Should you get hypnotherapy from an amateur or someone pretending to be a hypnotist?

But before that, what is the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy?

Let’s take a stage hypnotist as an example. What is his special skill? I guess he has the ability to make people laugh.

A hypnotherapist has the ability to help people get over a fear, lose weight, quit smoking etc.

After reading some books, I come to realize hypnosis is associated with the state of deep relaxation. People under hypnosis have a very narrow focus and basically zone out anything surrounding them. Usually, their main focus is on the voice of the hypnotist.

Hypnotherapy on the other hand is used for therapeutic purposes. To get the results of hypnotherapy, a hypnotherapist uses the techniques of hypnosis to encourage our sub-conscious mind to find a solution to our impending problems.

In short, hypnotherapy is a therapy. Hypnosis itself is not therapy.

Personally, I think someone with a limited skill in hypnosis should not attempt to perform hypnotherapy on another person. It may seem like fun and game, but the consequences can be drastic.

I started to think about this subject after reading a forum thread that talks about hypnotic regression gone wrong.

It got me thinking, should we be more careful about the effects of hypnosis?

Many professionals are using the conversational hypnosis techniques in their daily lives. Does it have any short term or long term consequences on the person being hypnotized? It may be a trivial question but it got me thinking.

I’ve seen stage hypnotist doing hypnosis for entertainment purposes. The person hypnotized seems to be able to perform super human feats. I’m just wondering if the volunteer that participated in the stage act has any problems afterwards.

If it was me, I wouldn’t want to get involved with things that cannot be clearly explained.