Cognitive-Behavior Therapy and Change: Unconditional Self Acceptance and Hypnosis in CBT

This article reflects upon several critical factors in promoting durable therapeutic change. Among these issues are rational disputation and endorsement; unconditional self-and-other acceptance; addressing demandingness, low frustration tolerance and “awfulizing” across content areas of approval, achievement, and comfort; metacognitive biases; schematic distortion/resistance; self-efficacy; dual perspective cognition and Rational-Emotive Dissociation (RED); emotional activation; avoidance, source-monitoring, and addressing the BASIC-ID. This article proposes that adjunctive use of hypnosis in Cognitive-Behavior Therapy is a valuable means of addressing implicit cognitive processing, and thus it is an important means of addressing schematic, metacognitive and affective change, as well as other aspects of RED. It can also provide implicit processing support for explicit rational processing skills. This article further proposes that hypnotic work on unconditional self-acceptance is a valuable adjunct and supports hypnotic work on the other themes. An illustrative script of hypnotic suggestions is included.