The feeling is similar to when you watch a movie and you are absorbed by what’s going on there. And yet, you can still hear the door bell and you can pause it anytime.

• Greater Effectiveness: Combining CBT and hypnosis has shown 70% better outcomes compared to CBT alone.

• Faster Results: Hypnotherapy helps achieve meaningful improvements more quickly.

• Brain-Based Changes: Neuroscience confirms hypnosis directly influences brain areas linked to emotions, habits, and responses.

No. You are awake and at all time in control of your actions.

THE SHORT EXPLANATION:

Brain-imaging research shows hypnosis can change patterns in attention and self-monitoring networks, which may help people get less hooked by self-consciousness and more able to stay engaged with a chosen goal.

Hypnosis helps change patterns because it’s effect on the brain:

• reduces self-critical noise,

• stabilises attention,

• makes new experiences feel real enough for the brain to learn from,

• allows old threat-based predictions to be replaced with more accurate ones.

That’s why change can feel efortless and more natural over time. The brain isn’t being forced to behave differently, it’s being retrained.

THE LONG EXPLANATION

During hypnosis, the brain doesn’t switch off and it doesn’t go into a special “sleep” state. Instead, how different brain systems talk to each other changes.

Normally, when someone feels anxious about being seen or performing, three things tend to happen in the brain at once:

• the self-monitoring system becomes overactive (“How am I coming across?”),

• the threat system stays on alert,

• and attention keeps bouncing between worries, predictions, and self-criticism.

Brain-imaging studies show that during hypnosis, this balance shifts.

First, self-monitoring quiets down.
Areas involved in constant self-evaluation and internal commentary become less dominant. This is why people often report feeling less self-conscious or less “in their head.”

Second, focused attention becomes stronger and steadier.
Networks that help you stay engaged with one thing at a time become more coordinated. Instead of scanning for problems, the brain can stay with a chosen image, idea, or task.

Third, the connection between thinking and bodily awareness changes.
Regions involved in noticing internal sensations become more connected to intentional focus. This helps thoughts feel more “real” and embodied, rather than abstract or distant.

Importantly, this doesn’t mean losing control. It means less internal interference and more direct learning.

Why this helps change patterns and behaviour

Most unhelpful behaviours aren’t driven by logic. They’re driven by learned brain–body responses. The brain learned them through repetition, emotion, and experience, not through reasoning.

In hypnosis, the brain is in a state where:

• old alarm signals are quieter,

• attention is more stable,

• and new experiences are taken in more deeply.

That makes it easier for the brain to update its predictions.

When someone rehearses a new response in this state — for example, speaking up without collapsing into doubt — the brain processes it less as “just imagination” and more as a valid experience. This matters because the brain updates its wiring based on experience, not explanation.

Over repeated practice, the brain starts to expect the new response instead of the old one. The nervous system no longer reacts as strongly, because it has learned that the situation isn’t as dangerous as it once assumed.

A widely cited fMRI study (Jiang et al., 2017; Spiegel is a senior author) found that during hypnosis there was:

• reduced activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)

• increased connectivity between DLPFC and insula

• reduced connectivity between DLPFC and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) (a key default mode network node)

In a meta-analysis of controlled studies (Valentine et al. (2019) ,International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis), people receiving hypnotherapy improved more than roughly 79% of control participants by the end of treatment, and more than 84% at follow-up. The same meta-analysis reports that 7 of the 17 trials targeted performance anxiety.

In a meta-analysis of controlled studies (Valentine et al. (2019) ,International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis), people receiving hypnotherapy improved 79% more than control participants by the end of treatment, and more than 84% at follow-up.”

The same meta-analysis reports that 7 of the 17 trials targeted performance anxiety.