Hypnotherapy For Children and Teens
Children’s/Teen’s Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is a natural and effective process that may assist younger clients with:
Sleep Issues
Anxiety
Self-Harm
Effects of Bullying
Achieving Goals
Emotional Regulation
PTSD
Compulsive Behaviours
and much more!
Many children respond positively to hypnotherapy — especially because their brains are naturally imaginative, playful, and primed for learning. This imaginative quality makes them well-suited to guided visualisations, stories, and playful metaphors that can gently encourage emotional or behavioural change.
In our first session, I spend time building trust and understanding your child’s motivation. We talk about what’s bothering them, how they’d like things to be different, and how change might feel. The desire to change is an important part of the process — without it, the mind is less likely to accept new suggestions.
Hypnotherapy is generally considered safe and low-risk for children. It’s a gentle and respectful process — your child stays in control at all times and cannot be made to do anything against their will. There’s no stage-show hypnosis here, just creative collaboration between your child’s imagination and my therapeutic tools.
Common areas of support include anxiety, fears and phobias, sleep problems, confidence issues, and school-related stress — though each session is uniquely tailored to your child.
In a children’s hypnotherapy session, I use play-based, imaginative methods to guide your child toward positive change. For younger children, this might involve storytelling, role-playing, or metaphor — often without sitting still or closing their eyes. We tap into their natural creativity to visualise solutions to their challenges in a gentle, non-directive way.
For example, a child working through bed-wetting might play out the concept of bladder control with make-believe dials, or opening and closing doors. These experiences help create symbolic understanding and plant positive suggestions in the subconscious.
For older children and teens, sessions are more structured — similar to adult sessions. They begin with a calming guided meditation followed by suggestions designed to support new thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
Hypnotherapy is a gentle and respectful process. Each session is tailored to your child’s needs, comfort level, and stage of development.
Disclaimer: Hypnotherapy is a complementary therapy and is not a substitute for medical or psychological treatment. Individual results vary. It is not used to diagnose, treat, or cure any medical condition.
Hypnotherapy for Teenagers
Adolescence can be an exciting but also overwhelming time. Teenagers are juggling school, friendships, family expectations, social media, and the big questions about who they are becoming. Sometimes the stress of it all shows up as anxiety, low confidence, poor sleep, unhealthy habits, or difficulties coping with emotions.
Hypnotherapy offers teenagers a gentle, supportive way to access their own inner strengths. By working in a calm, focused state of awareness, teens can learn tools to manage anxiety, reduce stress, improve sleep, increase motivation, and build confidence. It can also help with exam nerves, emotional regulation, performance in sports or creative activities, and letting go of unhelpful habits.
Parents often ask: Is hypnotherapy safe for my teenager? The answer is yes — it’s a safe and natural process, and your teen remains in control at all times. Another common question is: Will it work if they don’t want to do it? Most teenagers are resistant to Hypnotherapy because they don’t understand how it works. In the first session I always give an explanation of how the brain works and how Hypnotherapy works within the brain. They have the opportunity to ask as many questions as they like.
Do parents stay for the session?
You are always welcome to stay but if you think your teen won’t open up to me with you present you can leave and I can email you a summary of the session afterward.
Every session is tailored to your teenager’s unique needs and personality. The goal isn’t to change who they are, but to give them a sense of calm, confidence, and self-understanding as they navigate these important years.
The most important factor in teen’s sessions:
Is important that your child or teen wants to come to Hypnotherapy because they believe they have something they would like to change and would like assistance with it. When teenagers are told they have to come because the parent believes they need to, they are reluctant to participate and the sessions are ineffective.
Issues I commonly see teenagers for are:
Anxiety from bullying
PTSD
General confidence and emotional regulation
Body image issues
Sleep
Gaming/technology addiction
Negative behaviour/getting in trouble at school
How do I resolve these issues?
Anxiety: In hypnosis I teach the client to imagine themselves in a bubble that allows hurtful comments to bounce off it. I create a “safe place” in the client’s mind with an “anchor” which allows them to take themselves to that place in times of distress with the use of a hand movement. I also take the client into “positive regression” which involves remembering a time when they experienced the positive emotions they want to feel in the present. This reminds the mind it is capable of these emotions and acts as a pattern-breaker if the teen has become stuck in their feelings.
PTSD: I take the client through a process of “clearing” in hypnosis, which involves them getting rid of negative past experiences using mental imagery and taking them into their future to see how they change after resolving the trauma.
Sleep: I use future pacing which is a technique of setting up a “future memory” in the mind which then creates a path for the mind to follow that leads to good sleep. As the mind becomes more practiced in trance, it “shuts off” the chattering mind and leads to easier sleep.