A Question of Time?

I was talking to a potential client last night and she asked me how many sessions it would take to solve her problem. The stopped me. I ended up saying “just one,” but now, I’m not so sure. I hear other practitioners talking about clients that they see, regularly, for months or years. Most of my clients seem to get finished up in one session, and then I never hear from them again, and I always took that as a good sign. But I'm thinking now that different people, with different challenges, will probably need more time.

It’s dawned on me that many people need both education and treatment. Hypnosis sessions are good for uncovering what's behind the issues they face, but then what to do about it is up to the client. They will often get instructions about what they need to do to resolve the issue, but that still can leave them facing the same reluctance to act that created the issue in the first place. Knowledge is helpful, but the necessary next step is to understand what to do with that knowledge. In a couple of cases, I've had clients that discovered that the habits they wanted to get rid of, like smoking, or over eating, were a direct consequence of seemingly unrelated choices and their core values. In one case, an inflexible core of self-sacrifice forced an "somethings got to give" response from the subconscious, resulting in the habit, as compensation. These clients choose not to re-examine their beliefs, so they left with nothing changed. I hope you now have an understanding why simply laying on "good" suggestions and positive affirmations often don't work all that well.

Hypnosis is a powerful tool that allows us to uncover the source of challenges, and to release emotional charge around them. This often causes a shift in the client without them being consciously aware if it. They know something's up, but don't know what it is, and that can be confusing and frighting. The intensity of these feelings are directly related to the size of the shift. When I went through my shifts, it felt like the world had rewritten itself around me. Everyone was acting so differently towards me! Slowly I realized that what I was experiencing was due to both changes in how I acted, and how I interpreted other people's reactions. It would have been nice to have someone me navigate these strange waters, and guide me through the rough patches. I strive to offer my clients both relief and guidance.

So, what do I say when someone asks me “How long is this going to take?” It’s a valid question. If it was me, I sure would like to know what I’m signing up for, too. But I'm just not sure what to say, other than “It depends.” For people with just a "single issue," like to do one long session, which includes some counseling at the end, followed by a couple of short, followup sessions, as needed. For people who are on a path, or have a number of issues, we can work as long as they feel the need. I encourage clients to work as the feel the need and to quit when they're ready. When I was in therapy, and when I was working with any teacher or program, I knew when I was "done." I knew when I had reached the point where I got all I was going to get and it was time to move on. I want my clients to feel the same.

I don't think that any professional in this area really knows how long something is going to take. Every client is different, they work differently and have their own path. There really are two distinct types of clients, the ones that just want something "fixed," and those that recognize that life's a journey and that hypnosis is one effective tool to remove blocks and help clarify their path. In the best case, the "fixers" will evolve into "seekers," as they use the tools that I teach them, as they begin uncover and fulfill their life's purpose.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

A lot of things have been changing and it’s hard to keep in mind what is happening, from one hour to the next, in order to write it down. What seem so important in the morning, feels meaningless by the afternoon, when I have a chance to write it down. Perhaps that is just a symptom of the process.

In earlier posts, I talked about a session exchange with another practitioner who told me to “remove the mask” and start dealing with all the fear that I allowed to rule my life. Over the past few weeks I have been recognizing the game I was playing with myself. The game was trying to keep a foot in both camps and being “neither fish nor fowl.” By playing it safe and not wanting to look too “woo woo” to the outside, I found that I really couldn’t be any use to the people who really needed my help. Another thing I realized is that, because I’m not a licensed professional, (hypnotherapists aren’t licensed in California) I’m really not on equal footing with all the licensed therapists out there. The one that do hypnotherapy in addition to their other, more conventional, practices, or don’t see any value in it. That leaves me with a problem: If I try and compete along conventional lines (stop smoking, weight loss, phobias, anxieties, etc.) I will find myself in the position of trying to explain why anyone would come to me, instead of some licensed professional with, presumedly more training, and insurance companies will pay for.

So, what I’ve chosen to do, is to stop pretending to be a “conventional” therapist and embrace the “woo woo” side of things. This is really where I want to be anyway. There are many people out there that can’t talk to anyone: The things that are happening to them just don’t fit into our medical system. I have heard plenty of horror stories, some from my clients, about what the “conventional” medical and psychiatric response is to un-conventional symptoms. In my time, I was lucky to find a therapist that embraced some out-of-the-box therapies when I needed them. Many others are not so lucky.

So, in my fashion, I’ve come out of the closet, again. I’m embracing and own my weirdness to stop waffling on some of the hard questions. It’s real or it’s not, get over it. With that in mind, I’ve redone my MeetUp to reflect this change. Now I trying to attract the attention of people who are also in the position of having experience that they’re afraid to talk to anyone about, or they’ve tried and nobody’s listening. And then, when I meet them, I give them the straight dope. No more “some say that,” or “it could be like so and so.” I tell them what I’ve discovered and that they are not alone, there are plenty of people just like them. So far, it seems to be working, I’ve seen a steady increase in the number of members, and more people are signing up for meetings. They don’t all show up, but there’s no news there. It’s a simple fact that still hard to talk about this stuff, everybody’s afraid, whether they want to admit it or not.

I’ve started reaching out to therapists again as well. Same deal. This time I’m committed to explaining that my expertise lies in dealing with spiritual issues that other therapists are explicitly not trained to handle, and may refuse to acknowledge. Sure this will probably turn off any number of possible colleagues, but those probably would not have been any help to me anyway. But, even so, perhaps the conversation will plant a seed in their minds that might flower at the right time, when they’re confronted with the reality. The fact is, I can’t start a conversation with the struggling, without starting the conversation. I need to create a conversation and put it out there where they can find it. They are not all crazy, they are not alone, and they can learn to manage and even turn these experiences into something positive.

So, I’ve seen results from my changes to MeetUp, and I’ve started this conversation with potential clients. Not enough time has passed to see how much fruit it will bear, but the feedback so far is very encouraging. I’m sure I will get significant push-back from certain quarters, but that is expected. I want to redo my web site, but I’m still getting stuck on exactly what I need to say, and how to say it. I’m working on it.

What’s odd is that my outlook has changed as well. Everything isn’t “wonderful,” far from it. I have days when the dark cloud and nasty feeling just want to overwhelm me, but having this positive direction helps me through it. What’s really odd is that I read things differently than I did just a short time ago. Perhaps I’m allowing myself to absorb and understand things that I was pushing back on before. I didn’t want commit being one of “them,” so I put a lot of ideas and concepts aside, not really try to understand and absorb them. Now I see them as possible and that makes all the difference. There is a whole lot of very useful information and instructions out there, if you allow yourself to see it. People have been trying to tell us why we are unhappy and what we can do to take control of our lives for millennia, but we won’t listen. Though it may have a lot to do with how difficult it is to loosen the stranglehold of the cultural framework we are all raised in. Volumes have been written about that.

I’m thinking it’s time to revisit the concept of beliefs. I was having difficulty in explaining, before, exactly what a belief is. It seems so simple, until you begin to delve the power and pervasiveness of beliefs in this reality. I was reading something today that opened my eyes to the idea that beliefs go much deeper, and are much more powerful in shaping our personal reality, than I had previously understood. Which makes the ability to alter or removed beliefs, extremely powerful. Much more powerful than I had realized.

If life was a game, I would say that I’ve stepped up to a new level, with new powers and new challenges. Unlike a game, the transitions are not clearly marked, and they can be long and sloppy. Often, you don’t realize you’ve made a transition until some time afterwards, when you look back and see how much has changed, and where where the inflection point was. That’s enough for tonight. I’ll save the rest for tomorrow.