Month: September 2016

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Dream Interpretation

Dream Interpretation with hypnosis

    Have you ever considered Dream Interpretation as part of your hypnotherapy?

    I love hearing about dreams, and doing dream interpretation, because they reveal what is going on inside the subconscious mind. It is often difficult to know if your hypnotherapy has actually been helping your client. This is especially the case when you are using Metaphor Therapy or Gestalt Therapy techniques. These indirect methods are designed to make subtle long term changes, sometimes so subtle that even the client doesn't realize they are happening.

    I always ask the client what changes they have experienced since our last session. Usually the client can say what has or has not worked, and how they know that. But quite often the client will say that they haven't feel any change, even though I know that I have done some powerful work  with them, and they should have noticed some changes.

    In that case I always ask if they have been having any dreams. Dream interpretation often gives deep insights into changes in the unconscious.

    Dream interpretation example

    One of my recent clients said that she felt that something was happening but she couldn't really say what, exactly. So I asked about dreams, and she told me the following vivid dream.

    In my  dream I was laboring up a steep hill and there were other people going up as well. At the top was an airplane and we were going towards it. As I got closer the plane began to slip, and then it started sliding down towards me. I got frightened of being squashed and looked around for help, but I could only see two people, men, and when the men turned towards me I could see that they were unreal, with faces like cardboard cutouts from old cartoon comic strips. I realized that they were no help. The plane was sliding down towards me, so I put out my hands and was surprised that  the plane was pushed out of the way and passed by me harmlessly. That was the end of the dream.

    I gave her my interpretation of the dream. Understanding dreams is simple. Everything in the dream is you. Other people are parts of you. Objects are metaphors for what you want to happen.

    Using these rules, the going up the hill is a metaphor for struggling to change. The plane at the top of the hill is a metaphor for a means of escape. The other people on the hill are various parts of who she is. Metaphorically she want to get on the plane and fly out of there,  but is afraid of it, afraid of what might happen after the change. So that fear is translated into the plane turning into a threat. She seeks help from other parts, but sees that they in fact are cardboard cutouts, not real and not of any use any longer. So she gets the courage to deal with the threat, and deflects the plane and realizes that it actually can not harm her.

    This was a perfect summary of her situation. She wants to change, but part of her is afraid to, so her mind shows her resolving this problem in dream. After the dream turns out OK, her mind can accept that she can change, and she starts the process of change on her own.

    Later sessions actually confirmed this. She told me she no longer cared what she wore, or how she looked, because in fact 'Nobody cares what I look like. I have been obsessing for years over something that is not real'.

    So her mind has now released the constant worry of having to look perfect, to be perfect. At some point she got on that plane.

    Another case of dream interpretation helping with hypnosis.

    How do you value a hypnotherapy business?

      hypnotherapy business

      How much is a hypnotherapy business worth?

      As with any business there are two ways of valuing a hypnotherapy business. There is the asset value of the business if it was closed down tomorrow. This is he difference between how much the assets are worth if they are sold at auction, minus any liabilities.

      Then there is the going concern valuation: take the average of annual income minus expenditure to get the gross profit, then deduct the salary the therapist wants to earn and what is left is the net value stream generated per year.

      To value the business you calculate how much money you would need to have in the bank to earn the same amount in interest as the net value stream each year. That figure is how much the business is worth as a going concern, minus some percentage to account for the risk of being in business as opposed to the nil risk of interest earned from a bank.

      Calculating the risk discount is not an easy question, and the answer depends on many factors.

      1. WOULD YOU WANT TO BUY A HYPNOTHERAPY BUSINESS ANYWAY?

      If you have an established brand then buying and continuing another business might only dilute your own brand presence. If you already have a hypnotherapy business in the same catchment area then the best thing to happen might be for the other business to just shut up shop and disappear. It reduces  your competition and so should reduce your marketing costs.

      If you are a new entrant, or your current practice isn't doing too well, then it might make sense to buy the business.

      There is also the question as with any business - why is it for sale? Obviously a therapist can die leaving a thriving business, or the therapist might want to retire. Or it might just be that the therapist could not make the practice pay enough, and wants to unload it and move on.

      This is where accounting records become crucial. The business needs to be able to show audited financial records of income and outgoings. If there are no audited accounts then the business has been run by an amateur and it might be best to leave it alone or risk inheriting tax problems and unexpected claims. If there are no certified accounts, then there is no basis to make an objective valuation.

      2. WHAT IS THEIR BUSINESS MODEL?

      Success in the hypnotherapy business is essentially about attracting a stream of new clients.

      Dental patients will go to the same office for years, and so taking over the dental practice means taking over the patient list, patient records and goodwill. The value of the business comes from the ongoing value of the repeat visits for years to come.

      To a certain extent, professionals like dentists and accountants are standardized. They all have the same basic qualifications, and cannot practice without these government controlled qualifications. They all offer the same level of expertise, more or less, and have to strictly adhere to fixed regulations and procedures and are subject to being struck off if they don't.

      A hypnotherapy business is not like an accountancy service or a dentist. Hypnotherapists typically do not have repeat business in the same way. If you treat a client for smoking, say, they should not be ever coming back for the same thing.

      To get over this lack of repeat customers there are several different business models underpinning any hypnotherapy business. The difference is how the clients are recruited.

      You get high profile 'showbiz' type therapists who spend more time on self promotion and publicity than they do in seeing clients. Then you get the type who spend a lot on constant advertising and business promotion. These businesses are further split into those who promote a brand name such as "Key Hypnosis" and those who promote the person named "Jane Smith Hypnosis". Sometimes these specialize in segmented markets, such as stopping smoking, weight loss, or self confidence.

      There are
      High Cost and Low Cost strategies

      Low cost practices use a different strategy. They focus entirely on their local area. Many just have a website and rely on localized search engine results and maybe some paid entries on local business listings. Some low cost practices are integrated with medical centers and get referrals from health professionals.

      Why does the business model matter? Where the hypnotherapy business is based on the personality of the therapist, the business effectively is the therapist. When the therapist goes away, the business goes away.  In that kind of business hypnotherapists are not interchangeable in the way accountants are. People want to see a particular therapist, not just any therapist. So you may not be able to convert past customers into future sales because the clients will not go to someone they don't know. Similarly, if the business model is based on referrals from medical professionals you may have to spent a lot time trying to persuade them that you are as good as the person you are replacing.

      If it is a low cost internet based service for a localized brand name business, then effectively what you are buying is the Google ranking. You might be better spending the money on Search Engine Optimization to increase your own ranking.

      3. ARE HYPNOTHERAPY BUSINESS ASSETS WORTH PAYING FOR?

      A hypnotherapy business is a service industry like computer software training. In a training business all of the income comes from face to face interaction with the trainer. The trainer basically sells their time. They may own a few incidentals like tables and chairs, but this type of business is really about contacts and reputation. The software trainer doesn't own the software, or the intellectual property rights, or the trademarks, or anything else enduring.

      A hypnotherapist does not own 'hypnosis' and usually has little or nothing in the way of exclusive intellectual property that can be resold. There may be books or CDs on sale, but once the original author has moved on they

      Assets
      and Liabilities

      are difficult to keep up to date. Most therapist CDs are actually 'home made' and few have formal legal rights to use the background music on them. The 'scripts' are unlikely to be worth much either since the basic procedures are common throughout the industry and any script can be easily and transparently paraphrased. So the value of any claimed intellectual property needs to be carefully assessed.

      There are also liabilities. If you buy a practice, who is responsible for comeback from past clients? If a client for stopping smoking comes back and says it didn't work, are you responsible, or is the previous owner going to fix it? If a previous client kills themselves, and the relatives find hypnosis a convenient scapegoat, are you going to court to defend the previous therapist as the owner of the company responsible?

      Arriving at any sort of valuation can be very difficult.

      Do you have second hand anxiety?

        Anxiety

        I had a client who came to me for anxiety: it turned out to be second hand anxiety. The cause of her anxiety is direct result of her upbringing, which was a direct result of events.
        Her father was Polish, and was conscripted into the army early in WWII. His unit was captured by the Germans. He was imprisoned in a labour camp. Thousands died through brutality, starvation and disease.

        The Russians over ran the camp but instead of liberating them all, he was conscripted into their tank battalion. As part of that battalion  he endured the horrors of fighting on the Eastern Front right up to the end. Eventually they let him go due to pneumonia. 

        The result of his privations and captivity was that he had lung disease for the rest of his life. He also had survivors' guilt, night terrors and PTSD. So she was brought up in a household where her father was constantly in and out of hospital, he was often absent or lying sick in his room, there was never enough money, and constant worry about the future.

        My client had a lifetime of caring for him, not having a real dad, and not having a settled home life. She became anxious and constantly stressed. Most likely this triggered her own life long anxiety. It also led to her becoming a professional nurse.
        What is notable about all this is that my client is in her late sixties, and still suffering from something that happened in the 1930's, long before she was born. The evils of the second world war are still with us today.
        It is quite remarkable how long historical events can reach into daily life. And if my client's children are in turn affected by her behavior then they, in their old age, will still be suffering for what happened over a century before.

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        Solution Focused Therapy

        Solution Focused Therapy

          How can Solution Focused Therapy be used in a normal hypnosis session?

          The essence of Solution Focused Therapy is the idea that it is the client who is the expert, not the therapist. All forms of psychotherapy involve talking. Hypnotherapy is unusual in that a lot of the time the talking is one sided. Hypnosis is not a conversation; the therapist is talking, but a client in trance only responds when prompted.

          However, the hypnotherapist needs to know what to talk about. So a session typically consists of first finding out what the client wants. Finding out exactly what the client needs is one of the key skills of hypnosis.

          There are many different techniques that can be used to extract what the client's real needs quickly and accurately. One of the most useful is Solution Focused Therapy.

          Solution Focused Therapy

          SFT focuses on identifying the best solution for the client. It does not ask about past problems, or how the client got into the situation they are in. SFT focuses on what the client wants to have happen, how they want to feel. SFT examines what can be done now, not what happened in the past.  It is about what is possible given the client's present situation.

          It is based on the principle that whatever the client can do that helps in some way should be noted and encouraged. Therapy is based on the idea that it is the  client's current behavior that is causing or maintaining the problem, so keeping on doing more of the same is wrong. Therefore anything different, any change, is success.

          Anything that leads away from the present unhelpful behavior is useful. The therapist's job is identify what can be changed and to help the client make that change.

          Success

          Therefore, the first thing to do is to identify exactly what the client would consider a success. Then to identify what successes, of any kind, the client has had in the past and what the client can find as possible new behaviors in the present.

          On this basis the hypnotherapy can incorporate things that will lead to the goal of the client. Visualization can be done featuring the client in their ideal situation, doing the things they want to do, and having the life they want to live. The therapy can also use examples of past successes to remind the client that they are resourceful, that they can succeed. That way they can zoom in on what they want to change. And then the hypnotist can use standard techniques to help the client identify key new behaviors.

          That way the therapist can use the principles of SFT to make the hypnotherapy more effective.

          What do you think?

          How do you use Solution Focused Therapy? Is it even possible?

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          self sabotage hypnosis

          Self sabotage

            Self sabotage stopping with hypnosis

            Humans have a strange ability to self sabotage. We all know how to eat better than we do. We all know how to drive better than we do. We all do things that we know are bad for us, will stop us achieving what we want, will make us feel unhappy. And yet we still do them. Why?
            What is it about humans that makes us self sabotage? I'm not thinking about suicide, that is a different issue. I'm talking about buying chocolate when you have diabetes, smoking when you know it is going to kill you, not exercising when your cardiologist tells you you must.

            How can people be so disconnected from their own behavior? Take a simple thing like eating fruit. We all know we should. There is not doubt about the health benefits. Fruit is delicious. And yet, we leave the fruit and take the pastry.
            I see clients who tell me that they want to stop smoking. It costs them money, makes their clothes smell, makes them outsiders, will certainly make them ill, and most likely will kill them. And yet they keep on smoking. They sabotage themselves. They stop for a while and then start again. Part of their mind is screaming at them to stop, and part of their mind rejoices in taking the next puff.

            It should be simple. Just don't buy any more smokes. That's it. But it is like exercising: we all know we should, and we don't. We all know we are putting on weight, and somehow we don't care. We should get on and finish the school assignment, clean the house, tidy the garden: we know how to do it, we know it needs done, and yet we don't.
            Procrastination is the name for not doing something we should.
            What is the right word for keeping on doing something we shouldn't be doing?

            Shame and how to let it go.

              I got an email from someone asking about what techniques to use to deal with chronic shame.

              Shame is a feeling about who you are. It is a belief that something about you, something core to who you are, is permanently wrong, bad, not fitting with what other people expect.

              Nobody is born with shame. Shame is something that other people put there. You might have done something, real or imagined, that other people told you was unforgivable, or that you personally decided other people could never forgive or forget. When you believe that your actions are unforgivable, then you walk around with that shame permanently on you.

              However, nothing is unforgivable. There is nothing a person has done that they can not make amends for. And in most cases, the shame is something imposed by the person on to themselves. It is a personal belief, created and maintained and carried by that person. It is in fact that the person cannot forgive themself.

              So the way to get rid of the feeling is find a way to get forgiveness.

              There are many techniques available.
              The right approach depends on whether the shame is due to something you did and remember, or if it is some general feeling not attached to any particular action.

              The NLP technique of reframing might work to put the action into a different perspective.
              Gestalt change techniques can be applied directly to the feeling in your body, and change the feeling.
              Ordeal therapy might be appropriate here, depending on your personal spiritual beliefs.
              Metaphor in hypnosis can be used to get a Power Figure to give you the forgiveness you need. That is the one that I would try first.

              However, everyone is unique, and it is always best to seek help from some experienced therapist who can spend time finding the source.

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              Problem Clients

              Dealing with Problem Clients

                Problem clients are inevitable. Therapists have to be ready to deal with whatever comes through the door. However sometimes it is not just how to fix what they want that is the issue. Occasionally it is the person themself who is the problem.
                I had a woman come to see me yesterday. She gave no indication on the online booking of what her problem was. She came in and sat down. I said 'I will just turn off my cellphone', as an indirect suggestion that she might want to do the same. And I got a glare as if I should have done that before she arrived.
                My custom is to get the client to write their name and email address on my clipboard so that I have a reminder of the name during the session and doing a little task often gives a nervous client time to settle down. This client challenged me and said 'You already have that!'

                Warning signs of a problem client

                We moved on and I asked her 'Is is OK if I record this session?' And I got an instant 'No, it isn't'. When I asked why not, she replied 'I don't want anyone else listening to what I say'. Very forceful, and very aggressive.
                It has been my experience that I get about two clients a year who don't want the session recorded. Occasionally the client wants to talk about delicate sexual matters, and that's OK. It is also my experience that every problem client I have ever had was one who refused to allow the session to be recorded. Refusal is now an instant warning flag to me.

                I considered terminating the session right then, but decided to continue with the session to see whether I could retrieve the situation. I asked what her problem was and she said 'Drinking. It is ruining my relationship'. I then asked her whey she just didn't stop. Answer 'I don't know'. Why do you think you drink? Answer 'I don't know'. What do you get out of it? 'I don't know'. And so it went on. Every attempt to access her feelings was blocked. As I started to explore her behavior and how and when she drank I kept pointing out inconsistencies. For example, 'I can't stop drinking' and 'I only drink at weekends'. Pushing further into why she was drinking, total aggressive defensiveness came out. Then I got to what harm her drinking was doing to her relationship if her partner also drank, the real reason emerged. 'I snap at him when I am drinking and say things that I wouldn't say when I am sober.'

                This began to sound to me like an extreme case of Black and White thinking. I gently probed for evidence of depressive behavior. She immediately went into defensive mode. Every attempt to suggest that she might have some aspect or other was strongly denied. And not just denied: it was refuted in a way that made it clear that she thought I was an idiot. Every question was thrown back at me, and I began to realize exactly what was happening in her relationship.
                And I also realized that my first instinct was right: it was time to get her out of my office. Even though I recognized that it was simply her subconscious defending her psyche against any attempt by me to get near whatever the real cause was, the way she was doing it was affecting my psyche as well.

                Transference from the problem client

                Traditional psychoanalysis warns against something called Transference. This is the tendency of the analyst to take on the personality and mimic the issues of their patients. The degree of transference depends on the strength of the personality of both parties. A strong patient and weak analyst will transfer in one direction, a strong analyst and week patient will transfer in the other direction.
                This is not normally a problem in hypnotherapy because hypnotherapists usually only see clients once or twice, whereas psychoanalysts could see their patients for hundreds of sessions. However it is the strength of the personality that matters. In this case the woman was so emotionally aggressive that I found myself reacting to her words and attitude, and I could feel myself tightening up inside as she hooked into my own archaic triggers. If I had let the session continue we both would have continued giving stronger and stronger responses to what the other said.
                So I terminated the session and wished her success in finding someone else to help.

                I hope she does find a way out of it.

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                Hypnosis Tarot

                Is New Age Therapy just for the gullible?

                  Are New Age therapy clients too gullible? I recently went to a Psychic Fair in my local town. It was well organised and well attended. All the usual New Age Therapy services were there: Aura Readings, Palmistry, Crystal therapy, Healing touch, Dream interpretation, Fortune tellers and various other New Age types.
                  The attendees were what looked like ordinary people, mostly women. They were getting their fortunes told or watching their auras drawn and everyone seemed well satisfied.

                  On the New Age assembly line

                  And that was what bothered me. I understand about placebos, and I am comfortable that people sometimes need to believe in something a bit out of the ordinary. I also believe that some of these modalities are helpful and worthwhile. But previous places I had been to all involved a bit more scene setting. I expected low light, whale music, private rooms, costumes and exotic symbols. This one seemed more like an assembly line. Everyone was in one big open room. They were queuing to book appointments. Everyone  waiting their turn like a motor licence agency, moving in when the last person finished while the seat was still warm. To make it look even more industrial, the time was prominently displayed on a clock facing the client.

                  Fleecing the New Age gullible

                  All these people were paying quite substantial sums of money without, apparently, ever questioning what they were getting or how effective it was. They also didn't seem to be much bothered about who was delivering it, or if they were qualified to offer it in the first place.
                  It was the Tarot card readers who got me. I use Tarot myself. Sometimes they the best way of reaching a particular client. But it has to be done with conviction and confidence.

                  What I saw was an extreme case of fleecing the gullible. One reader was laying out the cards, talking to the client, and then without the slightest sign of embarrassment looking up the book to see what the cards meant! The client just sat there while the 'psychic' read out what the book said.

                  In my view, if you are going to sell people nonsense, you should at least put some effort into it. Surely the client is entitled to believe that you have some sort of legitimate connection to the New Age universe? Would you continue attending a doctor if that doctor was looking up your symptoms on the Internet?

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                  Hypnosis Ethics Code of Practice

                  Hypnosis Ethics Code of Practice

                    Hypnosis and Ethics

                    I was reading an offer to me to sign up for a Gastric Band Hypnotherapy Treatment Workshop. This is for practicing hypnotists and insists that they be experienced. It also insists that they already adhere to a recognized code of practice.
                    I think that everyone should follow a code of practice. They are very good things. However all the ones I see are primarily concerned with practices that protect the therapist. They are all about how the therapist will behave in order that certifying organisation does not get sued. They usually outlaw sexual impropriety, disrespect for the client, criticizing other therapists, and other good things. No harm in that.

                    Ethics is actually about the client's rights

                    However, there is seldom much in the way of protection for the client. It seems to me that what is missing in most Codes is protection from exploitation of the client. There is nothing wrong with hypnotizing someone to believe that they have had Gastric Band surgery - if it works. But if it doesn't work, or if only a tiny percentage of clients benefit, then it surely becomes an Ethics issue. Is it not unethical to advertise and encourage clients to undergo hypnotherapy if it is usually a waste of money?
                    I have yet to see a Code of Ethics that says that the therapist agrees to do a follow up with every client, and requires the therapist to stop doing the procedure if it doesn't work.

                    Ethics and what the client wants

                    The counter argument is that if a client wants some procedure and believes that it will help them, then provided it actually isn't going to do any harm, the client is entitled to get whatever treatment they ask for.
                    A further argument is that most therapy is actually placebo, and it doesn't matter what you do. Provided the client believes in it, the therapist doesn't have to believe in it. If the effectiveness of a treatment is actually dependent on the client's belief system, then aromatherapy, fortune telling and homeopathy are all valid, and do not need any scientific validation.
                    Personally, I feel very uncomfortable with this position.

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                    Overload Induction Script

                    Is there an Earworm in your head?

                      Is there a maddening tune going round in your head?

                      Most of us from time to time will find a song going through our head that stays there and you can't get rid of it. It is sometimes called an 'earworm'. I have always been curious as to the origin of the earworm and why we have them. I find that I get the same small set of songs popping into my head at random times. So I got to wondering if they really were random.
                      I am a hypnotist, and I have a deep interest in the unconscious. I believe that the unconscious mind determines conscious behavior. So to me, the origins of the 'earworms' must some from some process in the unconscious that from time to time leaks out into the conscious. My theory is that if you have a word, or a phrase or a song in your head, then that must be associated with some unconscious process going on.

                      Those repetitive tunes have meaning

                      So I monitored what songs they were, and what was happening when they appeared. I sometimes get the same song three times a day, but I can also get that song only after months have passed. To me, there is nothing obvious about the actual words used, or the chorus or anything else that would explain why it appears or what made it relevant.
                      But after thinking about two particular songs, I think I have managed to work out what is going on, for me at least.

                      One common song I get in my head is the old Simon and Garfunkel classic "Keep the customer satisfied" I used to worry about how some of the lyrics applied to me, such as 'I get slandered, libeled' or 'one step away from the county line', which made no sense at all in my life.

                      Find the key phrase

                      But then I realized that the song appears immediately after something unexpected and good happens to me. The key phrase is the first line "Gee but it's great to be back home". It has nothing to do with being back home - I never left. But I think what is happening is that as I am feeling "Gee it's great" in response to some event in my life, that unconscious feeling is triggering the onset of the song, and it continues playing over and over in my head until the feeling passes.
                      I get the same thing with 'Raindrops keep falling on my head'. The key to the onset of this song is when I thought that I had done something wrong, or things were going badly. But then I realise that it is actually turning out OK. The key phrase here is "Nothing's worrying me". That is exactly how I feel unconsciously, and that is the feeling that the song encapsulates.

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