AI for hypnotherapists is becoming one of the most talked-about developments in therapy practice. Some therapists use AI every day to help with admin, writing, and marketing. Others worry about ethics, confidentiality, and whether artificial intelligence has any place in the therapy room at all.
I think the reality lies somewhere between the two. Used sensibly, AI can be a useful assistant in your hypnotherapy practice. But it should never replace your professional judgement.
How Can Hypnotherapists Use AI Safely?
Quickly Turning Rough Notes into Readable Copy
If you’ve scribbled down some notes at a CPD course, supervision meeting, or client session, you know what they mean when you write them. But when you come back later, the personal shorthand or doodles may not mean much. AI writing tools, especially voice-to-text AI, can easily turn them into something you’re still going to understand in a year’s time.
AI Can Help Market Your Hypnotherapy Practice
Not writing every social media post, in my opinion. There are, in fact, AIs that will post daily on your business page with no input at all from you. That sounds tempting, but AI draws its ideas from a generic database, and you may well end up with irrelevant posts or inaccuracies published in your name. Or just posts that look and sound like everyone else’s.
But when you’re uninspired and staring at a blank screen, AI can come up with some ideas that you can make your own. Or if you have an idea and can’t make it work, AI will know how. This is really helpful to tie in your posts to events and awareness days that are in the public mind, but not obviously therapy-related.
For example, I put in a prompt asking AI to come up with a Pancake Day-themed post for a hypnotherapy social media page and got this in a few seconds.
“Shrove Tuesday is here, and while you are flipping pancakes, it is also the perfect time to flip your mindset. Just like a good pancake, life works best when the balance is right. Too much stress, old habits, or self-doubt can leave things feeling a little off. Hypnotherapy can help you gently reset, letting go of what no longer serves you and creating space for healthier thoughts and behaviours.” (https://www.perplexity.ai)
And AI is really good at identifying hashtags, which have always been a bit of a mystery to me!
AI as an SEO Assistant
If you’re writing or tweaking your website, AI can
- Identify keywords and likely search phrases
- Help you decide on SEO friendly titles and subheadings
- Write meta descriptions
I tend to write the page, then copy and paste it into AI. I ask for ideas to improve the SEO. It will give me a list of suggestions (with reasons if I remember to ask for them) that I can use or not, so it still sounds like me.
AI, Research and Technical Articles
A huge time saver, and a good way of finding and understanding research.
Understanding research
If you have a study or research article full of jargon and statistics you don’t understand, upload the document to AI, or give it a URL. You can ask it for:
- A simple summary.
- The research’s strengths.
- Its weaknesses.
- The practical implications of its findings, for therapy and elsewhere.
If it’s relevant to what you want, go back and check it yourself. I often use this option to précis the research I include in my newsletters, since I have to condense it down to a very limited number of words.
Finding research
If you need to identify relevant research, it can find studies for you. This is handy for:
- Therapy students who want to support or disprove an argument in essays,
- Therapists who want to write blogs or update their knowledge of the research that sits behind their therapy,
- Therapists who want to know if there’s an evidence base for using hypnotherapy with a specific issue or medical condition.
But this use comes with some special warnings.
- Number one, students: don’t let AI write your whole submission for you.
- Number two, always check that the studies it cites actually exist. AI is a bit like a puppy – it’s very eager to please and will sometimes create information if it can’t find it
Roleplaying Conversations
If you receive a complaint or need to decline a request from a client, you won’t want to have an exact script to respond, but you might want to try out some ideas. Ask the AI to role-play the other person and try out several different approaches until you’re happy with your approach.
Hypnotherapy students can also ask AI to role-play a client so they can practice clean language and non-leading questions: ask the AI to let you know if you make an error instead of answering the question.
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AI as a Brainstorming Partner
This is one people often overlook. You can enter your random ideas and questions on a topic into AI and ask it for a response.
Examples would be:
“I’m running a workshop and…”
“I need an exercise for…”
“I need ten examples…”
“I’m thinking of doing [X], what are the pros and cons?”
AI tends to offer you lots of affirmations and tell you what wonderful ideas you have, so if you want it to be critical as well, include this in your instructions.
Using AI to Create Images
Canva and sites like Unsplash have lots of free images you can use on your website and in social media posts, and other sites like iStock Photo have an even wider range for a few pounds. However, sometimes you need something very specific.
I recently needed an image showing an old wooden toolbox containing a feather, candle, notebook, metronome, eye chart, smooth stone, and stopwatch. Perhaps not surprisingly, I couldn’t find it on image sites, so AI created it for me.
AI images can be great when you have an exact picture in your head, but nobody has photographed it. Just be aware that some social media sites ask you to indicate when a post image is created with AI. This is to ensure people aren’t posting fake news or manipulating pictures of real people without their knowledge and consent. My toolbox wasn’t an issue!
Can AI Help Run Your Hypnotherapy Business?
AI can act as your PA (Personal Assistant) when it comes to:
- developing realistic advertising budgets,
- comparing CPD courses,
- making tables,
- summarising long sets of notes, or
- creating checklists.
It loves the admin tasks you hate.
How Can AI Help Answer Therapy Client Questions?
You can ask AI to help in your hypnotherapy practice by drafting resources like:
- FAQ pages,
- emails,
- Discovery Call information,
- explanations of therapy,
- creating factsheets and leaflets.
Can AI Help Draft Hypnotherapy Scripts?
As with all these ideas, I would never advise you to generate a script and read it to the client as it comes. But if you use hypnotherapy scripts and can’t find just the right one for your client, then it will come up with some great ideas. Let me give you an example.
Many years ago (before we even had Google, let alone AI), I had a teenage client who wet the bed. It wasn’t trauma-based. All the medical tests had been done, and the doctors concluded he just slept so deeply he didn’t get the message to wake up and go to the loo. His only interest was the game Call of Duty, which I had never seen or played. As a new therapist, I embraced the idea that metaphors should reflect the client’s interests, researched the game, and finally came up with a metaphor set within it to address his enuresis. It took me a long time.
As an experiment, I recently fed this basic information into AI, and it came up with a relevant metaphor in a few seconds. And (I hate to admit it), it was probably a better idea than the one I remember writing. It was formal and a bit stilted in places, so it had to be reworked in my voice, but it would have saved me a whole lot of time and effort if it had been around when I needed it.
When Shouldn’t Hypnotherapists Use AI?
The truth is that AI isn’t a therapist, even if it does make a surprisingly capable assistant. Give it the repetitive, time-consuming jobs that steal hours from your week, check its work carefully, and it can save you a great deal of time.
Leave it to make clinical decisions, however, and you’re asking the wrong member of staff to do the job.
Holding Confidential Information
Before uploading any client information to AI, make sure you understand how it handles data. Avoid entering any information that could identify a client, for example when you’re developing ideas for a personalised metaphor.
Replacing Your Clinical Judgement
In most cases, therapists themselves are not qualified to diagnose clients because they are not medically trained. AI has never met your client or trained as a hypnotherapist (or doctor).
You are the one who has rapport with the client, has observed and spoken with them, has completed training and abides by a code of ethics.
Assessing Risk in a Crisis
A real person (you) needs to handle situations like suicidal thoughts, Duty of Care issues, or any other situation where clinical or ethical judgments are needed.
Making Ethical Decisions
Choosing what techniques to use, spotting changes in a client’s emotional state, and deciding when to refer or escalate care need your professional judgment and real-world context. If you need help with them, supervision is the answer and not AI.
Tips for Using AI in Therapy Practice
AI is very literal, so be very specific in your requests (prompts). For example, if you want it to draft a blog for you, give it a few details: the audience you are aiming for, the tone and length you want.
AI wording can end up sounding like a motivational poster: “Unlock your inner potential as you embark on a transformative journey towards becoming the best version of yourself…” Unless you talk like that all the time, take the AI’s idea and put it in your own words.
AI has many talents. Unfortunately, knowing when it has no clue what it’s talking about isn’t one of them. For example, Mikey Shulman, a lecturer at MIT Sloan and Head of Machine Learning at Kensho, tells a story about an AI that was asked for a recipe for Black Forest cake. Everything was fine until it confidently told users to cook the batter in the toaster.
Should Hypnotherapists Use AI?
I confess, I’m a cautious fan of using AI, both in my therapy and teaching practice. I use it mostly for time-saving tasks. I don’t see that as lazy or cheating, any more than using a grammar or spellcheck, or a calculator. It’s a tool like any other.
I do see it as a slightly over-enthusiastic assistant. It works incredibly hard, wants to please, learns quickly … and occasionally does something spectacularly silly. So, check its work before you send it out into the world.
If you’re curious about using AI, but you’re not sure where to start, or you feel it could be doing more for you than it does, that’s why I created my AI in Therapy Practice CPD course. It doesn’t try to turn hypnotherapists into technology experts. It just focuses on easy, legal, and ethical ways that therapists can use AI safely and confidently in practice.
AI certainly isn’t a replacement for a therapist. But it is a replacement for some of the jobs that stop therapists from being therapists.
About Debbie Waller
Blog Author Debbie Waller is a hypnotherapist, supervisor, and trainer with more than twenty years of experience. As well as having a busy client practice, she runs Yorkshire Hypnotherapy Training and writes books and articles for therapists who want to deepen their knowledge and develop effective practice.
Disclaimer
The information and ideas shared on this blog are based on the author’s professional experience, research, and training. They are intended for educational purposes and to support reflection and professional development. Therapists should always apply their own professional judgment and consider the needs of individual clients when using any techniques or suggestions discussed here.
While every effort is made to ensure the information is accurate and helpful, no responsibility can be accepted for any loss, damage, or difficulties arising from the use or misuse of material contained in these articles.
