Hypnotist learns the proper time and place for direct suggestion hypnosis and Regression Hypnosis.

Being new to regression hypnosis work in March of 2004 (I had done some hypnotism sessions- part time for 6 months), the report/story below was a test for me, right from the start. And I learned the hard way, by not following my intuition.

One of my very first clients that the Universe sent to me for regression hypnosis work was a woman, 28, who was very angry, frustrated with life, and said she was overweight. On the intake interview she even told me that she had seriously thought about suicide.

I had a hard time believing that she was so drained of hope that she would really kill herself. The reason is that, as I met in at the office I was actually short of breath, she was and is, absolutely beautiful. And her aura, (I feel auras), was radiant and powerful.

But as the hypnosis pretalk interview proceeded I did indeed feel some very strong frustration with her life. I was amazed that she felt she was overweight because she was breath-takingly beautiful to my eyes, and surely not even 10 lbs overweight. According to her she could not loose that last 20 pounds and it was making her nuts and depressed.

I gave her my regression hypnosis pretalk, which was pretty basic back then, but full of my enthusiasm for it because of my personal transformations.

We had great rapport and I decided to give her an "ego strengthening" direct suggestion Hypnosis session, instead of doing some regression hypnosis work. She was a little intimidating to me and I chickened out doing the regression work that I knew she needed. She was all for going back and finding crap that makes her feel lousy now, at age 28. I soon wished I had just done regression hypnosis with her.

The hypnosis script was an altered one of the ego strengthening hypnosis script that is so popular. I thought I was doing her a favor in just helping her feel good about herself in this first session.

She called me up 3 days later, which surprised me, and said that she was really going crazy because "everything" she did seemed to fall apart or get messed up. She asked if the hypnosis did this to her.

I wanted to say, "no way, what I did TO you was a good thing," but I didn't. I said that I really didn't know. I felt really bad because I was supposed to be helping her, but it sounded like her life got worse after the session.

A few hours later the light went on in my head. It was something that Stephen Parkhill said in his Hypnosis Regression training videos. Not sure I can completely quote him word-perfect, but he warned to not give direct suggestions that will make the subconscious mind prove who's in charge. He also said something about not giving (yea team!, as he says) direct suggestions, that someone will love themselves, without first understanding what love means to that person in their subconscious mind.

That was my wake up call. My intention was to do this woman some good (do gooder...) by telling her to love herself more this week than she had in years, "love yourself, blah, blah, blah.."
I had to sit on that until the next hypnosis session and it hurt knowing that I probably caused her more problems instead of healing anything. She even said in the phone call, "I've made so many mistakes this week that my boss looks like he might fire me." I felt terrible. But that's part of becoming a master of anything, isn't it?

On the next session we did hypnosis regression and she regressed to some very, very strong scenes of anger toward dad. We spent most of the session releasing her anger in one event. It was jam packed! (Now, many years later I know her SM was using this event to discharge a lot of other problem feelings from events with dad.) She hit my pillow with complete abandon.

Now the interesting thing was that I remembered her telling me in the first session that she HATED her father, for a lot of reasons I don't have space to write here. So it was not a surprise to me that she spend all her energy on "giving it back to you (dad)" in that session. After it was over she looked like she had let go of 100 pounds of junk. Physically exhausted but radiating with energy and peace in her body and on her face. Yes, we got forgiveness.

Next Hypnosis session she comes in and I ask her how this past week went. She started her report with all the negatives that still bother her. Well, heck, I'm looking for something good! Then she said, "Oh I went to my parents for dinner..." I raised my ears and my eyebrows...
She let it drop. I didn't. I said, "how long were you at your parent's house?" "Oh, about 3 or 4 hours." ZOOOOM! It flew over her radar with no indication that this was an improvement.

I said, "hmmm, 3 or 4 hours... with your dad? How did that go?" She started talking, but then changed... "Oh yeah!" The light went on in her mind - "I didn't kill him."

I pointed out that the work we did in her last session made some significant changes in her feelings. She looked at me with a funny face, like, "wow, it really did." No way before the last session could she have spent a comfortable evening at ... dad's house.

I'll write about this woman in some other files because she was an amazing first client, one I'm sure God and the Universe sent to me for my baptism by fire.

Notice the results from the first session which was my chickening out and giving direct suggestion hypnosis, and her second session where she went to battle with dad in some hypnosis regressions.

This client, what she taught me, ultimately shaped my current philosophy about how I do first (Hypnosis) sessions, which is (now :-) very successful and rewarding.

Yes I do Direct Suggestion hypnosis in first sessions, but only after I help them obtain some significant releases.

 

Don't paint over dirty surfaces ;-)

Randy Shaw, C.Ht.

 

For more information on Regression Hypnosis click here: www.regression-hypnotherapy.com