Is years of therapy bad for you? Find out why!

Today we're going to talk about a topic that has puzzled me for years, and frankly, excited me a little. Why on earth does therapy for some people take years? Why do people sit on a couch waffling for hundreds of sessions, when at the bottom line, nothing really changes?

You may be feeling good, looking forward to the day, but you're still missing that one input for that radiant smile. Well, luckily I'm here again to provide that input. Grab a cup of coffee, sit back and relax, because I'm going to tell you exactly why traditional counseling misses the mark and how it can be done.

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The endless sessions of the canalside community

Let's face it: we all know the stories about psychoanalysis. People who spend 150 sessions, or even more, with a psychotherapist. Look at the Amsterdam canals. People walk in the door of the psychiatrist there, the door huh, hopefully not the psychiatrist himself. They lie there for hundreds of hours talking a bit in the hope that it will solve something.

And yes, sure, it provides temporary relief. You’re focusing on yourself, and you’re getting attention. But does anything really change at the core? Rarely. It’s a kind of emotional massage: it feels good for a moment, but the next day the knot is back. Unless they accidentally end up with someone like Marcel and suddenly have a “hallelujah moment.” But do you know what often happens then? They’ve probably been under hypnosis for a brief moment, which is why the process suddenly did work.

The revolution that had to wait 40 years

In the 1950s, we had Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis. These men were ahead of their time. They found a way to reduce that endless psychoanalysis of 500 sessions to something that was revolutionary at the time: twenty or so sessions. We now call that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

And guess what? They were vilified. Really, completely burned down by the establishment. It took forty years for their method to be declared "evidence-based. Forty years! Why? Because it was faster? Because it was more effective?

Let's look at another "coincidence." In the same 1950s, you had the first DSM, the psychiatric bible. That was 120 pages thick then. Today that thing has grown to 1,200 pages.

See the correlation? While sessions per client declined slightly (thankfully), the number of illnesses exploded. This, of course, is how we can continue to make the same revenue. If instead of 500 times your clients come only 20 times, you do need 20 times as many illnesses to keep the schedule full.

It's all a coincidence, of course, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure there is no commercial rationale behind it whatsoever.... but I do think it's a very funny coincidence.

The big mistake: Thinking talking helps

Talking generally works really poorly. If you end up in the mainstream mental health care system for short-term therapy, you’ll get ten to twelve sessions. Once you’re deemed “cured,” you’re free to go. But often, you’re immediately referred to long-term therapy, which can last for years.

I regularly have discussions about this with psychologists, especially those in mental health care. They think I’m exaggerating. They say that hypnotherapy doesn’t work that well at all. But for the sake of convenience, they conveniently forget Kirsch’s 1995 study[1]. He discovered that any form of therapy works better when combined with hypnosis—as much as 25% better!

Imagine if we did cognitive behavioral therapy with hypnosis, the results would be 25% faster. Instead of twelve sessions, you only need nine. Do you normally do ten? Then you'd be done in seven sessions.

But what do you see with the hypnotherapy we teach at Hypnosis Institute Netherlands? Most people are ready in three sessions. Sometimes one, sometimes eight, but I've never had to see anyone more than eight times in the last 20 years. Never.

When a psychologist says that twelve sessions is "short-term," I find that ultra-long. If you need twelve sessions for something that can be done in three sessions, then you're simply doing something that doesn't work as well. And of course they find that annoying to hear from a guest like me. "What do you know about it, Edwin?" Well, I do know something about it.

I’m up for the challenge: give me a client you’ve already had six sessions with and where nothing’s happening. Give me two sessions with that person. I’d bet money that more will happen with me than in all those sessions with the psychologist.

Protocols are killing results

So why does hypnosis work so much faster? Not because I'm such a genius (although some people say I am, but of course I distance myself from that (just kidding)) but because I don't have to adhere to protocols.

Protocols are safe for the therapist, but often a disaster for the client. If you stick to what you’ve learned from a book, you’ll start filling in the blanks. You’ll slap a label on the client: “Oh, this is a client with such-and-such a diagnosis, so I have to follow protocol X.”

That's where it goes wrong. You have to see the person, not the label. Do you have enough tools in your toolbox to deviate when necessary? Are you allowed to deviate from your practice or yourself at all?

I also used to be very polite. Then I would sit there and hum. "Hm-hm, tell me more..." My sessions sometimes lasted three hours! That doesn't make sense, of course. Until I decided: I'm going to cut straight to the point.

I gave myself license to stop being polite. Because my being polite doesn't help that client. Results help that client. Since I flipped that switch, my sessions take about an hour and there is always a result.

So is the problem solved in one session? Not always. But the client does notice an immediate difference. That's something the average psychologist doesn't do: test in the moment. They give homework: "Go ahead and work on this and we'll see how it went next week." That doesn't work. We all know that almost no one does that homework. You have to get results while the client is in the chair with you.

Feelings vs. Thoughts: The upside-down world

One of the biggest misconceptions in psychology is that thoughts cause emotions[2]. “Change your thinking, and you’ll change how you feel.” That’s only a small part of the truth. Look at young children. They don’t know language yet; they don’t have labels for their feelings, but they certainly feel fear, sadness, or insecurity. So which came first? The feeling, of course!

Changing your thoughts takes a tremendous amount of effort. Just try “thinking positively” all day long when you feel miserable deep down inside. It’s like trying to mop up water while the faucet is still running. But it’s actually quite easy to change how you feel. And when your feelings change, your thoughts automatically change along with them.

Imagine suddenly feeling super happy. Then you immediately think happy thoughts, too. In hypnosis, we go beyond that critical thinking. We work directly on that emotional imprint, the imprint. When that imprint changes, your beliefs, your ideas and even your hierarchy of values change.

The addiction to therapy

Sometimes I think: therapists make people addicted to therapy. They create such a strong dependency that the client panics when the therapist goes on vacation. "Oh no, what am I going to do without my weekly hour?"

If you’ve ended up there, in my opinion, you’re a bad therapist. You’ve made someone dependent instead of resilient. You want to make people independent! You want to bring out that inner strength that everyone has within them.

This is also the goal of therapy[3].

Sure, it takes some people a little longer than others. But if you keep pushing someone, at some point they are going to push back. In the beginning, people are often scared or weak: "I don't dare, I find it scary." Fine.

But we keep working until the person thinks, "Wait a minute, I don't need you at all! I can do it myself!" That's the response you want.

The rest is "paid friendship." Keeping people in therapy for years because it makes them feel heard. When really they have just bought a subscription to attention.

That's not my thing, and that's not what we teach hypnotherapists at Hypnosis Institute Netherlands.

Do you also want faster results?

It's time to stop the endless drivel and really start looking at what works. Do you really want change? Then work at the level where the change happens: the feeling.

This is also what we teach you at the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands. Want to know how it works? Come to the free masterclass on hypnosis for an introduction.

Or register directly for one of our events and trainings.

Do you have a question about the training program? Schedule a free one-on-one consultation here.

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