So a lot of people wanna know “is hypnosis covered by insurance” or “is hypnotherapy covered by my benefits?” This is a very common question we get asked, maybe the most common. And to understand the answer to this, we actually have to take a step back and understand a little bit of the lay of the land of this mental health tool that is hypnosis.
Hypnosis is Unregulated
So it’s fascinating because nowadays to be a hypnotist, it’s a largely unregulated feel.
Hypnotists, if they are just a “hypnotist”, are not actually allowed to do therapy, but at the same time it’s not that difficult to become a hypnotist. You can take a course that that lasts for a couple weeks and you are typically allowed to at least call yourself a hypnotist. Sometimes the word hypnotherapist is regulated, but the term hypnotist is not.
So the average person that you look up in your city who is a hypnotist, has trained specifically in the era of hypnosis and cannot do therapy and therefore it’s oftentimes categorized as an alternative therapy and typically is not covered by insurance or by other benefits.
Hypnosis Has Its Roots in Therapy
But the interesting thing is that hypnosis at its root back in the day, goes back, has its roots in conventional therapy training.
Almost every therapist when they’re learning about the history of therapy as a whole, the grandparents of modern therapy, they’ll learn about Freud and Pavlov, and also, one of the main figures you learn about is actually Milton Erickson.
Milton Erickson was a genius with hypnosis where he could through having conversations with people and with a very contrarian and sort of roundabout way, create rapid change in people. In a way that was quite astounding and that in some ways was hard to teach because it was such an intuitive skill that he had.
But in the sixties and seventies, it really put hypnosis on the map. You can still find old school therapists, psychotherapists, especially in the medical field, dentists, doctors, and psychiatrists who’ve trained in hypnotherapy. And so if we go back to the roots, we see that actually hypnosis is founded and is part of the bedrock of therapy that we know of today.
Things have progressed. There’s things that are much more popular like CBT and stuff like that, but hypnosis has its place in therapy and many times can be extremely powerful. And at our clinic, we are very much informed by ericksonian hypnosis in as the type of hypnosis we employ with our clients.
Different forms of Hypnosis
And so really the distinction is then, you know, a. who is the practitioner who is working with you? And b. what is the specific techniques that they are doing?
Because a lot of times, being in a state of trance that is hypnosis, that’s just the container, that’s the state of your mind. What happens in that place can vary a lot. A lot of hypnotists, for example, are trained to be very behavioral, to really focus on the future and to create change through visualization. They take a very proactive approach and you, as the client, are quite passive and have a script read to you.
Meanwhile, there are other forms of hypnosis, such as the kind that we do at our clinic, that is actually a lot more focused on you, the client going through your own process and your own journey.
And in that way, our Ontario hypnotherapy far more similar to therapy. You can think of it as doing therapy while in a state of trance.
Hypnosis as a Therapy
And so in the way that we do hypnosis, you can actually use your benefits to experience hypnosis. You’re basically seeing a therapist, then doing this really unique and powerful form of therapy that is actually really uncommon. It’s rarely taught today because typically the modalities are much more behavioral and practical and cognitive
And yet when you try hypnosis, many people find that a single session that can create this rapid change that they may be have been struggling for years. This is because our philosophy is that you have to dive deeper into your body and into your emotional and subconscious world to create the change that you want to create, and hypnosis is really helpful for that.
Hypnosis vs. Hypnotherapy
And this is also worthy of almost making the distinction between hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Hypnosis oftentimes can stand on its own, and it’s oftentimes unregulated. Hypnotherapy, meanwhile, once we’re in the context of mental health, that is something that in the United States and in Canada, that term oftentimes discouraged.
So that is something to keep in mind when you’re looking for a hypnotist versus hypnotherapist, where sometimes that distinction is made. Where if somebody is not a licensed therapist, they might stick through the word hypnosis, but some people might not be so scrupulous about which term they use because they are to some degree interchangeable.
But I like to think of it as hypnotherapy is the therapeutic experience of hypnosis. Hypnosis can stand on its own and it can be something that is very different than therapy. But hypnotherapy is a therapeutic modality: just like you have cognitive behavioral therapy. Just as you have narrative therapy, you have hypnotherapy which is therapy that is done with hypnosis as the transformational factor.
So to answer the original question, can hypnosis be covered with benefits? Yes.
With our licensed clinicians, you can actually come to us, work with the therapist to incorporate hypnosis into your healing journey. You’ll be doing therapy, because you’ll be doing hypnosis that is grounded in Ericksonian hypnosis. And because of that, you can get reimbursed by your benefits, by your insurance if you have it, and actually makes the process simultaneously more affordable and more effective for yoruself.
If you’re curious about trying hypnotherapy as a powerful tool for healing in your life, I invite you to connect with our practitioners today.
