This is probably not the answer you are expecting…

There is no doubt that for the majority of people hypnosis has connotations and associations to do with magic or even mysticism.

In fact, all you really need to do is check the history of hypnosis.

It first began with magnetism and then became exorcism, mesmerism, fluidism, animism and evolved in due course into what we know of as hypnosis. At that time hypnosis was commonly used by spiritualists and Christian Science and it was only after many years that hypnosis became a part of the clinical practice.

The fact that people report claims of ‘life changes’  after having been involved with some kind of hypnosis makes it no surprise that as a therapist I often get asked both by clients and others “Can you hypnotize me to do ‘x’ or ‘y’”?, or “Could you hypnotize me to stop doing ‘x’ or ‘y’”?.

And why not, you may ask. Why not cure every problem, physical, psychological or emotional, by simply hypnotizing the person and giving them a sort of post-hypnotic suggestion?

Of course the bigger question is, why do we not get to hear about the major successes of the Hypnotherapists who tend to work with the ‘magic wand’ framework (make an appointment and I’ll hypnotize you and your life will all be good)? The most we get to hear about is from those clients who claim to have quit smoking because of a hypnosis session (and even with those clients I tend to be skeptical. See my earlier blog ‘When Hypnotherapy is not the answer’). What about the cases of people with real mental health challenges?

There simply does not seem to be real evidence that this type of change-work with clients is effective and long lasting.

In reality, it is rare to come across people who have been cured from severe anxiety attacks, bouts of depression, addictive or compulsive behaviors simply by having been hypnotized.

There is a basic, clear distinction that many people (including many Hypnotherapists) do not make… and that is the major difference between staged performance hypnosis and Hypnotherapy.

A person who volunteers to be a subject at a hypnosis event or street hypnotist will see it as entertainment.

In many instances, an individual who is seeking to resolve an issue will only turn up to the therapist after deliberating  the idea in their mind for many hours on end. He/she will usually be reluctant and even act passive about their problem so as to keep themself protected from anything the therapist might suggest that they are not comfortable with. In contrast, the person who volunteers to be a subject of a street hypnotist or stage performer is usually more than happy to fully co-operate and be utilized in different ways for the demonstration.

For a client who is suffering from strong feeling related issues, such as severe anxiety, anger, depression and addiction, there are often many layers of guilt and shame that come along with the packaged problem.

Most of the clients I see do not appear in my office all-ready suited up to make changes in their life. From my part, I always expect a certain amount of resistance from a client, especially when we’re talking about the more severe mental health related issues.

An experienced Hypnotherapist can expect to find themselves frequently having to explain to potential clients looking to get rid of their problem magically, that for a person to change it requires full cooperation and at times a big shift in one’s life style.

Of course, hypnosis has its great uses in that it can be used in a number of ways to help bypass a client’s resistance and speed up the process for change.

This can be done by:

• Elegantly working with the person’s choice of reality, rather than asserting an external agenda of the therapist’s
• Where necessary to help powerfully elicit emotional states in a client
•  The use of hypnotic language to have a client experience extra variety of choices
• Utilizing hypnotic trance for the use of post hypnotic suggestions that could potentially help the client take the next step towards change
• The use of hypnotic trance to integrate learning’s of a session for a client. This is so that the learning’s of the session are not just a cognitive learning experience but it actually engrained in them, as they get to see, hear and feel the experience of change in the future.

So…back to the original question, does hypnotherapy work?

The answer is…

As with any other form of Psychotherapy, the effectiveness and results of a hypnotherapy session may well depend on any one of the following:

•      The rapport between the client and therapist

•      The client’s commitment to changing

•      Outside influences

•      The mood of the therapist during the session

•      The mood of the client during the session

•      The co-operation of the client

The list goes on…

Therefore, if you wish to know how many sessions it will take?

My answer is:

There are too many factors involved to be able to know how long it can take.

So to summarize: Hypnotherapy should not be looked at as a magic wand, although it can be a useful tool at times in the process of Psychotherapy.

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Without getting too technical, NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming (I know… what’s up with the programming, right?!).

The basic idea of NLP and its approach towards Psychotherapy is that all thought and behavior problems no matter whether it is an anxiety, addiction or depression issue, they all come about through a process.

This implies that feelings and behaviors do not just happen to people.  Instead, an individual would need to have some type of internal process in order for a certain feeling or behavior to develop.

An example would be a person who has a phobia of spiders. In order for the person to experience the awful panicky phobic reaction, the person is likely to have some kind of distorted image in their mind of the spider.  This will  likely cause them to start a frantic, loud, fast paced internal dialogue, which in turn will create the intense feeling of anxiety and panic.

Now coming to the approach…

NLP is considered a brief and solution focused form of therapy.

This is by contrast quite different to the way most therapies work. With NLP, clients do not spend weeks or months exploring what the issue may be. Instead, if a person feels they have a problem, the NLP practitioner will expect the client to present what they would like from them as a therapist. There is not much sense (in NLP) for a client to request a therapy session if they are not really sure that they actually wish to change anything for themselves.

In my NLP practice in Jerusalem and Ramat Beit Shemesh prior to the session, the potential client is sent notes to complete about their symptoms and what they would like to accomplish by having this session. This helps create an understanding between us of what could and should be expected from the session.

To create an effective outcome in an NLP session, the NLP therapist would use certain approaches and techniques, all with the same purpose of stopping the unwanted patterns which are keeping the person from living a better life.

For people looking to get help for most types of psychological problems but are not interested in delving deep in to the past, with long-winded sessions, NLP may well be the answer.

This methodology is used with adults as well as with children. Although a child does not know how to diagnose their own problem, if the therapist has good enough rapport, the child will be forthcoming with what it is that is bothering them.

So the question is always…

What do you have to do now in order to take the first step towards a better life?

Book your session today by sending me a short message via the contact page or call me directly.

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This is a festival which represents the themes and ideas of freedom.

Yet, on the eve of Pesach, one of the traditional things that we eat, is the very bitter herbs we call Marror, to remind us of the times that were tough.
This means, that part of what it is to be a free human being, is to recognize that life is not always Happy, amazing and wonderful.

This is quite different to the way many people perceive the idea of freedom.

I can’t say that I know what freedom is, but I think that this is an important concept.

I have come across many clients, especially ones with addiction related issues who are constantly looking for the all amazing  and successful life…
“I wish I would feel loved all the time”…
“I wish I could feel confident all the time”…
“I wish I could feel spiritually connected all the time”.
And because they do not  end up  actually having these feelings and experiences ‘all the time‘ (since such a concept is non existent) they will tend to knock themselves and end up looking for replacements to gain those feelings.
Pesach (Passover) tells us to wake up and recognize that life is a journey with many ups and downs …and as long as one is heading in the right direction with the right attitude, you are okay …even though we are all bound to mess up again…this is all a part of freedom…

Being a slave means…”I messed up today, last week and the week before for the past x amount of years and therefore I am messed up“. The first step to freedom is to stop being a slave to ones messed up’ness.

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Giving a child a teddy bear will not help with her fear of the wind because she is not looking to be comforted. All the child really wants to know is that she will not be blown away by the wind.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of teddy bears. In fact my children enjoy going to sleep surrounded by the comfort of their teddies.
Another example (which I have come across) is when a child was scared of robbers breaking in. The parents kept telling the child that robbers exist only far away, that they “never come to our town.”

As with every distressing situation with a person, the question is, what are they looking for? To get rid of the uncomfortable feeling or are they looking to have the problem resolved. In this case it involves the child’s knowledge and feeling that they are safe.

Too often a parent or therapist can get busy trying to save a situation, all the while completely ignoring what is going on in reality.

Instead of desperately trying to get rid of the fear (like the one of the wind) get involved in what is going on in her reality. If she feels like she is going to fly away, how about hold her hands (tight if necessary)!

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For those who have heard of the great Psychiatrist/Hypnotherapist Dr Milton H. Erickson, the amazing miracle worker.  Coming out of the course with our certifications we felt like we were there already, we already had the skills that Erickson had.

After all, NLP modeled Erickson, so in that case it was easy to learn the expertise that Erickson had after all his years of practice. In fact we had felt even more privileged since we had not only learnt the modeled techniques of Erickson, NLP had also modeled other great therapists such as Virginia Satir (Family therapy) and Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy). Personally, I was very interested in Erickson’s approach.  It just sounded so powerful so I went ahead and learnt more about Erickson and ended up training in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. Imagine becoming a mental health healer only the process is ‘conventional’… just like talk therapy.

It took some time (and many hundreds of clients) after having opened my private practice in Jerusalem and in Beit Shemesh for me to learn some very real and valuable lessons about therapy and the way it works in the real world.

Lesson #1 in the real world of change work:

It was very easy to elicit good feelings in a client.

Yes, after having learnt all those magical techniques, especially the hypnosis related techniques, getting a person to feel relaxed or in any great state is easy.

BUT

Having a client feel good does NOT mean that they have been “cured”.

This is a weird misconception that many people who work in the areas of brief change work have.

A client goes to a therapist and complains that they suffer from anxiety. After receiving minimal information from the client, the therapist starts using different forms of ‘powerful’ techniques to get rid of the feeling. Using ideas of reframes and fantasy metaphors that will get the client to completely step out of their realistic problem and enter a make-believe world of peace and serenity. The Therapist will then use the future pace technique where they talk about the clients life in the future without the symptoms. Instead there is a beautiful future with all its brightness and glory.

The problem with that…

I used to have the idea (based on an NLP pre-supposition) that ‘people make the best choices available to them’. Therefore, all I need to do to help a client is to instill new choices. By speaking about the better choice and giving some post-hypnotic suggestions it ought to be enough to bring about the change in the client.

BUT…the change did not happen.

After a few days (sometimes weeks, depending on the clients ability to keep hallucinating) the client will come out of that trance and the patterns and symptoms will re-occur just the way it was.

This is because the actual internal (in the mind) and external patterns of the problem were never dealt with.

Which then took me to Lesson #2 In the real world of change work:

Clients tend to have less patience than therapists.

If a client chooses to go to a therapist who practices brief change work because he wants fast results then they will expect fast results. If after going for a few sessions the client sees that their problem still exists, they will not bother going back to that therapist. In fact they would rather lie to the therapist and say that things have improved.

Lesson #3 In the real world of change work:

The game of pleasing…

Generally speaking, most clients that go for therapy are very cooperative and commonly therapists tend to be very kind, caring, empathetic and pleasing towards their clients.

Sounds ideal…right?

What could be the problem with that?

Recently while chatting with my friend and colleague Andrew T Austin I was musing with him how I used to be a real miracle worker and now I just don’t get those amazing results so often.

Of course, what really had been happening was that I had never followed up with my clients and I just presumed that if they still had a problem they would let me know.

I had always been too busy making every effort that my client be comfortable and feel good. They in turn did not want to offend me or make me feel bad, so they never mentioned anything when it had in fact not worked for them.

Lesson #4 In the real world of change work:

So you managed to get your client to feel inspired…Mazel tov

Okay, so now your client can go rave about you and how wonderful a person you are and possibly even give you a brilliant testimonial.

I tend to be wary of when people say that they feel inspired. To me inspiration is often just another sign that the client is not living in reality and is not learning to deal with life at present.

Lastly and to sum up.

Real lasting change is noticeable when a client makes a shift not just in their state and feeling but also in their attitude towards the given problem. Ultimately, the only way to really know that change has occurred is by checking up with the client and to ask for specific details regarding the supposed change that transpired.

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This person had been to a number of different types of alternative therapies but ‘it’ had never worked.

Why did ‘it’ not work? And why would hypnosis not be the answer?

Let’s set the scene.

This guy who has been acting out with self-destructive behaviors for years (in most cases) has decided that he wants to do something about it, or at least this is the image he is trying to give to others. He goes to some alternative healers who do whatever they do…and now comes along to try me (actually not me, rather he wants to try the hypnosis). He wants me to put him into a trance and get him to stop acting out the behaviors in the future.

This means that he wishes to float away into a wonderful pleasant trance while I the therapist practice, or elicit as some would call it, the supposed change work for him.

Of course if the hypnosis does not work then there is something wrong with the way I did it, since hypnosis worked for his friend. So we book for him another session.

All the while the client continues his behavior wanting ‘it’ (the hypnosis) to create the results while he is passive. This really does not make any sense.

The one thing that should be clear is that hypnosis, unlike what many people believe about it, is not the wave of a magic wand. A person who comes with a request to be hypnotized so that they can be put in to a hypnotic state and by the time he can hear the 5,4,3,2,1 he would have completely been cured is completely unrealistic.

This approach also gets the client to assume that he need not be holding by any level of real commitment to change. It gives the impression the client does not need to do anything, in fact s/he can even keep the same problematic attitude that was a big cause for the problem and just rely on the therapist’s fantastic hypnosis technique to solve all of life’s problems.

What about all those who quit smoking in just one session?

Out of curiosity, I questioned a number of people who made the claim of quitting smoking after just one deep hypnosis session. In each case they told me they would have stopped either way and the hypnosis was more like a stepping stone for their transition to becoming a non-smoker.

Do you have an experience that says that I am wrong? Feel free to comment.

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Even though NLP is a talk therapy, it is not the same as formal Psychotherapy since its focus is purely about changing the unwanted behavior or feeling rather than going into never ending analyses of the past. The essential thing that you will gain from a NLP session is to learn to stop the unwanted patterns and triggers which hold you from living and feeling better.

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NLP can help you start living and create a better focus in your life. By understanding the way the feelings and thoughts are processed we can learn to shift the unwanted patterns and bring about lasting and positive changes.

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