How to treat a phobia

I have a client coming in who wants to deal with a Phobia. I got to thinking about how to deal treat a phobia.

Phobias are learned disorders and therefore any phobia can be unlearned. Treatment for phobias are usually successful, although clearing a phobia completely may take several sessions.

In hypnotherapy for phobias therapists often use the NLP Phobia Cure, or some form of graduated exposure therapy. But there are other ways of dealing with a phobia.

Ways of treating a phobia

Graduated exposure for phobias is done by introducing the phobic person to what they fear, a little at a time, to get them used to it.

Flooding consists of surrounding the phobic person with what they fear. For example a person with a fear of knives would be taken to a room with a drawer full of knives, and knives on the bench top. This will cause them to have their reaction. Although it can be unpleasant, they will realize that they did not come to any harm. So you learn that you can be in a situation where there are knives.

Another method is Counter conditioning. This is a treatment that teaches the phobic person how to relax while in the phobia situation. By relaxing, you learn to control the panic you get from their phobia.

Ordeal Therapy is seldom used today, but it does work. The idea is to get the phobic person to be exposed to the phobia just up to the point where they want to turn away and avoid it. Then the phobic person is told to do something unpleasant. You are told to keep doing it until it gets so unpleasant that you would rather face the phobia.

Is a stage hypnosis show good for hypnosis?

This weekend I went to see a stage hypnosis show. I always enjoy these. They take me out of my comfort zone. It forces me to think about how I hypnotize people, and what I could be doing differently.

The show got off to a bad start because it started twenty minutes late but by the end everyone had a good time.

Chooseing volunteers for the stage hypnosis show

He started the audience participation with an NLP type point-and-turn- and-then-see-if -you-can-turn-further-by-imagining-you-can demo. Then a hand clasp suggestion test. Oddly enough he did not select the most hypnotizable from among these - he sat everyone down and asked for volunteers. And there were plenty. The seats on stage filled up very quickly. He then did a progressive relaxation on the volunteers. I tried to go along with the induction to see if I would go into trance but I found the music he used too loud and distracting.

But it clearly worked on the volunteers. Many were obviously zonked, but a few I had my doubts about. What was interesting to me is that like all the stage hypnotists I have seen, he did not do any testing or confirmation.

He ran a very loud show and the stunts were very vigorous. So vigorous that I observed that many of the volunteers shook themselves right out of trace. He kept them working away at various things although it was obvious to me that some were clearly not in trance. And yet, when they sat down and he counted 3-2-1 and told them they were back in trace, they all seemed to be so. So, do I need to do just that with my clients? I am still puzzling about how some of the volunteers were doing really out there stuff but still unquestionably in trance.

What you can learn from a stage hypnosis show

Maybe I should have a go at running a show of my own sometime. It certainly doesn't look particularly difficult. I know one well known stage hypnotist who started off in a band, but wasn't too good at it so changed from playing guitar to booking other acts and made a living at that. Later he branched out to booking other types of act, including hypnosis shows. He used to watch the hypnotist he booked because he enjoyed it. And then, one night the hypnotist did not show up. Instead of cancelling the show, my friend took to the stage himself and did what he remembered of the routines. He had never hypnotized anybody up to then, and now he was hypnotizing a whole room! He never looked back and built a new career for himself.

A lot people think that stage hypnosis is bad for the hypnotherapy industry and put the wrong idea into people's heads. I disagree. When it done well it lets the public see a real hypnotist and experience hypnosis for themselves. I think it mostly gives a positive image of hypnosis.

Overall it was a fun night and very professionally done. My wife loves these things. And, to top it off, we won first prize in the raffle! Over $400 worth of services from local businesses. I love hypnosis!

ADHD and ADD

A therapist wrote to me about ADHD and ADD

Hi Dave,
I've just got your scripts book and I'm exceptionally pleased with how the flow and language and just everything works.

Although I've only used the nail biting script with a single client I'm confident it was a slam dunk.

I am planning on focusing my effort on clients with ADHD and ADD. I was hoping to find some scripts on that. Tonight I attended a meeting of ADDers and realized that everyone's perception of their problem was 'uniquely their own' perception. So nothing appears to be straight forward.

I was wondering if you could offer any insight into how to pursue this issue?

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My reply was:

ADD is a strange disorder. There are so many reasons for it that it is hard be sure what to do in every individual case.

Some children are genetically disposed to it and have physical brain problems.

Others are reacting to chemicals in the stuff they eat and drink, or the medication they have been given.

There are children who are just boisterous kids and are acting the way kids do.

Some children are normal kids who are being affected by over-zealous parents.

Some children have been trained into it through bad parenting skills, and let do whatever they want, and now they are out of control.

My approach is to take it very carefully.

I always pay more attention to the parents.

What to do about it

If the kids are in category one and two there is not a lot I can do to help.

Kids in category three and four need two things addressed. The kids themselves are under great stress because everything they want to do naturally is being scrutinized and forbidden and punished. I treat those children for anxiety and stress and do a lot of self esteem work. I allow the kids to realize they are normal and it will all work out for them.

The other thing I try to do is to treat the parents. If they can't get their kids to act the way they would like, then change what it is they like! You can work on the parents to realize that their child's behaviour falls on some part of a very large spectrum so they feel comfortable with that level of behavior, to accept what they see and to be relaxed around it.

So my advice to look at the total environment of the child, and always consider a multiple approach.

Stopping inappropriate behavior patterns

High expectations is often what drives inappropriate behaviour patterns. I had a client yesterday who is a successful businesswoman. She came to see me because she has become aware that she is getting trapped into a pattern of behaviour that she doesn't like, doesn't want, and that is threatening her marriage.
What she has is a pattern of sudden aggression towards others. She runs a successful hairdressing salon and manages 10 staff. Over the years she has learned to control her aggression with respect to customers and staff. But her problem now is that she's being aggressive towards her husband over real or imagined incidents.

The origin of the problem

Her mother had married a very argumentative man. They separated when my client was four years old. My client remembers even at four years old asking mommy "when is that bad man leaving?" Her mother then remarried, this time to a man who was physically abusive, as well as being verbally abusive. My client grew up in this dysfunctional household and remembers many occasions when she had to intervene between her stepfather and her mother. Her mother was passive and always tried to calm the situation down, but usually was not successful.

My client described an incident that was typical of her behaviour. One day she came home to find that her husband had thrown out some spring onions. She had been expecting to use these for some diet that she was on, and now could not.
This triggered an immediate rage. She accused him of trying to sabotage her, of having no concern for her feelings or her needs, of being totally selfish. But strangely enough, even while she was going through her rant, part of her mind was saying "why are you doing this?"

Indication of inappropriate behavior patterns

This "split attention" indicates an inappropriate behaviour pattern in action. All behaviour is designed to keep you safe. The sudden aggression is designed to back off danger and keep the person safe. My client learned in childhood that the only way to be safe, to keep the threat away, was to go full at it.

My client's stepfather was manipulative, abusive and constantly trying to put others down. Over several years she had learned to recognize the signs of a dangerous situation before it even happened. She discovered that what worked to stop it was to unleash her own aggression. Over time, this became her default behavior.

What is happening now is that she is identifying or imagining situations in her current life which matched the threat that came from her stepfather. And that then causes her to fire off her own defence mechanism. Unfortunately, it is now being directed at people who are completely innocent. And of course these people resent it deeply because they don't understand where it's coming from. In particular it is affecting her marriage. Her husband is quite baffled as to why she suddenly flies into a rage and then five minutes later acts as if nothing had happened.

Therapy to get rid of inappropriate behavior patterns

NLP pattern interrupts depend on being able to recognize and stop the behavior. The problem is that very often the damage is done by the time the pattern is recognized. What I try to do is isolate and destroy the trigger first. And then substitute a different behavior.

In this case I got the client to put itself back into the feelings that she had with the spring onions incident. What we were looking for was the initial feeling, and not the reaction to that feeling. I then used metaphor replacement to allow her to deal with that feeling.

After considerable prompting, she said that the feeling was like a red square with grey smoke coming out of it. I then explored all the different aspects of that red square. For example where the sides straight? Were the corners sharp? How thick is it? And so on. She quite rapidly transformed the square into an outline. Then she successfully made the outline disappear.

The next stage then was to remove the inappropriate behaviour pattern. I took into a fairly deep trance and told her that she was in charge of her inner mind. I got her inner mind to search for the thing that was causing that aggressive behaviour. Eventually her mind found it, and with my prompting, she was able to take it out of that place. It appeared to her as a wooden ball. This ball shattered and released all of its contents as a liquid. I got this liquid to drain down her body and then run out through the soles of her feet.

The final stage was to go back to the place where that wooden bowl had been, and fill it with something else. I asked her to think of something good that she could put in that place was represented a different feeling. This meant that if the feeling was ever triggered again the inappropriate behaviour pattern would be replaced by a different feeling.

Fixing the ‘Perfect Life’

I had an interesting case today. The client was a young woman who was successful at business and had a good marriage. But she was so wound up all the time that she couldn't enjoy them.

She said she used to be carefree and relaxed, but 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 her step father was a drunk. She felt that had to be a provider from an early age. She felt that it was always up to her to save the day.

Metaphor therapy

When describing how she felt when things were stressful at the business she owned she said 'I feel the walls are falling in'.
I used this as a starter for metaphor therapy. I put her into a light trance and got her to associate into that feeling. She reported that she felt two walls around her: hard and cold, smooth, grey concrete, like a tunnel, ground smooth. I got her to imagine changing the walls little by little and finally, getting the walls to crumble. Now that the walls were gone she could enjoy the ride.

Then I did another metaphor release on her feelings of panic. She said she felt it everywhere. I asked her where she felt it most. 'In my arms'. I worked on that and she reported that she felt it as black rectangles in her arms. They were giving a tingly anxious feeling. The edges were soft, light warm. I asked her to imagine a a potter, and how the potter moulds and stretches the material. That metaphor allowed her to think of change and she was able to get rid of the rectangles.

Learnings

We ran out of time, but I was left wondering about her high standards and if it was actually perfectionism and black and white thinking.

I usually make the client sit up properly in the chair and do an induction that at some point usually includes a progressive relaxation from head to toes. This client was a young woman, and she clearly felt comfortable curled up in my big leather chair. So I decided to go ahead with her as she was. I did a breathing induction and she went into trance normally.

Maybe in my training I picked up that an induction should be a formal thing, and I need to loosen up a bit?

Hypnotizing a difficult client

It is said that there are no difficult clients, only unprepared therapists. Well I had a difficult client today.

She presented with social anxiety. She had the usual feelings of getting panic attacks when talking in company, embarrassment when she thinks people are looking at her. In addition she complained of getting a pain in the neck when she thinks people might see her. Clear evidence of psychosomatic reaction.
She blames it on bullying at school. Everything was good in primary school but when she went secondary school she felt not as good as the other girls and shy and got bullied.

Try the standard approach

The obvious way forward was regression to deal with the old bullying. Started to get her into trance. No way. I decided to be subtle and tried to teach her self hypnosis.
We had to stop because she said the light was too bright.
So I tried hypnosis. Said she didn't feel anything with a countdown.
She said she couldn't visualize anything at all.
Then I did a kinesthetic induction, since she couldn't visualize.
I succeeded in getting eye closure.
I took her into regression but she said she couldn't get any feeling and couldn't remember anything.

She couldn't visualize anything. Nothing at all.
I tried talking to her unconscious mind. From her answers it was clean that she was not in trance.

Clients don't come more difficult than this. She gave absolutely no cooperation, no visualization, no feelings, no memories. I was baffled.

So try something else

I wasn't going to give up. I tried eyes open non-trance Metaphor Therapy. Still said she said she couldn't feel anything. Nothing came to mind no matter how much I tried to prompt her. Then got her to talk about what was worrying her. Finally we got it down to the cause. She is over critical of herself and thinks that everyone else will be critical too. Tried to work with that. Then started going round in circles.

Finally, the truth

Then she said she had very high standards.
And procrastination.
After two hours I finally realized: she has depression.
I tested for the classic symptoms of depression and confirmed that she has it.

That is why nothing worked. She has all the symptoms, but doesn't have an emotional problem. She is one of the millions of people with undiagnosed depression who have no idea of the real root of their problems.

I wonder how many other 'difficult clients' are actually just not aware of their real problem?

Can you hypnotize someone who is stoned?

A client asked: Can you hypnotize someone who is stoned?

Cannabis as pain relief

In this case, my friend is a stoner [cannabis]. He suffers something akin to restless leg syndrome. The grass is not the problem. Lol. He has a condition where his muscles, especially his thighs/quads, are drum tight, permanently pumped full of anxiety and tense to the point that they are literally sore to touch 24/7. It certainly detracts from his enjoyment of life.

He's been to doctors, osteopaths and acupuncturists, et al. However, not one of them can find anything outwardly wrong with him. I'm figuring it is psychosomatic, though that makes his 'condition' no less serious. It's a major problem. Anyway, I'm going to work with him using relaxation scripts. Getting back to the cannabis use. Is it silly to attempt to hypnotise him while he's a bit stoned? I'm figuring it's what he uses to relax and obviously I need him to relax. I mainly use progressive relaxation induction, but if you stop to think about it, he's unable to relax his muscles. I know there are other inductions, but he's still unable to relax, by and large. I figure the grass might take the edge off, so to speak.

Can he take cannabis before hypnosis?

Can you think of any reason he can't have a puff or two before our session? If a person has restless leg syndrome (which is the closest malady to the one he seems to have), then it might actually be useful to tell them to imagine they are a little stoned whenever they consciously think that they want to stop the painful sensation. Grass is obviously what he uses to remedy his pain. But he wants to cut down or even stop using. I think that my approach is a stab in the dark, but I just wanted your expert opinion. Can you think of a better script than one simply for relaxation, please? Of course, I will use metaphors and the likes, but in the end it's just about relaxing and masking pain, right?

How to hypnotize someone who is stoned?

I replied: There can be problems inducing trance when the client is stoned. People who are high on marijuana have difficulty focusing on anything. Regular users report that their mind keeps wandering away and they lose track of what they are thinking about. A client who is really stoned probably could not concentrate enough to follow the instructions.

On the other hand, just taking one or two puffs to take the edge off their anxiety probably would have no effect. I regularly induce people who are on Prozac and other prescription drugs.

However, I don't think a relaxation induction is the right way to go about it.

I would try a breathing induction. Get him to dissociate by focusing on his breathing. Just be aware of the breathing. When you have him breathing gently and rhythmically then suggest he thinks of a word. Any word will do. Or suggest a word, like 'eagle' or 'dolphin' or something he might associate with free-ness and might prompt his imagination to go into a visualization. Then tell him to silently repeat the word on every out breath. As he breathes and repeats the word he will start to go into a light trance. He should start visualizing something without you telling him to. Then tell him he is in the first stage of trance. Tell him the next stage is to welcome his own inner mind. Tell him as he breathes his mind is opening, letting go of something, and he can get in touch with that mind. Suggest he might be feeling different.

Self convincing in hypnosis

Then tell him that this inner mind is powerful, looks after him, controls his mind and body. Tell him to ask that mind to demonstrate its power by focussing on his eyes. Tell him that mind can take over his eye muscles, can show the power by making it impossible for him to open his eyes. That his eyes feel as if they belong to someone else and he just cannot open those eyes. Then invite him to test that his inner mind has achieved this. When he can't open his eyes, he is in trance. Job done. No mention of relaxing; and using his own tendency to clamp down.

So once he is in trance what are you going to do? Just relaxing isn't enough. Presumably he does that on his own when he goes to sleep.

I think you should get him, in trance, to visualize his tense muscles, or the whole business of tension, how he feels it, does it. Then get him to verbalize what image comes to mind. Get him to expand and detail that image. Then get him to experience the thing changing, gradually, in subtle ways to become something else. Gently lead him by oblique suggestions to get the thing to shrink, or corrode or gradually decay and disappear via some other process.

Should work.

Life coach may not be what they say they are

Beware of the life coach

I had a call today from someone asking if I could refer them to a life coach. I had to tell them that I did not know any life coach that I would inflict on anybody. All the ones I had ever met were losers trying to tell other people how to live their lives. There might be genuinely useful ones out there, but I have never met them.

I was once a member of the local Chamber of Commerce and it seemed to me that most of the membership was made up of Life Coaches and Personal Finance Advisors. They appeared to be there for the sole purpose of marketing to each other. It also seemed to me that not one of them knew the slightest bit about what they were talking about. When I asked those 'Life Coaches" how much money they had in the bank, or what kind of car they drove, it was immediately obvious that they were complete amateurs. In fact most them had taken up these 'professions' because they had lost their jobs in the downturn. They had to do something to make money so this seemed like a good way to make a living.

Your Life Coach and the Management Sciences Paradox

It reminds me about what is known as the Management Sciences paradox. This says that the people who go into professions are the ones who should never be in that profession. The basis of the paradox is that people are attracted to study the things they feel weakest about. For example, when I was doing my psychology degree it was clear that most of the students were secretly hoping to find out what they feared what is wrong with them. And in my estimation all of the staff had psychological issues of their own.

People who are chronically disorganized, for example, realize they have a problem and begin to search for ways to not be so disorganized. So they learn more and more about what makes people disorganized and how to be less disorganized. They end up knowing more about disorganization than anyone else, but they are still disorganized. But when it comes to selecting people to teach about disorganization, who gets the job? The person who has studied it most - the person who is in fact fundamentally disorganized.

In this way you end up with Behavioural Scientists who alienate everyone they meet, time managers who are always late, therapists who secretly believe they are no good, and life coaches who are hopeless losers.

Body Parts Therapy for smoking

Body Parts Therapy for smoking is an unusual but effective form of hypnosis treatment. While in trance you invite each part of the body to speak and say what it wants.

The theory is that you can separate the unconscious mind and its connections to the body, from the conscious mind. Therapists who employ this technique believe that each part of the body, each organ, has its own awareness. Each part works with every other part in order for the whole organism to function correctly. If one part is functioning badly then this affects all the other parts. This will cause dissatisfaction in all the parts that depend on it. Those parts will want to voice their disapproval.

Listen to your body

Therefore, the way to get all your parts working in harmony is to listen to them. To listen to them you have to get them to talk. And that is exactly what the therapist does. The therapist puts the person into trance and then asks the subconscious mind to allow each part to speak. This

So in the case of a smoker, for example, the lungs are being affected by the smoker's behaviour. Allowing the lungs to talk will allow them to complain about how they're being treated. And if the lungs aren't working properly then the heart isn't working properly, and other parts of the body aren't working properly either. Each of these parts has its own agenda, its own opinion, and they need to let the unconscious mind know how they feel.

How to use body parts therapy

You get the client to listen to his lungs. Then to listen to his heart. You tell the client to repeat what these organs are saying. Ask the client to listen and see if there are any other organs, or any other parts, that want to have a say about smoking. It is also quite common to have a dialogue between the various organs. Once the organs have voiced their complaints, get the client to apologize for abusing them. Tell the client to ask forgiveness of the organs. Wait until the organs have replied. Then get the client to promise that he will never abuse them again by smoking.

Once that has been negotiated tell the client to listen again to the organs. The organs will be cheering and applauding and encouraging. Use this to make the client feel good about stopping smoking. The client knows that every part of him is rejecting smoking. All of his organs are telling him that smoking is killing him. (This is a variation on Spiegel's stop smoking method). The client now knows that every part of him is supporting his efforts to stop.

Through suggestion build up the client's belief in his own ability to succeed. And then suggest that every part of him will revolt against him if he ever starts smoking again. Tell him that his organs will make him feel sick if he even thinks about smoking.

This is usually enough to turn off even the most determined smoker.

Spontaneous hypnotic regression

I had an interesting client at the weekend. This man had a very powerful job in a major company. He gave presentations as part of his job. He is confident about how to do them, he has never had a problem with one, he is good at them. Yet he gets anxiety about them. He has had this anxiety for years.

Logically he knows that there is nothing that he fears about giving presentations. Logically he knows that even if it all turned out wrong he could still recover and do a good job. And yet he is struck with chronic anxiety.

Looking for the initial sensitizing event

I put him in trance and got him to focus on the anxiety. I asked him to imagine he was about to give a presentation and to allow the feeling he gets to come into his body.

He had difficulty getting a strong feeling. The feeling was there but very diffuse.

I decided to deepen him to get down to a really profound level of trance. I used a new deepener I have developed. You imagine that as you relax yourself a cloud in the sky gets thinner, and keep relaxing more deeply until the cloud has gone.
A few iterations of that process got him very deep. I told him to look for the feeling and turn it into an object. He struggled to sense anything but then became aware of a cloud. I tried to get him to develop the cloud, but it was just a cloud. And then he said, 'I sense there is something else'. I followed that idea and then said he was getting a feeling of something detaching. I encouraged him to let that happen, to just let go and allow it to progress any way it wanted. At this point, I was very careful not to pressure him or suggest anything that he might do or see or feel. I used careful clean language all the way.

Finding the initial sensitizing event

Then he got various images. He couldn't quite make then out, like a gallery of photographs. I suggested he just let them go and see what happens next.
Then he got a feeling of a picture of himself as a boy in school uniform and a cap. We allowed this to develop for a while. He couldn't determine whether it was a feeling or a picture. Then he got a memory a teacher, of being hit with a ruler by the teacher for using his left hand. He is left-handed and he remembered being hit on his left hand to encourage him to use his right hand. He then went into this memory and felt the fear of that child, the unfairness of it, the feeling of not being able to get away, or to able to do anything about it. And the anxiety. He hated going to school after that. He had a memory, or maybe it wasn't, of his parents talking to the teacher, but he could not see the teacher's face, or anything else about it, so he wasn't sure if it was a real memory or not.

Spontaneous Hypnotic Regression

He had developed spontaneous hypnotic regression. It was never suggested to him that he go back in time to find the source; this arose completely from his own mind. He had found the source of his anxiety.

He was clearly in a regressed state, so I used the standard method of dealing with it. I asked him to find some way to make it right for that child, to make the child triumph in the situation. "Find some way that the child can get out of that situation and be a winner". Again spontaneously, he put himself into the situation as an adult, helped his own child-self deal with the problem, effectively did the INNER CHILD work himself by going back and making it right.

I then added a part of leading the child out of there and growing him up the current age with that success in place and that was it. Problem fixed.

I had heard of spontaneous regression to the initial sensitizing event but I have never seen one before. This was probably how the technique was discovered originally.

Accidental links to spontaneous hypnotic regression.

This case shows that many of the problems that arise in later life are actually caused by accidental linkages back to unresolved problems earlier in life. Fear of Flying clients usually know that there is no real danger in a flight, but at some point they felt afraid in an aircraft and that linked back to an earlier unresolved fear. From then on every flight triggers, not the fear of flying itself, but the original childhood fear.

I think this client was the same with his presentations phobia. At some point in some presentation he had felt a tremor of fear, and that had triggered the school room fear, and from then every presentation linked back to the childhood fear. I believe that clearing the childhood fear will have cleared his adult fear.

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