NLP vs Hypnotherapy: What Is the Difference?

The short answer: hypnotherapy is a psychological therapy that uses hypnosis, a natural state of focused and absorbed attention, to help you change patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour. NLP, or neuro linguistic programming, is a set of communication and change techniques developed in California in the 1970s, partly by studying how the psychiatrist and hypnotherapist Milton H. Erickson worked. Hypnotherapy always uses the hypnotic state, while NLP mostly works in ordinary waking conversation. Hypnotherapy also has much stronger research behind it: NICE recommends it for irritable bowel syndrome, while NLP has very little independent evidence in its favour.

I trained in both. I hold postgraduate diplomas in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and in NLP, and I have practised as a hypnotherapist in London since 2010. So I am not writing this to dismiss NLP, or to sell it. I still use a few of its tools every week. But when clients ask me "NLP or hypnotherapy, which one should I have?", they deserve an honest answer, including what the research does and does not show.

What is NLP?

Neuro linguistic programming was created in the early 1970s at the University of California, Santa Cruz, by Richard Bandler, then a student, and John Grinder, a professor of linguistics. They set out to model three exceptionally effective therapists: Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, the family therapist Virginia Satir and, after the anthropologist Gregory Bateson introduced them, Milton H. Erickson. Their idea was that if you could describe precisely what excellent communicators do, anyone could learn to do it.

The name sums up the theory:

• Neuro. We take in experience through the senses and the nervous system.
• Linguistic. The language we use both shapes and reveals how we represent that experience.
• Programming. Our habitual responses run like learned sequences, and learned sequences can be changed.

Well known NLP techniques include anchoring (linking a chosen feeling to a touch, a word or a gesture), reframing (changing the meaning you give an event), the swish pattern (replacing an unwanted mental image with a desired one) and working with submodalities, the size, colour, distance or volume of an inner image or sound. Today NLP is used at least as much in sales, leadership and coaching as it is in therapy.

What is hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis for a therapeutic purpose. The Society of Psychological Hypnosis, part of the American Psychological Association, defines hypnosis as a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness, with an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion. In a session, a trained hypnotherapist guides you into that state and then works with you, through suggestion, imagery, metaphor and mental rehearsal, towards a goal you have agreed together.

You stay aware and in control throughout. Therapeutic hypnosis, or hypnotherapy, is not sleep and it is not stage hypnosis. Its history as a treatment goes back 250 years: from the development of mesmerism, through the work of the Scottish surgeon James Braid in the 1840s and the profound work of Jean Martin Charcot and Hippolyte Bernheim in the late nineteenth century, to the twentieth century advances of Clark L. Hull, Milton H. Erickson, Ernest Hilgard and André Muller Weitzenhoffer, and on to the recent contributions of the psychiatrist David Spiegel at Stanford. It is a much longer and richer clinical history than that of NLP. I cover some of this history, and the main types of hypnotherapy, in what is hypnotherapy?

NLP vs hypnotherapy: the key differences

Both approaches aim to change the automatic patterns behind a problem. Where they differ is in how they get there, and in how much we know about whether they work.

The biggest practical difference is the state you are in. In an NLP exercise you are usually awake and talking, actively following instructions. In hypnotherapy you spend much of the session in a quieter, inward state, where your capacity for new learning increases powerfully, imagination becomes more vivid and the critical, analytical part of the mind steps back. That makes it easier to understand and rehearse a new response with your whole attention, rather than just think about it. In this state we call hypnosis, there is also a significant increase in mind body communication and connection, which makes it possible to work effectively with physical patterns too.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of hypnosis, and a fundamental difference from NLP, is its profoundly embodied dimension. Hypnosis is not simply a mental exercise or a way of changing thoughts and beliefs. It involves a shift in the relationship between mind and body, creating conditions in which psychological processes and physiological responses can become more closely integrated and more responsive to therapeutic work.

Where NLP and hypnosis meet

The two are more closely related than most comparisons admit. In 1975 Bandler and Grinder published Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., a detailed study of how Erickson used language in hypnosis. What they described there became known in NLP as the Milton Model: indirect, permissive, story rich language that lets each listener fill in the meaning from their own experience.

In other words, a large part of NLP is Ericksonian hypnosis, taken apart and given new names. That is why many NLP trainers also teach trance, and why people who come to NLP first often find certain aspects of hypnotherapy surprisingly familiar.

Erickson was a psychiatrist and the founding president of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. My own hypnotherapy training comes from his tradition: I trained with Stephen Brooks, who introduced Ericksonian hypnotherapy to the UK, and with Dr Ernest L. Rossi and Dr Stephen Gilligan, both direct students of Erickson. You can read more about my training. After many years of work with clients, I remain convinced that using the hypnotic state within a relational, psychodynamic process that is also fully embodied and somatic makes therapy considerably more effective in supporting real change and healing.

What is NLP hypnotherapy?

NLP hypnotherapy, sometimes called NLP hypnosis, is not a separate, recognised therapy. It is a label practitioners use when they combine the two: hypnosis for the deep, absorbed part of the work, and NLP techniques for the conscious, practical part around it.

A combined session might use a precise NLP style question to define exactly what you want, hypnosis to rehearse that change with your full attention, and an anchor so you can call up the new feeling afterwards in daily life. Done well, the combination can be useful. My own experience is that, in most cases, adding NLP tools to effective hypnotherapy is a matter of style and does not necessarily change the therapeutic outcome. The question to ask is not what a practitioner calls their method, but whether their training in hypnotherapy itself is solid, because that is the part with the evidence behind it.

What does the research say?

The evidence for hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy has been tested in hundreds of controlled trials, and the results are stronger than its reputation suggests:

• Irritable bowel syndrome. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends considering hypnotherapy for people with IBS that has not responded to medication after 12 months.
• Anxiety. A 2019 analysis that pooled 17 trials found that the average person treated with hypnosis reduced their anxiety more than about 79% of people in control groups.
• Across conditions. A 2024 umbrella review of 49 research syntheses, covering 261 studies, found positive effects in almost every comparison, with the largest for pain and medical procedures.

Brain imaging also shows that hypnosis changes activity in the networks that govern attention, body awareness and self monitoring. I explain the findings in what happens in the brain during hypnosis.

The evidence for NLP

The research on NLP is much thinner, and mostly unfavourable:

• In 2010 the psychologist Tomasz Witkowski reviewed 35 years of NLP research. Of the 33 empirical studies he analysed, 18.2% supported NLP's claims, 54.5% did not and 27.3% were inconclusive.
• A 2012 systematic review led by Professor Jackie Sturt at King's College London, published in the British Journal of General Practice, found only 10 relevant studies and little evidence that NLP improves health outcomes.
• The popular NLP claim that the direction of someone's eye movements shows whether they are lying was tested in three studies by the psychologist Richard Wiseman and colleagues in 2012. None supported it.
• A 2019 critical review in the International Coaching Psychology Review, published by the British Psychological Society, concluded that the practices unique to NLP are poorly supported by research evidence.

It is worth being precise about what this means. Little evidence of benefit is not the same as evidence of harm, and several NLP techniques overlap with methods that are well supported, such as cognitive reframing in CBT or imagery rehearsal in sports psychology. What has not held up are the theories NLP added on top, such as the idea that each person has a preferred sense (visual, auditory or kinaesthetic) that a practitioner can read from their words or their eyes.

Training and regulation in the UK

Neither NLP nor hypnotherapy is regulated by law in the UK, so anyone can use either title. That makes training and registration the thing to check.

• NLP. Certification is set by individual training schools and associations, and practitioner courses range from a few days to several weeks. A separate and much longer training, neuro linguistic psychotherapy, is recognised by the UK Council for Psychotherapy through the Neuro Linguistic Psychotherapy and Counselling Association.
• Hypnotherapy. The NHS advises choosing a practitioner who belongs to a register accredited by the Professional Standards Authority. Ask any hypnotherapist where they trained, for how long, which professional bodies they belong to and whether they are insured.

For transparency: I am registered with the General Hypnotherapy Register and the General Hypnotherapy Standards Council, and I am fully insured. If an NLP practitioner offers to treat a mental health condition, it is reasonable to ask whether they also hold a recognised therapy qualification.

NLP or hypnotherapy: which is right for you?

In my experience, the choice depends on what you want to change:

• Hypnotherapy may be particularly appropriate when you are dealing with difficulties that significantly affect your mental, emotional or physical wellbeing. These may include anxiety, panic attacks, chronic stress, insomnia, persistent fears, emotional distress, or deeply ingrained habits such as smoking. As a therapeutic approach, hypnosis can work with the psychological and physiological processes underlying these difficulties, including patterns of nervous system activation, emotional responses, bodily sensations and learned behaviours. It is particularly valuable when difficulties are not simply a matter of how you think, but involve how you feel, react and experience yourself at a deeper, often involuntary level. The aim is not merely to improve performance or acquire new skills, but to support meaningful therapeutic change and restore greater psychological and physical wellbeing.
• NLP techniques may be more relevant when you are looking for practical tools to improve a particular skill, behaviour or situation, such as preparing for a presentation, approaching a negotiation or communicating more effectively. These techniques are commonly used in coaching and personal development, although the scientific evidence supporting NLP as a therapeutic method remains limited.
• Speak to your GP first if you have epilepsy, schizophrenia or a history of psychosis. The NHS advises that hypnotherapy may not be safe for these conditions, and neither approach replaces medical care.

How I use NLP and hypnotherapy together

Hypnotherapy is the core of my work. Ericksonian hypnosis in particular lets me work with your own language, images and resources, so that change comes from you, and from your own innate and learned resources, rather than being imposed by an external authority. Around it I use a small number of NLP tools: precise questions at the start to find out what you actually want, and simple anchors or reframes you can take home. I leave out the parts of NLP that research has not supported, and I do not claim that any method works for everyone.

Many of my clients notice a difference after the first session, although the number of sessions you need depends on what we are working on. I explain this in how many hypnotherapy sessions will I need?, and why lasting change is rarely instant in is hypnosis really a quick fix? You can see how a session unfolds, step by step, in how hypnotherapy works.

I see clients in person at my practice in Camden, London and online by video. If you are unsure whether hypnotherapy or a combined approach is right for you, get in touch and we can talk it through. You will find my fees here.

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