Hypnotherapy Psychologist

by Paul Northcott PhD

Approachable psychotherapy, hypnotherapy & counselling. Understanding, support & expertise to better do & be what you want.

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Approachable psychotherapy, hypnotherapy & counselling. Understanding, support & expertise to better do & be what you want.

FAQ

Price
Alternative therapy
for the
alternative you

Frequently (and infrequently) asked questions.


  • How many sessions will be needed?
    • A number can't be reliably given because it varies considerably across clients. Help is neither rushed or drawn out; Hypnotherapy Psychologist doesn't subscribe to some snap of the fingers cure or to indefinite personal analysis. Necessity governs the help span. Equally, the sooner a client no longer needs Hypnotherapy Psychologist the better. And we may well find that 'brief therapy' - that consisting of very few sessions - is all that is required. One pointer is that the more that hypnotherapy per se suits a client's needs, the less help-time will usually be required; and the more that counselling suits a client's needs, the longer the overall help-time. So it is that even just one session may be sufficient for a particular client, yet another client may have several sessions.

  • Do I have to commit to multiple bookings?
    • No. Usually we'll only arrange the next one appointment. The alternative, making commitment to multiple further appointments, can be therapeutically helpful. However, practicalities are often problematic. And I want clients and potential clients to know they'll always retain an 'easy-out'. Plus, because clients get to choose again whether to have a further session they have a useful reflection point that may otherwise be missed.

  • Do you take on as clients all who contact you and want your help?
    • No. Their mental health issues could be too severe to be helped by this mode of assitance. Or the rapport betweeen us may not be conducive to our continuation. The non-conducive rapport may be nobody's fault; just a 'bad chemistry' matter.

  • What if I feel that what I wish to disclose is 'too much'.
    • Hypnotherapy Psychologist will unconditionally give you dignity and respect at all times. There is nothing you can disclose that will prevent this.

    Windowed upper-room of attic with many old framed paintings stacked against the walls.

    What's here won't be judged and needn't - if you don't want it to - define your future.

  • Can I use a mobile phone for the video sessions?
    • Certainly. This is a great way to have a session somewhere that best suits. The bigger the screen the more immersive, though. At the outset of us proceeding to work together we'll agree a therapy contract (as is standard practice) concerning the essential rights, conditions and responsibiliies of us both; this will include policy details over the procedural/practical aspects of us having our sessions online (e.g. specification of what one or other of us will do in the event of internet failure during a session).

    Reflecting water-puddles between buildings of a poor-looking sunglow-lit street - with telegraph poles and overhung by many telephone lines.

    Whatever and wherever your station of life, you're only an internet-connection away from the help-station of Hypnotherapy Psychologist

  • Help! Can I see you ASAP, please?
    • Check my availability on the 'Booking form' accessed from the Booking page; if there's a suitable slot, grab it and follow the rest of the standard booking process (described on the booking page). If there isn’t an available slot soon-enough for you, given you consider you need to see me urgently, you can use an emergency booking method: write to me via the contact form and select the ‘emergency’ button on it; I will audio-call you as soon as I can upon seeing your message; we’ll together arrange a session as a matter of priority. Please only use this emergency booking method for what you feel is a genuine emergency; thank you.

  • Do you provide/sell audio-visual material?
    • No need. There's masses of great mentally helfpful material on Youtube, for free (e.g. for relaxation, positive affirmation, 'mindfulness'). Moreover, the real essence of what we'll do to help can't be captured on such media.

  • Can you treat medical matters?
    • No. The psychological is the expertise. However, issues around the physical and seeing medical doctors may be discussed.

  • I know a lot about my condition; can you still help me?
    • Born of their suffering, some clients are already experts on the physical/medical, and/or have accurate insights into their psychology. Their understandings don't eliminate gains available from therapeutic encounters. The essential dynamics, and potential for help therefof, of therapy sessions remain.

    Woman sitting on floor in a bookshop, reading a book.

    Your informed input will be welcome

  • Do you do 'clinical hypnotherapy'?
    • Sure. Hypnotherapy IS the 'clinical' application of hypnosis (in the sense of 'clinical' meaning therapeutic). Hypnotherapy would never not be 'clinical hypnotherapy'.
    Use of the word 'clinical' in the term 'clinical hypnotherapy' is perhaps to make hypnotherapy sound akin to the medical, for prestige, and to (unnecessarily) distinguish hypnotherapy from any other use of hypnosis.
    ...Tell More 🤓

  • Why didn't you talk more here about what hypnosis is and isn't?
    • One reason is that this information is plentifully available on the internet. Two, I believe that you knowing about my particular service is more important. Three, culturally-prescribed hypnosis/hypnotherapy is only one aspect of the help I provide.

  • Will you help me to feel more confident in any area?
    • Yes; any area, where to do so is moral and ethical. So you don't have to worry over the area in which you want help concerning your confidence.

  • Will you help me with sexual issues in any area?
    • Again, yes; any area, where to do so is moral and ethical and when your sexual activites involving other people are consensual. And where I believe I possess the ability to help.

  • I'm not into typical things; is this OK?
    • Absolutely. Note, many people privately believe or suspect they aren't into typical things sexually. Thus what one considers 'untypical' may be not so untypical after all. So please don't be deterred from seeking help because of how you think your interests could be regarded.

  • Nothing has helped me yet. Why should it be any different with you?
    • It needn't be different. But it could be; and because I'm different.

    Wide view of inky ocean and dark clouds with the pink of sunset/sunrise above the horizon - where a far-off ship can just be seen.

    Hypnotherapy Psychologist could be the help you are looking for

  • Is there any follow-up?
    • I like to have a follow-up session 3 months after the main help period. This is free. I care about each and every client.

  • Do you help those who are liable to maliciously physically hurt people in any way?
    • No. Different help would be required than the talking-therapy that I offer.

  • Have you yourself had problems like you help with?
    • Indeed. In big part I do the work here because of past experiences.
    I know what the suffering can be like. I know how one feels to have would-be helpers not 'get it', including ones well-qualified on paper. This has bestowed deep desire in me to help others, and a compassion and understanding that probably can only be gained experientially. Were not for my challenging experiences I wouldn't feel I could be an authentic helper; this is so irrespective of my University degrees and my lifelong interest in psychology and psychotherapies.
    ...Tell More 🤓

  • Shouldn't you have not said certain things here?
    • Not at all. This website is 'nothing held back' so that you will get as good an understanding of me as possible before contacting me. Again, our relationship will be so important to success.
    By contrast, psychotherapies are traditionally considered to work via a set of specific mechanical-like treatments/processes (akin to medicine). These would-be special 'active' factors are held to treat clients irrespective who administers a therapy. Therapists' qualities like their capacity to form good relationships, including, simply, 'how nice they are as people', are not considered or downplayed. This traditional view can't be displaced; it serves the psychotherapy industry. Yet enlightened workers across decades have known it's wrong. That is, any 'active factors' of most psychotherapies account for little of the thereapeatic outcome; and instead general factors like 'relational' ones - those concerning the therapist-client relationship - have by far the lion's share of effect. To be clear, some psychotherapies (e.g. psychosexual therapy) do have lots of specific techniques/processes that have direct thereapeutic effects. However, in all psychotherapies there'll always be contribution (positive or negative) of relationship factors.
    ...Tell More 🤓

  • Is having your help easy?
    • Hypnotherapy itself is usually a pleasant thing. Other aspects of the possible help process from Hypnotherapy Psycholgist can be challenging. At hand can be challenges like undesirable memories, uncomfortable truths, ongoing external incursions, and motivation dips. Overall ease varies a lot. The help you need may be simply had in one or two classic hypnosis procedures - with minimal accompanying 'therapy talk' before or after. Then, you could better benefit from more involved, lengthier, help - with potential challenges thereof.
    Consoling to know, perhaps, is that I myself can face challenges helping you. Your resistance (to me / the help / change) may be considerable. And I'm anyway not an immutable certified therapist robot, nor somebody who doesn't possess personal demons and imperfections. During our time together, perhaps sparked by our time together, undesirable memories, uncomfortable truths, etc. may arise in ME (which, of course, I will handle professionally, with minimising alteration of how I am with you; this is a part of my role). Maybe this confession isn't consoling to know, and - perfectly understandably - you'd rather have a helper who at least portays infallibility.
    ...Tell More 🤓

  • Are there any prerequisties for having your help?
    • They're mentioned on the 'methods' page. Potential clients should ideally be prepared to:
    -Encounter examination of their thoughts, feelings, and life.
    -Strive for openness and honesty.
    -Actively ‘work with’ me.
    -Face discomfort if necessary.
    Also, clients should feel from this website and initial communications that which they like. Because as said throughout, rapport between therapist and client matters more than anything.

  • Why doesn’t your photo have that classic professionally-taken look?
    • The current picture is a Sunday walk's spontaneous selfie, from June 2023. It's as unfalse as can be. I hope it portrays that I'll be as unfalse as can be with you.

  • Will you be incessantly saying to me 'How do you feel about that'?
    • Hopefully not incessantly!

  • To maximise the placebo-effect, do you have a Harley Street area 'clinic'?
    • If I needed one I would give up. Anyway, do you want to pay for one?
    Granted, perceived credibility from work-whereabouts may contribute a bit to useful positive expectations in clients. I anyway believe that my efficacy would be the same wherever I worked.
    ...Tell More 🤓


    Neon sign saying 'THINK ABOUT THINGS DIFFERENTLY', with all black background. It has one letter per line, and 'DIFFERENTLY' is reversed

    This could include over who will help you

  • Why don't you lard your writing with medical-service sounding terms, like 'treatment', 'patient', 'clinic', 'clinician', 'practitioner'?
    • Because psychological therapy and problems are very different from the physical, and because (notionally desirable) association with the medical isn't necessary (and may be disadvantaging).
    Psychological therapists do like to recite 'the "medical model of illness" doesn't apply to the psychological'. However, they also seem to like using medical sounding words themselves.
    ...Tell More 🤓

  • Are you scientific?
    • To baldly reply ‘Yes, I'm scientific (all the time, over everything)’ would be misleading, given difficulties of definitions, the complexities and wonders of life and our universe, and questions over the validity and uses of the scientific. But I can say I’m scientifically orientated. My three degrees involved studying and doing science. Self-Centred Therapy was born of my empirical research. I’ve been employed as a scientist. I've designed and run dozens of scientific experiments and investigations. I accept and uphold scientific thinking (I’ve partaken in science-promoting events and been on TV talking of the scientific approach to hypnosis). Then, I like to believe I'm open to the metaphysical. I guess holding this apparently contradictory duality is a part of the searching human condition.

  • Can you call what you do 'integrated' and 'solution-centred' ?
    • Why not? 'Disparate' and 'problem-enhancing' wouldn't work.

  • Do you call yourself a Hypnotherapist? (And/or a Counsellor?)
    • I tend to label myself professionally as a psychologist and psychotherapist who uses hypnotherapy as but one possible way among other ways to help people. But as hypnotherapy is included, and is sometimes the principal form of help, and as I've long-studied and used hypnotherapy, I am a hypnotherapist too. Similarly, for a particular client I may serve as that which could perhaps most accurately be labelled their counsellor. But in actuality I draw on all I know and am qualified in that's relevant to help a client; so the question usually becomes moot as to the best-fitting professional title of my role for a client. I appreciate the varied labels of talking-therapy practices/therapists can be confusing for clients (professionals too disagree over them). I'm always happy to help with further clarification, and so with determining the relevance to you of what I can offer.

  • Whose, or what, is your 'school of thought'?
    • In a sense, my own. I wouldn't feel authentic were I slavish channeler of approaches that third parties had conceived.
    And it'd be rather hypocrticial of me to call myself a purveyor of something named after something/somebody else, when my very therapeautic message is for you to do things your ways to suit yourself. This said, tempering the sound of this alternative position, in formal terms I practice what's called 'pluralistic' psychotherapy. For I do, of course, incorporate pre-existing doctrines/methods into my own. If a psychotherapeutic method approach is likely to work (for a given client, for given issues) I may well weave it into the treatment plan. Of schools of thought, a legacy of my doctoral education is sympathy to the 'socio-cognitive' view of hypnosis; I adapt this for practical purposes, thus I can sound like an adherent of the contrasting ‘state’ view of hypnosis. I may use techniques from the ‘quick change' approaches - including ‘cognitive behavioural therapy’. Yet as my practice evolves – the learning ever-continues – I discover more the value of the 'existential’ approach to therapy. Before Universities so commodified counselling and psychotherapy courses, I undertook the 'client centred counselling/therapy' styled programs, which informs my client-work. I've come to recognise the utility of 'spiritual counselling'; I myself do not offer this, for want of expertise in it, but I'm open to clients’ spiritual sensitivities. *
    ...Tell More 🤓

  • Will you be able to maintain the studied facial expression of sincerest concern throughout?
    • It'll probably falter. But my actual concern over you will always be there, and deeply so.

  • Why aren't you just like the others?
    • Perhaps that authenticity thing?

  • You live in a lovely part of Britain, down there in Penzance, in desirable Cornwall. How can you empathise with me, given my less than desirable location/circumstances?
    • I've lived all over England, including in extremely troubled locations, dwellings, and circumstances. I will relate to you like only somebody who has had these experiences can. You could well usurp me, in total, on the 'hellhole resume'; but you could well not.
    It follows that I'm acutely aware of the effects of one's environment on one's mental and physical health.

    Close-up of dirty bowl of white ceramic pedestal sink in orange-walled bathroom, almost full with: several empty Marlboro cigarette packets, Fanta can, and cardboard cups containing many filtered-cigarette butts. Strewn on the floor are further cardboard cups, empty Marlboro packets, and empty drinks' bottles.

    I get it

    ...Tell More 🤓

  • Why do you focus as you do, rather than say that you can deal with most psychological problems imagineable?
    • I only wish to work in areas where I believe my input to people's lives will be exceptional. Also, I'm very careful to not make false claims about myself and my work.

  • Do you therapeutically help via recourse to 'left-right brain (hemisphere) differences'?
    • I've long been interested in the related field of these; namely neuropsychology / cognitive neuroscience. My own experimental research, when I was an undergraduate, was in this area. For example, Northcott, P (1990). The Spatial Frequency model of Hemispheric Asymmetry: Low Level Success and High Level Failure. BIHE. (A paper praised by world-class cognitive neuroscientist Professor Justine Sergent of Montreal Neurological Institute, of whose concepualisation of lateralised brain function I examined with a unique laboratory paradigm. Professor Sergent became a valued transatlantic mentor.) Within my research on differential cerebral-hemisphere functioning I actually discovered (by accident, I confess) the basis of what was independently later called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) - the psychotherapy method. Most welcome are accruing developments in our understanding of the neuropsychological bases of psychotherapy and psychological dysfunction. Psychotherapists have to be cautious, though, not to over-flaunt the connection. Such as hemisphere differences can easily be cited, adding scientific-sounding credibilty to an approach, when actually the neuropsychological contribution isn't clear or is even questionable. I keep abreast of the genuine neuropsychology behind psychotherapy, and where applicable this knowledge is implicit in what I practice.

  • Should I avoid therapists/counsellors who don't have specific psychology qualifications?
    • Not at all. Fantastic therapeutic work is done by people of all sorts of backgrounds.
    Conversely, individuals notionally well qualified for it with certificates/diplomas/degrees can be awful at it. The latter can apply to those who occupy the most respected of 'clinical' psychology roles, and who work in the most formal and recognised of settings; by many accounts, clients would get immeasurably more compassion, understanding and useful assistance from a New Age therapist working out back of the town's Witchcraft shop; or from a therapy dog. I suggest you consider the totality of the make-up of a possible therapist/counsellor for you.

    Bearded street beggar, holding handwritten sign made of waste cardboard advertsing cheap advice-giving services.

    ...Tell More 🤓

  • I think you sound like an 'out there' therapist, so why should I choose you?
    • Perhaps you shouldn’t. I genuinely sorry you see me thus, or for any offence felt. I hope you can appreciate that I’m reaching out to the very people that I’ll best be able to help. In doing so I effectively try to filter out those not amenable to my help; this actually saves you the experimentation of coming to me were I an ‘appeal to everybody’ helper.

  • I've been abandoned by a counsellor who suspended their work to have more children. Would you cease our ongoing sessions in order for you to go off and fulfill some elected personal matter?
    • No. I consider that the deal you should get, given what you're paying and given what this work is about, is one in which the worker will see you through to the end of the help. If I wished to take an unforced break from providing services for everybody, then I would simply stop taking-on new clients and meanwhile continue to help existing clients until our respective work together naturally concluded.

    Solitary hotel on the inside curve of a winding mountain road, below a spectacular late sky of wispy red-hued clouds and with mountains behind in the distance and to the sides.

    A haven for help until you are ready to leave





Prices

  • How much will it cost?

    • The Initial Consultation of up to 15 minutes is £10.

    Normal sessions of about 45 minutes are £45 each.


    The Initial Consultation. Regretable is that a free Initial Consultation isn't offered; when I did offer this I received too many non-genuine callers. If we don't proceed after it, you don't loose much money (and anyway will have gained some knowledge, maybe a little confidence or mood boost, and will be all the readier to seek help from elsewhere). If we do proceed, the £10 is effectively refunded, via you only paying £35 for the first sesson. If you're a non-genuine caller, I'll have got something for entertaining you.

    Value. These prices are good. Again, I wish to appeal to people who otherwise wouldn't have therapy; cost is one prohibiting factor. I would charge even less, were not for the negative expectation doing so could create. I appreciate that 'even' £45 for 45 mins sounds a lot set-against the low wages of so many people.

    Pricing policy. Hypnotherapy Psychologist's pricing policy has clients at its heart. I believe we're worth the same. I would pay you £45, whatever you do, for 45 minutes. I couldn't justify charging more, other than as an expectation-creating stratagem.


    Make no mistake, for these prices you'll be getting ultra topnotch therapy.

    Partially snow-covered public telescope, set-against distanced snowy mountains.

    Worthwhile cost for hope of chance of vision anew?

  • Do you offer any discounts?
    • Yes. Good ones. They apply to: 1) the unemployed on social security benefits, 2) those whose only income is minimum wage earnings, 3) those whose only income is a mixture of minimum wage earnings and social security benefits, and 4) students. Normal sessions for people in any of these circumstances are £25. (The Initial consultation remains £10. Because of the 'refund' of this, the first standard session will only be £15 for the discount-eligible.) **

  • How and when do I pay?
    • Payment for a session is made before each one and through a secure payment form on the booking page - where more details are given. The form works through the Paypal company. Payments can be from a Paypal account, or from Debit/Credit cards. Though Paypal handles the money transfer, a Paypal account isn't needed to pay with a Debit/Credit card.

  • What if I still feel uneasy paying so litte?
    • You can, of course, pay me more if you want to. I anyway do not accept more than £60 for a 45 minute session. This maximum is still comparatively very reasonable for the engagement and expertise received.


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* If you're interested in having spiritual counselling you may like to consider Kelly-Ann Maddox. I would go to her. (I'm not connected to her.)

** The discounted rates also apply to earners of near minimum wage - like in the UK the still insultingly low and so wrongly called 'living wage' (which employers disingenuously claim shows their generosity).