Isn’t hypnosis some kind of mind control?

This is a common misconception about hypnosis that has been popularized by Hollywood and stage Hypnotist.  The truth is that even with the most entertaining stage hypnosis, while it appears that the participants are being manipulated, they’ve agreed to play along.  Perhaps the hypnotist tells everyone to act like parrots and they start flying around the stage. That was a suggestion that the participants accepted.  Hypnotherapy works along the same lines as a collaboration between the hypnotherapist and the client with the difference being that the hypnotherapists and the client work together to create effective and beneficial suggestions.  You can’t be made to do or say something that you wouldn’t normally do or say.  The conscious part of your mind, which is aware during hypnosis, would step up and say “No way, I’m not doing that.”