Does hypnotherapy work if you don't believe in it?

I once had a client that came to me to quit smoking, but she was scared to be hypnotised so she brought a friend along to sit with her.

Her friend wasn’t shy about telling me that hypnosis was all nonsense.

The friend was also a smoker but she wasn’t at all interested in quitting. She stayed in the room for the entire session just to make sure I wasn't doing anything that I shouldn’t with her buddy.

I used a progressive relaxation induction and combined many subtle language patterns with NLP to help the actual client become a non-smoker and her friend obviously heard everything I said.

About a week after the session the friend called me to thank me. Even though she hadn’t even wanted to quit smoking the cigarette that she’d smoked before entering my office was the last one she ever smoked.

Not only did she not believe in hypnosis but she didn’t even want the change to happen. When I was studying hypnosis I was told that the clients desire to change was the most important factor of successful therapy, obviously this is not the case.

I’ve also been told by many people that hypnosis only works if you believe in it. I think that those people don’t believe in it at all, and they think it’s all down to placebo. For me, hypnosis is very real and definitely works. Even if you don’t think it will or want it to!