More Hypnotic Weighty Issues!

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).

Weighty Issues!

NLP for Weight Control 

Let’s begin with a typical client session focused 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 NLP, 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 NLP 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 NLP 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 NLP 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 what you WANT to do ~CHANGES~ now see the next article for more.   

The Happy Hypnotist, Introducing the Meta Model

The Happy Hypnotist, Introducing the Meta Model

Metaquestioning made easy!

Last time we looked at the origins of the meta model and introduced how we all delete, distort and generalise the information we process. Let’s now take it a bit further and get a bit more structured.

The meta model is designed to teach the listener how to hear and respond to the form of the speaker’s communication. This model allows you to respond in a way to obtain the fullest meaning from the communication. Using the meta model you can discover the richness and limits of the information as well as the modelling processes the speaker is using.

Deep Structure and Surface Structure

At a deep level of thought, a speaker has complete knowledge of what he wishes to communicate to someone else. This is called the deep structure and operates at an unconscious level. In order to be efficient in his verbal or written communication, we unconsciously delete, generalise or distort our inner thoughts based on beliefs and values, memories, decisions (limiting), strategies, what we want you to hear, etc. What is finally said or written (surface structure) is only a small subset of the original thought and may be ambiguous or confusing and lead to miscommunication and very often does.

Why is this all useful to know you ask? For me, it is absolutely fascinating to know I do this! Of course, like you, I did not think I really did this to a great degree, though it was easy to notice it in others. Are we really this bad at communicating? Actually we are really good at communicating what we think we would like to communicate, though not necessarily what the truth of our experience is. This is why reading someone else’s diary is so fascinating, naughty and forbidden, because to know, to really know what is at the deep structure level of another human being is all consuming.

To illustrate deep structure and surface structure and why it is important to be aware of the distinction, let’s assume you are my therapist. Before saying or writing a word and often in a blink of an eye, my inner thoughts (deep structure) are unconsciously filtered through my model of the world (beliefs and values, etc.) without my conscious appreciation, of course.

I might say to you something like, “My family doesn’t appreciate what I do.” Which is the offering of the surface structure of my communication. You, as my friend and therapist take in my words and at a deep level of thought (your deep structure), filter what I have said through your beliefs and values, memories, decisions and then you may say (surface structure) something such as “I know exactly what you are saying and here is what you should do.”

Really, however, you do not. I have not said what I really mean and you are doing your best to help me, though that advice is purely based on your own map of the world. With the best of intentions, you have no idea how to help me, because I have not given you enough information. I have not told you the truth.

This is not to say that anybody is purposely lying. It is just that we throw away words so flippantly and others are so wanting to be helpful, it all gets very confusing, very quickly and nobody feels understood.

Worse still, this may result in an argument because I feel you do not understand me and are always telling me what to do and I may become more entrenched in continuing with my limiting beliefs and behaviours as you adamantly stick to your own views too. What a shame. I am (kind of) asking for help and you are doing what you think is your utmost to help and we are at loggerheads.

What do you do? Well, a good approach is to realise I am not communicating very well and have a little empathy, knowing that emotional states blur communication and it is really how I feel that I need support with. You could be well advised just to get very curious about what I have said and to ask questions for both of us to gain a better appreciation of my deep structure.

Of course only do this by invitation, as you feel your way asking one or two questions and if you get the ‘back off’ face as I call it, when you intuitively know you have overstepped the mark, outstayed your welcome or the like, stop.

If I really want help (and, by the way, many times we do not, we just want a sympathetic ear or someone to validate that we are in the right and the rest of the world is of course entirely wrong because you are my friend after all) then I will accept and perhaps encourage your further delving into my private world.

Once we have this clarity, you are in a better position to provide advice. What often happens is that when I, as the client, get clarity on the issue and what needs to be done, I do not need your advice, but simply your continued support and curiosity. You, in essence, merely help me discover the path from my surface structure to my deep structure of language through questioning, sounds easy doesn’t it?

This is why I tell my students that this really is an easy job. The tricky bit is to lay off! The tricky bit is to hold back when you want to gush out all your advice. The clever bit is to worm your way around to the client, or friend, discovering the solution that you think you knew from the start. When I have my penny dropping moment and offer the solution you have crafted a path for me to discover by your clever questioning, we are cooking with gas.

The Meta Model provides us (as coaches, bosses, therapists, family members, friends, …) with a set of questions to assist the person we are helping (client) to move from the surface structure of his communication to an understanding of his deep structure -- unconscious beliefs, values, decisions. This is not about finding the right answers but having a better understanding of your client’s model of the world.

Avoid asking ‘Why’

The questions in the Meta Model do not have any ‘why’ questions. When you ask someone a ‘why’ question, often they feel they have to defend what they have said or done, make excuses or rationalize their behaviour. On the other hand, if you expressed the question as a ‘how’ question, then you get a better understanding of the process used by your client and thus more information and understanding.

Deleting

Recognise when deletions have occurred and assisting in recovering the information restores a fuller representation of the experience.

Ask questions such as:-

About whom

About what

How specifically

I am afraid

What or whom are you afraid of?

I don’t like him

What don’t you like about him?

I don’t understand

What don’t you understand?

I don’t get any recognition

How would you like to be recognised?

How will you know when you have been recognised?

What would let you know?

How would you feel if you were recognised?

Limits of the speakers model

They identify limits by challenging limits you can allow the speaker to expand his/her model of the world

1. Universal quantifiers
2. Model operators (primarily operators of necessity)

Universal quantifiers

Challenge and exaggerate the quantifier or insert additional quantifiers

All

Every

Always

Never

Nobody

I never do anything right

Never?

Can you think of a time when you did do something right?

Model operators

Lack of choice

Have to

Must

Cant

Its necessary

What prevents you?

What would happen if you do?

Semantic Ill-formedness

Distortion

Which may impoverish the experience

1. Cause and effect
2. Mind reading
3. Lost performative

Cause and effect – x causes y

Challenge whether the causal connection is true allows them to review the situation to see if there are further choices.

Challenge how x causes y

I’m sad because you were late

You frustrate me

You make me angry

Mind Reading

How specifically do you know x allows you to challenge old assumptions

Everyone thinks you are crazy

How specifically do you know that?

How specifically do you know?

I’m sure you can see how I feel

How specifically can you be sure I see how you are feeling?

Lost Performative

Usually judgements, rules that are appropriate to your model of the world and puts them into others

Challenge for whom

That’s the right way to do it

Right for whom?

Its wrong to live on the social

That’s a sick thing to do

What, how, who?

If you find yourself going inside to fill the gaps, as for further information

That really hurt me

How?

The client makes his communication clearer, so you do not fill in from your experience.

I am afraid of the crowds

What is it specifically about the crowds?

How do you know you are?

What prevents you from feeling calm in crowds?

Never lead your client – if you find you are finishing the sentence in your own head you are leading!

Be persistent with metaquestioning.

Good metaquestioning words:

Because?

Specifically?

And?

How?

What?

Where? Always? Never?

They are still smoking!!!!!

Life as a successful hypnotist is somewhat of an usual 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: 

1. follow up
2. use the data to enhance your technique
3. connect with positive effects of original therapy
4. identify and explore deeply that moment of choice to smoke
5. revisit new behaviour generator, perhaps in new guise (eg Gestalt)
6. establish congruency, are all of the parts in agreement with these new behaviours? 
7. address functional purpose
8. work with future self and care of physicality
9. use past choice successes to overlay on therapy
10. 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!

In a State about Hypnosis!

Still in a state about defining hypnosis?

Modern theories of hypnosis have drastically changed the way we view this subject. Because the most common popular view of hypnosis is as an altered state of consciousness of some kind (i.e. trance), this will be used as a departure point to explain how hypnosis (1) has been viewed since the 18th century when it was first systematically studied and mass interest first arose, and (2) has been deconstructed as a unitary concept by some modern scientific theorists of the subject.

The most popular traditional view of hypnosis is a sleep-like state induced by a procedure of some kind by an operator and in which certain special behaviors seem to result; particularly extreme responsiveness to suggestions made during the hypnotic process, including physiological responses, and where anomalies of the experience of volition and memory are consistently reported by subjects.

Therapeutic interest in hypnosis results mostly from the fact that response to suggestions apparently includes some increased capacity to access functions which are normally considered outside of conscious control and memory. Popular interest in hypnosis stems from the therapeutic interest, and because of the long associations of hypnosis with spiritual and secular traditions of self-improvement, self-insight, or self-fulfillment. There has also been interest in hypnotic methods in various areas of medical and scientific research.

A truly balanced and comprehensive study of hypnotic phenomena would probably have to include its relationship with neuroscience, cognitive science, models of subjective experience, models of creative thinking processes, theories of psychosocial development, theories of human language and symbol processing, and various philosophical stances that are still of interest today (such as moral and ethical considerations of various conceptions of the human will and responsibility for actions, and such as the legal status of testimony revealed with the help of hypnosis).

Jeffrey K. Zeig is the founder and director of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation and has written around twenty books on the subject of mind matters and comparative methods of psychology and hypnosis.

He put forward this list in 1988, identifying the following frameworks, into which I have inserted my own additions for clarity and demonstration of how we can be thankful to all and recognise the value of each who has gone before us.

1. Hilgard thought of hypnosis as dissociation, meaning splitting off of aspects of consciousness from each other. One of these aspects was thought to assume dominance at particular times though other aspects were able to influence behaviour simultaneously or even could replace the dominant part.
   
   In modern hypnotherapy, this fits with our methods of using part therapy to help our clients. So, for example, the smoking part may seem dominant at one time for the client, when the client explains that nothing they do can stop themselves smoking. They have tried and tried but still the smoking part remains dominant.

The New Behaviour Generator Model befriends the smoking part and sends it into background awareness whilst encouraging the creative part to emerge and have some air time. Whilst the smoking part is never actually replaced, we do coerce it to morph into a more usefully labelled part with more consciously acceptable behaviours, after of course, eliciting what the positive aspects are of that smoking behaviour. So, for part therapy purposes, Hilgard is tops.

2. Sarbin and Coe describe hypnosis in terms of role playing, Following Robert White's radical interpretation of hypnosis in that a subject is merely playing out the role defined by the requirements of the hypnotist, who claimed the hypnotic process thus
   “its most general goal being to behave like a hypnotised person as this is continuously defined by the operator and understood by the client.”
   Sarbin used concepts from his own role theory using empirical research data, and analogies with other socially constructed roles, to argue that hypnotic subjects did not have to achieve some elusive special state of consciousness but could be better understood as identifying with an unusual social role or behaviour, that is acting out the expected role of a hypnotised subject in response to the directions of the hypnotist.
   This is where our Gestalt Therapy Model comes in. We hypnotists rely on this Model, don’t we, in fact for the client to play the role of an individual (such a parent, employer, neighbour etc) causing angst in the subject’s life to prompt a conversation and ultimately a resolution, between warring parts. This has served me so well over the years, encouraging the client to see the other side of the argument and to pick out any usual purpose or mitigating factors. It is particularly useful if the party in question is unavailable to make peace with in the present day, or, in fact, dead.
   
   Of course we open the role playing up to the subject acting on behalf of his pain in the knee, his irritable bowel or high blood pressure condition, you name it, anything goes, and it usually does with the correct handling.
   Spanos is also a leading proponent of this view. Spanos’ findings were to contribute to the view that the hypnotic state did not exist at all, and that the behaviours exhibited by those individuals are in fact due to their being “highly motivated” by the hypnotist. He stated that hypnosis is not an altered state and is actually the trying on for size, so to speak, of suggested behaviours that the participant either chooses to go along with or not.
   
   Enter here our New Behaviour Generator as we request the part in question to try on some alternative new behaviours that are as good as, or ideally, much better than, the old behaviour ever could be. Thank you Spanos.
   
   
3. T.X. Barber defined hypnosis in terms of non-hypnotic behavioural parameters, such as task motivation. Experiments performed door to door, found that researchers could induce sleepiness by suggestion alone, without the swinging watches or formal protocols used by hypnotists. The power of suggestion worked effectively on about 20 percent of the people tested.
   
   Here we have to thank Mr Barber for proving to us the power of suggestion. Never underestimate the power of suggestion and does one even need to be a in a special state for the suggestion to work? Are we lulled into some specific state as we wonder around isle after isle of brightly coloured packaged products in supermarkets, throwing them into the basket when we just came in for milk? State or non state, what’s your theory? How many times have you agreed to stuff you didn’t want to do? Were you in a state? Love, guilt, feelings of responsibility, arousal, fear, what made you respond to the suggestion given by another? Perhaps we should tighten up our unconscious security, though that is just a suggestion.
   
   
   
4. Weitzenhoffer first considered hypnosis a state of enhanced suggestibility, but later a form of influence of one person on another, such as a dominant spouse or parent, or employer or politician perhaps. Does that mean then that we can legitimately say that we are being hypnotised when our favourite or most respected MP or actor or friend asks us to do something? This would really serve us well then if we acquire enough publicity that fame of our intention and efficacy would just be enough and all we would have to do is say to a large group, something like, stop smoking, or stop shooting each other, please.
   
   
5. Gil and Brenman described hypnosis in psychoanalytic terms as regression in service of the ego, with transference (when feelings felt for another are transferred onto the hypnotherapist.
   
   I have certainly noticed this when I have been leading a course, all of a sudden I wonder to myself what on earth did I say wrong? It seems that quite often an outburst would occur in response to my stating something about hypnosis or similar and something I said or how I said it, or indeed something another person said in the group has provoked a heightened response from another participant. I have thought that something in the behavioural set of that individual has reminded the other of some unfinished business which has proved to be entirely useful when followed up with the practising of hypnotherapy together. So, yes, thank you Gil and Brenman too.
   
   
6. Edmonston assessed hypnosis as relaxation (based on a Pavlovian theory of sleep as partial cortical inhibition). Edmonston even offered a new term to represent this state, which he termed ‘anesis’, from the ancient Greek ‘aniesis’, meaning to relax, or let go. Remember that James Braid coined the term hypnosis to distinguish what he and his contemporaries practiced as being distinct from Mesmer’s animal magnetism. Edmonston , in similar vein, proposed that modern-day hypnosis was so distinctly different from Braid’s definition that it was worthy of this new name (Edmonston, 1991). His book concludes with the prediction that the eyes being “the only naturally visible parts of the central nervous system” would prove to be the keys to understanding hypnosis.
   
   This is surely where our eye catalepsy inductions come in and suggestibility tests using such have come from. Thank you Edmonston.
   
   
7. Spiegel and Spiegel implied that hypnosis was a distinct biological capacity, so I thank them for all the arm levitation inductions I have done.
   
   
8. Milton Erickson held that hypnosis was a unique, inner-directed altered state of functioning and our thanks to Erickson is unquestionable. Directing the subject to an inner state of enhanced awareness is a reliable induction in itself. Engaging with metaphoric, indirect language patterns and encouraging the client’s own subjective reasoning is where all our meeting the client where they are and indirect hypnotic suggestions come from, particularly helpful in working with the difficult client.
   
   
9. Various followers of Erickson's lead have proposed that hypnosis is best defined subjectively and phenomenologically as a process between individuals, and a communications strategy for the achievement of therapeutic goals, with or without recourse to 'trance.'
   
   
10. We should also reserve at least one category for the numerous esoteric, non-scientific, or archaic models which view hypnosis in general as a condition of subtle unidentified or unobservable bodily fluids, a unique electromagnetic field phenomenon, or the result of supernatural influences or contacts, or contact with alternate realms of existence (in a non-metaphorical sense). New age enthusiasts and proponents of angelic realms and other worldly