anti-hypnosis can be useful

It’s easy for any of us who are aware of the benefits of hypnosis to be offended or defensive when a client is blatantly critical of hypnosis - but - if we can get past our knee-jerk reaction - we can make use of this.

An elite athlete was frustrated because he couldn’t quite throw the distance with his javelin to qualify for the upcoming Olympics. He was an engineer and dismissed hypnosis as fluffy and unscientific. He was offered the following. “I’m sure you will be able to reach the required distance but if you can’t manage it by yourself, we could set up a hypnosis session”. He made the distance within a few days - just to avoid hypnosis.

A 9 year old girl was responding well to hypnosis, achieving an increasing number of dry beds. She was delighted, as was her mother, so we decided that she didn’t need anything more from me. The mother consulted me a few months later about something personal, and just in passing, I asked how the daughter was. The mother reported that she had been doing well, but had regressed and was now having fewer dry beds. I was taken aback when I suggested that we make another time, the mother said. “No. She doesn’t like you, and she doesn’t like hypnosis”. After I managed to swallow my pride, we decided that the mother could offer the option that a few months ago she had been having increasing dry beds, so she knew how to do that, but if she couldn’t manage it by herself, she could see me for help. She had a good result - just to avoid me and hypnosis.

Steven Lankton wrote about a fundamentalist Christian woman who was referred for hypnosis to deal with a serious problem. Her religious belief cast hypnosis as the work of the devil. Steve told her that he had worked with prostitutes and found that they didn’t like to hand over authority to a man. The woman found herself in a bind. If she refused hypnosis with Steve, she was aligning herself with prostitutes, but if she agreed to have hypnosis she was opening herself to the devil. She found that her problem was miraculously and spontaneously cured.

Hypnosis can be a wonderful catalyst, even in its absence. 😎