We have talked briefly in PM and some here know that I began with a psychologist who uses hypnosis as therapy and particularly for trauma work. It was covered by my insurance because she is a licensed psychologist and one of the doctors in the insurance company's network.

I do think hypnotherapy can be effective for some things. I think it definitely helped my anxiety, and I also purchased relaxation and guided imagery and autogenics CD's to use at home and I still use them fairly regularly and that helps too.

It was explained to me that hypnosis is bypassing the conscious and working directly with the unconscious ( in fact some of the script included the wording that "I" didn't have to do a thing). It was pleasant and interesting to do and I really did enjoy it. As far as therapy though, I prefer talking with someone and there wasn't much of that going on and what talking there was, just wasn't very satisfying to me.

It didn't help too much that she called it guided imagery for relaxation, then abruptly told me that it would 'become hypnotherapy', rather than being straight up with that information.

In spite of my not wanting hypnotherapy at this time, I would very much like to return for hypnosis for self-improvement at some point in the future since I saw how it helped some of my anxiety issues and because it just feels good!

Do I think it is therapy. That would depend on the goal(s) of the therapy in my opinion.