Moving on to the Pre-talk

The next stop in our discussion of what happens during a hypnosis session. Last we discussed intake processes.

So, you have filled out the intake form and you sit, maybe twiddling your thumbs, drinking a cup of tea and wondering what comes next. The hypnotist shows no signs of moving and seems like he or she is just chatting with you.

"Great," you think, "I did not come here for idle chatter. Let's get on with it."

The things is, you are getting on with it. This is the part of a hypnosis session called the pre-talk. It is extremely important. This is the opportunity for you to ask all the questions that maybe circling your mind, and you should ask them. Even if it seems like a silly questions (or the dreaded stupid question) - ASK IT! If the hypnotist makes you feel bad for asking anything, well, you should just get up and thank him or her for their time and get the heck out of there.

This is also the time when the hypnotist will give you more background on his or her processes, maybe a little background on the subject of what has brought you there, and will learn about you. Your expectations of the session may be discussed and you may find yourself doing some little tasks that help the hypnotist learn about how you process information. Are you a visualizer, more audibly reactive, or Kinesthetic, to name a few? They may also determine where you fall on an analytical scale. We will talk about this next in an upcoming post.

There are many hypnotist who feel the pre-talk is the most important part of the session. Not only does it lay the ground work and set the tone for the hypnotic work, it often begins the suggestion work. There is often a form of hypnosis at play during this time. It is called conversational hypnosis. Now do not panic. This is no different than many conversations you have through out your life, especially the conversations that influence you to behave a certain way. It is employed in advertising and debate. In fact, you have probably done it to others (been the hypnotist in this case) without ever knowing it.

This is a good stopping place here because it deserves a post in its own right. So stayed tuned. Shortly we will cover the concept of analytic types, conversational hypnosis, and suggestion work in traditional hypnosis.

The Giggle

In yesterday's sermon about hypnosis as religion, another topic of interest was brought forward. The giggle.

In an email from Michael, who is just now back from the NGH conference, he wrote the following poignant words:

On clients who giggle: This came up a couple of times in various sessions over the weekend. Consensus is that giggling is often a sign that the client is not ready to go into hypnosis yet -- either they have a fear/discomfort/uncertainty that hasn't been addressed yet or there is something else the waking client needs to discuss -- so you might want to stop and do some more pre-talk. Sometimes they're just a little self-conscious, in which case you can usually get past it by weaving something like this into your induction: "And because hypnosis is such a pleasurable state you may even catch yourself giggling a little here and there, and that's okay; it's just a sign of your mind releasing tension and can allow you to drift even deeper into relaxation."

This is wonderful advice and I thought it would be helpful, especially to those of you who are new to this or even those of you who are clients (or thinking about becoming clients). My very first paid client was a giggler. It was someone I had known a long time before that and it was a little disheartening. I had been told that clients might feel like laughing and to just tell them it was okay to laugh and get it out of their system. Hence to say that took quite a while but eventually the giggling stopped. The above approach is easier to work with and makes a lot of sense.

So thanks, Michael!

The Negative and the Positive

Wow. Last night was my 101th post on this blog. How quickly time flies. Wish you were all here to celebrate, oh, but wait, you are. Mimosas for all (I wish, but it is a work day after all).

If you read my post from last night, you will then be aware that yesterday was not a stellar day for me. But now that morning has come yet again, the light illuminates much. I believe that life does imitate art. As I was cleaning out my files, I found some old negatives from past advertising I had done. What a wonderful thing. Out of every negative a positive can be made. Hence life. Hence this blog.

As humans, I think we are fairly loath to talk about failures - so I will not. Rather I will talk about a tough session and the positive aspects about it. It has been a while since I have worked with a resistant client, so I fear the theme for the next few days will be tainted with this subject. In fact, this one had to be the most resistive person I have ever worked with in my career. For the first time in a long while, I came home exhausted from it. I know, poor me.

But rather than wallowing in misery, even as it was happening, I realized the session was not a failure. The client still made many connections that hopefully will prove helpful. The rationalization and censor processes were still full on, but it did ebb enough to let some moments of discovery happen.

For those of you who believe in the Laws of Attraction and the more New Agey stuff out there, I am a believer, too (for those of you who are not, feel free to skip this paragraph, though I think it may be the apex of this post). Here is what I really believe. I believe that those who come to me for help, have been sent to me for a reason. Yes, I know, they want me to hypnotize them, but it more than that. They are there because there is something I can offer them, help them learn, and there is probably something I am suppose to learn from them. Yesterday is probably more of the latter. I learned why it is good to have many options available in one's personal tool box (why one must learn how to work with analytical, permissive, authoritative, resistant options). It is also good to learn how to combine them. I learned that my intuition is worth listening, too. It was dead on. And I learned sometimes it is good to just let things be. You cannot force someone to be somewhere that they are not. At some point it really is all up to them. And that is okay.