Very much so. Every therapeutic relationship is unique and two different therapists can play different but complementary roles in your healing journey. These interdisciplinary relationships strengthen your personal growth and help you to achieve your goals.
If your current therapist focuses on one therapeutic modality, for instance person-centred counselling, pairing with another more change focused therapy can be very productive. Examples might include: Hypnotherapy to facilitate unconscious change, EMDR for trauma, NLP to change thinking patterns and NLP timeline techniques to remove disturbance from past events.
At Bill Frost: Changing States, this is the primary way in which therapy is approached. We deliberately use an eclectic blend of approaches ie Hypnotherapy, Hypno CBT, EMDR, NLP, biofeedback and other approaches. This strategy is designed to adapt within sessions to your personal responses and needs, rather than applying a rigid protocol.
That combination can be a powerful way to facilitate change and adding another therapist to that dynamic can accelerate the change process. However, if there are conflicts, there may be a need for the boundaries between the therapists to be better defined, whilst still maintaining patient autonomy. Patient autonomy honours a patient’s right to choose their own path in life and in terms of how their therapy is structured. This right is enshrined in the NHS Constitution and is a cornerstone of UK medical ethics, requiring healthcare professionals to respect a patient’s wishes.
There are a few questions worth exploring:
- What are your intentions with each therapist? Are you working on different issues with each? Or using one person as primary support and another for specific targets?
- Do both therapists know about one another’s involvement? This is not mandatory, but coordinated care often prevents overlap or contradictory approaches.
- How do you experience the dynamic? Do you feel energised and supported or torn between modalities? If both modalities feel enriching, that’s a great sign.
Many people find that layering therapy styles catalyses deeper, quicker results. For instance, combining trauma work through Hypnotherapy and EMDR with longer-term interventions such as psychoanalysis can create both speed and staying power.
So, will it work? Yes, provided you keep the lines open: be clear about your goals, check in with yourself about how each therapy feels and share updates with both practitioners. They each need to know roughly what the other is targeting.
Sometimes dual‑therapist work can cause confusion: For example, differing interpretations, conflicting assignments, or the client feeling emotionally overloaded due to overly frequent session timing. That is why ongoing reflection and coordination matter.
Here are a few questions for you to consider:
- 1. What exactly are you working on with each therapist?
- 2. Is there a shared sense of purpose, or are your goals quite different?
- 3. Have you noticed any overlap, or moments of déjà vu?
- 4. How do you feel afterward: clear and supported, or conflicted?
Understanding these questions will help you and your therapists fine‑tune how you use each relationship most effectively.
In short: Working with more than one therapist at the same time can accelerate the change process. When done with positive intention and openness, it can become a rich, tailored pathway to change. When done without coordination, it can feel confused and conflicting.
Do note that some more traditional therapists refuse to work with other therapists. This is a dated way of working and is relevant only really in the context of narrow focus research projects eg to determine the efficay of a specific therapeutic protocol.
In many cases, the NHS utilises multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) to provide psychological support. This approach combines the skills of psychiatrists, psychotherapists and community psychiatric nurses. These teams work collaboratively to assess, develop and deliver care plans that address a person’s mental health needs.