Relationship therapy with hypnosis: What you can do with hypnosis as a relationship therapist

A partner who never does what you want, miscommunication, disagreeing on parenting, a parent-in-law you’d love to strangle, cheating, a partner who wants too much sex, a partner who wants too little sex… There can be all sorts of reasons why couples therapy is needed to save a relationship.

It's always wise, because the least that couples therapy does is get you communicating with each other again. Allowing all parties to know where they stand again.

Relationship therapy can also be combined with hypnosis. This can be done together, as well as individually.

Benefits of hypnotherapy for couples therapy

There are a number of benefits to couples therapy with hypnosis, namely:

Hypnosis allows you to temporarily detach from your current situation, your ego, and yourself. As a result, you’re less caught up in the emotions surrounding the problem for which you need therapy and can view it more neutrally[1]. Research specifically focused on hypnotherapy for couples therapy also notes that because hypnosis addresses the subconscious, it can filter out the conscious conflicts in the relationship, so you aren’t distracted by them during therapy. This allows you to get to the root of your problem and resolve it[2].

You can also undergo individual hypnotherapy and work on your relationship through new insights, without your partner’s participation. A study of women who used individual hypnotherapy to address marital problems found that working on one’s own body image and marital satisfaction is very much possible with hypnosis[3].

If you suffer from anxiety and have difficulty forming close bonds with others—which is often an issue for people in relationship therapy—you’re usually easier to put under hypnosis[4]. This means that hypnotherapy can take effect more quickly.

Meanwhile, new techniques make it possible to put anyone into hypnosis. Even the people previously thought to be impossible or very difficult to hypnotize. So hypnotherapy is suitable for everyone[5].

If relationship problems are caused by one of the partners suffering from a particular fear, hypnotherapy for couples can work to eliminate the fear. The partner without anxiety can be involved in this and helped to deal with the other partner's anxiety[6].

If the problems stem from infidelity, hypnotherapy can be very helpful in overcoming this emotionally. This allows you to leave your anger behind and, as the betrayed partner, no longer feel the need to seek revenge or act spitefully because of what happened[7].

Hypnotherapy can also be used to address sexual issues, such as sexual identity, sexual orientation, or the ability to engage in sex and intimacy at all[8].

Giving Relationship Therapy

As a hypnotherapist, providing couples therapy is often a complex process. It’s difficult to build rapport with two people at the same time. In addition, you may be subject to bias stemming from your own relationships and how you were raised.

In addition, the therapy itself can have a triggering effect on all parties involved. If you ask one person a question, the answer might trigger the other person .

Suddenly, you’re dealing with two realities, two emotions, and two stories that you’re trying to weave together into a beautiful relationship.

Just by bringing both individuals into hypnosis, you help them leave complex emotions and things that trigger them out of the conscious for a while. Maybe something is still triggering, but at least they won't then jump up and start screaming angrily.

The interesting thing is that if something is triggering for that person it often says more about that person than about the partner. In couples therapy, partners often feel that their partner in particular needs to change something, but by working precisely with the trigger, they can find out that with small problems (such as misunderstanding) they themselves can do a lot to still gain understanding or to let go of wanting certain understanding.

In one example from the study (source 2), for instance, it emerged that the partner who had cheated wanted his wife to simply get over it. During hypnotherapy, however, it became clear that she herself was afraid of intimacy and therefore wanted to “quickly” move on with the relationship—without the intimacy needed to get over the infidelity.

Ego state therapy also helps people empathize with others. In the study, for example, one man found that this helped him realize that when his wife acts angry, it does not necessarily mean she is angry with him, but could also be angry about something else. This also made him realize that he did not have to react from his angry side, but could instead use his nurturing side to help his wife when she was acting angry.

You might even be given the suggestion to imagine, while under hypnosis, that you are the other person, and then to talk through the problem together. This alone can lead to much greater understanding and the feeling that the other person truly does love you.

Coping with cheating

The partner who has been cheated on may have suffered from insecurities about " being good enough" because of the cheating. Then it is again important for the hypnotherapist to restore self-confidence (source 7). Here self-hypnosis can also play a role to keep self-confidence high also in the future, without the help of a hypnotherapist.

Restoring the romantic trance

In a relationship, people are often in a kind of trance as well (source 2). If the relationship is going badly, that trance of being together can be broken. The hypnotherapist can then use certain statements to try to get someone who is no longer in the "relationship trance" back into that trance so they can work on their relationship together.

If, on the contrary, there is a disturbed trance, because one of the partners is very dominant, for example, or because they do things unconsciously. Then making them aware of the unconscious behavior can cause the disturbed trance to be broken, allowing them to work again on improving their relationship in an equal way.

Working with the inner child

Sometimes a person may also resist hypnotherapy and take couples therapy only because the partner wants it. He or she doesn't see a problem, but the partner does. You can then get to work nicely and will probably already help the partner well.

At some point the problem with the partner will become visible and you can see what the problem is now.

You can then even say that you have seen "their dance," their " pattern" for once, allowing you to work on the actual problem.

You can then finally work with the partner who “had no problem” to help them identify the root cause of the problematic behavior (source 2). This can be done through regression and a conversation with the inner child. After all, relationship problems are often caused by beliefs about love that originated in childhood, such as through the example set by their parents.

Follow relationship therapy with hypnosis

On the contrary, if you want to pursue couples therapy, it is helpful to know where you stand. As you can see, it is possible to go into therapy together, or just to do a few sessions on your own if problems have their origin in something the partner can't do anything about.

What is helpful for the couple is something that can become clear during the exploration conversation. During this conversation, a hypnotherapist can ask for more background information and see what techniques are best to use.

It also explains what hypnosis is and what to expect from it. A hypnotherapist will always ask permission before putting someone into hypnosis.

When the session is over, or when the hypnotic state is no longer needed, you are also brought back out of hypnosis and the hypnotherapist makes sure you feel refreshed and alert.

In any case, you will never do anything you don't want to when you are in hypnosis. In addition, you can look deep into your subconscious for causes for certain feelings. This can provide a lot of clarity for yourself and your partner. For example, you can find out why you or your partner gets triggered by certain things and those triggers can then be treated. So that these no longer trigger big emotions and cause problems that really aren't necessary.

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