Edmonton · Zoom, or a house call
Hypnotherapy for habit change
For the loop that restarts no matter how many times you break it. You stop for three weeks, something happens, and you are back at day one wondering what the point was.
Scope and medical boundaries
Please read this first. Hypnotherapy offered here is non-medical and is not a treatment for substance dependence, alcohol use disorder, or drug addiction. Withdrawal from alcohol and from some drugs can be medically dangerous and must be managed by a physician.
If substances are involved, your doctor and a qualified addiction service come first, every time. Al works alongside that care on the habit patterns and triggers surrounding it — never in place of it, and never as a reason to delay getting proper help. In Alberta you can reach the Addiction Helpline at 1-866-332-2322, free and confidential, 24 hours a day.
What this is for
Breaking it is not the hard part
You have stopped before. Possibly several times, possibly for months. Stopping has never been the difficulty. The difficulty is that the pattern is still sitting there, intact, waiting for the right combination of tiredness, pressure, and opportunity.
The kinds of loops this work is aimed at:
- The phone at eleven at night, two hours after you meant to put it down.
- Nail biting you do not notice until the damage is done.
- The ritual that closes every single day, whether or not you want it to.
- The checking, the scrolling, the online basket you fill at midnight.
- The same argument you start, in the same words, every time.
What these share is that none of them begin with a decision. There is a cue, a feeling, and a response that runs before the deciding part of you has been consulted. Afterwards you get to think about it at length, which is where most of the shame lives.
Willpower gets you through the first fortnight. It was never designed to run permanently.
Relapse then gets read as a character flaw, which drives the next round. Interrupting that read is usually part of the work.
The approach
Working on the loop, not the last incident
The same three stages Al uses for quitting smoking, applied to whatever the repeating pattern happens to be.
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Map the loop
What comes immediately before it, every time. Not the story you tell about it afterwards — the actual cue, the time of day, the feeling, the room, the person. Most loops turn out to have a handful of reliable entry points.
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Change what the cue leads to
In hypnosis the mind is unusually receptive to updating an automatic response. The cue stays — eleven at night will keep arriving. What follows it is what gets worked on.
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Plan for the bad week in advance
Loops do not return on good days. We rehearse the specific circumstances that have restarted it before, so the new response exists when it is actually needed. You also leave with self-hypnosis you can use on your own.
Results vary from person to person and no outcome is guaranteed. Hypnotherapy here does not diagnose, treat, or cure any condition and is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or addiction care.
Before you book
What a session is actually like
You stay in control
Hypnosis is not sleep. You hear everything, you can speak, move, or stop the session at any point, and you stay aware throughout.
Nobody can make you do anything
You cannot be made to act against your own values or say something private. Stage hypnosis is entertainment with willing volunteers. This is not that.
You have felt this before
The closest comparison is being absorbed in a film, or the few minutes before sleep. Deeply relaxed, entirely aware, and far less dramatic than people expect.
Common questions
Habit-change questions
Is this for alcohol or drug addiction?
No. Substance dependence is a medical matter and belongs with a physician and a qualified addiction service. Withdrawal from alcohol and some drugs can be genuinely dangerous without medical supervision.
If you are already under proper care and your doctor is content for you to also work on the surrounding habits and triggers, say so on the free session and Al will tell you honestly whether he can be useful alongside that.
What is the difference between a habit and an addiction?
That distinction is a clinical one, and drawing it is a doctor’s job rather than a hypnotherapist’s. What Al works on is the behavioural loop: the cue, the automatic response, and the situations that restart it. If what you are describing needs medical assessment, he will tell you that instead of taking your money.
I have relapsed many times. Is there any point?
Repeated attempts usually mean the wrong layer was being worked on, not that you are beyond help. Each restart tells you something specific about which cue was never addressed. That information is useful, and it is exactly what the first session is spent gathering.
Other things Al works on
No cost, no obligation
Start with a conversation
The free strategy session is where you describe the pattern and Al tells you honestly whether he thinks he can help, or whether you would be better served somewhere else.