Hypnosis Client Contracts

A therapist wrote to me:

I am looking for a 'model' or 'template' of a contract between therapist and client and can't seem to find one anywhere on the internet.
Have you any ideas where I might find this?

My reply was:

I don't use a contract. Never have, never will.

Hypnosis is about relationships

Hypnosis is intensely personal. A therapist who thinks he needs to be ready to sue his clients at any moment has something seriously wrong with his attitude. If you need a contract, the relationship has already failed, and it is always your fault.

In the therapy business the client holds all the aces. The client can lie to you, not turn up, not do what you ask - and there is nothing you can do about it. There is no practical way you can pursue a defaulter through the courts that won't cost you more in time than you get. It just leaves you looking desperate and unprofessional.
All the client has to do is to say that you were in some way deficient and you have no defence.

If the first thing a therapist does is to get the client to fill in a questionnaire and sign a legal disclaimer, full of penalties for non-payment, how likely is it that the relationship gets off to a warm friendly start?
A successful therapy business is based on trust, professionalism and referrals. All a contract does is specify in advance all the things that can go wrong. It tends to focus everyone's attention on the the wrong thing.

Bad therapists try to tie clients into agreeing to some number of sessions and then sue them when they don't turn up. That never works.

What is the basis for Hypnosis Client Contracts?

I have no idea how many sessions will be needed or long it will take. You should plan on the basis that you will never see the client again. Aim to do everything you need to do in the first session. It is almost certainly going to be your only session. If it works they don't need to see you again, if it doesn't they don't want to see you again.

If all you do is write down stuff in the first session, they feel cheated. Do not take elaborate histories, that is just a waste of time. If you really listen to the client, listen to their body language, what their clothes are saying, listen to their attitude, their choice of words, you will get most of what you need to know in the first ninety seconds.
Then you keep asking questions until you define precisely what their problem is and how you are going to tackle it. Then you do the therapy.
My sessions take as long as they take, up to two hours.

What to focus on

I keep comprehensive records of my sessions, but they are all about me. They are about what I thought and what I did and how it worked. More importantly, I note what might work better next time, and what I learned from this client. The only thing I have from the client is their name and email.

My advice is: forget about contracts, focus on building relationships.

Words Memory Trance Cure for Boredom

Words Memory Trance

Words Memory Trance are all connected. If you focus on a word for long enough it will lead you into the depths of your unconscious mind. Try it.

I am learning Spanish and I am therefore getting to know lots of strange words. Words are funny things. They have no meaning except what people give them. There is no particular reason why thunder should be the series of sounds we have all agreed to say to represent the sound that clouds sometimes make.

And yet I am in a business that depends on using the right words, and listening intently for particular words.

Words have no meaning

You can prove that words have no meaning quite easily. All you have to do is to repeat a word, any word, over and over. Quite quickly it will cease to have any meaning at all. It will seem totally strange to you. Technically, this is called 'semanic satiation". This is the basis of mantra meditation. By repeating a word or phrase you eventually dissociate from it, the word and its meaning separate, and your mind then drifts off into trance.

Another interesting experiment to do is to try to find out what a word means to you personally, your own personal sense of it. Take an abstract word, not something definite like the word kangaroo, but something you cannot picture directly. A word such as 'towards' or 'together'' or 'apply' or something else abstract. Even the word 'abstract' itself. Meditate on that word. A word like abstract might immediately bring up an image of some crazy modern painting. But you can continue to meditate on the word, and eventually you will find that you get other images and feelings that have to do with that word. It is quite an interesting process, watching your own mind at work.

A cure for boredom

There will be some words that do not produce an immediate image, such as 'towards', or 'close'. In that case meditate on your word, keep focusing on the word. At some point you will get an image, and it will probably be something associated with your early childhood. This is because these are words that could not be shown to you in a picture. They had to be demonstrated indirectly in some way. It probably took many attempts before you understood what that word meant. And most likely, what you get from your mind will be a memory of someone or something acting out your word.

So you never need to be bored again when you are waiting in the departure lounge.

Public speaking fear treatment

Is it really about public speaking?

My client said that she had an issue with public speaking. Whenever she has to speak with people who are above her or in a senior role she blushes and stammers and feels very uncomfortable. Even when she is in a meeting with people she knows. When they go round the table and ask everyone to introduce themselves she dreads it as the turn comes towards her. She always feels as though she's being put on the spot. Someone might ask a question and she won't know the answer. She hates the feeling of being in the spotlight.

Rather than being an issue of public speaking, it seemed to be more about the fear that people will think her less knowledgeable than they are.

Public Speaking and issues from childhood

I discussed this with her and she revealed that she had felt this way for a long time. This suggested to me that the problem came from childhood. A problem from childhood needs regression therapy or metaphor replacement therapy.

She told me that it is quite likely that this came from her childhood. She was one of a pair of non-identical twins. Her sister is currently being treated for anorexia. Her sister has a history of behavior difficulties. When they were growing up, of the two twins my client always felt that she was the favourite, and that her sister was discriminated against. My client was blonde and bubbly, and her sister was dark and sullen. Whether this was cause or effect she could not say. She could not remember anything in particular about her childhood that had to do with public speaking issues with people in authority. But she was quite willing to go ahead with the therapy.

Metaphor Replacement therapy - defining the object

I explained to her that the fastest way was metaphor replacement therapy. For that she would have to be able to get the feeling right there in the chair. If she was not able to get the feeling then we would do regression and try to find the childhood incident that caused it all.

It took quite a while for her to get the feeling. I then said to her "and where in your body are you feeling it?" She said "in my heart". I said to her "what thing does that most resemble? Think about its color, its shape, its size, think about what it be like if you were to reach out and hold it." She took a very long time to respond. I began to think that she was not able to get the feeling and we would have to go to regression.

But eventually she whispered "it's like a ball". I asked her to start describing it. She said it's sort of transparent, with red and black going through it. It is warm". Further probing elicited that there was about the size of her hand, it felt soft, it was like a marble with colors going through it. It was smooth. When I asked "what else do you know about it?". She said "it is a part of me".

Developing the metaphor for fear of public speaking

I then said "and what would you like to have happen to it?" She said "I would like it be gone". I then tried to create the link between this thing being gone and her behavior. So I asked "and if it is gone, would that mean for you?". She said "There would be a hole".

And I said "and what could you do then?". She said "I can fill the hole". I wasn't sure whether she had actually got rid of the object already or whether she just didn't understand what I was asking. So I sent her what would it mean to you if that thing was gone completely from your body. And she said "freedom". I tried to finish the link. I said "and with freedom what can you do then?" She said "I would be lighter".

Not Destroying the metaphor object

I thought the session was going off track. So I asked her "can you make that feeling a little bit bigger?" She took a very long time to answer. And then she said "yes." And I said "can you make it a little bit bigger still". She started to get very emotional at this point. I was worried that she was going to have a catharsis. Or some sort of abreaction. Her mouth was twisting, her chin was wobbling up and down, she looked deeply distressed. Under her eyelids her eyes were moving as if searching for something.

I reassured her "nothing in your own mind can ever harm you". Next, I encouraged her to change that ball. I asked "can you make it a little bit smaller?". And to my surprise she immediately said "yes". I then got her to progressively make it smaller and smaller. From time to time I asked "and what is going on in that place now?". She said it is very small". Then she said it has changed colour. It is now blue. It is not a problem anymore."

Keeping her new resource

The standard part of the process is to destroy the object. But in this case she insisted "it is not bad". It appeared that she wanted to keep this thing. So I got her to take the thing out from where it was. I suggested that she might find someplace and nobody wish you could keep it. Where it would be an asset to be useful to her.

Then I told her to think about the place where that marble had been. I told her to find some pleasant helpful thing that she could put in there. I suggested that there was something she could put in that would fill the place completely and overfill it and fill the rest of her body. "What have you found to put in there?" She said "positive feelings". I asked "and what colour are those positive feelings?". She said "yellow". So I use that to suggest that that dark hole had been filled with yellow and the whole of her body was filled with that lovely yellow feeling and tied it into things like daylight and days at the beach and other good memories.

Coming back from trance

I then got her to take two deep breaths and to count from one up to 3. I suggested it when she got to 3 she will be back in the present. And she was.

I tested to make sure that the feeling was gone. And she said "you know I'm thinking about it. I am thinking about the meeting with my bosses. And I just can't believe that that feeling is completely gone. Totally not there."

Lessons from the session

In this case whatever was causing her public speaking issue was very strong and very personal. But it also contains some element that she wanted to keep. Which was why she did not want to get rid of it completely. Fortunately I recognised this and allowed her to convert into some thing that she would find useful.

She ended the session still amazed that she could find no trace of that feeling.

Sexual Dysfunction is not always about sex

My client came to see me because of sexual dysfunction. He is a fit young man living with a woman he loves. She is keen on sex and so is he, but he keeps losing his erection during the process. She is understandably annoyed and is threatening to end the relationship.

My client told of a disastrous first attempt at sex that left both of them unhappy. He had been at a Christian camp and the object of his desire was also inexperienced. When the two of them met at night in an empty room it was in secrecy and under constant danger of being discovered. He said the whole thing was an embarrassment, nobody got anything out of it. He blamed it on inexperience and the threat of exposure. It was a classic case of a first attempt at sex that goes wrong, and plants the seed of worry that expands and ruins the rest of his life.

Sexual Dysfunction and Regression

Before he came to me he had been to see a different hypnotherapist three times. That therapist asked the usual questions and tried regression, but it did not have the right effect. He is now in a relationship with a woman who he thinks could be 'the one' so he is putting extra pressure on himself and his girlfriend is putting on even more pressure. I couldn't see what I could do that would be different from the regression and general NLP advice that he already got.

And then I got to thinking about that first encounter. A young man, a teenager, should have no problem getting it up. That's what young men are designed for. So I asked a bit more deeply about what went on that night, and particularly about what went on just before his assignation. He revealed that he was worried about what might happen before he even got there, and that everything turned out wrong just as he feared it would.

So I started thinking about why a young lover would be fearful even before the attempt. There must have been some reason why it even crossed his mind that it could go wrong. I tested for anxiety/depression. He has a bit of Introversion and a bit of anxiety thinking, but not full depression. His father had depression. He told of a childhood where his parents divorced when he was ten and he heard them arguing all the time. I concluded that he has hyper vigilance.

Sexual Dysfunction anxiety

I think that he had childhood anxiety and that it was the existing anxiety that made the first sex go wrong, not the bad sex that caused the sexual anxiety. He has underlying anxiety that is making him catastrophize over his past sexual failure. And because he sees this particular woman as his chance at a life partner, he is putting intense pressure on himself because this one must work, or he will miss out for life. This is causing more catastrophizing thoughts, more anxiety, and she is putting more pressure on him to perform, which causes more anxiety and so on.

The interesting thing about this case is that it is not the first sexual encounter that was the Initial Sensitizing Event (ISE) and therefore regression is the wrong treatment. There was no ISE. What was there was chronic anxiety from childhood, that happens to be expressing itself as sexual performance problems.

The solution therefore is to treat the anxiety. And that's what I did.

More bad news for smokers

Smoking is bad for you in so many ways. It causes heart disease, lung cancer, skin wrinkles and emphysema. It also makes you smell, keep you addicted, and uses up all your money. But that actually is more bad news for smokers.

New research shows that smoking can prematurely age a man's sperm. It has long been known that older women have a greater risk of having children with birth defects. Apparently this also applies to men. The older the father, the more likely it is that his children will not be healthy.

The risk seems to be associated with epigenetic tags on the of the father's DNA. These DNA tags determine how active the genes are. The tags are altered by age, and diet, and now it appears, also by smoking. In fact, the correlation is so clear that scientists can now very accurately predict a man's age by examining these DNA tags. Scientists got a surprise when they matched their estimated age from the tags to the actual age of the man donating the sperm. They found that smoker's sperm showed much older tags than their actual age. The conclusion is that smoking ages your sperm prematurely.

Pregnant women should stop smoking

This is a worrying development. Older men have an increased chance of fathering children with autism and schizophrenia. It is not known if there is a connection between smoking and this, but the possibility is there.

Pregnant women are routinely advised to stop smoking when they get pregnant. This research suggests that men who want to have children should also stop smoking. Particularly if they are older men to start with.

There is some good news. Sperm is produced fresh throughout a man's life. Therefore there is a chance that if the prospective father stops smoking he may be able to reverse some of the damage.

State dependent memory

How to use state dependent memory in therapy

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went in there? Newly published research has shown that moving through a door affects your memory of what you did in the room before you moved out through the door. This is an example of state dependent memory. The things you did or thought in one place are anchored to things in that place. When you move away from that place, you leave the anchors behind. So you cannot recall what you thought and felt when the anchors were present. This has been known for a long time. It has been proved with school children. If you teach them in a classroom and test them on the material, they will have better recall if the exam is held in the room they were taught in, rather than an exam room.

I used to be a diver. It is common among commercial divers for them to realize that they need a certain part to get the job done. But when they come out of the water they just cannot remember what it was they needed. The moment they plunge back in, the memory is there, fresh and clear.

Clients can be fixed in state dependent memory

State dependent memory affects much of what we do, and how we feel. Many of our clients are dominated by state dependent thinking. It is quite common that when you go home and visit your mother say, you change how you talk, how you behave and even how you think. These behaviors are anchored on the place or the person. The associations can be so strong that you will agree to do things that you would never have agreed to normally. But once you get outside you start kicking yourself.

Quite a lot of therapy depends on breaking state dependent memories. Going on holiday for a few weeks is a very good way of forcing the associations to go into extinction. When the triggers are not there, the behavior fades. Doing something completely different, like mountain climbing, or spending a few days on a tall ship does the same thing. This is why delinquent teenagers are sent away on brat camps. Being in completely different environment with different rules, breaks the associations that were triggering their bad behavior.

So sometimes the best thing we can do for a client is to encourage them to get out of the environment they are in. Maybe it applies to you too?

False Memories Sexual abuse

False memories

You can go through your whole life blaming your own behavior on something that is not true. But if you act on false memories, they might as well be true.

I had a client today who reminded me of how pernicious and dangerous false memories are. This client was grossly obese. She told me that she used to be an alcoholic, she had eating problems all her life, she was unhappy and didn't know why.

When I asked her what she thought the reason was, she told me that she supposed it was all because she had been sexually abused. I asked when this had happened and she told me it happened at age two. I asked her how she knew that, since no one has any memory of being age two.

She said 'Well my mother told me'. I asked her what memories she had of the incident, and she said she didn't have any. I asked her 'So how do you know you were abused?' and she thought for a minute and then said 'Well, I suppose that I don't know'.

This woman has gone through her whole life being told that she had been sexually abused. It has affected everything she has done, every thought, every action. Now, I don't know if she really was abused or not, but it doesn't matter. If you don't remember being abused then effectively you weren't abused.

False memories are just as bad as real abuse

But what has happened is that every time she felt bad, every time she felt unable to cope with something, the same old reason was trotted out - 'Oh, it's because you were abused'. This belief, put there by other people, has prevented her from ever examining her own life objectively, from seeing things as they really are. The result is that she has had a belief that her life was ruined from the beginning, that there is no point in trying to improve. She blames the 'abuse' for whatever she feels, for every reaction. That has prevented her from ever getting to grips with the real source of her unhappiness.

I personally believe that child abusers should be strangled in the town square because of the damage they cause. But the well meaning people who convince women that they were abused when they were not, are equally guilty. They ruin just as many lives.

Are hypnotists today better or worse?

I was talking with some students the other day. One of them asked why we don't have such giants of hypnosis these days such as Dave Elman and Milton Erickson. They were quite taken aback when I said that the hypnotists of today are actually better than Elman and Erickson. They were even more shocked when I said that neither of them were in fact the great figures they are reputed to be.

They are both long dead so they cannot defend themselves, but the evidence is fairly clear that Elman was a stage hypnotist and did almost no therapy and that Erickson's legendary skills, are just that, a legend. There are people alive today who knew both of them, and they certainly were not regarded as infallible therapists when they were alive.

What made them major figures was the books they wrote. These gave a basis for studying their techniques and tended to sideline all the other hypnotherapists working at the time who didn't write books. I am not denying both were good hypnotists, but the scale of adulation, almost awe, has gone too far. Read some hypnosis blogs and discussion lists and you might be forgiven for thinking both were the descendants of gods.

Hypnosis Hype

The reason for this adulation is not hard to find. If you are offering a training course, do you want to tell prospective students that you will be teaching them standard hypnosis techniques, or do you want to tell them that they will be learning the secrets of the most powerful hypnotist who ever lived?

Naturally you are going to puff up the so called Master Hypnotist, and the more you boost their magical powers the more your students will like it. And since your students won't know any different, they too will go out to the marketplace and tell everyone that they have been trained in the ways of the greatest hypnotic genius ever. And so it goes on. Each new class of hypnotic learners exaggerates even more, until the whole thing takes on a life of its own and the claims reach the level of absurdity.

Past Life Experience

People come for past life regression for many reasons. My client yesterday was driven by curiosity. He was over 70 years old and had always wanted to find out if he had a past life.

He went into trance quite easily. I got him to imagine that he was lying in a luxurious chair. I deepened him twice until he has lost contact with his body. When he was well into trance I suggested that he felt like floating. Then I put him into a boat drifting down the river. As he was floating down the river I told him that he was pass parts of his life.
I told him that he would see a scene from his life in childhood that had some special significance for him. It may or may not be something he remembered, but he would see and hear everything that was going on.

Setting up for past life regression

He described a scene that was outdoors with lots of people having fun on a sunny day. He was watching it from a distance and wanted to be a part of it. This established that he was able and willing to go back into his own memories.
I suggested that the boat was going further down the river. The river narrowed and turned into a tunnel. The boat was going down the tunnel, dark and calm. I then suggested that he saw a light, or a vibration, or something else which was a guide to him. The guide took him to a place outside the tunnel for his first past life regression experience.

First Past Life Experience

He said he was in some place. I prompted him and he said it was indoors. There were chains. He was cold, there were other people there but he could not see them. He was dressed very poorly. It was very dim and the light might be coming from flames. I asked him why he was there and he said he was there for punishment. He said he was aged about 20 but did not know what the date was, or what year it was. I asked him how he felt and he said he felt depressed. I asked him why he was shown that scene, what lesson it might have for him. He said that maybe it's because I can move and I'm not actually chained.

Second past life experience

I then told him to take a deep breath and come out of that place. I suggested that the boat was going deeper into the tunnel. The walls were coming in and the water was going faster and there were waves and there was a noise up ahead. Once again, I suggested a guide appeared who took him out of there. Then I suggested he was going to come to some high place. He told me that in that place there was sunshine, the sky was blue, there was a green valley below. I asked him what was going on there. He said he was just there for the view.

I asked him what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to fly. I asked him what he called the place. He said it had no name. I asked him who he was. He said that he was a child. I asked them if it was a boy or a girl. He never answered. I asked him how he was dressed. He said he had bare feet. He then volunteered that there was bare rock all around. Then he repeated that he really wanted to fly from there.
I got him to take a deep breath to finish off that particular life.

Third past life experience

For his third life, I told him that he was in the boat and the tunnel was getting narrower and narrower and the boat was shrinking and he was shrinking until he had shrunk down to a point. I told him that this point was floating in space in the place between lives. I asked him what he could see, what he was experiencing. He said he was in a void. I pressed for more details but he only could say that there were planets there. He was floating around among the stars. I tried to find out who he was and what he was doing, but the only thing he told me was that he was young.

What past life regression is about

We talked about his experiences. I discussed with him my theory that all past life regression experiences are actually metaphors of the person's current life. We talked about his feeling of wanting to join in with other people playing, and he said that was exactly how he felt growing up. He was always on the edge of things, he never felt that he belonged with other kids. About the PLR experience with the chains, thinking about it, "it is really how I feel about my life".

He had a successful business but he really wanted to not be chained to it and retire. I asked him about the flying PLR experience. "I have had that dream before. It probably represents wanting to get away from everything."

I think this exercise sums up perfectly how the events and memories that come out and past life regression are actually metaphors for what the person is experiencing right now and their own life. It may be that they're just not willing to face them, so their mind allows them to address them indirectly.

Smoking Weight Gain

Smoking weight gain

I had an unusual client yesterday. She was very insistent that when she stopped smoking, she does not want to start eating instead. She is very afraid of putting on weight. And of something much deeper.

When we were talking about the reasons for her smoking, she hinted at various dark things in her childhood. But she was also adamant that she was not going there. She told me that she wanted me to stop her smoking. That was her number one priority. And when she has successfully done that she might look into dealing with the other things in her past. She had stopped smoking for four days when she was taken into hospital to have a stent put into her heart after having had a heart attack. In the hospital she felt great. She could clearly feel the benefits of not stopping. But as soon as she got into the car on the way home it smelled of smoke and her husband was smoking. She immediately said "give me one of those." And has been smoking continuously since then.

Reasons for smoking

We talked at length about why she smokes. She smokes whenever she is agitated, whenever she is unsure what to do, whenever she is getting stressed. Basically smoking is an avoidance mechanism. She is using cigarettes as a way of putting off dealing with whatever it is that she has to deal with. I spoke at length about finding out what it is that is driving her to smoke, what is that is making her nervous and unsure. I asked her for examples. She said "when I'm giving a presentation, when explaining things to a client". I said that after 30 years surely she should have gotten over that. I said that "this is just a clear example of the way that something is making you uncertain and unsure of yourself".

I said that we really should try to deal with the deeper issues. But she absolutely refused. I told her that I could stop anyone smoking, and I didn't want her coming back in a few weeks. If she was in a smoking household the pressure is so much stronger. Her husband smokes around her, he smokes indoors, she needs to put some pressure on him to be more supportive. He needs to recognize the danger he is posing to her. We left it at that.

Hypnosis for smoking

I suspected that she needed some willpower, some strength, some belief in her own ability to get through this. So I hypnotised her and took her to a bridge. On the bridge there was a powerful figure waiting for her to give her the strength that was missing. The figure got her to realize that she was carrying something around with her. The figure said that these were stones. She dropped the stones off the bridge. And in return the figure gave her a magic talisman.

I then reconnected her to the feeling she had in hospital, of being a non-smoker. After she had experienced what it was like to be a non-smoker, I did a metaphor of draining all the doubt out of her mind. This removed her belief that she could not give up smoking.

When she came back from trance she said that one of the stones was white and the second one was black. She said that she knew what they represented. She told me that the talisman was just a light. She went away convinced that she could stop smoking.

But I still wonder what deep secret she is holding.

1 2 3 … 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 … 25 26 27