Before you learn to be a hypnotherapist, it’s important that you choose to undertake your hypnotherapy training with the best hypnotherapy trainer that you can find/afford. There are many different hypnotherapy trainers and schools out there offering a variety of different training solutions, but some of the so-called ‘hypnotherapy trainers’ that are running courses in the UK aren’t actually much good. In fact, a few of them are downright terrible!
I don’t want you to end up shelling out for sub-par hypnotherapy training, because you deserve the best. Even if you do your research and end up training with another hypnotherapy trainer and not here at the Rory Z Hypnosis Academy, so long as the trainer you choose is good, that’s all that truly matters! As a hypnotherapy trainer, I don’t want poorly trained hypnotherapists out there giving the rest of my students a bad name! That is why I do my best to educate people, with blogs just like this, on how to get the best hypnotherapy training.
So here are four awesome tips on how to choose a top hypnotherapy training course, so that you can become a truly professional, capable hypnotherapist.
Don’t sign up to the first course you see…
Rule one: Shop around! Shopping around means that you probably shouldn’t sign up to the very first course that you stumble upon (unless, after more research, it turns out to be very thorough and comprehensive).
Finding a hypnotherapy course on Google
The most common way to find a hypnotherapy course would be… Google! As a rule, the ‘organic’ entries featured at the top of Google, or on the first page, have been around for a while, or they have plenty of referring links. That said, just because a hypnotherapy trainer is on page one of Google, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are a good hypnotherapy trainer… It just means they’re good at getting their website high up on Google and therefore more easily searchable.
Please take the adverts at the top of Google with a pinch of salt. Lots of companies pay to be at the top of Google using ‘sponsored ads’, because they can’t get their website high up on Google organically (which means they either have a bad website or low interest – usually for good reason). That is why I always advise prospective hypnotherapy students to beware the ads at the top of Google searches. If you see a little box that says ‘Ad’ next to a Google entry, this means the company has paid to put their business in front of you:
Unfortunately, most ads won’t be as overt as the example above.
Finding a hypnotherapy course via social media
Another way to find courses is via social media, whether that is with direct posts from trainers and schools, or in hypnotherapy-related forums and groups. With the latter option, most people are only too willing to share their own learning experiences with you. However, also be aware that often it is the trainers themselves posting in groups. The key thing, regardless of where you find your chosen course, is to compare it against other similar courses.
So, once you’ve done some research and found a few courses that you like the look of, you can then compare the differences. The main differences being:
- Cost
- Location (in person/online)
- Course Duration
- Qualifications
- Syllabus
That last one is important, because you need to find out what you’re actually going to learn (in detail) otherwise, there’s not much point doing the comparison! Also, when it comes to qualifications… Well, I’ll wait, because that point is covered in more detail below.
There’s a time and place for ‘cheap’
Unfortunately, there are many people out there whose sole focus is to make money by teaching hypnotherapy, regardless of the quality of what they are ‘teaching’. Many low-level trainers manage to fill up their terrible courses by drastically undercutting those trainers & companies that do actually teach hypnotherapy properly and effectively. So you might want to take that ‘budget hypnotherapy diploma’ with a pinch of salt. That said, on the other side of the coin, just because a hypnotherapy course is super expensive doesn’t mean it is good either! Anyway, we all like to save money, so by all means buy the cheap ketchup instead of Heinz, but when it comes down to hypnotherapy training, you tend to get what you pay for, most of the time. However, when looking for inexpensive hypnotherapy training, there are some good options out there, and especially with online training!
There are some online hypnotherapy courses that cost thousands of pounds, which is similar to the price of many in-person training courses you might find. In contrast, there are a few good trainers who provide a great deal of valuable content online at a much more affordable cost. A couple of the ‘big names’ in the hypnosis world offer low-cost monthly online memberships, so that anyone can benefit from top-quality hypnotherapy training, without having to worry about breaking the bank. In fact, we offer something just like this at the Rory Z Hypnosis Academy. If you’d like to learn more about our online hypnotherapy training, check it out here:
At the end of the day, to make sure you are getting value for your investment, it goes back to comparing courses and exactly what you get, so that you can make a truly informed decision.
Reviews & testimonials are important!
Testimonials are useful when you’re buying things online, and especially where companies cannot delete any negative reviews (i.e. Amazon), but when you’re looking on a hypnotherapy training website, it might not be so straight forward. You must remember, companies are in charge of their own websites, so if they get negative reviews, they probably won’t put them up on their website! So, when looking at reviews and testimonials on a hypnotherapy training website, you need to be careful and scrutinise them.
Student testimonials will usually be in 2 formats, text or video. Obviously, video is great, because you get to see that it’s a real person leaving the review. However, video reviews are often less common, and written reviews are the norm. Written reviews can be hosted directly on the training website, or they can be collected through a third-party review website. This second option is often a much more reliable indicator that the reviews are real. I personally use TrustPilot to collect reviews from my RZHA students, because it proves that they are real reviews from real people, and it is a trusted platform.
When it comes to written reviews listed directly on a website, a dishonest hypnotherapy trainer or school could easily forge a bunch of fake reviews from imaginary students.
How to spot a fake review
Generally fake reviews are all written in exactly the same way, using very similar words/language on every review. If reviews have no names included at all (or just first names), that’s generally a bad sign, and to a lesser extent if reviews on their website do not have pictures of the reviewer, you can’t tell how genuine the review is. The more proof you can get that reviewers are real, the better. As such, it is a good idea to try typing a reviewers name into Google, do they exist? Most people exist on Google these days, so if you get no ‘hits’ then it could be a fake.
Oh, and needless to say, if you come across a company that has no reviews, get out of there, quick!
Ensure that your qualification is REAL
You can complete a hypnotherapy course, get ‘certified’ and you might even get a professional membership to some organisation, which sounds great on the face of it, but you must be aware that all hypnotherapy qualifications are not created equally. In fact, even some of the associated ‘professional organisations’ can be made up by the trainers/schools themselves! Seriously, I’ve come across some companies who’ve made their own fake ‘regulating organisations’ to give the illusion of quality/security/whatever, when in fact it’s all a scam (but sadly, a completely legal scam).
On the flip side, there are some companies whose training is accredited by some of the well-known professional bodies and organisations, yet whose students are not getting all of the tools that they need in order to practice hypnotherapy confidently and effectively. I have personally re-trained students from various other courses, including the expensive ‘accredited’ courses, and even some with level-4 HPD qualifications, because they weren’t confident to go out and be hypnotherapists after completing those courses! Now, that’s not to say that all such courses are bad, because they’re not. My point is, just because something has an accreditation or a fancy sounding certificate/qualification, it doesn’t mean that it will be the best hypnotherapy course because of those things!
Regardless of certificate titles and professional body memberships, the most important thing that your qualification needs to do is qualify you to help people. A piece of paper or a membership isn’t going to do that. The skills that you learn whilst you are gaining your qualification are what is important. So, make those the focus of your hypnotherapy training search, and choose the best course that will give you everything you need in order to become a professional and competent hypnotherapist.
Now it’s time to act…
Hopefully this blog has been of some help to you, and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me personally.
Whether you train with me at the Rory Z Hypnosis Academy or somewhere completely different, what’s important is that you are trained well, and that you leave the course knowing what you’re doing. The more well-trained hypnotherapists there are, the better the public opinion of hypnotherapy will become!
Best of luck on your journey towards becoming a qualified hypnotherapist, be shrewd in your decisions, make sure you know the facts, and know that you’re getting the best training before you book, because let’s face it, you deserve it!
