Using what is already there
by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. of Couns., PhD, Dip Clinical Hypnotherapy
June 2013
I was doing the
initial assessment before a hypnotherapy session with a client recently, for
work on his difficulty sleeping. Among other things, I wanted to know if he had
had any prior experience with hypnotherapy. He said he had, but what he
described was creative visualization, which is only one technique of
hypnotherapy. He said it was kind of useful, but it didn’t have an enduring
effect. He also said he had a relaxation cd that sort of worked, but he found
it difficult to stay focussed.
Creative visualization
can be very effective, but only if the imagery is sufficiently pertinent to the
person using or receiving it. This point is one I wish to develop here. It
follows the principles I use, and have described previously, of using what is
already within the ordinary experience of a client in therapy, for it is this
unique and personal resource that aids in the process of recovery.
There is an elegance
in doing this that is very Taoist. The word “Tao” is difficult to translate and
is usually described as the “way”, which doesn’t really tell you much. I like
the description of the Tao as the watercourse way, the way of simplicity, the
way things happen when water finds its path naturally, from where it is at now
to where it becomes and how it changes its way in a simple process of becoming.
The Taoist way is not forced and doesn’t impose things that are not already
present in some form.
So I inquired of my
client with the sleeping problems what imagery was used by the previous
practitioner. He said he had to visualize a waterfall in a forest and imagine
the sound of water tumbling down. I asked if he had any particular liking for
waterfalls and he responded that he didn’t particularly. He said it was an
image he had to work at conjuring up. I then asked him what his favourite
pastime is, and he replied fishing offshore in his boat. It is an activity he
doesn’t get to do much, but when he does it, it relaxes him profoundly. This
was the way of Tao for him and thus became the image I used in my session with
him: sitting in a gently rocking boat, throwing a line overboard and waiting
for a fish to nibble. Fishing from a boat is something he knows and it is
something that he does already for relaxation. What a better resource than a
imagining with difficulty a waterfall prior to drifting off to sleep!
The fundamental of
good therapeutic practice in general is to start with their lived experience,
their phenomenology, not an alien idea taken from a text book. This is why
taking a case history really matters, and why intelligent questioning and
conversation is needed throughout the sessions of working together. What
happens in a psychotherapeutic and a clinical hypnotherapy session is thus
shaped around the client’s experience, and the resources they already have,
albeit ones they may not be aware of. Change happens from this starting point, in
a very concrete way and not in any abstract sense.
Hypnotherapy has come
an incredibly long way from the traditional method of the hypnotist requiring
the patient to gaze at a candle or swinging pendulum and then to go into a deep
trance and receive suggestions without an opportunity to respond to them during
a session. By contrast, in
modern hypnotherapy developed from
the wonderful work of Milton Erickson (1901-1980), the client might be invited
to speak about what’s happening for them as the therapist works. They may be
invited to comment on the direction the session is going, or to speak about
their experience at that particular time, or amplify or clarify some aspect
that the therapist doesn’t fully understand, or they themselves need further
explanation. This invitation is a hallmark of an approach that isn’t top-heavy,
like traditional hypnosis tended to be; it is, instead, collaborative. The
client can choose, and express it aloud, whether to take up suggestions made
during the session. In other words the client is active in the process. Things
are not being done to him against his will. His own experience, matters and
this is what is employed in the sessions with the therapist. Change happens
through choiceful engagement in a process, not because somebody else dictates
it.
In other words, modern
clinical hypnosis, is less dependent upon the development of a trance state
(though this remains part of it) and more on bringing focus through awareness
of other ways of seeing things and of shifting an emphasis that is getting in
the way of ordinary life. Problems like smoking, insomnia, pain, hoarding, low
self confidence, compulsive behaviours, panic attacks, and depression are all
helped by hypnotherapy sessions. I emphasize, though, the collaborative aspect
of this kind of therapy. Hypnosis isn’t a magic pill that cures without the
person wanting change. Change happens because the person wants it. The sessions
are deeply nurturing and the person generally expresses feeling wonderfully
relaxed
Therapeutic change has
a similar feel to the way water courses through a landscape, organically
transforming everything it meets, for it uses the already present yet tangibly
shifting blockages and stagnations and problems that used to go round and round
and round one’s head, to a new fluidity, a lightness of being, and an a delight
in something young and new and very exciting. This therapy is deeply
transformative.
