Comparison with CBT, Hypnotherapy & Medication

How effective are Hypnosis and Cognitive Therapy in the Treatment of Anxiety & Depression?

Cognitive Behavioural Psychology

CBT’s core efficacy is based on a scientifically flawed assumption – that the emotions are controlled by and repsond to, conscious thoughts. They are not.

You do not SEE a bear, THINK, then RUN… you see a bear and run. Conscious decision making does not feature in fight or flight.

The real science has been ignored for decades and anyone with an anxiety disorder who has received CBT will know that it is, at best, a session with a friendly practitioner, but, in terms of recovery, it has no merit whatsoever.

Asociated techniques such as exposure therapy (flooding), anxiety diary making, making worry time etc. are all equally as misguided in their scientific basis, approach and application.

CBT’s efficacy data is based on a number of factors, but primarily on numbers who return for more after receiving six sessions and data around patient turnout at sessions.

In essence, if you fail to turn up for your first session of CBT, you are a ‘cured’ statistic.

If you have CBT and do not return for more (even if you are not eligible for more), you are a ‘cured’ statistic.

In terms of patient feedack measuring true relief, there exists no data to support the curative effectiveness of CBT.

A recent study concluded that CBT is exactly as effective as doing nothing.

Extract from Daily Mail newspaper 2015

cbt scam

Hypnotherapy

Used clinically, hypnosis is delivered, supposedly, as a means to modify autonomic responses in the brain in order to adjust emotional responses.

Neither hypnosis, nor any other form of relaxation can reach the subconscious neurology responsible for the creation of the emotions.

At best, hypnosis is relaxing, but most patients say that this sense of calm, if achieved at all, is very short lived indeed. Many clients report that hypnosis makes them feel far worse.

The science of the neurology of the emotions does not support, or in any way connect, the practice of hypnosis to the control or reduction of anxiety disorders.

GWagstaff

Dr Graham Wagstaff

GRAHAM WAGSTAFF is Professor of Cognitive Social Psychology at the University of Liverpool and has been there since 1973. Dr Wagstaff has been studying hypnosis for 20 years and doesn’t believe that there is any such thing as hypnotism.

 

Neither does The Amazing Kreskin. He began a stage career as a magician and hypnotist when he was 11. Now 59, he still treads the boards in the US, but insists: “Nobody on stage has ever been hypnotised in the history of the world.” So certain is he of this he has offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who can prove that hypnosis exists.

Dr Wagstaff, Mr Kreskin insist that stage hypnosis is not a question of meddling in people’s subconscious but is more a question of audience credulity.

A French aristocrat, the Marquis of Puysegur, identified the phenomenon he called “magnetic sleep”, or the hypnotic trance, and began using it in therapy. Establishment physicians dismissed this as mountebank science, and it has gained acceptance only in the past 100 years with the evolution of psychology and psychiatry. Today it is widely used in psychotherapy.

Dr Wagstaff, insists: “The whole concept is a fantasy, a cultural invention.” He says that people want to believe that some simple route exists to the troubled, hidden corners of their mind. That, and the desire to show off, according to Dr Wagstaff, is what drives people to take part in stage hypnosis, and from the moment they reach the stage they are led on by the pressure of the situation and the power of suggestion.

Dr Wagstaff, like scientists in the US and Canada, has conducted studies comparing the behaviour of people who have been hypnotised with that of people who have not. If both groups were given similar instructions, he found no significant difference in their responses.

People under hypnosis, he argues, behave oddly because they want to believe in it and because they are willing to comply with suggestions made to them. But why are they prepared to make themselves look ridiculous?

“They don’t have to be hypnotised to do that. Look at what they are prepared to do on television for Bruce Forsyth or Noel Edmonds,” says Dr Wagstaff.

Mr Kreskin lost his belief in hypnosis about 20 years ago, when he was called in to help a psychologist treat his patients. They found that patients for whom hypnotic techniques clearly did not work were just as likely to recover as those for whom they did.

“I have shown that everything that we associate with hypnotism can be done without any voodoo-like induction,” he says.

“If people are persuaded and motivated they will do any of these things.”

Hypnotherapy has no measurable recovery efficacy.

Medication

No medication has ever been synthesised that can access the nurology responsible for the emotional responses in humans.

Medications used, including benzodiazepines, sedatives and antidepressents are not anti-anxiolytics and their chemical effect on the brain cannot reduce or change emotional responses. Thei use can often lead to dramatic side-effects, heightened anxiety, issues with dependency and withdrawal.

If a patient is taking medication, correct intervention through LAR Therapy will remove the underlying anxiety rendering the medication redundant. At this stage easy withdrawal protocols can be implemented to return the patient to emotional and chemical equilibrium and wellbeing.

The recovery truth

Listing therapies, yoga, mindfulness, meditation, medications, alternative therapies, vitamins, supplements and indeed any other resource used to address anxiety disorders would be futile.

None of the above address the core science of anxiety disorder suffering.

The mind and body have one system that controls the emotions, including fear and that same system is responsible for anxiety disorders.

The only way to modify and remove the emotional repsonses that cause anxiety disorders is outlined within LAR Therapy, which is why its efficacy is 100%.

Should you TRY other therapies?

This is your choice, but most sufferers have tried most of the widely available treatments with no curative success.

This is because these processes cannot reach the correct portion of the mind and redress the imbalances.

LAR developed as the result of 20 years of practice and millions of clients, of two decades of research and trials and of an unblemished reputation for recovery.