A Hypnotic deepener takes someone from being in a trance to being in an even deeper trance. It is generally believed that the deeper the trance the more effective the therapy, but this may not be the case as a lighter trance can give more flexibility during the session.

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In the main, anxiety reduction is the main focus of a Solution focused Hypnotherapist, if the clients “stress bucket” has capacity inside it, the client is able to deal with day to day life a lot easier and work from their intellectual mind, rather than the much quicker and negative Primitive mind. The client leads us and we follow asking questions and focusing in on solutions to what may be causing the anxiety. For this we use Scaling and the Miracle question to guide conversations on how we could make some small changes in the client’s life that will move them up the Happiness or Confidence scales.

There may be times when, in addition to the above, we use additional techniques. NLP methods such as the Rewind technique are very successful in assisting with PTSD and Phobia. Clients are relaxed and taken to an imaginary place with a TV or a Cinema where they can watch themselves, watching old movies in black and white of the trauma or phobia that they have experienced.  Watching them forwards and in reverse until the emotional spike is reduced or has gone. Them we can “reframe” the situation to a more positive outcome.

Another technique is the “swish” technique. This could be used for a variety of complaints. For weight loss, we get the client to picture themselves at how they look now and replace that with their preferred image of themselves and teach them to “swish” the images back and forth in their minds to allow the brain to train itself for positive outcomes. Also in sports, we could have a picture of the moment of anxiety, for instance before lifting a weight and the moment of success, when the weight is safely been lifted. 

We use inductions to relax the clients into Trance and get them deeper into relaxation by utilising deepener scripts. When they are comfortably in trance, we tell stories or metaphors to allow their brains to think and process to solve the riddles contained within them. Suggestions, whether indirect or direct can be used in trance to solidify the conversations that we had with the client during our session.

Each client is individual and we should always use what we feel is the best course of action to help with their issues. Reducing anxiety, I feel, is the priority initially, as with a low anxiety level, other techniques are far more effective.

I mainly use progressive relaxation inductions, which allow a gentle drift into trance. The subject matter of the script though, I base on what information that I can get from the client at the initial consultation.

I find that for people who like holidays, tropical island and beach style scripts work well as they can imagine a beach that they know or enjoy. Walkers or ramblers may like to picture green hills and meandering paths, leading down a valley. Climbing down stairs is a classic, but I did have a lady who found her imagination didn’t picture a lovely stately home, but a grim old castle that made her feel cold and nervous, the next session we changed to stairs leading down to a beautiful beach, which she enjoyed so much more. Gardeners enjoy gardens, the closer you can make the induction to something the client can picture, the more effective the trance.

Avoiding any reference to the phobia of the client is wise, if the client is afraid of heights, stairs could be avoided, people with a fear of water or large sea birds, would not be as comfortable walking along a beach.

I use eye fixation for children as this encourages eye closure and then can lead to a progressive relaxation without them opening their eyes.

Common sense and listening to the client at the IC will help in selecting the best induction, to allow our clients to access their subconscious minds.

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Clients will come to see us as there is something in their life that they would like help with. Usually, the client knows what they don’t want, for example, “I don’t want to feel stressed all the time” or I don’t want to be afraid of spiders anymore” very small interventions can help with both, but are these the actual goals of the client?? We have to be careful not to dismiss these goals, but we also have to find out what the client actually wants, not what they don’t want. Using the Initial consultation format we can carefully question to find out what would make the clients life better and turn “I don’t want to feel stressed anymore” to “I want to be able to enjoy my evenings with my family” or “I don’t want to be afraid of spiders anymore” to “I would like to deal with a spider if I see one” we look for what the clients wants instead of what they don’t.

We let our clients know roughly how many sessions it could take for them to achieve their goals, we discuss at what point would they be happy to stop therapy, this could be in conjunction to the miracle question and scale, “when they reach an 8, its good enough” or it could be when they decide that they just feel better. They are in control of when they stop, but if the therapist feels that it is too soon, they should bring this up, we always take a full course of Anti-Biotics as this is what the doctor tells us is best, if a therapist thinks stopping therapy too soon would hinder, the client’s recovery, they have a duty of care to say so. Stating that it could take between 9-12 sessions, maybe more, for the client’s complaints to ease sufficiently, sets the stall out early and suggests things are not an instant win, so the speed of recovery is not over estimated, if it happens sooner, that’s great!! If for a phobia the therapists estimates 5 sessions, they could suggest that “most “clients have this many sessions, but some a few more, again, allowing the client to expect an improvement gradually.

Asking a client what his goal is for this session is valuable also, as sometimes different situations crop up in our clients lives that throw them a curveball and we may need to focus on something else, what ever it is, whatever the goal, we need to acknowledge it, record it and find small steps forward in achieving it.

We would never want to be in a position of promising to wave a magic wand within a number of sessions, as this would subconsciously put pressure on the client to achieve their goal in this time and maybe for some reason, change is not possible in this time frame. We could also be accused of misleading the client.

Goals are so important, but we must remember that a football player doesn’t need to score a goal to win, just playing the game is sometimes good enough.

A Hypnotic induction is used to induce a state of trance in a client. There are many methods to do this.

In the main, for Solution focused Hypnotherapy we only need a light relaxing trance to help us with our work, so a relaxing progressive relaxation induction can be used for most people. A walk down some stairs in an old stately home to a room or maybe a walk down from a green hill to a beach, just listening to the story and the client imagining that they are the one walking is enough for them to drift off into a lovely place.

Other methods, but not an exhaustive list, are

Pattern Interruption, where a handshake is adapted by the therapist to confuse the client into trance.

Metaphorical Inductions, where we tell a story or a fairy tale, with hidden suggestions inside.

Confusion inductions, which use a play on language to confuse the mind into trance.

Arm levitation, where clients are encouraged to notice different feeling in their arms

Eye fixation, where a client stares at something until their eyes are so heavy, they have to close.

Fractionalisation is where you get the client to come in and out of trance to gradually go deeper.

Any change in a client’s emotion can be used to encourage trance, if they laugh or cry or a loud noise makes them jump, a skilled Hypnotherapist can use these emotion changes to induce a trance like state.

Each client is individual and not everything works on everyone and it may take a little practice to find the most appropriate method.

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During the initial consultation and the workings of the mind presentation, we discuss why the clients may be feeling as they do. We discuss how our minds produce chemicals or neurotransmitters depending on the situation we are in or our thoughts at the time. Our ancestors are used as a metaphor to describe what we have to do to produce the “happy” chemicals that we need a constant flow of, to lead a more intellectually controlled life.

Solution Focused Hypnotherapists do not tell the client what they should be doing, but we can question in a way that may encourage the clients to do what they need to do, or of course suggest that our other clients find certain things beneficial. In the same way we would encourage the listening of our MP3 each night before bed, as “most of my clients feel this is beneficial and speeds up the therapy process” 

We have to ensure, that right from the start, we tell the client that they will be the ones solving their own problems and they have to do all the hard work outside of the therapy sessions. The work that the client puts in between the sessions is what will help their situation the most and if they act on the advice from our ancestors, their progress will be far more effective. If we develop a good working relationship, the therapy will also be far more beneficial as we can be far more honest with clients and we should ask them, if at times they are resisting therapy by not putting in the effort needed between sessions.

As we do not normally set homework, with the exception of suggesting that the MP3 is listened to, it is difficult to set a task that we may feel is beneficial. But we can listen for the client to suggest something that we may feel is beneficial and proceed to question it until the client then thinks it’s a good idea, at this stage we could gain commitment and invite the client into trance, to process what they have just committed to. Active listening and seeing great opportunities is the key.   

Asking a client “what would you like to achieve from today’s session” for me is so important. We already know why the client has come to see us as we have taken all the information we need at the Initial Consultation. We may be working successfully in reducing the client’s anxiety levels, which allows them to want to tackle other areas too. Sometimes, the initial complaint, was not the thing causing the anxiety and we should be mindful of this. Working at one step behind the client and watching their lead, we can see where they are going and guide them along their way.

I recently had a client come to see me for assistance in sticking to her weight loss plan, she was expecting, conversations of portion sizes and mentioned “hypnotic Gastric Bands” I of course talked about what she thought the benefits were to her if these were to be successful and she said she would feel she could go back to doing exercise as she would have more energy and feel better about herself. I then carried out workings of the mind presentation and focused heavily on the 3P`s, Positive interaction, Positive thoughts and Positive Action, strangely enough, the client had a lightbulb moment and said “maybe I should go swimming as I used to really enjoy that !! oh and I should walk more really!!” the subsequent sessions didn’t mention weight loss, they focussed on seeing how she could find ways of walking further and swimming faster. The lady had lost 12lbs in the first month of seeing me, she was happier, felt good about her changing body shape and didn’t worry so much about what others though she looked like. 

A little girl with a phobia of dogs is currently coming to see me, we are making terrific progress and we have got to the stage where she is happy to be in the vicinity of dogs and even stoke them if they are on leads. At one session, when we were close to the end, I asked “is there anything else that you would like to talk about today that we may have missed? “She then explained she had a residential trip at school and was so afraid of going rock climbing. We then spent an additional 25 minutes learning how we could use the “swish” technique to help her overcome the first few feet of the climbing walls. At the next session, her “what’s been good about your week?” was that she climbed and abseiled down the rock face!!

We need to ask, listen and react to what we are being told and hearing, this way we can see the best way forward.

During the Initial Consultation we describe what Hypnosis is, we say it is a tool that we use as Hypnotherapists, but we call it Trance, which can take away the stigma that some people have regarding the word Hypnosis. Of course, this may not be necessary as they have already come to see us for help and may be comfortable with the wording.

Trance is very ordinary in many ways. All of us go into trance many times a day, when we are concentrating on something, watching Television, at the gym or running, even when we are driving a regular route. We do it all the time.Trance is when the two mind, the conscious and the subconscious, come together in focus. You are then able to access the subconscious mind and that vast intellectual resource, enabling you to get the very best out of yourself

I often say, that our goal with trance is to guide us into a state of relaxation, where we can allow our brain to work hard on finding solutions, whist we enjoy moments of complete relaxation. I also compare trance to REM sleep, or maybe day dreaming, when the body allows the mind to process our thoughts and allow us to plan for the future, it really does depend on the client.

The main goal of any discussion around Hypnotherapy is to educate the client to the reason we do trance at the end of a Solution Focused Therapy session. We need the client to be working from the Intellectual mind, to allow them to absorb what we have been talking about and allow the prefrontal cortex to access the vast database of information that is the cerebral cortex to make their future brighter.

We also use repetition, which builds stronger learning pathways in the brain, which allows us to give positive suggestions that the brain will act on, not something the client can do if they are using their Primitive, emotional brain.

It also allows the client to leave the session feeling good, relaxed and with a reduced anxiety level. No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to feel anxious and relaxed at the same time. Feeling happy and angry at the same times doesn’t seem to work either!!!   

We have also to remind the client that stage Hypnosis is not Hypnotherapy, our aims are for the client to have a better life and not be the star of the show.

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