Reflective Journal Entries: Multiple Sessions?

From Lucy Waterhouse, with thanks

I am finding to my amazement that I am getting clients booking to see me for multiple sessions! Not just booking them, but coming to see me, coming back and reporting huge improvements and recommending me to other people in their network who are also coming for support. 

I have had several returning clients now, one has been a woman who has stopped smoking. I knew that it wasn’t going to work to do it all in one go as she was very clear right from the start that she wasn’t prepared to just stop. So I worked with her over about four sessions to completely address her need for nicotine and also the habit of smoking as a physical behaviour. 

She has been back four, maybe 5 times and we have built up a good relationship. She is very streetwise and I have found that I have had to adapt my style and language to fit her, as I think coming over all academic and wordy would just have alienated her and made the hypnotherapy less accessible to her. Working with her at her level- and she is a very intelligent woman, who has not had the privilege of having access to education or a lifestyle that has brought out the best in her in an academic way, but who is incredibly driven and resourceful and passionate. 

We found plenty in common with each other and it was obviously something that she felt worked and was producing results as she kept coming back! I am expecting to see her for her fifth and final session in the next few weeks if he books it but have high hopes that she has kicked the habit for good after our last session where I used metaphor as described in my workbook, blowing the addictive behaviour and feelings into a balloon and watching it float away, enjoying the scenery and her kids and the trees that are the lungs of the earth, bringing life giving oxygen to all of us. She was particularly moved after this session and very motivated throughout all of our sessions as she had lost her mother to lung cancer through smoking at a young age and didn’t want her ids to go through the same. She also had her oldest child being very supportive of making these changes and I regularly brought her children into her hypnotherapy as a source of inspiration, future pacing her and telling her how proud her kids are to have a mother who only breathes clean air. She has enrolled into a mixed martial arts programme and her asthma has abated significantly and she feels (she told me!) that she has a whole new lease on life and had no idea how much time she spent in her addiction, smoking and thinking about smoking, how many late night runs to the off license for cigarettes etc. Again, well done here and I am thankful you have escaped the trap that ensnares many of the one hit wonder and ‘it didn’t work first time’ syndrome. Having such a good comprehension of addictive behaviour and empathy is priceless thank you.