Hypnotherapy for children and young adults

Hypnotherapy for children and young adults works amazingly well.

Children and young adults have big imaginations and tend to be open minded, seeking guidance and embracing change.

While using hypnotherapy, I have little difficulty in engaging the child with the use of their imagination in envisioning powerful scenarios that easily encourage change. 

I have been a teacher for 11 years now and I hold an NVQ 4 in Child Development. I know how to set a child at ease and have a wealth of experience in child related issues.

As a parent myself, I know how confusing it can be to look at different options available for support. 

Hypnotherapy is recognised as a treatment option by the NHS and Professional Standards Authority (the UK Parliamentary regulator for health care), and year-on-year more parents are turning to hypnotherapy to help  children overcome behavioural problems, increased confidence and tackle anxiety. 

Children’s minds do not work in the same way as ours as adults. If a child is struggling, they may not be able to easily verbalise what is happening or why it is happening.

This could naturally be frustrating for a parent and extremely concerning if a child finds it difficult to speak on the issue. The beauty about hypnotherapy is that, aside from knowing what the issue is, I do not require a lot of talking and analysis with your child. This means that children tend to find hypnotherapy a peaceful experience and one where they can relax and start to build on their newfound confidence.

Paediatric Hypnotherapy most often involves helping a child to effortlessly change habits, eradicate discomfort and physical symptoms. The child learns to use relaxation techniques and mental images similar to a daydream or fantasy to enter an “altered mental state”. We all enter these states a number of times a day and there is nothing frightening about it for the child. They are always in control.

Hypnotherapy has been used to treat hundreds of behavioural disorders. Common behavioural problems include;

• Bullet point thumb-sucking
• Hair pulling 
• Bedwetting 
• Sleep terrors 
• Nightmares
• Swallowing problems
• Eating issues and food aversions
• Anxiety and stress
• Confidence building
• Illness
• Self harm
• Stuttering or stammering
• Exam nerves
• Nail-biting
• Bullying
• Anger
• Eczema
• Fears and phobias

Hypnotherapy is accepted as an effective therapeutic tool by the NHS and the PSA but there are unfortunately little trials as of yet which have reached completion other than those in relation to IBS. However, below you can see the efficacy demonstrated for the use of hypnotherapy in IBS on children in a recent trial (hypnotherapy now equals the treatment the NHS would provide and is recommended as treatment) and therefore can extrapolate from that the efficacy which clients and their children see from this powerful intervention in relation to many many other issues - some of which are listen above. 

Hypnotherapy for IBS in Children 

Six months after completion of a trial on children suffering with gastrointestinal issues, more than 60 percent of children who went through this program had maintained their progress, cutting symptoms by at least half. The team on the trial state that, “most children with both abdominal pain and headaches reported improvements in both.Additionally, many parents reported improvements in sleep and focus at school”.

Separately, a Dutch team concluded in a separate study that, after gut-directed hypnotherapy, two-thirds of a small group of children with chronic IBS or stomach pain were at least 80 percent better almost five years later.

Study showing efficacy of hypnotherapy in children with IBS: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029157.2015.1012705?journalCode=ujhy20

Study demonstrating 80% improvement almost 5 years on: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22310221/

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