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Gambling pulls hardest at a level willpower can’t reach. Hypnotherapy works on the subconscious reward cycle driving the urge, so you can get your time, your money and your peace of mind back.
Gambling harm runs on a powerful reward cycle. The high of a win, the pull to chase a loss, the near-miss that feels like almost — these become hardwired patterns that override clear thinking long before anyone decides to gamble. That is why people who are intelligent, capable and fully aware of the damage still find themselves doing it again.
At Canberra Hypnotherapy Clinic we work directly on those subconscious drivers: interrupting the cycle, reducing the emotional pull, and rebuilding a real sense of control rather than a resolution that lasts until the next trigger. Here is how hypnotherapy works if it is new to you.
If the debts are mounting, if someone is about to find out, or if you have had thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out today rather than waiting for an appointment. Gambling Help Online is free, confidential and open 24 hours on 1800 858 858, with counsellors who deal with exactly this every day. In a crisis, Lifeline is 13 11 14, or call 000.
Practical steps matter too, and they work best alongside the therapy rather than after it: self-exclusion from venues and betting apps, blocking gambling transactions through your bank, and a free financial counsellor through the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007.
This is a non-clinical service. We don’t diagnose or medically treat gambling disorder, and we are glad to work alongside a gambling counsellor, your GP or your psychologist rather than in place of them.
Free 20-minute consults can be booked by phone, text or message — confidential, and no obligation
Gambling rarely stays in one part of a life. By the time people call us, it is usually the surrounding damage that has become unbearable.
Savings go, then debt arrives, and the pressure to win it back makes the next bet feel necessary. Breaking the compulsion is what stops the damage compounding.
The secrecy does as much harm as the money. Rebuilding trust is slow work, and it can’t start while the gambling is still running.
Shame keeps people gambling in private and stops them asking for help. Lowering it is often the first real change clients notice.
Hours disappear into a screen or a venue that belonged to family, work or rest. Getting them back is a bigger relief than most people expect.
Gambling manufactures illusions of control, lucky systems and the sense that a win is due. Those beliefs sit below reasoning, which is why arguing with them doesn’t shift them.
Partners and children carry the financial and emotional weight of this too. Changing the pattern lifts it off everyone, not only the person gambling.
Call or text Stella on 0421 206 918, or send a message and we’ll come back to you.
Gambling is almost entirely a subconscious problem. Nobody needs convincing that it is costing them — they can recite the figures. What they can’t do is talk themselves out of the urge when it arrives, because the urge isn’t generated anywhere reasoning can reach it. That is precisely the level hypnotherapy works at.
Spiro Apostolopoulos and Stella Jones are Clinical Hypnotherapists, Strategic Psychotherapists and NLP Master Practitioners, and have worked with Canberrans on addiction since 2012. Sessions follow a structured process that interrupts the compulsive cycle, reduces the urges themselves, and builds the internal resources to make a different call in the moment. Meet Spiro and Stella →
Your first session starts with a private conversation about your history, your triggers and what you want to be different. From there your therapist guides you into a deeply relaxed but alert state, where the subconscious is far more open to change. We identify the patterns driving the behaviour, reframe them, and strengthen your own sense of control.
Each session builds on the last. You leave with practical tools and a recorded audio for use in between, and secure online sessions are available anywhere in Australia. See what to expect from your first visit →
Call or text Stella on 0421 206 918, or send a message and we’ll come back to you.
It can help a great deal, because it works at the level the problem actually lives on. The reward associations and the compulsive urge are formed subconsciously, and that is where we work — rather than asking you to out-argue an urge that was never built out of argument.
How far it takes you depends on how long this has been running and what else is going on. We will give you an honest read at your free consult rather than promising an outcome.
No. This is a non-clinical service — we don’t diagnose or medically treat gambling disorder. The strongest results we see come from combining things: hypnotherapy on the urge and the emotional drivers, a gambling counsellor on the behaviour, self-exclusion and bank blocks on access, and a free financial counsellor on the debt. We are glad to be one part of that.
Yes, and don’t wait for us to start. Self-exclusion from venues and apps, and a gambling block through your bank, put real distance between an urge and a bet. Hypnotherapy reduces the urge; those measures buy you time when one still turns up. Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858 can walk you through setting them up.
It varies with how long the gambling has been part of your life and how you respond. Some clients notice significant change within a few sessions; others want longer support, particularly where the gambling has been doing a job emotionally. You will get an honest view at your free consult, not a package quoted before we have met.
Very often, yes. Gambling is frequently a way to escape something — stress, numbness, grief, a mood that won’t lift. We work on the gambling and on what sits underneath it, because treating only the behaviour tends to leave the driver intact. Where that underlying picture needs clinical care, we will say so and work alongside whoever is providing it.
Not from us. What you share stays between you and your therapist, and we don’t contact anyone about your care without your consent, other than in the rare circumstances the law requires. A lot of people come to us precisely because nobody in their life knows yet.
Then you come back and we work with it. A lapse is information, not failure — it usually points at a trigger we hadn’t reached. The dangerous part isn’t the bet, it’s deciding the whole effort is ruined and going back to it properly. Nobody here will be disappointed in you.
Yes. Secure online sessions are available anywhere in Australia and carry the same quality as sitting in the room. Some people find it far easier to talk about this from home.
Call Stella for a free 20-minute consult — confidential, no obligation, and no judgement about how far it has gone.
Monday – Friday, 10:00am – 6:00pm · 42 Geils Court, Deakin ACT 2600 · online Australia-wide
We're confident you'll benefit from hypnotherapy, so we'd like to offer you a free 20-minute discovery call to see if it feels right for you.
Prefer to speak with someone? Call 0421 206 918
