Hypnosis for Starting a New Job
It is the Tuesday of the third week. The organisation chart has been explained to you twice, you nodded, and you still do not know who does what. You took notes you will never read again. You know twelve names out of forty.
You spend your days understanding instead of producing, and nobody has told you how long that lasts. You do not dare ask the question that seems too basic, so you look for the answer alone, which takes three times as long.
In the evening you are exhausted without knowing why, since you have done nothing concrete. And there is that small voice, the one saying they will eventually notice you are not up to it.
This is a normal state, almost everyone shares it at this stage, and it says nothing about your worth. It simply says you are new.
What is a Job Transition?
Starting a new job is a period of transition, with a beginning and an end, during which you lose all your bearings at once: the people, the codes, the tools, the decision-making channels, and the sense of being competent.
It is that last one that surprises people most. You did not lose your skills by changing desks, but they no longer apply to the same context, and that feels a great deal like lacking them.
Several very different situations go by this name, and they do not raise the same questions.
- Joining a new company: everything has to be learned, including the informal codes, and nobody writes those down anywhere.
- An internal promotion: you know the house, but your place has changed. The trickiest case is becoming the manager of your former colleagues.
- A first management role: the job changes completely, and few people are trained for it before they are in it.
- Returning after a long absence: parental leave, sick leave, burnout, retraining. That is a job transition in its own right, and it usually comes with an added fear, that of no longer knowing how.
Impostor syndrome
It is the usual companion of this period, and it deserves to be described properly.
The term comes from a 1978 article on what its authors called the impostor phenomenon: the persistent sense of not deserving your place and of owing your success to luck, with the fear of being found out. It is not a medical diagnosis and it appears in no classification. It is an experience, and a very widespread one: a systematic review published in 2020 in the *Journal of General Internal Medicine*, covering 62 studies and more than fourteen thousand people, finds rates ranging from 9% to 82% depending on the measurement tool and the cut-off used, in men as much as in women, at every stage of a career, and particularly high among ethnic minority groups.
That last observation points to an essential nuance, and one usually absent from content on the subject.
The feeling of being an impostor does not always come from you. When you are the only woman on the executive committee, the only one who did not come from the same school, or ten years younger than everyone else, the impression of not belonging may reflect real signals from the environment rather than a poor self-image.
An article published in 2020 in *Frontiers in Psychology* argues precisely for putting that feeling back in its context rather than treating it as an individual flaw, and a 2026 review bears it out on data: impostor feelings can be "socially produced", reflecting structural inequities and organisational hierarchies rather than individual vulnerability alone. Treating it as a simple lack of confidence amounts to asking the person to correct what is coming from elsewhere.
The impact of a Job Transition on daily life
Cognitive fatigue is the first effect, and the most underestimated. Everything demands conscious attention: the commute, the names, the software, the way an email is written here. It is exhausting, and it does not show up in any deliverable: at the end of a day spent mostly listening and trying to understand, you are more tired than after a day of output, with nothing to show for it. Sleep follows quickly, often with night-time waking that replays the day: the subject of our page on sleep and insomnia.
Constant self-monitoring. You watch yourself speak, you reread a harmless message three times, you weigh every contribution. That mode of working consumes a considerable amount of energy and tires you more than the work itself.
Isolation. The bonds are not made yet, there is nobody to tell that it is hard, and the last person you want to tell is your new employer. The tension that settles over all of it is what we call stress and anxiety management.
The pressure of an implicit deadline. The first hundred days, the first review, the end of what is called here a probationary period and elsewhere a trial period: milestones that are in no way official but that everyone imposes on themselves. The hundred-day marker, incidentally, is borrowed from nineteenth-century political vocabulary and never had anything to do with an employment contract.
And the effect at home, because that load comes back in the evening while those around you are expecting enthusiasm.
The recognised approaches outside Hypnosis
If fatigue no longer repairs, if sleep is lastingly affected or if physical symptoms appear, the point of entry is your doctor, or in France the occupational health service. A difficult transition can tip into burnout, and it is for a doctor to say so.
- Professional coaching, the approach most directly suited to this situation: mapping the stakes, setting priorities, preparing the first meetings. See our page Life Coaching.
- The onboarding programme offered by the employer, which often exists and is often under-used, with a designated contact or buddy to ask for if none was offered.
- Mentoring, internal or external, whose practical contribution far outweighs any method.
- Training, when a skill is genuinely missing. It is sometimes the simplest answer, and it gets wrongly set aside for fear of admitting a gap.
- Psychotherapy, if the difficulty is long-standing and replays at every change.
- Staff representatives or human resources, if the organisation itself is the problem.
Hypnosis places itself alongside these approaches, on the side of apprehension, inner dialogue and recovery.
Video available in French
Video transcript
Bonjour, je m'appelle Anne Géraldine Lavielle, je suis hypnothérapeute, coach professionnelle et formatrice. J'interviens régulièrement en entreprise pour du coaching individuel, collectif et organisationnel mais je travaille aussi en cabinet de ville et en visioconférence. Mes clients viennent souvent pour des problématiques personnelles et professionnelles car j'ai une approche holistique donc globale de la personne.
Je propose aussi de l’hypno-coaching, c’est-à-dire des séances de coaching classiques avec une ou deux séances d’hypnose pour faciliter les changements. L'hypnose est une méthode que nous utilisons dans le champ des thérapies brèves afin de pouvoir coopérer avec le cerveau de la personne et plus spécifiquement son inconscient, lorsqu'il vient nous consulter. La magie de l'hypnose c'est de permettre d'impulser des changements psychologiques et comportementaux durables, car notre cerveau a cette capacité à changer.
C'est une méthode qui a à la fois des bases scientifiques solides en lien avec les neurosciences, mais qui est aussi très créative. J'utilise aussi d'autres approches comme la méditation de pleine conscience, l’EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, la PNL ou l'art coaching. Cette méthode permet notamment de prendre confiance en soi, de développer de nouvelles ressources et compétences comme lors de la prise d'un nouveau poste.
C'est ce dont nous allons parler ici. Souvent, les gens qui viennent dans mon cabinet dans le cadre d'une prise de poste ont très peur de ne pas être à la hauteur de leurs futures fonctions. Les grandes interrogations tournent souvent autour des points suivants : - L'évolution des relations avec leurs anciens collègues, - Les nouvelles compétences à acquérir comme par exemple l'affirmation de soi, comprendre les jeux sociaux ou apprendre à déléguer, - La nouvelle posture à adopter, - Le changement identitaire qui peut s'opérer, c'est à dire passer de collaborateur à manager ou manager à responsable ou responsable à directeur.
Et enfin apprendre à sortir du perfectionnisme. Alors comment renforcer la confiance dans le cadre d'une prise de poste ? Bien, déjà on discute beaucoup pour essayer de comprendre quelles sont les problématiques de la personne. Il peut y avoir aussi une découverte du nouvel environnement quand on change d'organisation. Un problème de légitimité avec le complexe de l'imposteur. On peut développer par exemple des affirmations positives pour renforcer sa confiance en lui.
Cela passe par la visualisation des succès futurs en imaginant les scénarios pour les atteindre. On peut également mettre en place des techniques pour améliorer la concentration et la clarté mentale afin d'aider le client à rester focalisé sur des tâches importantes. Cela passe notamment par de l'hypnose. Je peux même utiliser des séances pour simuler des situations professionnelles difficiles et réfléchir avec le client à des réponses appropriées.
Enfin, pour faire face au complexe de l'imposteur, qui peut prendre beaucoup d'énergie à la personne, l'hypnose est tout à fait recommandée pour faire taire cette petite voix négative et capitaliser sur ses points forts. Mais le plus important est de rester à l'écoute de son client pour donner des réponses claires aux besoins qu'il manifeste et ainsi nous fournir les meilleurs outils possibles pour qu'il puisse gérer leur stress.
Alors en conclusion, et bien vous avez à présent quelques idées pour vous aider à appréhender la prise d'un nouveau poste et à ancrer de nouveaux repères. Pour plus d'informations sur l'hypnose et comment elle peut vous aider, et bien prenez contact avec moi. Toute l'équipe de Solutions Hypnose est là pour vous accompagner dans ces changements en cabinet ou par visio, cela fonctionne aussi très bien. N'hésitez pas à poser vos questions et à partager vos expériences, nous aurons à ce moment là plaisir à vous lire.
Et puis si vous avez aimé cette vidéo, et bien n'oubliez pas de liker et de vous abonner pour plus de conseils. A très bientôt pour une nouvelle vidéo.
Hypnotherapy is a complementary form of support and does not replace medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns about your health, please consult a physician first.
Hypnosis for a Job Transition: aims and benefits
Let us start with what hypnosis does not do.
It does not teach you your new job, and nothing replaces the time that takes. It does not remove the discomfort of the first months, and we explain below why that would not be desirable. It does not compensate for a badly defined role, an unmanageable workload or a team in distress. And it does not guarantee your first months will go well.
What an accompaniment aims at
- Reducing apprehension around identified milestones: the first committee, the first presentation, the first review with your manager.
- Setting up an anchor you can use on the spot, that is, a discreet gesture tied to a state of calm, practised in self-hypnosis before walking into a room.
- Easing the inner dialogue, particularly the catastrophic scenarios that loop on Sunday evening. See Hypnosis for Letting Go.
- Drawing on three specific resources: calm, perspective and concentration. They already exist in you, and the work consists in making them available when you need them rather than two hours later.
- Recovering in the evening, so that the day stops when it stops.
- Putting the sense of being an impostor back in its place, without trying to replace it with an opposite certainty that would not hold.
The deeper work on self-esteem is covered on Hypnosis for Confidence, Esteem and Assertiveness, and saying no, setting a limit and speaking up on Hypnosis for Assertiveness at Work.
Discomfort is not a symptom
A word on the implicit promise of most content on this subject, including the previous version of this page: adapt fast, be comfortable immediately, nail your first months.
Nobody is comfortable in a job they do not yet know. The unease of the first weeks is not a sign that something is wrong: it is a sign that you are learning, and it decreases as your bearings are built, not as you work on yourself.
Wanting to remove that discomfort too quickly has two perverse effects. The first is that you pretend, which costs you even more energy. The second is that you stop daring to ask questions, when asking questions is exactly what is expected of someone who has just arrived, and what shortens the period.
What an accompaniment can do is make that period more bearable and less lonely. Not remove it.
When the problem is not your adaptation
Some of the people who come about a new job are not having trouble adapting.
They have discovered a role that does not match what was described at interview. Or an exhausted team, a predecessor who left in bad circumstances, a remit without the corresponding means, an absent manager. In those cases, the difficulty is accurate information about the situation, and treating it as a personal problem amounts to asking you to accommodate what does not work.
There is also a possibility these pages rarely mention: leaving. The start of a contract is, on both sides, the moment when it is still possible to say this is not working. The terms differ from country to country and from contract to contract, and they are worth checking with your employer or a qualified adviser. Realising early that a job does not suit you is a clear-eyed decision, not a failure.
The first conversation is there partly to make that distinction. If we hear a harassment situation, a manifestly unmanageable workload or signs of burnout, we will point you to the people concerned, who are not us.
What the research says
First a correction, because it is everywhere in this field: no, the brain does not confuse the real and the imagined. A person under hypnosis stays aware of where they are, hears what is going on around them and remembers the session afterwards. What changes is that what is suggested is often experienced as coming of its own accord, without effort. It is that quality that does most of the work. What is true, and sufficient, is that picturing a scene in detail engages part of the brain regions involved in living it. Part only: the most recent work shows that overlap to be more limited than has long been written. And one further piece of honesty nobody offers in this field: most of what has been measured concerns learned movements, and, on the social side, the fear felt before speaking in public rather than the performance itself. So we do not claim that a board meeting is prepared for the way a tennis serve is: the exercise aims to make the scene less foreign, not to guarantee what happens in it.
Then what the research has looked at, and what it has not. Hypnosis in the workplace is only just beginning to be studied: the first randomised trial published on the subject, in 2026, covered thirty-one people and measured the meaning they found in their work, and the authors themselves present it as a feasibility study. Nothing closer exists. As of 19 September 2026, a search in Europe PMC and in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry crossing hypnosis with job transition, onboarding, career change or impostor syndrome returns no clinical trial. The widest review available on hypnosis (forty-nine meta-analyses collected in *Frontiers in Psychology* in 2024) covers pain, medical procedures, anxiety, depression and sleep, not professional transitions; the report the French Inserm devoted to hypnosis in 2015 does not evaluate them either.
What is documented lies alongside. On anxiety, a meta-analysis published in 2019 in the *International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis*, covering fifteen studies and seventeen trials, reports a greater reduction among people supported with hypnosis than in control groups, with better results when hypnosis accompanies other interventions rather than being used on its own. The 2024 review already cited reaches a comparable conclusion across all indications: real effects, highly variable between fields, and methodological quality that is often poor.
On impostor syndrome, finally, the 2020 systematic review found, at the time, no published study evaluating any treatment. A 2026 umbrella review now counts about thirty, of which five are randomised trials and only three are rated high quality, and none of them on hypnosis. Nobody should promise to make it disappear.
An example of accompaniment
*An illustrative example. The name is changed and the path described belongs only to the person who lived it.*
Marc had just been promoted to a management role in his company, where he had worked for several years. He described significant anxiety before every team meeting, and a stubborn conviction that choosing him had been a mistake someone would eventually notice. He prepared those meetings on Sunday evening, which cost him the Sunday, and came out of each one feeling he had been slightly off, never able to say quite how.
The first conversation served to separate two things. On one side, a sense of illegitimacy that nothing in his record supported: his reviews were good, the promotion had been offered, not fought for. On the other, a very real difficulty rarely named: he was now managing two people who had been his colleagues six months earlier, and nobody had supported him on that point.
The work bore on the apprehension before meetings, on an anchor usable before walking in, and on the Sunday evening inner dialogue. For the question of his former colleagues, we suggested he raise it with his management and ask for dedicated support, which he obtained.
> "What helped was that nobody told me it was all in my head. Part of it was, part of it was not, and knowing which changed everything." > Marc, name changed
He now describes meetings that are still uncomfortable, but that no longer take the evening before. Every situation is different, and Marc's path says nothing about what you will experience.
How a Hypnosis session on this subject unfolds
The conversation. The context of your arrival, what happens concretely and at what moments, your sleep, your workload, and what you were promised before signing. We will also try to distinguish what belongs to your adaptation from what belongs to the situation, because the answer is not the same.
The aim, framed together and tied to a real milestone. For example: preparing Thursday's committee, or stopping replaying the day at eleven at night.
The induction. A natural state of attention you already know without naming it. You stay conscious, you hear everything, you can speak and you can stop whenever you wish.
The work. On this subject it usually takes three forms. Recalling past situations where you found your feet, to identify what you drew on then. Setting up an anchor tied to calm, reactivable before a milestone. And going through a coming situation mentally until it becomes familiar.
The return and the exercise. A conversation about what you experienced, and a self-hypnosis exercise to take away, often designed for the five minutes before a meeting, or for the end of the day. Some practitioners hand over a recording of the session.
The number of sessions is settled at the first conversation. Sessions work in person as well as by video, which is often simpler during a period when your hours are not your own.
Book an appointment
The first conversation is there to determine whether hypnosis is the right resource for your situation, and on this subject that is particularly true: the distinction between a difficulty in adapting and a job that does not hold up comes within the first few minutes, and it changes everything that follows. If your situation belongs to someone else (your doctor, a coach, human resources), we will tell you.
In person, the practitioners who cover professional coaching and working life in English see clients in Quebec, in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Gatineau, and in France in Paris and Lille. By video, wherever you are: often the simplest format during a period when your hours are not your own. Here is how it works.
A question before you decide? Write to us describing your situation.
Where would you like to consult?
All areas
Annie Mayrand
Gatineau - Cumberland (ON)
👤
🧑🎓
🚭
❤️
💻
Christian Rocher
Beloeil
👤
🧑🎓
👶
🚭
❤️
💻
David Veilleux
Montréal - Anjou
👤
🧑🎓
🚭
❤️
🤰
💻
Florence Aton
Sutton
👤
🚭
❤️
💻
Jessica Reid
Sherbrooke
👤
🚭
💻
Julie Rocque
Montréal - Jean-Talon
👤
🧑🎓
👶
🚭
❤️
🤰
💻
Nuria Pérez de León
Montréal - Rosemont - Saint-Lambert
👤
🧑🎓
💻
Réjeanne LeBlanc
La Prairie
👤
🧑🎓
👶
💻
Frequently asked questions about Hypnosis for Starting a New Job
It varies with the role, the level of responsibility and the organisation. The markers that circulate (a hundred days, six months) are conventions, not standards: the first is borrowed from nineteenth-century political vocabulary and never had anything to do with an employment contract. What matters more is the direction: was last week a little easier than the one before? If nothing shifts after several months, the question deserves to be asked differently.
It is not a medical diagnosis, and it is not rare: it is a very widespread experience, described in men as much as in women and at every stage of a career. It is unpleasant without being abnormal. It is not for us to say at what point it becomes something else: if the feeling weighs on you to the point of affecting your sleep, your health or your decisions, talk to your doctor or a psychologist, who are the people trained to judge.
No. The hypnotic state is a state of focused attention, not sleep and not being placed under someone's influence. You stay conscious, you hear everything, and you keep the ability to refuse a suggestion, to speak or to stop the session. Hypnosis in itself cannot make someone act against their will. What calls for vigilance is the relationship: a clear framework and a practitioner who lets you say no are part of what makes a session safe.
Hypnosis as we practise it is a non-medicinal accompaniment: we never intervene in a treatment, neither to adjust it nor to suspend it. Simply tell us at the first conversation what you are taking and what for, so that we know who to point you to if needed. If you have any doubt about compatibility with your care, the question goes to the doctor who prescribed it: they, and only they, can answer it.
Psychotherapy is a regulated framework, practised by professionals whose title is protected, and it can cover the whole of psychological functioning and established disorders. Hypnosis as we practise it is a more circumscribed accompaniment, focused on a specific aim. If the same difficulty has replayed at every change for a long time, a psychologist will bring more.
Coaching works on strategy and method: your priorities, your plan for the first weeks, your meetings. Hypnosis works on the state you approach them in. The two combine well, and some practitioners in the network do both.
That is not an adaptation problem, and no session will settle it. What can be worked on is your clarity about what you want to do with it: raising it with your management, renegotiating the scope, or drawing the conclusion and leaving. The conditions for leaving early in a contract vary with your situation and with the country: they are worth checking in your contract, with human resources, or with a legal adviser. That is not ours to tell you, and it is not a failure.
It is a job transition in its own right, with an added difficulty: the fear of no longer knowing how, and sometimes of how others see your absence. If the absence followed burnout, the return is prepared first with your doctor. In France, you can also ask for a pre-return appointment with the occupational health service from thirty days of absence: the occupational physician can recommend adjustments to the role. In Quebec there is no equivalent service, and it is your own doctor who frames the return; your employer, for their part, has a duty to accommodate.
The number of sessions is settled at the first conversation, depending on whether it is about preparing for a specific deadline or accompanying a whole period.
Sources and references
Impostor syndrome
- Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: a Systematic Review. Bravata, D. M., Watts, S. A., Keefer, A. L. et al. (2020). Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(4), 1252-1275: 62 studies, 14,161 participants.
- Contextualizing the Impostor "Syndrome". Feenstra, S., Begeny, C. T., Ryan, M. K., Rink, F. A., Stoker, J. I., & Jordan, J. (2020). Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 575024.
- Rethinking the impostor phenomenon: An umbrella review of concept, context and interventions. Gisselbaek, M. et al. (2026). Medical Education, 60(6), 607-624: 16 reviews, 30 intervention studies.
Work and health
- Preventing psychosocial risks. Institut national de recherche et de sécurité, France, in French
- Psychosocial risks at work. CNESST, Quebec, in French
- The pre-return appointment: articles R4624-29 and R4624-30 of the French Labour Code, and returning to work. CNESST, Quebec, both in French
On hypnosis
- Valentine, K. E., Milling, L. S., Clark, L. J., & Moriarty, C. L. (2019). The Efficacy of Hypnosis as a Treatment for Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 67(3), 336-363. doi.org/10.1080/00207144.2019.1613863: abstract freely available, full article paywalled.
- Meta-analytic evidence on the efficacy of hypnosis for mental and somatic health issues: a 20-year perspective. Rosendahl, J., Alldredge, C. T., & Haddenhorst, A. (2024). Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1330238.
- Évaluation de l'efficacité de la pratique de l'hypnose. Inserm, 2015, in French.
If you are struggling at work
- Quebec: the CNESST · your union · Info-Social 811, option 2
- France: the employer or human resources · occupational health services · staff representatives and the works council · the labour inspectorate · 3114 in case of distress
The employment-law information mentioned here is given for guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. It differs from one country to another: check it with the bodies named.
Hypnosis as practised by the members of Solutions Hypnose is a complementary support approach. It is neither a medical act, nor a diagnosis, nor psychotherapy in the regulatory sense, and it in no way replaces a consultation, follow-up or treatment prescribed by a health professional.
Our practitioners do not assess and do not treat mental disorders or illnesses. They never ask for an ongoing treatment to be stopped or changed: that decision rests exclusively with your doctor.
No result can be guaranteed. The testimonials and examples presented on this page describe individual experiences and do not predict what you will experience.
In case of significant distress, unexplained physical symptoms or suicidal thoughts, contact a doctor, emergency services or a helpline without delay.
Page written by Anne-Géraldine Lavielle
hypnotherapist and holistic coach
partner at Solutions Hypnose.
English version reviewed by David Veilleux