Hypnotherapy goes straight to the root cause of limiting beliefs and self-sabotage patterns and can have an advantage over many other modalities because it deals with subconscious thought processes, which are often the cause of many people’s problems.
In my personal and professional experience, working with a psychologist, psychotherapist, counselor or other forms of 'talk therapy' tends to further ingrain the past story, encourage victim mentality, and creates labels and reinforces negative thought patterns. While this is a generalization, it is VERY common.
Nearly all of my clients, friends, family, etc have all reported temporary relief from being heard and seen, and 'getting it off their chest', however, the same issues would eventually pop back up and they did not experience any real change in behaviors or emotions from talk therapy.
As a hypnotherapist, we are in a unique position to be able to communicate with the subconscious mind in a way nobody else can. I'm not saying other modalities don't work, I just think hypnotherapy is much quicker and more effective because of our advantage to bypasses the resistance of the conscious critical faculty, therefore allowing for rapid, permanent behavioral changes.
While hypnotherapy is the obvious choice for most people wanting to make rapid belief and behavioral changes in their lives, it's not for everyone. While we can assist with cases of emotional illness such as trauma and neurosis (stress, depression, anxiety, phobias) we are not suited to treat extreme mental illness such as psychosis which is where psychotherapists can make great strides in treatments.
The term hypnotherapy is broad and doesn't really specify what techniques are being used however a good hypnotherapist will combine techniques such as RTT (rapid transformational therapy), CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), Regression, Shadow Integration, Cord Cutting, etc.
I have seen people battle doubts, fears, addiction, depression, unwanted weight, sex and intimacy issues, in-and-out of counseling for YEARS...
Some of these lucky people chose to try hypnotherapy and overcame their issue in as little as ONE session. For more information read about Rapid Transformational Therapy.