Gastric band fallacy

Gastric band Hypnosis

I saw a client today who wanted me to do gastric band hypnosis on her. She slumped in the chair and told me that she had to lose weight. She acted as though the weight was something being put on her and she was a victim. Her whole attitude was that there was nothing she could do about it. Everything about her just seemed like apathy.

As I asked her about her behavior and attitudes to eating. She just sat there and expected me to believe she wasn't overeating, didn't have any problems, life was just fine. All she wanted was for me to do the gastric band thing to her. She was going to just lie there while I dissolved her fat. Basically,"Just sprinkle the fairy dust over me".

The gastric bypass hypnosis fallacy

Her whole attitude was that the weight gain had nothing to do with her. I could not get any sense that she was willing to make any changes at all, didn't need to. Just fix me and I'll be gone. I have had several clients like this. I think the whole gastric band hypnosis idea appeals to people who want someone else to do something about their behavior. They are basically looking for an effort-free magic solution.

She said she had been piling on the weight since she got married six months ago. It didn't seem to have anything to do with the actual wedding since they had been living together for seven years before that. She told me that she was on depression pills. She was a twin, and her nonidentical twin was grossly overweight. I asked about her upbringing. She told me her father was a drug addict, was narcissistic, and had mental health issues. He physically and verbally abused her mother. My client said that she was not abused, although she was frightened by all the arguing when she was growing up. She did not say very much about her mother, except that her mother spend her time trying to placate her father.

Exploring motivation to exercise and diet

I really wasn't getting anywhere with her. She was holding back on me. Not deliberately, but because she really was not in touch with herself. I discussed depression and how this affected her. She gave me conflicting views about exercise. She had been to outdoor hockey as a player this week, she had been to the gym, but still managed to be overweight. I asked her why she didn't stop eating. She said "I enjoy eating". That really was about the depth of her introspection on this. I could not get her to even start to think about her own motivation to over eat.

It seemed to me there were three possibilities. She was suffering from some genetic based issue inherited from her father and mother. Or, she was holding in a lot of bad stuff from childhood and her upbringing in an unpredictable household, and not looking at that. Maybe she was actually being influenced by the side effects of the depression medication she was taking.

Ending the session

After a lot of discussion I told her that I thought it might be a side effect the medication. I was careful to stress that in no way was I qualified and she should not change her medication, but she should discuss it with her doctor. I was hoping that seeing another person might jolt her out of her current state. Her defenses were just too good, I could not get past the barriers she put up. In fact, I could feel myself getting annoyed inside at her total stonewalling responses. Not a good response from me.

So I told her I couldn't do anything further for her at that point. She said that it had been a useful discussion because it has raised several points she had not thought of. I offered the session at no cost because I had not fixed the problem. She insisted on paying something. So it wasn't a total loss for either of us.

Should a therapist be crying?

Is it unprofessional to be crying during a session? It is quite normal for clients to cry. In fact I regard it as a help to diagnosis. It is a sign that the client's emotions must be near the surface. It makes it easier to find the right feeling to use when doing regression therapy. However therapists cry as well. A recent academic article has looked into the issue of therapists getting emotional during therapy. The article reported more than half the therapists in the study admitted becoming emotional with a client at some time in the previous four weeks.

Is detachment good?

When I started out in this business I was as damaged as any of my clients. I frequently heard stuff that echoed my own upbringing. I could listen to it with detachment, but I think the similarity to my own experience helped me understand and empathize more.

Listening was no problem. Using a script of mostly direct suggestion was no problem either. But when it came to delivering a metaphor for an individual client, the closer it was to my own issues the more it resonated with me. The result was that I found myself getting emotional along with the client.

Empathizing with your client

I was quite startled by this at first, but I later realized that it was doing me good. And it if was doing me good then it was probably doing good for the client as well. Then I deliberately started writing metaphors that would cause me to cry, because that way I knew they were good powerful metaphors. By listening to my own emotions I got better at dealing with other people's emotions.

As I got more experienced I realized that in order to get into the client's mind, I first had to imagine what they were feeling. To get real empathy, I had to generate that same feeling in myself. Once I had the feeling I would allow my mind to open up to whatever visualizations I felt might work for me. As the session progressed, I turned those visualizations into a continuous metaphor. I described the images I was experiencing internally and just allowed whatever actions and events that wanted to happen, to happen. The metaphor wrote itself. Since I had to imagine the images and actions in my mind first, of course my mind was being affected by them at the same time as the client's mind was being affected. This set up a feedback loop. The more I got into the client's feeling, the more focused the metaphor became. The better the metaphor, the more emotion it generated and that changed the metaphor to fit better.

Crying develops empathy

As I progressed, by fixing other people's problems in this way, I fixed more and more of own problems. Nowadays I no longer feel that same raw emotion to the same extent. But I think that I do in fact come close to tears with more clients, rather than fewer. Healing myself has allowed me open up to other people, to get more empathy with them. I now feel the sadness of an abusive childhood probably more keenly than I ever did years ago.

In the study, only one percent of therapists thought that they had disadvantaged their clients by showing emotion. In my case I only get emotional after the client is in trance, and so the client does not see me, since they have their eyes closed by that point.

But I often remark to them afterwards that they were not the only ones crying during that session. I think that the client appreciates sincere emotional contact.

Affirmations Suggestions Emile Coue

I have been thinking about the use of suggestion in therapy. This arose from having a discussion with someone over 'suggestion therapy'. We were arguing about what exactly is 'a suggestion?' And that got me to thinking about all the different forms of suggestion. There are direct suggestion, indirect suggestions, stories, sayings, covert hypnosis, stealth hypnosis and all the rest.

One of the most commonly used is self-suggestion, or affirmation. Affirmations have been around since Antiquity: Aristotle said 'A vivid imagination compels the body to obey it'.

Affirmations suggestions and Emile Coue

Modern affirmations started with Emile Coue (photo above). He was French pharmacist (1857-1926) who noticed that his customers got better the more he puffed up the power of the medicine they bought from him. The same medicine sold without his praise didn't seem to work so well. He believed that when willpower and the imagination were combined the results were unstoppable. He believed that conscious auto-suggestion was superior to hypnosis. He was the first person to state that "you are what you think". When you think about something, your mind forms an image of it, and your unconscious mind will strive to achieve that image. If your thoughts are always dark and negative and self-critical, then your mind will tend to dwell on that, and make you unhappy. He developed the famous affirmation 'Every day in every way I am getting better and better'. This affirmation was designed to counteract negative thinking.

Suggestion can work with the conscious mind

Coue's work showed that you don't have to access the unconscious mind to make changes, you can also make changes through the conscious mind. With affirmations, people are giving themselves suggestions while fully conscious of what they are doing. Coue taught that willpower is not enough. No amount of willpower is going to overcome negative thinking. He emphasized the need to imagine what it is that you want first. Then think of ways you can achieve that. Finally you reinforce it with an affirmation.

There is an extensive list of affirmations on this site.

Depressed for success

Depression isn't all bad

They say you should dress for success, but how about depressed for success?

Depression is usually seen as a negative disease. However, not everything about depression needs to be bad. Not that it is something you would wish on anyone: I have it myself, and I would much rather not have it.

However, a client this week reminded me that there are positive aspects to depression, although it might not seem so to some people.

This woman was successful at business, and had a good marriage. But she was so wound up all the time that she couldn't enjoy them. From being be carefree and relaxed, she now was stressed about everything. She had high expectations of herself, was driven all the time, was always looking for things that could go wrong.
She said she had been brought up in a family where she had to be a provider early on. Her step father was a drunk. As a teenager, she felt that it was always up to her to save the day. There was relentless pressure to do something.

Depressed for Success

It is no surprise that a woman with such a background would be depressed. But in this case, the depression was the driving force to her success. Depression makes you anxious about things going wrong, you worry and catastrophize about everything. In this woman's case, the worry actually drove her to take action. She did everything she could to meet trouble before it started, to always be ready. She had high standards, almost perfectionism from her black and white thinking. That combination led to success in her profession and to recognition of her abilities. From this she started her own hairdressing business. It is ironic to think that it is in fact the depression and dread of failure that has driven her to the top.

I wonder how many other people are successful as a by-product of depression?

Handicapping yourself to fail: extreme procrastination

Every hypnotist has to deal with procrastination. (Either their own, or in the client). It can be very hard to clear. Many procrastinators are really skilled at putting things off and come up with wonderfully inventive reasons for not getting on with it. But the underlying reason is fear.

Handicapping yourself to fail

One common fear is fear of being criticised for not doing well enough. The most common way out of this is to handicap yourself, usually by restricting the amount of time available to complete the task. A common strategy to get round this is put off and put off starting until five minutes past the last possible minute, and then slamming into the work and getting something out of the door by the deadline. The rationale is that you can't then be criticised for not living up what is expected because you didn't have enough time to do it properly. So in your mind, you are safe from the pain of being found not good enough.

Handicapping yourself to fail: extreme procrastination

Some people have taken this to extremes, making it a part of their life. The world chess master of the early nineteenth century from 1800 to 1820, Alexandre Deschapelles, used to take the pressure off his chess matches by giving away one or two pieces before each game. That way he handicapped himself: his opponent had eight pawns and he only had six. So if he lost it was not because of his lack of ability, it was because he had fewer pieces than his opponent. And if he won, well it just showed how good he was, but he avoided the pain of not measuring up, and therefore did not have to procrastinate about playing a match.

Eventually he became recognised as the best player in the world at the time. But then someone else came along, who beat him consistently. Deschapelles realised that he would always be beaten, so he gave up chess completely, never played another game, and took up the card game whist, later known as Bridge.

And once again he handicapped himself by wasting his highest card. He went on to be an outstanding card player but always only after imposing a handicap on himself.

This habit is remembered today in the Bridge technique known as Deschapelles Coup, beating your opponent by deliberately sacrificing a high card in order to spoil their planned strategy.

Hypnosis Hypervigilance Induction

I had a challenging client yesterday.

They say that everyone can be hypnotized but this client did her best to prove it wrong. She was very nervous about trance but started willingly enough.

I started the standard induction and when we got the 'now close your eyes' bit, she closed them, and five seconds later, opened them again. She was constantly fidgetty, touching her face, moving around, not settling down. I told her to close her eyes again, she did so and opened them again two seconds later. But I was determined to get this client into trance. I like to think I know what I am doing and at the very minimum I should be able to get anyone into trance. So I persevered.

Challenging clients don't relax

She just would not relax. She kept opening her eyes. I used the stairs induction, but she opened her eyes on the last step. I then used a beach induction with her lying on a beach relaxing and willing the clouds to disappear. Still opening her eyes. Then I did a long gentle breathing induction, and began to get some response and signs of going into trance. I then did a shortened progressive muscle relaxation and finally got her relax. I then tested with an eye catalepsy.

Hypnosis Hypervigilance

I think that the problem with this client was really hypervigilance, a fear of losing control. For people like this, the idea of me saying 'Now just close your eyes and trust me' triggers immediate defence responses that you have to work hard to overcome.

However the lesson from this is that if you keep at it, eventually everyone will go into trance.

Palliative past life regression and terminal care

I recently had a client who booked me for a past life regression session. I am always happy to do these because I am fascinated by what the mind brings up. A lot of my clients are totally convinced that they lived one or more past lives. Strangely enough, it is in the middle of run of PLR requests. I find that I tend to get a bunch of PLR clients close together. Then it may be a few months with none, followed by another bunch. I have done many past lives but it never occurred to me that it could be used for palliative past life regression.

This client asked me to listen to an online radio broadcast that he thought I should hear in order to be able to do the type of Past life regression he wanted. The broadcast covered all the normal stuff. It all seemed fairly run-of-the-mill and not particularly noteworthy. However, the speaker is an MD, a qualified surgeon specialising in cancer. He said that he has had great success working with patients who are terminally ill. He works with those patients, hypnotises them, and takes them back to one or more past lives.

Palliative past life regression

This has had an amazing effect on a lot of patients who have only a few weeks or months to live. It puts their own imminent death into context. Knowing that they have had a past life allows them to reframe their impending death as simply a one step in an endless cycle. They cease to fear death and just accept it as an inevitable part of a much larger process.

I think this is a wonderful use of hypnosis. Whether you believe in past lives or not, giving comfort to the dying in a very direct and vivid way has to be worthwhile.

Exploring the artist’s mind in hypnosis

Looking into the artist's mind with hypnosis

I had a client the other day who is an artist. She is a well respected and well known artist. She came to me to sort out some personal difficulties. In the process of interviewing her, she talked about her art and her ideas about art. She is highly intelligent with a lively artist's mind. Her art is quite avant-guard. She designs installations that visitors can walk into. It gives them a full immersive experience. Inside her art work they will find rooms with no corners, with no obvious lighting sources. Colors merge into each other. There are strange designs of wall that leave you disoriented and unable to find a way out.

And that is exactly how she described her life to me. She feels disoriented, directionless and with no way out.

We went on to deal with some of her issues, but it left me wondering whether this a recurrent theme in art, and whether with enough skill you could work out the state of the artist's mind by examining what they produced.

And whether it doesn't just apply to artists, whether what all of us produce personally and collectively actually reflects our inner states. Perhaps culture is a by-product of the collective psyche.

Changing the artist's mind

It also brings up some issues specifically related to hypnotherapy. This woman is successful precisely because her art reflects her artist's mind. What happens to her art if I take away the issues that are driving her? Am I destroying her artistic source? Will I make her unemployed? Or perhaps she will use her existing talents to produce a different kind of art? Will her new artist's mind produce a new artist's output?

The ethical implications of changing personalities and attitudes are quite profound. What happens if what I do causes a man to no longer put up with his wife's behaviour? Suppose I change a person's limiting beliefs and they go out and start a business, and fail at it? Is my hypnosis ethical?

Strategically significant customers

Clients who change your business

There are many ways of marketing hypnosis services. However marketing theory has identified what are known as Strategically Significant customers. All marketing should be focused on strategically significant customers first. To count as strategic a client needs to satisfy one or more of three requirements:

Customers with high life-time values (i.e. customers who will use the service many times in the long term). For a hypnotherapy practice this type of customer is actually quite rare. If you do your job properly they should not be coming back repeatedly!
Customers who serve as benchmarks for other customers. These are very valuable to the working hypnotherapist since these are the customers who tell their friends, and their friends' friends, and are willing to give testimonials and be references for wavering customers.
Customers who inspire change in the supplier.

These are actually the most valuable type of customer. These are clients who are willing to let you follow up. They will often tell you what they think worked well, and what did not work so well. The best type of customer is someone who is demanding and unreasonable and wants more than you are prepared to give.

That kind of customer is what forces you to improve your service, to learn more, to make changes in your product, and generally keeps you from getting complacent. Complacent providers get replaced by proactive providers.

You should follow up after every session, and keep records how your client decided to use you, and not some other service.

Healthy Body Healthy Mind

The health benefits of exercise are being demonstrated in more and more new research studies: Healthy body healthy mind. However it often difficult to get clients to be motivated to exercise, so some researchers are offering advice on that as well:

1. Get the client to compare their current level of exercise with what they used to do, to emphasize how it has changed.

2. Talk about the evidence that exercise can help with their problem, and show that exercise should be regarded as one part of their overall treatment.

3. Talk about how exercise shaped the health of their ancestors, that human beings were designed to work hard and be in constant motion, and that our current lifestyle is one of the things affecting their health.

4. Make it very clear that you expect them to start exercising more, and get them to commit to doing some specific exercise.

5. Encourage the client to identify what type of exercise will fit into their life style./Don't recommend a specific method. Point out that they can do simple things like walking and gardening to help get fitter.

6. Show them how to use motivational tools such as exercise diaries, goal setting.

7. Explain what resources are available from their local community, how to join groups such as cycle clubs and weight watchers.

8. Give clear instructions as to how much exercise they need. The usual recommendation is between half and hour and an hour a day, at least three times a week. However, not to take on too much too soon.

9. Discuss the benefits of aerobic and strength training.

10. Help the client to realise that exercise is not an all or nothing thing. Getting fit is a process, not an end, and they should expect some setbacks, and teach them how to deal with them.

I think that all therapists need to start treating the whole person.

A healthy body helps to ensure a healthy mind.

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Gastric band Hypnosis

The gastric bypass hypnosis fallacy

Exploring motivation to exercise and diet

Ending the session

Is detachment good?

Empathizing with your client

Crying develops empathy

Affirmations suggestions and Emile Coue

Suggestion can work with the conscious mind

Depression isn't all bad

Depressed for Success

Handicapping yourself to fail

Handicapping yourself to fail: extreme procrastination

Challenging clients don't relax

Hypnosis Hypervigilance

Palliative past life regression

Looking into the artist's mind with hypnosis

Changing the artist's mind

Clients who change your business

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