Is Hypnotherapy Backed by Science?

Aug 20

-What the Research Shows

It's a fair question, and one I'd have asked too if I hadn't trained in this field myself: is hypnotherapy a genuine therapeutic approach, or is it simply a calming experience that feels helpful in the moment?

The honest answer turns out to be more interesting than either extreme. Hypnosis is a real, measurable state, studied seriously by neuroscience and medicine for decades — and it's also genuinely different from how it tends to get portrayed in popular culture. Let's look at what the evidence actually shows, and what it means for the kind of work I do.

What Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy Actually Are

Before getting into the research, it helps to separate two terms people often use interchangeably.

Hypnosis is a focused state of attention and absorption. Hypnotherapy is the therapeutic use of that state alongside conversation, therapeutic technique, and carefully chosen suggestion. Hypnosis on its own isn't a treatment for any one condition — it's a tool used within a wider therapeutic process, shaped by the practitioner, the client, and whatever's actually being worked through.

A Longer History Than Most People Realise

Hypnosis has been used in therapeutic forms for well over two hundred years. In the 18th and 19th centuries, physicians like Franz Anton Mesmer, and later James Braid, explored what Braid eventually named “hypnosis” as a way to influence pain, anxiety, and habit.

By the late 19th century, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot was using it in his study of hysteria, and both Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud experimented with hypnotic technique to access difficult memories and emotions.

Freud later moved toward free association instead, but the method kept evolving. In the 20th century, psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson transformed the field with a gentler, more permissive style, showing just how widely hypnosis could be applied across psychological and medical care. Today, it's practised internationally, folded into many therapeutic models, and studied within neuroscience and clinical psychology alike.

Hypnosis Within Other Therapies, Including EMDR

Hypnosis rarely stands entirely alone. Many psychotherapists and counsellors weave hypnotic technique into other approaches — cognitive behavioural therapy, psychodynamic work, trauma-informed care — and research describes it as something that can deepen focus, ease arousal, and support new learning within those other frameworks.

People sometimes ask about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), a well-known trauma treatment. EMDR shares some features with hypnosis — focused attention, access to difficult memories — but it's a distinct approach in its own right, not a form of hypnotherapy. Some practitioners use hypnosis alongside EMDR, often for relaxation or stabilisation, but EMDR itself sits outside hypnotherapy as a category.

Hypnosis in Medicine

Hypnosis has a genuine place in medical settings too. Doctors, anaesthetists, and hospitals around the world use hypnosis and hypnotic relaxation before and during surgical and medical procedures to ease anxiety, pain, and distress — including pre-surgery relaxation, support through invasive procedures, and in some cases, as a complement to anaesthesia itself.

What the Research Actually Shows

Hypnosis has been studied across a genuinely wide range of areas, and in several of them, the evidence is remarkably strong.

Pain and medical procedures. Across many studies, hypnosis consistently eases pain and calms anxiety before and during procedures like surgery, biopsies, and dental work. It's become common enough that many hospitals now offer hypnosis or guided relaxation recordings simply to help patients feel calmer before treatment.

Anxiety and stress. Research reviewing multiple trials has found that hypnosis brings about a meaningful reduction in anxiety, with most people who receive it improving more than the majority of those who don't — and those improvements tend to hold, or even continue building, over time. It seems to work especially well alongside other psychological approaches.

Depression. A review of the evidence described hypnosis as a genuinely effective way to ease symptoms of depression, performing about as well as other established psychological approaches.

IBS and gut-related issues. This is one of the areas with the strongest evidence behind it. In one large study following a thousand people with long-standing IBS, the majority experienced a meaningful improvement in their symptoms, and those benefits tended to last. Across the wider research, most people who try gut-directed hypnotherapy see real change — not just physically, but in anxiety and everyday quality of life too.

Habits and lifestyle. Hypnosis is also widely used to support people through smoking cessation and changes to eating and movement. The research here varies more in quality, but the overall pattern — particularly when hypnosis is paired with practical, ongoing support — tends to be a positive one.

Taken as a whole, the direction of the evidence is genuinely encouraging. No single study tells the whole story, and there's always more good research worth doing — but decades of work, across very different areas, keep pointing to the same thing: for many people, hypnotherapy makes a real, felt difference.

In my own practice, I see this reflected constantly in the women I work with. They often arrive feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or worn down by patterns they've carried for years, and leave feeling lighter, clearer, and more like themselves — sometimes after just one session. The research is reassuring to have behind it, but what tends to matter most to the person sitting across from me is simpler than any statistic: finally understanding why they've felt this way for so long, and feeling genuinely, lastingly different afterward.

How This Relates to Confidence, Self-Worth, Body Image, and Mindset

The research becomes especially relevant to the areas I work with most closely: confidence, self-worth, body image, anxiety, and long-held negative beliefs.

Anxiety. The same body of research applies directly here — hypnosis meaningfully eases anxiety, with results that tend to hold well after sessions end, especially alongside other psychological support.

Self-worth and emotional wellbeing. In one study following women navigating real health challenges, a programme combining self-care with self-hypnosis led to genuine improvements in self-esteem, alongside real reductions in anxiety and low mood, and participants described feeling more able to regulate their emotions and stay present day to day.

Body image. In a study of women who'd been through a cancer diagnosis, a hypnotic relaxation approach focused on body image led to less distress about the changes their bodies had been through, and a noticeably improved relationship with their bodies — every participant reported genuine improvement. A separate trial found women felt calmer, slept better, and felt more connected to their own bodies after working this way.

Negative beliefs and mindset. Hypnotherapy is widely used to work directly with the beliefs quietly sitting underneath so much of this — things like “I'm not good enough,” “I'll always fail,” or “I have to be perfect to be loved.” Working with the subconscious mind in a relaxed, focused state allows those beliefs to be gently reframed and replaced with something more supportive, which is often what makes lasting change in confidence and self-worth possible.

Confidence and self-image specifically. Interestingly, research comparing hypnotic “ego-strengthening” suggestions to the same suggestions given without hypnosis found that self-esteem improved more when delivered within a hypnotic state. That's a meaningful finding — it suggests hypnosis isn't just a relaxing add-on, but genuinely part of what makes confidence and self-worth work land more deeply.

Well-Known Faces Who've Spoken About Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy isn't only used quietly in private therapy rooms. A number of well-known people have spoken publicly about using hypnosis or hypnotherapy to work through anxiety, break a habit, or perform under pressure.

Joanna Lumley has spoken candidly about overcoming severe panic attacks and a breakdown in her twenties using hypnosis, describing it as part of how she made herself “waterproof” against the anxiety returning.

Adele has spoken about using hypnotherapy to help manage stage fright and anxiety before major performances.

Catherine, Princess of Wales has spoken publicly about using hypnobirthing across all three of her pregnancies, explaining that severe pregnancy sickness with her first child led her to discover “the power of the mind over the body.”

Matt Damon ended a 16-year smoking habit with the help of hypnosis, calling it one of the best decisions he's made.

Jennifer Aniston has spoken about overcoming an “extreme fear of flying” through hypnosis.

Reese Witherspoon has spoken about turning to hypnosis for a confidence boost after years of feeling insecure about her appearance in Hollywood, ahead of her role in Wild.

These stories don't prove hypnotherapy works for everyone — no single story does. But they do show it's a tool genuinely reached for by people who are careful and deliberate about what they invest their time and energy into.

The Clients That Might Surprise You

Some of my clients have been psychiatrists, therapists, and other mental health professionals. We’re all human, and sometimes we need help to go beyond our intellectual understanding of repeating patterns — which is exactly what RTT hypnotherapy does well. Even when someone knows the theory inside out, the subconscious can still be running older conclusions. That’s where this work can create a different kind of shift. Dr Brian Brown, emotional and physical fatigue recovery expert, functional and integrated medicine practitioner, author, and international speaker had this to say.

Since working with Maria, all I have to say is, “WOW!”
“I’ve practised psychiatry for 24 years, and I’ve never experienced this level of deep work in such a short period of time. In the 30+ days since my three-hour session with Maria, I’ve finished writing the book that I’ve been dragging my feet on for three years.
My stage-speaking coach introduced me to Maria. I think she recognised that I had some subconscious mental blocks that were potentially holding me back. She had the foresight to bring Maria in to work with me, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.
Maria has an uncanny ability to dial in directly to the root of the subconscious issue and the high level of skill to know what to do so that the subconscious brain can reprogram itself and let go of the blocks that it’s holding onto.
I’ve picked up more new clients than I normally would in a six-month period. I truly feel like an unlimited source of power, creativity, and energy has been released in me. I bounce out of bed in the morning, whereas I used to lie there for 30 or more minutes trying to talk myself into starting my day. Now, I look forward to my day because I know great things are going to happen — and they do. And I almost forgot to mention that the new clients I picked up were totally unsolicited — they were drawn to me.”

Why Public Perception Lags Behind the Research

Despite everything the research shows, it's completely understandable that many people still aren't sure what to make of hypnosis. In one study, fewer than half of patients believed there was moderate to strong scientific evidence behind it — even though, as the researchers themselves pointed out, hypnosis is a genuine, focused cognitive state involving real neurophysiological change. The gap isn't really about the evidence. It's about what people picture when they hear the word “hypnosis.”

And that picture is almost always shaped by stage hypnosis, which has done more than anything else to muddy the water. What you see in a theatre — someone seemingly losing control, acting completely out of character — is a performance, built on a willing, highly suggestible volunteer and a fair amount of social pressure, not anything close to what happens in a therapeutic setting. In a session with me, you're never unconscious and never out of control. You can talk, ask questions, pause, or stop at any point. You're never asked to accept a suggestion that goes against your own values or wishes, and you remain, throughout, entirely yourself.

Where RTT Hypnotherapy Fits

RTT, or Rapid Transformational Therapy, is my own approach to this work — bringing together hypnosis with elements of cognitive behavioural therapy, psychotherapy, and neuroscience, so that a session can move quickly to the root of a pattern rather than circling around it.

The wider body of research on clinical hypnosis is genuinely encouraging, and it's a big part of why I believe in this way of working. I want to be honest with you, though: RTT as its own specific method is still a relatively young field, and the formal research on it specifically is still growing. Like many newer therapeutic approaches, the published trials haven't fully caught up yet with what practitioners and clients are actually experiencing in the room — that's simply how research timelines tend to work, lagging behind lived clinical experience by years, sometimes decades. I'd rather tell you that plainly than let the broader hypnosis research imply more than it does.

What I can tell you is what I see, session after session, and what my clients tell me themselves: real, often rapid, and lasting shifts in how they feel, think, and move through their lives. My work uses hypnosis to gently explore the beliefs, memories, and emotional patterns that may be quietly shaping how you feel and behave today — often ones you haven't been able to reach through thinking your way there alone. Every person's experience is their own, and what unfolds in a session will always be personal to you.

This tends to resonate most with women who already sense there's something beneath the surface — who've done some of the thinking, the reading, the talking, and still feel a gap between understanding a pattern and actually feeling different because of it. If that's you, this is often exactly the kind of work that closes that gap.

There's a part of this no study can fully capture: the moment something finally makes sense, and you find yourself relating to an old pattern differently than you did the week before. That's hard to measure in a trial. But for many of the women I've worked with, it's been the beginning of something that genuinely lasts — not just relief in the moment, but a settled, different way of moving through life afterward.

What Hypnotherapy Can't Promise

Hypnotherapy isn't a magic cure, and it won't remove every difficult feeling in a single session for everyone. It also isn't a replacement for medical care, psychological assessment, medication, or specialist treatment where those are genuinely needed.

It is one meaningful, supportive option among others, particularly when the approach is matched thoughtfully to what you actually need, and used within appropriate professional boundaries. The right support always depends on what you're experiencing and what kind of help will genuinely serve you.

The Honest Summary

Here's the most honest way I can put it: hypnotherapy isn't simply relaxation, but it isn't magic either. It's a genuinely studied therapeutic tool, with some of the strongest evidence behind it in areas like pain and medical procedures, and encouraging, though more varied, evidence for anxiety, depression, and other areas of psychological wellbeing.

RTT is my own specific way of working within this field, and I want to be upfront that the research into RTT itself, as its own method, is still developing. If you're considering it — with me or with anyone — it's worth looking for a practitioner who's honest about what the work can and can't do, who works within clear, appropriate boundaries, and who will always point you elsewhere if another kind of support would genuinely serve you better.

If you've felt curious but cautious about this work, that caution makes complete sense, and I'd never ask you to set it aside. Good therapeutic work was never about switching off your discernment. It's about giving you enough honest information to make the choice that's genuinely right for you.