Conditions of Membership
- It is vital that every member of the QCHPA recognises that their actions impact on every other member. We’re stronger together, and if a member is marketing themselves in a way that the committee feels is undermining the brand, and fails to change that given appropriate warning, they reserve the right to cancel membership without refund.
- One of the defining features of Quest is the supportive friendliness. If someone is found to have failed to extend professional courtesy to another member, they may also have their membership withdrawn without refund.
Every member with less than three years’ experience since qualification must be in contracted supervision with a QCH approved supervisor. - Hold the Quest Diploma in Cognitive Hypnotherapy (HPD).
- Be a member of the CNHC or NCH.
- As a member of the CNHC or NCH you are required to abide by their codes and ethics. You must also undertake a minimum of 15 hours CPD per year, which can include additional training, workshops and reading. No more than a third of the 15 hours should be on one activity.
- Hold public liability insurance.
Branding
In order to keep the Cognitive Hypnotherapy Brand as clean as possible, it is important that QCHPA members market themselves purely as Cognitive Hypnotherapists, along with some specialities that connect to it – like Confident Childbirth Practitioners and Project You coaches.
In an ideal world, the easy thing to do would be just to say that members of the QCHPA can only advertise themselves as Cognitive Hypnotherapists. However, being prescriptive has never been the Quest way, so what we’re looking to present are guidelines that are based on a couple of principles, so people can retain as much flexibility in the way they market their business, without it damaging the core values of the Quest brand. There has to be a coherence because if everyone is simply free to do their own thing in marketing Cognitive Hypnotherapy in a way that suits them, it will quickly degenerate into meaning nothing, and we lose the credibility of linking to our research results.
The bottom line is we’re a Cognitive Hypnotherapy organisation proud to be one of the few approaches with peer-reviewed credibility, whose primary goal is promoting its benefits, not those of any other approach.
Here are the guiding principles which we hope will answer most queries. If they don’t please feel free to ask us to look at your website, we’ll be happy to advise.
Principle 1 For the research results to be deemed as a credible representation of the work of QCHPA members, it is vital that their approach mirrors the core concepts of Quest Cognitive Hypnotherapy.
Principle 2 For the research results to be usable by members as a body, it is necessary for them to market themselves in as unified a way as possible, to maintain the coherence of our organisation.
To that end, the description of Cognitive Hypnotherapy should include something like ‘it’s a model which allows me to tailor my therapy specifically to the needs of the client by enabling me to draw from a wide range of approaches, including…’ (your choice of the things you’ve been trained in by Quest, or things that could be described in Quest methodology as a structure/context intervention etc.) This can be written in your own words. ‘Including’, instead of AND makes clear that you are still ‘doing’ Cognitive Hypnotherapy while using EFT etc. it isn’t an add-on.
The homepage should only refer to you as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist unless the other service offered is unconnected to talking therapy, or doesn’t claim to help issues covered by Cognitive Hypnotherapy. Faith-based approaches are also not permitted i.e. spiritual mediums, shamans, Reiki, past life regression, reflexology, crystal healing etc.
So, for example:
- Cognitive Hypnotherapy AND massage would be acceptable.
- Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Coaching is also acceptable as coaching is not therapy.
- Counselling in specialist contexts, such as bereavement would also be ok.
- Cognitive Hypnotherapy AND a technique that fits within our model is not ok, as it suggests you don’t understand the model – e.g. Cognitive Hypnotherapy AND EFT/EMI/Rewind etc.
- It is, however, ok to say something like: “Cognitive Hypnotherapy – My approach enables me to tailor my therapy individually to the needs of the client, so may include techniques such as EFT, EMI, NLP…etc.”
On your home page, you can have a link to a selection of ‘Further Services’ which then goes to information about other interests you have.
OR, on your ‘About Me’ button, you could have a paragraph where you can also say something like “I am also trained in Past life regression (or Family Constellations or Matrix Reimprinting etc). For more information, please click here or see below”.
