Hypnowoman

Saturday, 15 July 2017

Insults and clients...

INSULTS ONLY UPSET US WHEN... on some level of our being we believe them to be true. ‘On some level of our being’ means it could be out of our awareness, that this may be a fear about becoming fat, having remembered being teased as being fat at school, or simply a reflection of our own judgements as that is as bad as it could be for us to be that which we so despise.

Using metaphor here and some dissociation for the upsetting comments from mom to ease processing.

Jennie: So regardless of what anybody says beyond that, you know, family and friends saying things like, ‘don’t be stupid, look at you, you are fine’ (So now she’s fat AND stupid right?). Fat is an issue. One way or another, it is an issue for her, that’s what causes the upset, why her unconscious carries it with her into other parts of her reality, instead of dismissing the comment as irrelevant.

You could say nobody really MAKES us feel upset, it is our reaction to the comment that is disturbing. We only get upset if we take it on board and judge ourselves just as harshly as the outsider.

How much do you know about how your mom perceived her body as a child and how she was brought up by her mom? Rather than interrogate you about that(!) I want you to almost unconsciously take that on board to balance what is happening with you, sometimes when she is saying these things to you just be curious about ….

Client: about where that came from….

It is absolutely great when the client finishes the sentence for you, and in the correct manner too!

Jennie: Yes, because these things tend to get filtered down through generations and probably, I know I cannot say this with absolute truth, though probably her attempts to make you the perfect physical specimen have been kind of misinterpreted in her own mind. Her endeavours to make you as healthy as possible and for you to be physically perfect have maybe come out in the wrong way. She may have had the best of intentions though it has not come out right. No mother would intentionally screw up their child!

Client: No, you are right.

Jennie: Well, you know, nobody teaches us to be a mother, we draw on whatever resources we have and sometimes we may overdo something because it was a big thing for us when we were young and we want to ‘save’ our child from the same torment, though who knows what other imbalances might be created along the way.

We draw on our own experiences of being a child and we get to that point when we catch ourselves saying something that our mothers used to say to us…..

Client: Oh I know! I’ve done that! (laughter)

Genuine good humour is such a valuable tool, it disintegrates (literally) the negative energy and ‘breaks state’ when enough information has been processed on a particular subject.

Jennie: How well do you sleep. Do you relax well? How about exercise?

Client: I go through phases. I used to like walking. In February this year I joined a ladies’ cycling club. With all the rain we had I stopped going as regularly and then altogether.

Jennie: Did the group stop?

Client: No, they still went but I didn’t fancy going in the rain. And I am not good in the heat at all and being overweight it has been worse. It seems to have gone by the wayside … I am thinking of joining the gym now.

There is contradiction here, so is it the damp and cold that hinders the activity or the heat? No need to bring contradictions to the surface, the client’s mind is aware and that is enough. Notice my next comment, introducing the idea of enjoying a physical activity.

Jennie: What will you enjoy at the gym?

Client: Well I…… I don’t enjoy the gym. When I first started cycling I remember saying I had finally found the exercise that I enjoy. Jenniehough I think I have got some sort of mental block about it at the moment.

Switching modalities now, from feeling to visual. She knows she has a block and that’s good. Notice the eyes will lift from looking down to searching up into the visual field.

Jennie: What is your bike like?

Client: It’s an old one that was made up for me and it does the job. I was even wearing the clip on shoes. I did the Devon coast to coast in April and was doing 70 miles in one day. But again, I have got this attitude of being all or nothing. I either stick to a diet or pig out. I am either doing lots of exercise or no exercise. I do tend to push myself and then forget I am not the same as I used to be. I push myself to the boundaries and my mum will tell me not to overdo it. I think that’s where I trip up because I end up exhausted.

Recognising within herself now that mom DOES care!

Jennie: Have you always been this hard on yourself?

Client: I don’t know! (laughter) Yes, I think so!

Jennie: So, standing beside yourself now if you could just now see this situation in an objective way. If this were your daughter talking to you saying these things, what would be the advice you would give to her?

Doing some ‘gesalt’ work now to aid processing.

Client: Chill out!

Jennie: [impersonating her] I DO chill out! If I chill out too much mom I won’t do any cycling at all so don’t tell me to chill out!

Client: I know what I would say, but if someone were saying it to me I suppose I would say, well, ‘how do you do that?’ I would say ‘just take it slower, don’t charge in ….’

Jennie: So this is the time to be gentle on yourself. You see, I am not expecting an answer, in fact if there were an answer I would think I had got all of that wrong then! (laughter).

The fact that there is not an answer means that it is not available to you through your conscious awareness. Your unconscious knows. It’s like your unconscious is sitting there saying, ‘I have known for years!’ (laughter) ‘You haven’t listened to me have you! You do know that there is a mechanism within you that will balance all of this out.

You have realised that it’s all or nothing with yourself as you have described it. So let’s make it quite ridiculous for you now. Let’s suggest that instead of dieting religiously for six months and then having two years off (laughter), that, say, you experiment in your mind now with dieting for one day and having the next day off. Because, well, what is the difference?

Client: Yes. Ok.

Jennie: So, being the personality that you are at the moment, going on past strategies, on the first day you would have a couple of lettuce leaves (laughter), cycle 70 miles, (laughter), and wake up in the morning saying, ‘oh right, today’s my fat day, I can eat whatever I want!’. So, what is it, what is it that you would look forward to eating?

Client: ohhhh, chocolate. Sweets, cake, biscuits.

Important information now, establishing what, specifically, are the changes in eating habits that will be of most use and promote the most noticeable changes in behaviour.

Jennie: Particularly what chocolate?

Client: I like it all!

Jennie: And biscuits, what biscuits in particular?

Client: I like them all. If I can’t make my mind up I will just take everything.. You know, like the vending machine at work in the morning break, a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar and going back and having another chocolate bar.

Jennie: And would you have had your healthy sandwiches with you at work?

Client: Yes, I probably would have taken fruit with me. And yoghurts. I would be prepared, but would still want them.

Jennie: So how would that affect how you felt, from having the chocolate bar and the crisps and then returning for another chocolate bar?

Client: It’s almost like physically you feel better because you are giving yourself that buzz, you have satisfied that need, but mentally, I know I have kind of sat there and weighed up who is there in the room (God it’s terrible) because you don’t want everyone to know that you have had two bars of chocolate…

Do you know what the client means? Note how we deal with SHAME in the PART5

Shame is the worst part of being overweight...

Client is admitting shame. Important for the therapist to realise that client will be using the term ‘you’ to dissociate and presume that everyone else shares same dilemma, therapist knows statements do not apply to them. Beware of being hypnotised by your client!

Jennie: So this is ‘shame’

Do you remember the adverts presented by the celebrities of the time eating oozing fresh cream cakes seductively saying the slogan ‘naughty, but nice’? And how about the pretty young girl in the field eating the chocolate flake? So you can forgive yourself on this score, because you see you did not DECIDE on these actions. Consciously you planned to eat the healthy sandwiches and yoghurts you had prepared for yourself.

Unconsciously, which became a habit at a certain point in time, what you were perhaps looking for was the excitement, the fulfilment of desire, the ‘getting away with it’ even. It wasn’t about the nutritional content of the foodstuffs though it is time for me now to draw my graph.

You may know this though it is always good to bring it through to consciousness. When you wake up in the morning your blood sugar level will have stabilised.

I am now drawing a graph to illustrate the exaggerated peaks and troughs of blood sugar levels throughout the day of a sugar addict.

Client: Yes

Jennie: Everything you have learned in the past is useful; though now is a new time. I want you to begin to relate to your body as a biochemical machine. Which is what it is, and to understand now what happens physically within the body. After this session your mind is going to be back in control, after you now realise how your body has been affected chemically by these behaviours.

To assist with that I shall draw the graph. Most times when you get up in the morning you have had something sweet. Cereal with sugar that you say you cannot eat without Anything sweet, marmalade, jam, sugar etc (and this is not saying that any food is ‘bad’ this is just for understanding what happens chemically to you) will shoot your blood sugar right up. This will feel good.

You will have an abundance of energy, your physical self will have this increase in energy and your body will not need to break down any fat into glucose which is what happens when you break down fat, the fat turns into sugar. Even if you were a body builder and all you ate was protein, eggs and steak all the time, your very clever body would convert the excess protein into sugar. It would be a harder task for it to do, but it would. It is a survival mechanism. If you have freely available sugars just go into your bloodstream and elevates it dramatically.

You know that your body is always aiming for balance, so if you have excess alcohol it would be striving to purify the system and stabilise it once again. Your body is always striving for balance and to be ‘normal’ so what it does here, is that it releases insulin to bring about that stability as quickly as it can. If you have a lot of sugar, hopefully there is going to be a lot of insulin unless you are heading towards being diabetic. Which then means you may experience a drop in that energy, it’s not really a drop, though compared to the elevated levels you have experienced it seems like an unpleasant place to be.

This coincides with your mid morning break. There is memory within every cell, the latest scientific research by Candace Pert (discoverer of the opiate receptor) proves so. So it is as if your very body then remembers how good it felt when you had the chocolate bar last time and guess what?

Client: Wants it again!

Jennie: To begin the cycle again. Yes. The signals will be going back up into your brain to say we want to feel that energy again and your instinct will be to go back to the vending machine.

There is also, coupled with this, a kind of wave permeating from way back when of all that deprivation coming flooding through you, that now you are a grown up, now your mom’s not here to watch, almost represented by those others around you, there is now a naughtiness that I can do what I want and it’s my money anyway…….. etc.

Your experiment then would be, because don’t trust what anybody says, don’t believe everything I say, do this for yourself and find your evidence. Test it out for yourself, if you woke up tomorrow morning and had eggs instead of cereal you will not get the up and down of the blood sugar - nuts are good too. Then just see if your appetites are different. Relate to food as if it were friend or enemy, rather than blaming yourself for the cravings.

I am sensing now that I have enough from the client to work with, so now my voice is becoming more assertive, more commanding and the hidden commands are coming through, to benefit the client who is looking for direction. ‘… believe everything I say, do this for yourself’

Jennie: Tell me how different you feel your behaviour needs to be at this point in time in order for you to be the physical size and shape you want and what it is specifically you would want to be different from this moment onwards for you.

More commands, ‘.. your behaviour needs to be [different] … to be the physical size and shape you want…. You want to be different from this moment …. For you. Establishing need for change whilst empowering client to do this for herself. Requiring client to be specific as to what changes need to be in place.

Client: I want to be more in control. I feel I am at the mercy of my emotions or cravings or mixture of both. It is always such a big issue. Every time I am eating I am either feeling self righteous or guilty and I don’t want it to be such an issue for me anymore. I want to feel easy around food and make the right choices naturally.

Jennie: Can you remember a time when you did eat naturally?

Client: I went on my first diet when I was 18. Prior to 18 I didn’t have an issue with food

Jennie: … and you didn’t have an issue with weight?

Client: That’s right

Jennie: So it began when you were 18 then. So for those years before there were times when you didn’t even want to come in for tea, or you wanted to stay outside on your bike, did you ride a bike when you were young?

Client bringing up the fact that pre dieting, everything was fine physically and emotionally with food. It begs the question as to why the first diet was embarked upon though we trust unconscious has spotted that one too…. Putting the client now into a suggested situation that she can challenge or agree upon, though main idea is to return to positives of pre diet experience and re-establish.

Client

Oh yes

Jennie

… and you just wanted to stay out there on your bike and somebody was running after you with a cardigan (laughter) and you didn’t even know it was cold?

Client

(laughter)No!

Jennie

So you will know, by watching your daughter, you will know and you will remember as you unconscious will enable this to happen, that once the obsession has stopped, or held in abeyance, even for half an hour, you will remember when you have taken her to school and watched children just run for the sake of running. They invent games so that they can run about.

Client

Yes, they do.

Jennie

Until they get perhaps to teenage years there is no child skulking in the background leaning against the wall, they are all running around.

Client

That’s right yes

Jennie

And there are those parents who are saying ‘just stay here, don’t you dare run off’ and by the way, the unconscious mind does not recognise a negative, so if you ever hear yourself or anyone else, saying to your child, ‘don’t you dare run’, or ‘now when we get to this place, I don’t want you to….’ And then we describe the very behaviour we don’t want them to do!

In the same way, if you were saying to yourself repeatedly, ‘I mustn’t forget my keys in the morning, I mustn’t forget to post that letter, or in the morning I mustn’t forget to take something out of the freezer ready for dinner’, your unconscious has to make a picture in your mind of you NOT doing the thing that you want to do, in order to try and discount that possibility! (laughter)

All it thinks about is forgetting the keys, finding the urgent bill still in your handbag after the last post has gone, or searching the cupboards for something to eat that doesn’t resemble a frozen brick. Much more useful to say, ‘in the morning I shall remember my keys, I shall remember my keys, remember my keys’. So, because children are operating at mostly an unconscious level, the worst thing that we can do really, again with all good intentions, is to say, ‘don’t you dare run’ or ‘when we there, don’t go running off like you did last time’, because they are imagining themselves, on your instruction, running off and then trying to negate it. It may never have occurred to them to do such a thing, but you put it right there in their visual cortex.

Client

Yes! (laughter)

Jennie

Much more effective to promote the positive rather than to install the negative, if you like. So, you would like things to be different.

From what you have said to me and what you have said to your unconscious mind, you would like things to be different and you would like things to be more balanced. You would almost like to have the same attitude to food that you had when you were 18?

Client

Yes. But in saying that, I have got to lose weight, so I have got to take that into account too. Whereas then, I did not have a weight problem, so it would have been easier, does that make sense?

Does it? Does this really make any sense at all??? Read PART6 to find out.

more Real Client transcript....

As we pick up the session from part one, we are continuing our perfect weight control session where the client realises that by reading about hayfever in a magazine, she unconsciously created the condition within herself. She continues.

Gosh no, I had it for a few years and it was just an itchy pallet and I didn’t know that that was a symptom of hayfever and it wasn’t until I read it in a magazine that the symptoms fully developed. AND they DID! Yes, Gosh, don’t! Well, if you ever want that addressed we’ll do that for you! (laughter) Though I suspect you’ll be doing that for yourself now. The first time I treated someone for that was when I was doing a seminar in a hotel and I thought the girl on reception was upset. She explained it was hayfever and I found myself saying, ‘have you always had that then?’ Anyway, I brought her into the course when she was able to get cover and, in front of a large audience, I did this hayfever treatment with her and from her eyes being really puffy and her nose running etc within a couple of hours there were no symptoms and it was fantastic. I just tell you that for your unconscious to play with, because you reading that women’s magazine is a little like reading a book on illnesses isn’t it? You begin to feel, with some relief it must be said, that you must indeed have some lurgy that explains all of your symptoms until you read that it is confined only to the pygmy population in outer Mongolia or something like that! Some people who have discovered they have high blood pressure may have had certain stresses at that time that elevated it beyond the norm, though chances are that as soon as someone says, ‘oh your blood pressure’s a little high’ that it will be high again the next time it is taken in those same circumstances because of the ‘anchoring’ effect. Introducing ‘anchoring’ here is useful for later therapy. I had preclampsia when I was pregnant and it changed minute by minute!

I said the following. Your body is in a constant state of flux. Watch anything at all about the physicality of the human body on one of these brilliant tv documentaries and you can become completely enamoured by its intelligence. Get a scratch on the back of your hand one day and you may notice it and say, ‘oh look there’s a scratch on the back of my hand I wonder how that got there’ and with total confidence you will know that within days it will have healed completely and almost disappeared. In fact, we can take this innate healing so much for granted that someone else usually comments on it when they notice the improvement. If you have any minor damage to any part of the body that is not debilitating you have expected it to go quickly and before you are aware of it, it has gone. When you bring your attention to something it sensitises it. So when you bring your attention to your hayfever (sneeze!) the symptoms would get worse before they get better. Your body constantly recreates itself! You know it is marvellous, as soon as that scratch on the hand is acknowledged, the cells start dividing, the blood supply is increased in that area, you know even now you are making bone? How do you make bone? Do you really need to know? It’s a miracle isn’t it? You kind of accept that miracle more readily when you are pregnant don’t you? You are aware of the fact that you are actually growing a human being and when your baby is born you think, wow, did I do that, how did that happen then! (laughter). Though every day is a miracle, your hair is growing, your nails are growing, your body is constantly in a state of flux. And knowing that to be true, there is no reason why a particular method of eating or even exercise would work in the same way for you your whole life through. You know sometimes some method will work beautifully for you for a certain amount of time and years later you put the same method into operation saying to yourself, ‘I know exactly what to do to lose weight’ and it doesn’t work. Your body and your mind is always evolving, changing and it may be a simple fact that you deprived yourself so readily and expertly last time and was so entirely miserable in the process, that your unconscious mind will now do all that it can to prevent it happening again! Maybe you were more resilient then and could distract yourself more from the discomfort, maybe deep down you would like to be happier than you were then and if happiness was once equated with being free to eat what you like and particularly those choccies and sweets then you can work out the rest. So we need to find out now what will be the most helpful for you at this stage in your life. Right. More details taken now, about job, GP and medication. Conversation follows about wanting to come off some medication originally prescribed for depression years ago, and her now imagining she would become anxious, should she decrease the dosage as recommended by her doctor. I state that being depressed and being anxious are two different states and it is impossible to experience two opposing states at the same time

She continued. You know, I have had some terrible things happen to me over the last eight years and the times I have been to the doctors about depression it has always been to do with my weight. Like ‘I can’t go on like this’. Always to do with my weight.

I said. You know if we were being filmed, some therapists would be saying, ‘why is she going into a discussion about something else rather than focussing on what the client came for, her weight issues?’ and yet you have just proved the validity of doing just that as you have now connected the depression and anxiety to your weight issues without me having to say anything. It is far more important than people think you know, weight issues, particularly with a lady. Although we might want to be perceived by the outside world as an intellectual being, as a personality etc, the first thing any stranger notices about us is our physical self… And it is the first thing we notice about other people.

These comments are offered to judge responses to how important client perceives the presentation of one’s physical self to be, as judgements of others are reflected in the harsh judgements of self. Access and treat one and usually, the other is positively affected too. We know this, because this is how we ourselves judge the world. We get to know somebody and then perhaps think they are not as bad as we at first thought and put our judgments to one side, eventually. We cannot escape the absolute truth that for our own survival and for our own sanity, we have to make these snap judgments and pigeon hole people before we know how to respond to them. Our own perceptions of how we relate to a ‘fat person’ and what we perceive about their lifestyle are important; is fat this, is fat that, is fat happy, is fat a Dawn French happy? We then overlay that as soon as we meet another, as if we put ourselves in their position, judging ourselves in the way that we would judge others and that leads to our lack of confidence. And then some others may completely overcompensate and the confidence that they are trying to construct makes them appear arrogant. It is a male/female divide, and also a cultural one, I have seen men in Greece stroking their bellies to attract favourable attention, as if to say, I am so rich and powerful I can afford all of this food and rich living and if you are lucky today, I might share it with you! (laughter) Different cultures perceive the idea of ‘fat’ in different ways. Though I would imagine, and it is for you to tell me, that you don’t perceive the idea of fat in a good light. I will think negatively about someone who is overweight and then chastise myself for thinking that way because how can I make that judgement when I am overweight? Maybe it is because I didn’t have a weight problem until my thirties and so I still perceive myself as slim. Though in saying that, my very best friend my whole life has always been very overweight and I love her to bits and I have never thought badly of her. So you realise now you are fighting against the perceptions of yourself rather than of other people. Perhaps if fat means lazy then you could be trying to prove to the world that you are not lazy, though proving that mostly to yourself. (nods of confirmation).

She continued. Yes, as the weight came on I know now that I was desperate to appear to be more active and I joined a gym and all sorts. I can see what you mean about that.

I said that ultimately it is how we perceive ourselves which can be our most supportive ally or it could be our saboteur too.

She said that so, you asked me about parents and my mom has always had a thing about weight. She is always making comments to me and I think that plays a part doesn’t it? In filling out the client form, there was a section about parents, whether they were alive or dead.

Some clients cloak trauma to themselves by measuring time in different ways. For example, saying their father died when they were ten years old. Then, later, when asked when a particular problem first occurred, the client will say it began in such and such a year, or so and so years ago, which exactly coincides with them being ten years old.

I had only asked fleetingly whether the parents were still alive and yet some time later, the unconscious brings the mother into the therapy as relevant. This is why all questions on your client form are useful. Yes. What comments does she make I asked.

Oh God, it can range from, if I have a biscuit at her house she will say ‘I thought you were on a diet’. Though if I am ‘being good’ she will be the first to keep offering me ‘bad’ foods. And if I refer to seeing a cousin of mine the other day she will say something like, ‘oh and she has put on a lot of weight as well hasn’t she?’ I would think ‘why would you say that?’ Her conversation is littered with comments such as that.

Notice again the references my client makes to being good and bad which indicate that eating ‘bad’ foods is perceived as naughty, exciting even, or rebelling against mom, exerting her own power.

I then continued. What is the most hurtful?

She said once that I looked a mess.

Is a mess to do with weight or hair? I asked.

She didn’t say so but I knew it was to do with my weight. She said ‘just look at you, you’re just a mess’ and it really upset me. Yes Especially as, I suppose, I consider myself to be quite stylish, I have always liked to wear make up and, you know, from time to time I have let myself go. I would never dream of saying something like that to my mom.

I continued. Let’s give you an example here to illustrate what I would like to say next. Let’s say there is a lady outside of the front of this building now and from our point of view there is no way she needs to worry about her weight, we would look at her and would think, wouldn’t it be great to look like that, she looks fantastic. And there is an eight year old boy on a skateboard not paying any attention to where he is going. Suddenly he crashes into this lady. She is stunned and he picks up his skateboard and shouts ‘fat cow!’ as he disappears down the street. Now, she would probably, (stereo-types here) get upset. Maybe not there and then, though maybe when she gets home, or she might ring up a friend and tell them all about it. Perhaps just before she goes to sleep tonight she sheds a few tears. It would perhaps affect her adversely. You see, insults only upset us if .... Read Part 4 to learn how insults upset us and what we can do to stop it!

INSULTS only upset if we think them true...hmmmmnnn

We are continuing our series of articles knowing that INSULTS ONLY UPSET US WHEN on some level of our being we believe them to be true. ‘On some level of our being’ means it could be out of our awareness, that this may be a fear about becoming fat, having remembered being teased as being fat at school, or simply a reflection of our own judgements as that is as bad as it could be for us to be that which we so despise.

Using metaphor here and some dissociation for the upsetting comments from mom to ease processing.

So regardless of what anybody says beyond that, you know, family and friends saying things like, ‘don’t be stupid, look at you, you are fine’ (So now she’s fat AND stupid right?). Fat is an issue. One way or another, it is an issue for her, that’s what causes the upset, why her unconscious carries it with her into other parts of her reality, instead of dismissing the comment as irrelevant.

You could say nobody really MAKES us feel upset, it is our reaction to the comment that is disturbing. We only get upset if we take it on board and judge ourselves just as harshly as the outsider.

The client then finishes my sentence for me with the words ‘about where that came from.’

It is absolutely great when the client finishes the sentence for you, and in the correct manner too!

Yes, because these things tend to get filtered down through generations and probably, I know I cannot say this with absolute truth, though probably her attempts to make you the perfect physical specimen have been kind of misinterpreted in her own mind. Her endeavours to make you as healthy as possible and for you to be physically perfect have maybe come out in the wrong way. She may have had the best of intentions though it has not come out right. No mother would intentionally screw up their child!

The client then agrees with the statement, no, you are right.

Well, you know, nobody teaches us to be a mother, we draw on whatever resources we have and sometimes we may overdo something because it was a big thing for us when we were young and we want to ‘save’ our child from the same torment, though who knows what other imbalances might be created along the way.

We draw on our own experiences of being a child and we get to that point when we catch ourselves saying something that our mothers used to say to us…..

The client then continues with Oh I know! I’ve done that! (laughter)

Genuine good humour is such a valuable tool, it disintegrates (literally) the negative energy and ‘breaks state’ when enough information has been processed on a particular subject.

How well do you sleep. Do you relax well?

How about exercise?

The client answers with I go through phases. I used to like walking. In February this year I joined a ladies’ cycling club. With all the rain we had I stopped going as regularly and then altogether.

Did the group stop?

She answered with no, they still went but I didn’t fancy going in the rain. And I am not good in the heat at all and being overweight it has been worse. It seems to have gone by the wayside … I am thinking of joining the gym now.

What will you enjoy at the gym?

Here is where it gets interesting as the client continues. Well I…… I don’t enjoy the gym. When I first started cycling I remember saying I had finally found the exercise that I enjoy. Jenniehough I think I have got some sort of mental block about it at the moment.

The client is switching modalities now, from feeling to visual. She knows she has a block and that’s good. Notice the eyes will lift from looking down to searching up into the visual field.

I ask her what is her bike like.

She continues. It’s an old one that was made up for me and it does the job. I was even wearing the clip on shoes. I did the Devon coast to coast in April and was doing 70 miles in one day. But again, I have got this attitude of being all or nothing. I either stick to a diet or pig out. I am either doing lots of exercise or no exercise. I do tend to push myself and then forget I am not the same as I used to be. I push myself to the boundaries and my mum will tell me not to overdo it. I think that’s where I trip up because I end up exhausted.

The client is now recognising within herself now that mom does care!

I ask her. Have you always been this hard on yourself?

I don’t know! (laughter) Yes, I think so!

I say. So, standing beside yourself now if you could just now see this situation in an objective way. If this were your daughter talking to you saying these things, what would be the advice you would give to her?

I am doing some ‘gesalt’ work now to aid processing.

Client comments that she would say, Chill out!

I then answer her by saying the following. I do chill out! If I chill out too much mom I won’t do any cycling at all so don’t tell me to chill out!

The client then continues. I know what I would say, but if someone were saying it to me I suppose I would say, well, ‘how do you do that?’ I would say ‘just take it slower, don’t charge in ….’

So this is the time to be gentle on yourself. You see, I am not expecting an answer, in fact if there were an answer I would think I had got all of that wrong then! (laughter).

The client then adds. Yes. Ok.

So, being the personality that you are at the moment, going on past strategies, on the first day you would have a couple of lettuce leaves (laughter), cycle 70 miles, (laughter), and wake up in the morning saying, ‘oh right, today’s my fat day, I can eat whatever I want!’. So, what is it, what is it that you would look forward to eating?

She says, ohhhh, chocolate. Sweets, cake, biscuits.

Important information now, establishing what, specifically, are the changes in eating habits that will be of most use and promote the most noticeable changes in behaviour.

Particularly what chocolate? I ask her.

I like it all!

And biscuits, what biscuits in particular?

I like them all. If I can’t make my mind up I will just take everything.. You know, like the vending machine at work in the morning break, a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar and going back and having another chocolate bar.

And would you have had your healthy sandwiches with you at work?

Yes, I probably would have taken fruit with me. And yoghurts. I would be prepared, but would still want them.

So how would that affect how you felt, from having the chocolate bar and the crisps and then returning for another chocolate bar?

It’s almost like physically you feel better because you are giving yourself that buzz, you have satisfied that need, but mentally, I know I have kind of sat there and weighed up who is there in the room (God it’s terrible) because you don’t want everyone to know that you have had two bars of chocolate…

Do you know what the client means? Note how we deal with shame in part five of this article.

Real Clients - more!

We are continuing our weight control client session begun in the previous article.

You will continue to do that which you want but that which you want is changing.

I now hand over to you and ask what it is that you would like to be different now when you leave here today and as I ask that I am asking the question of your unconscious mind which is listening to me now, it is the part of you that is blinking your eyes, to stop your eyes drying out, it pumps the blood around the body and we are not always aware of what it does for us

I have given the command that ‘after this session, any addictions will just go’. I have offered the support of the cd to help between sessions too. Notice, also, I begin with the idea of asking the client what they would like to change, though, because this is so important and I want an unconscious response, I ‘leave it hanging’ awaiting completion, without the need for an answer to be offered right now. I follow with an explanation of the unconscious mind to acknowledge and honour it within the client, to request its contribution.

The unconscious mind is completely in charge when you are fast asleep in bed at night. When you wake up in the morning, it is as if in that waking you get a download of information, of consciousness, as you become aware of where you are, who you are, who you are with (laughter). At that moment as you are waking, and many people wake up just before the alarm (nod of confirmation) … you may be wondering what the time is and there is a remnant of a dream somewhere, you know who you are, your name etc and that is your consciousness coming back in That does not mean that the unconsciousness goes somewhere when you are awake, it has far too many tasks to do for you like that blinking that you are doing as we said before.

Your conscious mind certainly goes somewhere when you sleep, as we can tell now by all kinds of equipment measuring brain wave activity, though your unconscious remains. It stays with you the whole time. It still tries to tell you about that dream during the day when you are far too busy to listen! (confirmation and laughter).

Oh yes, I know. I’ve just had a new car and I keep having dreams about it.

Really?

When you get an offering from the unconscious mind of the client, it is a gift, use it. Many therapists I know will throw away comments like this, wanting to get back on track to the weight issue, rather than explore the seemingly unrelated unconscious contributions. This is confirmation that the unconscious is communicating into conscious awareness, and the client feels safe enough to tell you their dreams. You often find some useful connections here.

It’s driving me mad. You know when you can’t quite grab a hold of the dream? I think I have been thinking of the same one for days. I can’t get it out of my head.

What remnant of the dream remains?

It was about the car and I have a feeling that something bad was happening to it. (laughter) I can feel that sort of atmosphere of the dream but that’s it. I love dreams.

You will know that the car represents something important to you.

It was very unexpected. It was a gift. I was driving around in a tatty car beforehand..

So the car was unexpected and precious? You may worry about something untoward happening to it? Now this is about what the dream means to you, not what you would read about in a dream dictionary. Maybe that car represents a fear of loss, it’s so nice you don’t want it to lose it. Quite often, by the way, clients contact us wanting to lose weight and I find that word ‘lose’ to be a very interesting word.

I could lecture for hours about this, though basically we are programmed in this country particularly to think in terms of ‘losing’ weight. This programming is often intentional by the providers of food substitutes or the diet industry at large because big business corporations certainly have access to the latest research on the workings of the human mind. When we lose something, if you think of anything that you have lost in the past, it always has negative associations. If you lose your keys, or lose a loved one, or even lose consciousness! If you lose anything at all you put yourself in a bad mood, which you may chose to change by eating to make yourself feel better.

That reminds me of a book I read once about stopping smoking which said ‘don’t ever say you are giving up because you make yourself think you are depriving yourself’.

Yes, because physically, by depriving yourself, you lose energy, you feel vulnerable, helpless and hey, says the adverts, we’ve got this product that will really help! Not only does it put your unconscious mind in a bad mood, your unconscious mind will do everything that it can in order to go and find it again.

That is because losing your keys, losing your memory, losing your way: its duty, when you lose something, is to go and find it.

All those well meaning individuals who run the diet clubs and give all the advice on losing weight are most usually innocent of the fact that the industry is employing psychologists and others to promote feelings of dissatisfaction in dieting endeavours so that the high priced product is bought. And if they worked, by the way, long term, these organisations would be out of business.

So part of what I want to tell you is that although we live consciously and we are mostly in charge and in control of our faculties etc, unconsciously we are being programmed all the time. Programming takes place in the big supermarket, whilst watching television (as the sound now goes up dramatically when the adverts come on), when engaging in everyday conversation with other women (usually) and within the conversations taking place in our own head to try and make sense of it all.

So, when you are watching the film which is full of quiet suspense and subtlety, when you are looking for the tiny eye movement or increased tension in the jaw of the actor to determine whether he has committed the crime or not as he is defending his life, then comes the commercial break and ‘Scrub it and BANG!’ fills your senses followed by the oh so sensual ‘this isn’t just chocolate…..’

I get so cross at adverts that shout at me!

And if they don’t shout they will employ some powerful visual to get your attention. You will catch yourself now, because as soon as you are introduced to these concepts you go, ‘oooh’ it may be days, hours or weeks and you will see right through them. Commercials are designed, when you think about it, to put you into a somewhat negative state, to create the need within you and then the answer is here ‘ding’!

This is to tell the unconscious mind, mainly, that ‘it is not your fault, you have been programmed’. Also, it is to gear up the defences of that part of the mind to make it more resilient to such effects in the future.

There is a lot of information to take in here though it is going to more useful if it is tailored to you specifically. Though there are commonalities within all of our experiences, and in allowing your awareness to expand you can laugh at these things and you are no longer affected by them in the same way. The more inner work you do the more resistant you are against it.. you will not become a born again advert protester, though to begin with they will irritate you, when you begin to laugh at them you realise you are not going to be taken in any more.

Now I am taking personal details, name address, date of birth etc, filling in client form.

And you heard about us just by walking past?

Yes, you know I have walked past the front of this building for years and suddenly, as I say, something just made me look.

Isn’t it strange? You know we like to think that the unconscious mind only seriously addresses these kinds of issues when it is ready. Now’s the time. Well done.

More personal information volunteered now, and has small child that she is concerned does not adopt unhelpful eating patterns from her.

At school, what was the subject you were most interested in?

Literature and Art

Did that mean by any chance that you were not particularly interested in Maths?

(sharp intake of breath) I HATED Maths! No didn’t like Maths at all. I was terrible at Maths.

It usually follows!

Yes, my ex, brilliant at Maths, but no imagination at all!

You know, it’s almost as though we somehow want to learn what it would be like to experience that which is totally different from ourselves on occasion and we engage with that through our partner isn’t it?

Can I just grab a tissue here Jennie because I forgot to have my hayfever tablet this morning.

Oh, so even though it is damp outside today you are affected?

Oh yes.

Were you born with that or did it develop?

Just can’t help myself here, allergies are dealt with so quickly, it is an opportunity to point out to the unconscious mind it may be time to take its power back and be free of this too.

It developed in my early twenties.

Do you know what happened at the time, what was significant in your life back when it began?

Gosh no, I had it for a few years and it was just an itchy pallet and I didn’t know that that was a symptom of (to be continued in the next part).

Real Client transcript and help with yours!

Let’s begin with a typical client session focussed on weight issues. I comment to you throughout, so that you can recognise important facets in what can seem like merely an inconsequential conversation to the uninitiated. You already have a fascination with the phenomena of the human mind and a fascination of hypnosis, by reading this article, so join me now as we apply hypnotic techniques from the moment the client is walking through the door of the Practice. This is a verbatim session transcript.

The client focus here is regarding weight issues.

The session begins with pleasantries about the weather and the journey to the practice. I begin with the question I’m just wondering how you came to hear about the practice.

The client said that I was just passing one day. You know, I must have walked past here for years; it was only the other day that I noticed the sign.

I continue. That’s great. You know, we like to think that your unconscious mind notices these kinds of things only when it is ready to change. It’s good to establish how the client has come to know of your skills particularly, or hypnosis generally, word of mouth etc. I am repeating the phrase, ‘you know’ together with voice tone and body posture (slight shrug), to gain rapport (this will be used throughout session).

I am seeding a response, in saying ‘…your unconscious mind…. is ready to change’. Apart from the sign outside, we don’t advertise. So, most often clients come to see us because they know of someone who has already been helped tremendously by coming here. Though you came just because you noticed the sign?

The client confirmed with a Yes.

I asked. Do you know anything about hypnosis or how much it can help you with weight control?

The client replied. No, nothing really.

So, really this is blind hope we are talking about, yes? Or is it ‘the last thing on the list’?

Well, yes, I’ve tried everything else!

This is when again I am seeding response ‘…someone has already been helped tremendously by coming here.’ And “…can help you with weight control’. Also, introducing humour and realisation of desperation, wanting it to work without yet knowing evidence of effectiveness. As we talked about on the ‘phone, you know a lot of our challenges to do with eating and exercise are in the mind. It is usually because we have been through the process of deprivation-based dieting, where weight reduction will work as long as we ‘suffer’, as long as we are ‘good’. The unconscious will only allow us to do that up to a certain point. Maybe 5 or 6 weeks on a very strict regime will mean that the next time we come to do it the mind is more guarded, because it knows what you went through last time.

There is recollection and representation of information already given by client over the telephone to illicit the inner response of being with someone who understands. The brain likes what’s the same, (you are the same as me). Bringing the ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ perception into awareness in order to discount it.

The client then continues. I did six months on Slimming World and then became a consultant. Yes, the feeling of deprivation was there even though I was having a kit kat every week. When you are used to having one every day, I suppose, the deprivation was still there, although compared to many, it was a very generous eating plan.

The client is now processing more, validated by looking around and down to feelings. Notice the change from ‘I was having a kit kat…’ to ‘…when you are used to having one….’ This is an appeal to those outside of ourselves to hope they experience this too; also a deflection from one’s own plight being separate, perhaps unique and distinct. Also, it is association to dissociation and if now pointed out to client this would prevent further admissions and hinder rapport.

I clarify with own suggestion. I suppose it was like ‘I want a kit kat now, I don’t want to wait until Saturday!’

The client confirmed, with a Yes, it was!

The unconscious can be likened to what some may call the ‘inner child’, you know sometimes we may just want a milk shake or something seemingly ridiculous to the consciousness, well chocolate is part of that, particularly if it was used as a reward in childhood – you have been ‘good’ so now we can go to the sweet shop and get you something. Some of these associations are so deeply rooted in the unconscious mind that although we would like to feel that we are in charge of what we do, if we were continually told to eat everything on our plate before we could go out to play or that there were children starving in other countries etc, if that was the case when we were at a very vulnerable age (with nothing against the people who with the best of intentions encouraged us to eat like that) these learnings settle deep within the mind as we grow older. If we find that we feel compelled to finish everything on our plate, or even find ourselves finishing what other family members leave rather than throwing it away, there is perhaps a remnant of that still within us. Even if those people who said these things to us may not be on the planet any more, we may still think it is the right thing to do, despite what our conscious mind says and all the well-meaning intentions of slimming clubs.

It is our conscious mind that wants us to live the best life possible in its own terms, though it is our unconscious that still runs screaming away from a spider (or wants to!) though we would prefer to be more dignified and capable. In the beginning we had what might be referred to by some as the ‘one hit wonder’. People either smoke or they don’t though you do HAVE to eat. What you may perceive now as an addiction to chocolate, or crisps or bread, if you could say to me,’ Oh Jennie, if I could only stop eating such and such I know I would be fine. Can you make me not like pasta or whatever’. There is usually something. These comments are references to information given by client on the telephone and also guiding the unconscious to think about what client could change in eating habits. In this initial session, maybe there is something we can do with that. The one session has been brilliant for about two weeks. After the two weeks, that’s when you know. That’s when the physical addiction is out of the system when you say things like, ‘oh I never knew how much chocolate I was eating or why I would want to do that’, or ‘crisps are just so salty and sharp I just don’t want to put them in my mouth now’. After two weeks that is when you know if the behaviour wants to re-establish itself, you know it is more deep rooted. Client Yes. These comments are to prepare the client for more than just one session, as the expectation can be that all problems are ‘fixed’ in an hour (as perhaps it may appear in the stage hypnotism that may have been exposed to when behaviours are radically changed temporarily).

This takes the pressure off client and off therapist. Physical addictions can be likened to smoking in a sense because the receptors in every single cell respond to certain substances. If you are having a lot of sugar for example, suddenly not having any sugar at all throws those receptors into a frenzy and almost compels you to dive into the sugar bowl even though there is no real need for you to have the sugar. After this session, any addictions will just go. Our clients have taught us that after two weeks it’s good to have something else, then two weeks on from that for more long term, lifetime changes. You will continue to do what you WANT to do - BUT now see the next article for more.

The are STILL SMOKING, argh!!!!

Life as a successful hypnotist is somewhat of an unusual one. One day you are walking into a pub to the throngs of, ‘Don’t look into her eyes, ha ha!’ or, 'You can't stop me smoking' (to which, after ten years of similar comments, I inwardly question why would I want to and where's my two hundred pounds) and the next you are being worshiped as a semi deity because you have lowered someone’s blood pressure, sent their life-threatening condition into remission, or just freed them of their addiction to chocolate biscuits or enabled them to get on that aeroplane for the holiday of a lifetime they thought they would never have (not all on the same day you understand, though maybe that is possible!).

The one thing folks associate professional hypnotherapy with the most, in my experience, is stopping smoking. The results of your first stop smoking therapy session can make or break a career in hypnotherapy, no matter how talented a therapist you are. Let’s say you are a newly qualified hypnotherapist. You put your heart and soul into over two hours of the best therapy you could muster and have gone for two whole days with your fingers crossed hoping that it has worked and then... and then..... a friend of a friend thought they overheard someone saying that who they think may have been your client might actually be smoking again and you are crushed, resolving never to ever try to help someone stop smoking again! If this sounds familiar, or promotes a lurking fear of dread to the surface, then read on.

One Hit Wonder?

Many schools and advanced master classes teach the two session smoking cessation method. It is valuable to have some kind of follow up, maybe either telephone the client, get them to text you, or even come back at the same time next week, though do get some kind of response rather than blind hope to build your business on. These people will be going out into the community either singing your praises or not. So even if you do just the one session, follow up to know how effective you have been.

They are still smoking!

Actually, what has happened is they have started smoking again. There will have been some time after the session in which they were a non smoker. It may have been hours, days and sometimes years. I had a client return after two years of not smoking to say the session had not worked as someone offered him a cigarette at a New Year’s Eve party and he was drunk and did not know what he was doing, so had one and became a smoker again. The mastermind phrase, 'I have started and so I will finish' has a lot to answer for! Just because a cigarette has been offered, or lit, or bought, does not mean that the whole thing has to be smoked, and certainly does not mean that twenty more have to follow that day to finish one's past daily smoking behaviour.

What do you do?

One cannot help but be changed by such deep inner work as occurs in hypnotherapy when the hypnotic state has been achieved during the session and the unconscious mind of the client has agreed to stop smoking. So reconnect them with the experience of being a non smoker, recognising that the body was recovering and purifying itself. The sense of smell and taste will have had time to recover and the unconscious will remember this and want an improved circumstance to continue. However brief or long a time it was that they experienced being free of tobacco, let them elaborate on any negative aspects to truly process them out and to get rid of them, though remembering to return them to the positive effects of your therapy. They will probably realise that they have been sleeping a lot better, their senses have been more engaged and they have been generally a lot happier, in addition to remembering they did actually stop smoking for a time. This will get you into a more positive state too.

Information Time

You can suggest to them that they know far more about their smoking behaviour than ever before (and you will know more too) and ask them about it in detail. Don’t accept the lazy phrase, ‘it just happened’, the conscious mind will try to trip you up and remember you could trance them if necessary; just get the information as to why it was useful. Acknowledge that indeed smoking that cigarette or cigar was useful because the unconscious never does anything for no good reason. Reiterate the physical effects of smoking, depending on what they say, for example if they did it to relax and you have explained that it speeds up heart activity you could say something like ‘I wonder why your unconscious would continue to believe something that is not true?’ This will instigate the separation that you need for part therapy. It is not their fault that the unconscious has returned to the old habit, though it is their conscious choice to allow it to take place. Perhaps ask, are you fed up enough now?

Choice

For your information, not the client’s, to help you understand how important this stage is, I will explain choice here. It might sound simple to just choose, though I think choice is more complex than is appreciated. Choice is one of the most powerful things a human being can do.

Making Choice Conscious

You can either regress to when they began smoking again, or project into the future to a time when they know they will smoke and get them to accept that they made a choice. For whatever reason, they made a choice. For example, consider the following statements.

This is a choice.

This is my choice.

I am choosing to, etc.

My reason for this choice is, etc.

This is what I am feeling and this is how I am going to respond.

This is the action I am going to take.

The result of my action was, etc.

That was my choice too.

You cannot go beyond something that you don’t do. So all experience is useful. I have found some clients go back to the behaviour seemingly to kind of test out whether life is in fact better with cigarettes or without them and then when they give up smoking ‘again’ it is with much more satisfaction, glee and determination that this truly is their choice! I have also experienced family members, when I was newly qualified myself, tell me that the session had not worked, only to witness them giving up all by themselves a couple of weeks later, strange that, is it not?

Some facts about choice

Choice offers freedom.

Choice can override genetic-hormonal codes.

Choice is focussed intent.

Choice is critical to changing action and image and essential to change itself.

It is the active agent (like yeast in bread) of your power, strength and talent. It is the active agent of taking back your power with responsibility.

The unconscious mind cannot choose

Choice selects the neural pathways of brain activity. When choice is accepted as a conscious act, the electromagnetic and electrochemical energies and forces of the brain are shifted and changed. Neural pathways are changed by choice.

Think about some good choices of the past, feel the sense of aliveness, gratitude to your old self and love for that past self having made the choice. Feel self value. Feel patience and feel power. When you connect the client with this real past experience their unconscious will be having a template to use with this particular behaviour. You can change your beliefs and your attitudes, though reality does not change until you make new choices based upon your new beliefs or attitudes.

Choice triggers the action and implementation of belief, attitude, thought, feeling and decision making.

Just Pretend

What do we term it when we can’t do something but keep going until we can? Practise. How do children practise to become well rounded adults? (A little too rounded and we are perhaps on to the next topic of hypnotic gastric bands!) Seriously, they do so, as we all did, by Pre Tending. Pre tend literally means before holding. So you can even get the client to pretend they are a non smoker. What would be different? Maybe talk about the four levels of learning. Where are they on the scale, is it maybe, conscious incompetence? Great, because that is one step up from unconscious incompetence. As we aim for conscious competence we need choice. Unconscious competence surely follows this, as the client can easily demonstrate with other activities from the past.

If we pretend often enough, we get there.

State Dependent Behaviour

Choice is entwined with state dependent behaviour. Will we just be sad until we stop being sad? Or shall we choose to cheer ourselves up? Does life just happen to us and affects us or do we happen to it? Use this wonderful idea of truly being responsible, or to be literal, ‘response able’. If client says ‘it just happened’ that the cigarette was in their hand then replay in detail, trance if necessary, how ‘it’ happened. Return to choice. What has to be happening around them for the behaviour to be triggered?

What about if they use the blanket global causal reasoning of stress? How does the client know when they are stressed? Does smoking really take away stress or just temporarily stops one thinking about the stressor?

A ware ness, to be aware, is the first step to conscious choice.

There are many suggestions you can make, such as the following. Do you want this body to be something you can control? This is called freedom. Be so curious that you do not judge them, or yourself. They are coming to you for help, so they trust that you will be helping them.

Create better feelings for your client, ‘let’s just feel better for no reason!’.

Use NLP, swap tenses to encourage a link to past successes, for example, saying, ‘That is something you knew how to do, isn’t it?’

Create a caring for the physical self, and an acceptance of how things were, moving ahead with new choices. Utilise the numb hand technique, or glove anaesthesia, suggesting that now that same powerful part of your mind that’s creating that numbness is now creating numbness for any remaining feelings of withdrawal whatsoever, whether they be psychological, physiological or mental, so that not only can you stop smoking, you do so comfortably, easily and naturally.

Reality is a monitor, a feedback device, let it feedback data to help you. Tell them to expect positive results. Tell yourself to expect positive results too. The positive aspect of someone coming back to you saying your therapy didn’t work is that they are giving you an opportunity to put it right for them, rather than just talking about you unfavourably to other potential clients!

Work with the reality of what is happening to you to revaluate what you are doing. Don’t make the client returning to the smoking behaviour a judge of your prowess; instead let it feedback data to help you.

You could ask ‘why wouldn’t you want it to work?’ You need honesty from the client here. There are payoffs and functional purposes all over the place with smoking; find them. They may worry about not having a break at work, or the wife or husband would be left out because the sharing and togetherness couples have is key to the success in many cases.

Create a touch program (NLP) for them to activate at key times.

Decide that you and the client are willing to review the process and continue learning. Thank goodness people smoke, you may say, because the rewards of this second session will be utilised by the inner mind in all other areas of their life to enhance it. The past is over, now is a new time!

Summary

Be client focussed, be client led. The above are just some ideas to get your creativity flowing. You may use all of them, or something completely different. Your client still wants your help or would not be putting themselves to the trouble of coming back to see you. Use the returning smoker to make yourself the best therapist you possibly can be. Each one is different, though the step by step guidelines below will help in all cases:

follow up
use the data to enhance your technique
connect with positive effects of original therapy
identify and explore deeply that moment of choice to smoke
revisit new behaviour generator, perhaps in new guise (eg Gestalt)
establish congruency, are all of the parts in agreement with these new behaviours?
address functional purpose
work with future self and care of physicality
use past choice successes to overlay on therapy
be positive!

To be successful, be interested in your returning smoker and let your creativity flow. Be interested in your own development and recognise that we are always learning and enjoy the process of becoming the best in the business!