Social cognition, or the ways people perceive their reality in relation to the societies in which they live, is an important component of mental health. A person’s perception of things such as self-worth, competence, confidence, and feeling of belonging is often informed by the way they feel they are being seen, or in some cases, not being seen, by the external world. 

Social cognition describes the prism through which people make their decisions about how to assess the people around them, and how they behave in response. It is the way that people form mental constructs of societal norms, and deduce the kinds of behavior that are expected of them. An awareness of how social cognition affects clients, and how therapists can help them to adjust their views, can help people live more fulfilling lives. 

When a person has a healthy social cognition, with firm boundaries and an openness to new ideas, it can be extremely helpful to have a highly structured social cognition. However, when someone’s ideas of how they are being seen by others is determined by distortions and misapprehensions, the resulting social cognition framework can create many problems. They might act out inappropriately, or shrink away from opportunities to express their true beliefs and feelings. 

Unhealthy social cognition can develop in a variety of ways. Social and cultural conditioning is one, of course. People can become presumptuous, and even prejudiced, about the way others receive them in the world, based on factors such as differences in basic belief systems, political and/or religious stances, and economic status. Equally, internal factors such as trauma, abuse, grief, abandonment, and brain injury can influence a person’s social cognition. When people see themselves as victims, they see others in the outside world as their persecutors. 

It isn’t the job of a therapist to attempt to change those of a person’s predispositions that are based on religious or political bases, but when clients suffer from distorted social cognition structures that result from psychological and/or spiritual injury, therapists certainly can help. 
 
How can we get to the underlying causes of social cognitions that do not serve our clients? We can open discussions with them, of course. However, talk therapy won’t always break through the defenses most people hold against intrusions upon their basic ways of seeing the world. It’s necessary to explore the motivations of which clients are not normally consciously aware. 

Hypnotherapy opens the lines of communication between the unconscious portions of clients’ beings and their conscious awareness. After being guided into a light trance state, clients are allowed to explore the feelings they have about the way they believe they are being seen in the world. 
 
They express these feelings, uncorking a wellspring of negative beliefs that have been the underpinning of their faulty social cognition. They can then, through the process of age regression, be taken back to the source of these beliefs. Perhaps they have been abused, or simply told that they “don’t fit in.” Revisiting these past experiences, clients identify with younger versions of themselves, feel the emotions that have been repressed, and get a chance to express them fully. 
 
Expressing true feelings back to an abusive caretaker or an intimidating bully, even after years have passed, empowers clients by giving them control over the way they respond to those instances of abuse.  It can also shepherd them toward a new way of being in the present. 
 
The practitioner of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy® helps clients to see how old beliefs and behaviors, based on their traumatic experiences, have prompted them to misalign their true beliefs about themselves and the way they act in the world. Clients are then invited to form new beliefs, and affirm constructive behaviors, and indeed, to create a social cognition that is based on reality rather than on memory of traumatic experiences. 

The unique characteristics of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy® permit practitioners to step into their clients’ inner world on deeper levels. By addressing feelings, what lies in the heart, therapists find the solutions to their clients’ issues much faster. What’s more, the clients experience much more profound healing that they might with talk therapy alone. 
 
The Wellness Institute, developers of Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy®, offers a Six Day Hypnotherapy Training and Certification Program that gives therapists the tools they need to help clients transform the ways they see themselves. Our online programs, led in real time by live teachers and hands-on assistants, are extremely popular with therapists and other mental health and healthcare professionals. 
 
While the healing is profound, and the training comprehensive, the program really does take just six days! A combination of didactic and experiential learning will set you up to complete the practice sessions you need to become a Certified Heart-Centered Hypnotherapist®. You will learn how to administer hypnosis as well as hypnotherapy, and you will be shown how these modalities can be used to treat everything from codependency and addiction to childhood issues and chronic pain. And, perhaps best of all, you will experience Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy as a client during  the Six Day Hypnotherapy Training and Certification Program, so you can see for yourself how powerful it is. 
 
The Six Day Hypnotherapy Training and Certification Program at The Wellness Institute is a gateway to a whole adventure in healing that you need to pursue in order to address the increasing number of clients who have been misled by faulty social cognition structures, as well as a myriad of difficulties. 
 
The Wellness Institute also offers a shorter program, Introduction to Hypnosis. In this two-day class, you can get a taste of what it is like to manage trance states and assist clients in changing their habits. If you opt to take the Six Day Hypnotherapy Training and Certification Program after that, you will be awarded a substantial discount on your tuition. You can contact our enrollment specialist and receive personalized attention to your specific questions. 
 
After you finish your Six Day Hypnotherapy Training and Certification Program, you will want to pursue more work, both on your skills and on your own personal transformation. You can do this by working your way through our advanced trainings. All of our training programs offer CE credit in most cases, and give you the opportunity for a lifetime of continued professional and personal growth. 
 
Learn how to transform perspectives and lead your clients to better lives. 

Enroll in the Six Day Hypnotherapy Training and Certification Program today!