Reflective Journal Entries: Difficult trance

From Lucy Waterhouse, with thanks

I had a client who I found particularly difficult to get into trance, a girl, A, who told me straight away that she didn’t think it would work as she has real difficulty in visualising things. 

Obviously I then tailored the session to include other senses, sounds, smells, using language and colour rather than visualising actual ‘things’. She had come with an interest in having a past life regression session and beforehand we had discussed the possibility of her unconscious mind not allowing this to happen for whatever reason and that if that was the case we could work on something else, and she picked confidence. 

The session was very difficult right from the start with her finding it very difficult to achieve a level of trance that was deep enough for the past life part to happen, so I changed tack and worked on confidence instead, knowing that even if she was not in a deep trance that her unconscious mind would be taking in everything anyway. 

She was disappointed that she didn’t have a past life experience but then told me that she had Asperger’s which made sense as to why she had found it so difficult to get into a trance in the usual way. She also told me that she wanted to come back for a different issue in the future because she wanted to deal with “her problems” before she moved abroad. She asked me to talk to Julie, one of the women who I am working for at the therapy practice and also her counselor to tell me what it was she wanted to work on. She gave both me and Julie permission to talk about this when she wasn’t there, saying that she felt uncomfortable saying It herself but wanting me to have some awareness of it the next time she comes in. Julie told me that she had been sexually abused as a child and that she wanted help moving on from that with hypnotherapy as the counselling was helpful in identifying areas to work on but wasn’t resolving things quickly or efficiently enough for her liking. I bought an Erickson book called ‘reclaiming her-story” dealing with female survivors of sexual abuse via metaphor and storytelling in hypnosis. 

I have yet to properly read this book but have had a leaf through it and it seems like it will be very helpful. I will make time to read it ASAP as I know her moving date is drawing nearer and I will be seeing her soon, though I don’t know when. I sparked an interest in finding out ways of working with clients who have autistic spectrum disorders and sensory disorders in general which is why I want so much to help my friend’s daughter with her incontinence issues.