Hypnosis to support cancer treatment
“I’m afraid it’s cancer.” Words that we all hope we will never hear, but with 1,100 such diagnoses every day in the UK alone [1] it’s more likely we’ll find ourselves facing them than many of us realise. At the same time, outcomes have improved significantly over the past 50 years, and survival rates continue to rise [2].
If you’ve recently heard those words yourself, there are likely to be dozens of things running through your head, perhaps including (but not limited to) some of the following:
Invasive treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy are hard. Slogging back and forth to hospital, unfamiliar terms and sensations, the not-knowing – and the endless waiting: waiting rooms, waiting for results, waiting to get your life back, week after week. It’s entirely normal to feel anxious about some or all of it, and not unusual for that anxiety to build rather than ease as treatment goes on.
This isn’t just an unpleasant add-on to what your body is already dealing with, it can become an issue in its own right, whether or not you’ve been prone to anxiety in the past.
A 2014 study followed women having radiotherapy for breast cancer, some given a combination of hypnosis and CBT, others just the usual supportive care. The difference held up well beyond the treatment room; those who’d had the hypnosis and CBT were noticeably less fatigued, an effect that lasted for up to six months afterwards [3], and reported significantly less emotional distress throughout their treatment [4].
CBT works by helping you recognise unhelpful patterns of thought and building coping skills, working with the logical, thinking mind. Hypnotherapy works differently, connecting directly with the subconscious where those patterns first took root, and reframing those beliefs to help you think, feel and act differently in future.
The research is supported by a 2017 review pulling together 20 separate studies of hypnosis in cancer patients, which found a real and lasting effect on anxiety [5]. This review found the effect was significantly stronger when hypnosis was delivered by a therapist working with someone directly, rather than through a generic recording.
Beyond the general anxiety of a cancer diagnosis, invasive treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy can bring their own specific fears, sometimes longstanding, sometimes newly triggered by treatment itself. Certain sounds, smells or routines can become uncomfortable associations in their own right, and the equipment, drawn-out treatment time or stillness bring their own particular challenges for some people.
Hypnotherapy is often used to help with deep-rooted fears and phobias, including those related to medical procedures. A study reviewing 19 clinical trials found consistent evidence supporting hypnosis as an effective treatment for dental anxiety and phobia [6] – one of the closest researched parallels to the kind of procedure-related fear some patients describe.
Nausea is a well-recognised potential side effect of chemotherapy, sometimes even triggered purely by the anticipation of treatment. A review of six trials found hypnosis made a real difference to both anticipatory and treatment-related nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy [7]. Most of these trials focused on children, but the research shows that this kind of anticipatory reaction, however overwhelming it sometimes feels, can be understood, reframed and reduced, so the anticipation itself stops running the show.
“I had had a fear of needles, hospitals [and] dentists for my entire life and I just thought that was the way it was. At 59, and diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, I realised that trips to the hospital were unfortunately going to become part of my life for the next few months. To say that I was anxious was an understatement. After 3 sessions with Helen (and listening to the personalised recordings that she provided me with), I’m not saying I look forward to my hospital visits but I no longer have all those awful feelings of dread and panic that I used to have. I feel calm, prepared and ready to take each visit literally one step at a time.”
In the same way that fear and stress activate the body’s sympathetic nervous system – the fight, flight or freeze response – feeling calm and safe activates its opposite: the parasympathetic nervous system, in which our body is primed to rest, digest and heal. Hypnotic trance is a state of deep physical and mental relaxation that supports this shift, helping the body return to a more settled, balanced state even in the middle of a demanding treatment schedule. The more you practice taking yourself into this state, the easier it becomes, which is why as well as working with you 1:1, I make you a personalised self-hypnosis audio to listen to daily. This work can support your resilience on two fronts – mental and physical – as the research shows.
Guided imagery has real evidence behind it too. A 2025 review pulling together nine randomised controlled trials found it made a genuine difference to anxiety, depression and quality of life for people going through cancer treatment [8].
Hypnosis itself has an even longer track record, particularly around pain and how the body copes with invasive procedures. This isn’t a new idea either, hypnosis was used as the sole method of pain control for major surgery in the 1840s, before chemical anaesthetics existed.
More recently, a trial published in The Lancet found that patients using self-hypnosis (exactly what you’re learning to do when you listen to the audio I make you) during invasive radiological procedures needed significantly less pain medication, reported less pain and had shorter procedure times than those who didn’t [9].
For people going through cancer treatment specifically, hypnosis-supported relaxation has been shown to help reduce the amount of sedation or pain relief needed for procedures like biopsies or port insertions, and to make the whole experience more bearable [10].
None of this changes what your treatment is doing, or replaces it. It works alongside your medical care, and any change to pain relief or medication during treatment should always be led by your medical team. What it can do is give you a genuine, trainable tool of your own, to support both your mindset and your body’s response to what’s ahead.
Imagery is at the heart of this, and it’s particularly powerful when reinforced through hypnotic suggestion, especially when guided by an experienced hypnotherapist skilled in personalising content. For practical reasons, most research studies use standardised scripts, the same words delivered to every participant.
When you work with me, the imagery I use emerges out of our conversations – your own words and images reflected back to you, your own sense of what safe and calm actually feels like. That’s because the most effective imagery for you isn’t what’s helped someone else, it’s something that already exists in your own imagination.
For one client of mine that meant conjuring up a fully-fledged videogame-style battle. For another it was bathing the damaged cells in compassion. For someone else, it was picturing each unwanted cell being “popped like bubble wrap,” because that made her laugh. None of these is better than another. What matters isn’t the theme, it’s that it makes sense to you.
One client I worked with prior to surgery put it this way: “[The hypnosis] created crystal clear healing visualizations in my mind. The personalizations of the mp3 brought many smiles to my face because they rang so true to the way my brain works about my current experience. Helen, you are so gifted!”
That’s the difference bespoke work makes over a generic recording, and it’s borne out in the wider hypnosis literature too, where therapist-delivered, individualised work has been shown to outperform generic self-hypnosis recordings [5].
Working with me gives you a space where you don’t have to be strong. A space where nothing is off-limits. A space where you can bring your deepest fears out into the open and see what happens when you shine a light on them. A space where you can shout, swear and cry if you want to, indulge in dark humour if that’s your thing or simply focus on all the lovely things you plan to do once your treatment is over.
What medical science can achieve these days is extraordinary, and expanding all the time. What hypnotherapy can support, alongside it, is the emotional and mental load of a diagnosis, whatever stage you’re at, processing fear, anger or grief, working through what’s unfinished or unsaid, or simply finding some calm in the middle of a very hard time. This work can support that kind of healing at any point in treatment, including for people living with an advanced or terminal diagnosis.
“Healing is different than curing. You can be healed without being cured, and you can be cured without being healed. But when healing happens, the cure is sometimes a welcome side effect. But even when it’s not, healing makes you whole and wholeness might just be the raison d’etre of human existence.”
Whether we work together in person in my consulting room in Petersfield, Hampshire, or online, no two sessions look alike. What we talk about, and where it takes us, is led by what comes up for you as we sit together.
My job is to listen without judgement, to stay curious, and to weave the thoughts, memories, images and metaphors that emerge into personalised hypnotic suggestions that enable you to integrate whatever we’ve uncovered and move forward. My aim is always to help you leave the room – real or virtual – feeling seen, heard and more rested than when you arrived.
If you’re curious to find out more, the first step is a free, no-strings exploratory chat to see if I feel like someone you can talk to.
- Read what Cancer Research UK says about hypnotherapy
- Read what Macmillan say about hypnotherapy (and other mind-body therapies)
- Read Cancer Research UK’s take on “positive thinking”
