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Picking up the phone before you’ve decided to. Hours gone without noticing. Hypnotherapy works on the pull itself, so using your phone becomes a choice again rather than a reflex.
Social feeds, streaming, browsing, forums — these platforms are engineered by very capable people to hold your attention for as long as possible. Infinite scroll, algorithmic timing, the small social reward of a like. Losing hours to them is not a failure of discipline; it is the product working exactly as designed.
It becomes worth addressing when the hours start costing sleep, work, study or the people in the room with you, and when putting the phone down stops feeling like something you can simply decide to do. Usually the scrolling is also doing a job — muting anxiety, filling a quiet moment, avoiding something harder. That is the layer we work on. Here is how hypnotherapy works if it is new to you.
This is a non-clinical service. We don’t diagnose or treat mental health conditions, and compulsive online use frequently sits on top of something else — anxiety, depression, loneliness, or the aftermath of something difficult. Where that is the case, please start with your GP or a psychologist. We will tell you honestly if that is what we think you need, and we are glad to work alongside them.
If social media is affecting how you feel about yourself, your body or your worth, that deserves proper support rather than better screen-time settings. For young people aged 5 to 25, Kids Helpline is free and open 24 hours on 1800 55 1800. In a crisis at any age, Lifeline is 13 11 14, or call 000.
Clients under 18 are welcome with a parent or guardian’s consent, and we ask a parent or guardian to be part of the free consult and first session.
Free 20-minute consults can be booked by phone, text or message — no obligation
People rarely book an appointment about screen time. They book about what it has quietly taken.
Reading a page, finishing a task or sitting through a film without reaching for your phone starts to feel genuinely hard. Most clients want that capacity back more than they want fewer hours.
Measuring your life against a feed of everyone else’s highlights is corrosive, and the unease it creates sends you back to the feed. We work on the emotional pull, not just the hours.
Being in the room without really being there wears on the people who notice. It is often a partner or a child who prompts someone to finally do something about it.
One more scroll turns into midnight, then one in the morning. Tiredness then makes everything else harder, which makes scrolling the easiest thing left. Sleep is often where we start.
Deadlines drift, work stretches into the evening to make up for the day, and the guilt that follows makes avoidance more appealing. The loop is the problem, not the laziness.
Scrolling is a reliable way to not feel something for a while. Build another way to handle that feeling and the reaching-for-the-phone tends to ease on its own.
Call or text Stella on 0421 206 918, or send a message and we’ll come back to you.
Screen-time limits and blockers work on access, and they help. What they don’t touch is the reach itself — the hand moving to the phone before any decision has been made, in a particular mood, at a particular hour, in a particular chair. That reach is subconscious, which is why people delete an app and reinstall it the same evening.
Spiro Apostolopoulos and Stella Jones are Clinical Hypnotherapists, Strategic Psychotherapists and NLP Master Practitioners, and have worked with Canberrans on habits and compulsions since 2012. We work on the reach, meet the need underneath it another way, and give you back a genuine choice 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.
The diagnostic picture is still settling — the World Health Organization recognises gaming disorder, but there is no agreed clinical diagnosis for general internet or social media use. What is well documented is that compulsive online use causing real distress and disruption is common and worth doing something about.
Either way, diagnosis isn’t our role. This is a non-clinical service, and what we work with is the pattern in front of us rather than a label.
Yes, and social media is the most common version we see. The pull is built from social validation, novelty and comparison, which makes it unusually sticky — and all three are emotional rather than rational, so they sit exactly where hypnotherapy works.
No, and that would be a strange goal in 2026. We are not anti-technology. The aim is choice: picking up your phone because you meant to, putting it down when you decide to, and having your attention available for the rest of your life as well.
Blockers work on access, and they are worth keeping. What they can’t change is the reach — your hand moving to the phone before you have decided anything. That is a subconscious pattern, and arguing with it or walling it off doesn’t dismantle it. Hypnotherapy works on the pattern itself, which is why the two go well together rather than one replacing the other.
Many clients notice meaningful change within three to five sessions. It depends on what the scrolling is doing for you — where it is covering anxiety or low mood, that part takes its own time. You will get an honest view at your free consult rather than a package quoted before we have met.
Partly, often. For a lot of neurodivergent people the internet is genuine regulation — stimulation on demand, low social cost, somewhere predictable to land. Our practice is neuro-affirming, so we start by asking what it is regulating rather than treating the hours as the fault. Then we work on the parts that are actually costing you something, and leave alone the parts that are helping.
No. This is a non-clinical service — we don’t diagnose or treat mental health conditions. Compulsive online use often sits on top of anxiety, low mood or loneliness, and where that needs clinical care we work alongside your GP or psychologist rather than in place of them.
Yes, and there is no irony in it — a scheduled video session with a therapist has nothing in common with open-ended scrolling. Secure online sessions are available anywhere in Australia and are as effective as being in the room.
Call Stella for a free 20-minute consult — no obligation, and no lecture about screen time.
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
