Is anyone on MN a hypnotherapist?

[teenyweenytadpole]

Hi, currently thinking about future careers for myself. I have somehow drifted into childcare and can't quite see myself doing it until I am old, am looking for an alternative career to take me to old age! I want something that involves people, I am also very into health and well being type stuff. I also would like to be self employed and hopefully work flexible hours to fit around my family. My background is HR type stuff, I have also worked in a birth related field for a while. Hypnotherapy is something that has appealed to me in the past, I almost signed up for a training course a couple of years ago but the timing wasn't right. I am sort of back to thinking about it again but it is quite a costly business to train. Does anyone here work as a Hypnotherapist? If so would you mind answering some questions for me please?? Sorry if this seems like an interrogation?
Do you make a reasonable living? I realise a lot will depend on hours worked but I would need to be able to make a reasonable amount to make the investment in the training cost in. Are you able to work flexible hours or do you have to work all hours to meet the needs of working clients? Do you work as part of a practise or alone? Do you find the work continues to be interesting or does it get repetitive dealing with similar issues?

I have already trained in HypnoBirthing but have never practised - was a bit put off to be honest by the whole script thing, it felt very formulaic - I imagine though that when you are fully trained it is not just a case of following scripts but more individual to the client? Is that the case?

Thanks so much for any input!!

yes you would be able to write your own scrip, but to earn enough..nope.

I know a couple of people who are hypnotherapists. They all started on a part-time basis while getting income from other places, and I think they found that it took a while to build up a good client base and reputation.

Two of them have pretty succesful businesses but both of them do more than just hypnotherapy practice. Thay also do things like training other hypnotherapists, relaxation classes with big corporates, sell hyponsis dvds etc.

I think to be succesful on your own you have to be good at your chosen therapy and also very good at developing and managing your own business.

Hi
I've just started up as a hypnotherapist part time, same starting point as yourself. I did the HypnoBirthing training a couple of years ago & run small classes on that, then decided to expand :)
At the moment, I'm estimating at least 2 up to 5 years of part time work, doing evenings and weekends until I build up enough referrals to get my name known.
If you just want to do the bog-standard areas like smoking cessation, anxiety, phobias, then you're competing against a lot of other people out there. If you can find yoursef a niche then you stand more chance of getting decent business without having to compete on price. I'm a fertility, pregnancy & birth specialist, however all the other training comes into play with that as people may need to stop smoking or lose weight to achieve their goals.
At the moment, it suits me to work evenings/weekends, but it shouldn't be a problem getting clients during the day as that's when you expect to have appointments. You could consider charging more for premium w/e or evening slots to encourage more day clients?
The training has cost me a lot, but the job satisfaction I get from helping people is worth 10 times the salary I get from my day job. You may see many people with the same problems, but you're getting them to turn their lives around and never feels repetitive!
Scripts, yes, you'll use your own once you've got the confidence, initially it's a case of adapting the ones you get on your training rather than reinventing the wheel, and of course they're tailored to the individual.
As someone else has said, having a second string to your bow can be useful as well, but if you're determined to make it work you'll find a way...law of attraction and all that!

Thinking about retraining in this - any recommendations of where to study? I looked into the NCHP training. I could either go to the Oxford one with Su Ricks-McPherson or London with Shaun Brookhouse.