Learning and getting certified in hypnotherapy gives you the skills to discover quite easily what the source of the addictive behavior is. Then, using the full 100% of the mind, you learn how to resolve the issues which have led to this destructive and often deadly behavior. Hypnotherapy training and certification can help you free the client from toxic behaviors. Hypnotherapy will lead people toward healing the unresolved issues that have been hounding them their whole lives. We have learned to uproot the causes which have been feeding this hungry tiger within. Most people during childhood are faced with unpleasant situations and then draw subconscious conclusions about themselves from this very childish mind. We also make decisions about how to behave which seem good at the time, but now are defeating us. These childhood decisions are so deeply hidden that only through the depth of hypnotherapy, not hypnosis, can they be discovered and treated.
A hypnotist (not a hypnotherapist) will mainly use relaxation and hypnotic suggestions to address the behavior. The hypnotist may ask the person to associate a nasty, disgusting substance with the food or drug they are addicted to. This may work for a few days or weeks. However, if the compulsive eater, say, encounters a situation where someone they love deeply threatens to leave, they are immediately back to consuming their addictive substance of choice. The pattern itself of using substances (food, drugs, etc.) to medicate unpleasant feelings has not been changed or healed.
With hypnotherapy, you can regress the client to childhood, discover these patterns and change them deep within the unconscious mind. The new affirmations and suggestions will stick for more than just a few days. This is a fundamental reason why the mental health professional must discern the difference between hypnotherapy certification and hypnosis certification.