demonstrated that the degree of empathy varies according to our connection with people. The more similar they are the more we respond to their situation, and the more we perceive them to be different the less our brains respond to their pain. I think the further study of mirror neurons – and perhaps their relationship to our feeling of selfhood – may reveal why this is so, but for now it remains something we should monitor in our work with people from different backgrounds and cultures, and definitely something I’ll be emphasising in our hypnotherapy training.

Click here to read the report on the research.

Trevor was asked by Changes to review his favourite ten books, so he did!

Trevor gives ten top tips on how to feel happier without it costing you a penny.

Trevor explains how to use your mind as your most powerful supplement.

Our very own Quest graduate Katie Abbott contributed to these tips.

Hardly any athletes succeed without first tasting defeat. It’s what you take from it that counts.

In this article for Lighter Life, Trevor and Supermodel Lisa Butcher describe how our past experiences shape our present feelings, and what can be done if that’s a problem.

An interesting article on weight issues that Trevor was asked to contribute to.

Here’s a quiz to help you sort your goals out, and three tips from Trevor to help you stick to them once you have them.