Much as I hate to start my Monday morning with a grrrrrrr, I am going to be doing some grrrrr-ing. But I think it is good grrrring. It is not a moaning and complaining kind of grrrr that is on my mind but more a general myth-debunking, righting wrongs kind of grrring that I hope will be helpful in some way.

It started on Thursday evening. I had just come back from a pleasant evening out and caught the tail-end of a new drama series on BBC1 called, ‘New Tricks.’

It is apparently about a group of eccentric ex-police officers who meet up to solve crimes and, guess what? In the bit of the storyline that I caught, the evil killer was finally apprehended… or so the main characters thought. What caught my attention were his words: ‘No, when I met her [the victim] I hadn’t got into NLP… I didn’t know about mind control…’

Ha! If it wasn’t so sad, I would have laughed out loud.

Here we are, yet again, with another suspected evil killer, under suspicion because he knows how to control people  not with blackmail, extortion or a stolen Kalashnikov but with the deadliest weapons known to man: hypnosis and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).

Oh dear, oh dear…

Every day, I talk to people in my consulting room about what hypnotherapy can help them to achieve in their lives, the changes they can make by learning to master their own thoughts with some simple ideas from NLP, and how they can let go of fear and unhelpful emotion using hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis. I explain how in the very natural relaxed and focused state of awareness that we call hypnosis, they have access to their own amazing resources for change – and can even strengthen those resourceful states or begin to create new ones. I explain that I, as a hypnotherapist, have no power over them. Contrary to some beliefs, I cannot make them thin, rich or happy. I can help them to discover these things for themselves.

In the same way, after working with me they will not find themselves dancing like a chicken, emptying their bank accounts and handing the contents over to me or committing murder – unless, of course, they already wanted to do that in the first place.

Because I have no ‘control’ over the people I work with – and it would be very improper if that were the case. Although it can be tempting to hope that someone can actually get inside your mind, flick a switch and make you stop overeating or smoking, wouldn’t that be rather unnerving, to say the least?

Would you really be wanting that to happen? Isn’t it even more amazing when you realise that, with the help of a well-trained and experienced hypnotherapist, you can do these things for yourself in a lasting and permanent way?

I explain all of this to my clients, debunk the myth that hypnotherapists are expert manipulators and then along come the writers of ‘New Tricks’ on BBC1 and, in one fell swoop, they reinstate the idea of the evil hypnotist who uses NLP and hypnosis to make someone kill their own mother.. Evil cackle, evil cackle.

By a very clumsy plot twist, it turned out that this is not what had happened… but still, the misrepresentation of hypnotherapy – a profession that helps people and that is now a recommended treatment by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for a range of problems including IBS and ulcerative colitis – is unfortunate to say the least.

It makes me a bit annoyed, it makes me go grrr because I know what a huge leap it is for many people to say, ‘I need some help with this,’ and then to pick up the phone and call a professional hypnotherapist. Programming like this may actually be detrimental to the well-being of a person who could really benefit from hypnotherapy.

So grrrrrrrr to you BBC. We need more responsibe talk about hypnosis and hypnotherapy,even in low-budget TV dramas. Otherwise, you are misleading people who may need help.

Grrr…. grrr… grrrr…

Meanwhile, I will keep doing my bit to spread the word about the benefits of solution-focused hypnotherapy.