The client that wouldn’t go into hypnosis!

She laughed and said,

“was I really that difficult?”

I was going through some old files and I came across a client that I am still really good friends with (at least 8 yrs since I met her for hypnosis) - I reached out to her and asked if I could write her story to help other therapists understand that this could happen to them. She laughed and said “was I really that difficult”

Here goes …

Andrea came to me for a free consultation for hypnosis. She passed all the questioning and tests with flying colours. She stated that she had lost who she was inside and needed to rediscover herself.

We booked in 3 sessions and proceeded. The first session in my clinic is always NLP questioning. I ask the client to tell me the story of their life based on the questions. We spend about 90 minutes together rediscovering the current Andrea and defining a new direction to go in. Easy Peasy!

Session 2 comes around and I am super excited. With creation and success in mind I knew Andrea’s PLS was visual and to use visual words. She was excited as well!!! … and so we began the session.

I tell her how she will teach me how she does hypnosis - we start with some visualisation to which she responded “I can’t see anything” - I debunk the concept of seeing things and proceed. About 5 minutes later I know she is not in hypnosis then she says “I can’t visualise what your asking”. She is just sitting there with her eyes closed being polite.

I clap my hands and break state - Andrea opens her eyes and says “I can’t be hypnotised can I?” - I responded with. The conscious mind is analytical and when we analyse what the person is saying it removes creativity for the unconscious to step in. We will proceed but I want you to do 1 thing for me.

”What’s that?” Andrea asked.

”I want you to think of all the things you have to do over the next week and keep thinking about them over and over again”

She sighed and said “That’s a lot to do, but ok!”

A few minutes later Andrea was in hypnosis.

So what really happened??

Let me break it down.

1. Andrea had done hypnosis before but her perception was she was just going to close her eyes, listen to me and off she would go - that is what had happened with all other audios (but I am not an audio that is at the whim of her control). Even after negotiating with her logically about hypnosis she “understood it” but struggled to “apply it”.

2. Andrea analysed everything that I was saying. When the conscious mind was analysing this would keep trance at bay, she was convincing herself she couldn’t go into hypnosis. You can tell if a client is in hypnosis or not based on breathing, posture and eye movement - I had to make this work FOR me, and AGAINST Andrea. So I asked her to think of all the things she had to do. This exhausted her thoughts and dropped her into trance so she couldn’t analyse what I was saying.

3. Have you heard of Aphantasia? Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create mental images in ones mind. I have never met anyone that couldn’t be hypnotised. However, there are some people that struggle to bring images to the mind on command. Get them telling a story and it happens easily and effortless as the critical mind is distracted by them telling the story (this is why I got her to think about all the things she needed to do that day - she was so busy telling herself her story the critical mind exhausted itself, got confused and dropped into trance).

I have lost track of the amount of people that have said to me “I can’t be hypnotised” - the truth is they can. They just haven’t met a therapist that:

1. They trust enough to relax around .

and

2. Finding the right hypnosis that works for them.

Another way around the analytical thinker is to use a confusion induction - Which you can download here.

A third way is to ask your client to close their eyes and keep them closed - tell them to listen to the world around them and enjoy relaxing into that chair. It is just people going about their day and that is none of our business. I will go quiet for 5 minutes whilst you enjoy relaxing in that chair - from here you just sit silently for 5 minutes (trust me - as a therapist it is a long time to sit silently but your client will start to relax into the chair in their own way - most of the time people just need a little rest or “time out” before the brain will switch off a bit - You will know if your client is slipping into hypnosis due to breathing etc)