Can’t be hypnotized

Hello,I am looking for advice.
I have used a number of self hypnosis CD’s and paid for hypnosis 1-1.
I keep trying but they seem to have little or no effect on me.
Is there something I am doing wrong? Is there something wrong with me?
Can you advise if there is some thing I could do which would remedy this?
Many Thanks

What if I can't be hypnotized? The short answer is that everyone can be hypnotised. It is simply a matter of finding the right method.

Client centered issues.

What you get is not what you expect

Part of the problem may be that you are expecting something different from what you are getting. Everyone reacts differently to hypnosis. Some people expect to get fireworks and cosmic enlightenment. Others expect to wake up totally blank and remember nothing. Some people feel weightless while others feel their limbs so heavy that they can't move. Still others jerk and twist in trance and are convinced that they can't have been in trance because they can move.

The fact is that everyone's experience is different. I know I am going into trance when my right hand twitches. I know I am going into somnambulism when I get a tingle on my upper lip. But I can also have a conversation when I am in trance.

Issues of control

As a hypnotherapist I get clients from all parts of the hypnotizability spectrum. The ones who do not go into hypnosis easily are usually people who fear losing control. They want to go into trance but when they feel themselves slipping away they instantly snap out of it.

This is often mixed in with or a part of mental anxiety. In some people their mind is always busy. They are so filled with constant thoughts, worries and panics that they cannot focus on the process. Some just drown out the words of the therapist. Others over analyse what the therapist is saying. They are both ways of protecting their mind from what will happen if they lose control.

Hypnotist centered issues

Competence

Some hypnotists just aren't very good. It takes a lot of experience to know when someone is going into trance, and when they are not. Anyone can read a script, and most people will go under. But some people need a different approach or multiple approaches to let go.

Matching the induction to the client

A hypnosis recording is a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. There is nothing wrong with recordings, but they have limitations. NLP says that people are either visual, auditory or kinesthetic. There is some truth in that. So I have to match my induction to the client. I sometimes do two or even three inductions if I don't see the signs of trance I expect to see. And in every case, I test to make sure the client is in trance before I continue with the therapy. Of you course, you can't be tested if you are listening to a recording.

How to deal with it.

The client can't do anything wrong in hypnosis. There is nothing wrong with you or your mind. You are a human being, therefore you can be hypnotized. If you don't go into trance then it is the hypnotist's fault. Everyone can be hypnotised. It might take a while, it might take several goes, but it can be done. Whether the hypnotist has the skills or the patience is another matter.

I suspect that if you have dealt with a competent hypnotist, and you have listened to multiple CDs, and you still can't go into trance, then the issue is one of control. Your mind just won't accept losing control. The test is if you have difficulty with sleep.

A good hypnotist can work with you and find a way of bypassing your loss-of-control fears. However, this might take a lot of time and a lot of money. What I suggest you do is practice a simple form of self hypnosis. This will let you experience the feeling of trance in a safe environment and under your own control. Once you mind learns that you can give up control and not die, you will be able to go into trance easily.

Self hypnosis exercise

All you have to do is to find some quiet place and do the exercise. Start by counting your breaths. On each breath out count from ten down to one until your breathing is soft and regular. Repeat it if you have to. Then count from ten down to one and think to yourself "body relaxing" on each out breath. Repeat if you have to.

Then on each out breath gently whisper or think a word. Any word. The word 'one' is fine. Or 'success' or 'trance' or anything else. The word is not important, the repetition is. Keep repeating the word until you dissociate. This means that the word will lose all meaning, will seem strange, disconnected. When you dissociate you are in the first stage of hypnosis.

Notice what the state feels like. Then practice finding that state again some other time. Practice with your word again and again if you have to. Eventually you will able to think yourself into that state without the exercise. When you have achieved that, you are successfully going in and out of trance. You can then develop from there. The CDs will begin to work and you will begin your path to change.

Smoking for distraction

Smoking for distraction is a way for people to avoid worries and bad feelings. Smoking is often a substitute for something else. My client today was unusual. He smoked fifteen cigarettes a day every day, except weekends. He doesn't smoke at all on the weekends, but he cannot give up the weekday smokes.

It is quite common to find people who only smoke at night, or only at weekends, or never when there are other people around. Many smokers can go without for long periods of time depending on the situation they are in.

This client smokes in the van on the way to work. He is a business owner in charge of several jobs where tradesmen are working independently at different work sites. All day he worries about the job, progress and what has to be done next. And that is the key to his smoking.

He is in fact catastrophizing about what could go wrong with each job. On the way there he winds himself up by imagining what he will find when he gets there, and uses smoking as a way to relieve the pressure. He is smoking for distraction. That is why he doesn't need to smoke on weekends: he doesn't have to go talk to workmen about progress on weekends.

Previous Therapy Fails

He had been to a hypnotist before many years ago. And he lit up on the way home from that session. I believe that people find it easier to modify their behavior when they understand what is driving it. In this case I found that he also had aspects of depression. His mind is always busy and he is a bit of perfectionist.

This combination means that he worries that things are going wrong when he is not there, this causes anxiety and the smoking given hem something to do to break the cycle. Now that he knows why he smokes and what he gets from it, it will be easier for him to come up with different strategies to get the same result.

In this case he decided that he would chew a pencil instead, and take a ten minute brisk walk after each site visit. That, combined with the stop-smoking trance I did with him should allow him to stop immediately.

Stop Smoking with cream of tartar?

Yesterday I was dealing with a stop smoking client. I saw her last week. I explained to her the psychology of why she smokes in order to motivate her to stop. This seems to have worked. Last week she thought she wanted to stop smoking: this week she is determined to stop smoking. And apparently, is willing to try anything and is in fact is trying everything all at once. She is using nicotine patches, affirmations, hypnotherapy and cream of tartar.

Cream of Tartar? She told me she had read on the Internet that taking a teaspoon of cream of tartar mixed with orange juice would remove all the nicotine from her body.

I had never heard of this so I decided to find out about it. After all, if it worked then I need to start telling clients about it. I quickly found a source on-line, in fact several sites described it. On examining the sites it became clear that there was just one site that all the others were using as their source. On checking that site, it became clear that there is no scientific study cited as evidence for doing this. In fact none of the websites offered any sort of proof at all. Most sites said something like 'it is said that' with no attribution and my conclusion is that they are all relying on each other.

How likely is it that Cream of Tartar might work?

It is actually Tartaric Acid, potassium bitartrate, a mild acid commonly used in baking. In very large quantities it is poisonous, but a teaspoon a day will do no more damage than altering the acid balance of your stomach perhaps and giving an incredibly sour taste to the orange juice. The sour taste is probably what influences the people who say it works. The strange taste will act as a placebo and will remind the smoker about how much they want to stop and could well have an effect. The orange juice contains citric acid, and ascorbic acid as vitamin C. And lots of sugar, so it is probably not a good mixture for most people.

I won't be advising my stop smoking clients to start drinking it.

Clients who want to fail

Some clients want to fail. Some clients are afraid of failure, others are afraid of success. Being a therapist you have to deal with whatever the client brings. You put yourself under constant pressure to get the right result. We worry about whether we have enough knowledge, enough training and whether we are good enough at all. And we are very disappointed when we fail.

We always assume the client wants to succeed too. But there are also clients who want to fail. I was reminded of this by a client I saw recently. She has a long history of drug abuse, emotional outbursts, destructive behavior and failed relationships. She is clearly unhappy, her life is out of control and she is afraid that she will attempt suicide again.

And yet I got the distinct impression that she does not want the therapy to succeed. She is willing to go through the motions, to say the right things, to pretend to go along with what other people want for her. But deep down inside she is afraid of not being able to cope if she does change.

She feels that if she gets cleaned up from drugs then she will be on her own again. She does not believe that she has the strength to survive without drugs. Stopped taking them before has always left her feeling awful. That feeling just got worse and worse over time until she no choice but to go back on the drugs and ended up more dependent than ever. She knows that stopping is not the answer for her. So she is not going to stop.

This attitude is entirely understandable. She is simply protecting herself from future pain.

What can you do when the client wants to fail?

Hypnosis and Epilepsy

Hypnosis and epilepsy worries some people, and believe that epileptics should not be hypnotized . This is not true. There is no reason why an epileptic should not benefit from hypnotherapy. There is nothing in hypnosis that would cause the onset of an attack, so there is no reason to avoid it.

There is no special procedure to use, just the normal approach. It is sensible to talk to the person about their epilepsy. Most epileptics already have their condition under control and know what to expect and what to do. All that is necessary is for the hypnotist to learn what to do in case an attack comes on during the office visit. The simplest way is to simply ask the client how to tell if they are having an attack, and what they would like you to do if one happens to strike while you are there.

Epileptics know exactly what they need and have been through it many times, so there is no great mystery: it is just something that happens occasionally in their life. The hypnotist just needs to accept that there is a remote possibility of an onset, and be ready if one happens.

It is just an illness, it has to be treated with understanding, and can be worked around. Hypnosis and epilepsy is really not a problem.

Hypnosis Script for Drinking

I was recently asked why I don't have a hypnosis script for drinking and alcohol abuse.

In my view drinking is always a symptom of something else. Smoking is a habit: drinking is a cry for help.

I have a great deal of sympathy with alcoholics and problem drinkers. In my view they are simply self medicating and trying deal with unwelcome thoughts and feelings in the only way they know how - by numbing it with alcohol. Drinking is the only tool they have.

There is no such thing as a successful script for drinking. Abusing alcohol is not a hobby or something the client wants to do. They need help to understand their own behavior. You need to find out what is causing the feelings in order to get them off the alcohol.

Therefore a script will not do it. The causes are many and unique to the individual.
The feelings are always associated with childhood upbringing so you have to get the person to go back to the origin and either do Gestalt re-modelling or try some sort of Regression to Cause.
The origins are too deep and pressures to keep drinking are too strong for a one-way hypnosis. Unless you engage in a dialog with your client's unconscious you will not find the root of it, and if you don't find the root of it then you won't be able to remove it.

That is not to say that drinkers cannot be helped by hypnotherapy. They can. There are many techniques of hypnosis and NLP that will help. However things like Regression to Cause really can't be reduced to a script. A competent hypnotherapist should be able to tailor the technique to the client based on experience and training.

I don't believe that you can use a script and expect to get lasting results.
That is why I do not offer a straight hypnosis script for drinking.

Self Hypnosis Suggestions

I received a query about Self Hypnosis suggestions:

I have a question about self-hypnosis. Is it better to give self-suggestion like:

I am now a billionaire

You are now a billionaire

Okay this is just an example I am just wondering which is better to word, in first or second person? Or should you do both within the script???

This question has been debated endlessly. No one has ever come up with an answer that satisfies everybody. It is not simply a matter of wording.

Can you do anything in self hypnosis? Self hypnosis refers to the process of putting yourself into trance. Once you are in trance, you are not actually capable of forming logical thoughts. If you can, then you are not in trance. So if you can't form coherent thoughts then you can't form sentences and the words don't matter.
Do you mean creating a recording you will listen to so that you put yourself into trance? I have never met anyone who has done this successfully. It is no problem to write out a script and record suggestions. But few people like the sound of their own voice, and since you wrote it you know what comes next and why you used those particular words. It is hard to get enough detachment to go into trance as you would if someone else was doing it.
If we are actually talking not about hypnosis but about affirmations, does the exact wording matter? Again, millions of words have beer written about affirmations and there is no clear answer.
If you have been brought up being told you are stupid and useless, then constantly reminding yourself that you are smart and capable will help to overcome your early programming. If you are an idle layabout then no amount of telling yourself 'I am a winner, I am a millionaire' will work. You just become an idle layabout with an inflated view of yourself. Changing the wording to 'You are a winner, you are a millionaire' doesn't really help.

You can play the recording (without the induction) over and over as you drive or at home doing something else and the words will eventually work their way into your subconscious. Whether they work or not is unknown. We are exposed to a massive amount of advertising but not all of it hits the mark. It is the same with self hypnosis suggestions.

The best way is to take yourself into trance with some relevant image in mind, and let your subconscious work on that for you. That process doesn't use words so the difference between 'I' and 'you' doesn't apply.

Fear of Driving Phobia removal

Fear of Driving

This phobia is fairly common. A surprising number of people get the shakes when driving over a high bridge or into a tunnel. Usually it is hard to pinpoint exactly why.

Yesterday I treated a woman who wanted to end her Fear of Driving. She said that she was OK around the back streets and normal driving. But when she got to a road with a drop off at the side, or a narrow part, she lost all her confidence.

The source of the fear

I asked when this started and she said it began about three years ago and had got progressively worse. She told me she was out driving one day when suddenly, out of nowhere, came an overwhelming sense of fear. Since that day she has been afraid of the feeling coming back. She tries to avoid driving so that she will not be exposed to feeling again.

This is a classic description of how phobia is created. You are doing something distinct like driving or flying, and then you experience an overwhelming fear, and then your mind links the fear to the activity, and you have a phobia.

Normally it is impossible to say exactly what created the link. But in this case, the woman recognised the fear. Her son had died suddenly ten years before and this was the same overwhelming pain she had experienced at the time. Something she was doing or thinking at that moment reactivated the initial feeling. The pain gets linked to the driving activity, and the Fear of Driving phobia is triggered.

Most phobias are not about the obvious activity. Fear of Driving is not about the driving, it is about not wanting to get that old fear again. The cure for phobias is to eliminate the origin of the fear.

In this case the mother had never gotten over the death of her son. She was still carrying around that dread that something else bad would happen. So the answer was to lay the old fear to rest.

Removing fear of driving

I hypnotised her and put her into a deep trance. Then I suggested that she visualize a chair in front of her. Then I gently suggested that there was someone sitting in the chair, someone who wanted to talk to her. Someone who was taken away from her and didn't get the chance to say goodbye. I suggested that this person wanted to give her one last message before going away.

I developed a dialogue saying to my client what a son would want to say to his mother. Then I let her say to him what she wanted to say. I suggest that he was reaching out to her, and most movingly, she extended her arm out to where the chair might be. And slowly, tears rolled down her face.

I finished the session by suggesting that her son had a gift he wanted to pass to her, and that he was saying "I'm OK mum. It's time to go now. I love you". He then got into a car and drove away, until the tail lights faded in the distance.

I let her come back to the present in her own time. She said to me "I feel such a feeling of relief". And that was the end of it.

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?

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.

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