Stop Smoking - Hypnosis Works
Henry will come for one session to stop smoking. The first stage will explore his relationship with smoking, establish when he smokes and why he smokes. This uncovers any hidden beliefs about stopping smoking.
I will explain the myths of smoking, and the real nature of addiction.
We explore why he has not been able to give up successfully in the past. The second stage, the actual hypnosis session, will be quite lengthy. It will use direct suggestion to overcome false beliefs about himself and his smoking.
Then I use visualisation to boost his self image, and parts therapy to reprogram his unconscious values. Finally, we use reframing to remove any triggers which might encourage his restarting. He will leave the office with absolutely no desire to smoke, no cravings. Instead, he will have a feeling of boundless confidence and energy.
No Cravings
Most people are able to stop immediately with no craving and no desire to smoke. But for a few people, after some weeks have gone by with no problems, they begin to think about smoking again. They typically start to talk themselves into 'I wonder what it would taste like?' or 'I just want see if I have really given it up'.
This is because they are reverting to their normal state. Old issues are returning. Unconsciously, they sense these old issues as discomfort. They also remember how smoking is linked to those issues. There is not actually a physical craving, just a vague feeling of loss.
They have always associated smoking with the issue, and now there is no smoking. But they feel it should be there, that somehow they should light up right now. In that case a second session focuses on identifying the issues Henry associates with smoking.
Any trigger situations not brought up in the first session will be dealt with. This session of hypnosis will allow Henry to become aware of the hidden reason why he smoked in the first place, and to eliminate that reason. Then he is a non smoker for life.
Anxiety - Hypnosis Works
Most clients see a dramatic improvement within one to three sessions. But for some clients it is impossible to predict how many sessions will 
be needed. In the case of Amanda, her anxiety could have many sources.
The anxiety may arise only in one situation or only with one person. It may be triggered by particular emotions or thoughts. The anxiety may be part of another problem such as depression or low self esteem.
It may even be a mild form of agoraphobia. It may be fear of another problem happening such as panic attacks or performance anxiety. In many cases the client has suffered the anxiety for years, and may have lost all faith in her ability to improve.
In this case the session started by establishing exactly what the problem was. I got Amanda to describe three things she could not do due to her anxiety. She was asked to describe one particular situation where the anxiety was present, or one time when she was particularly conscious of feeling anxious.
She was asked to picture the feeling of anxiety and to describe the picture. It turned out to be a picture of two people, one large and threatening, the other small and frightened. Exploring the picture revealed that in her mind, Amanda was still paralyzed by fear of a controlling ex-husband, and by memories of a controlling mother.
Visualizing Success
Amanda was taken through metaphor modelling, a process that involves changing the picture without going back to the frightening situation. Changing the picture changed how her mind represented the fear. Changing how she represented it released her from her anxiety.
At the end of the session Amanda was asked to describe how she now felt about each of the three situations she had previously described as impossible.
She was able to see her herself doing those things easily and confidently. Her anxiety had all but gone. It will reduce even further in time as she experiences more and more success in dealing with situations that she previously could not face.
Insecurity - Hypnosis Works
Irene wrote, "I am interested in trying out hypnotherapy. I have a few issues I would like to work through. But central to all of these is my insecurity." 
I'm told I come across as quite a confident person. For the majority of the time I would agree and I feel quite happy with myself.
However, I have a bit of a roller-coaster type personality. When I feel bad I tend to fall into fairly extreme slumps, scared of leaving the house and wanting to avoid socialising at any cost.
I have only recently realised how much I rely on positive affirmations from others to the degree that I am sometimes an attention seeker. This attention seeking is relatively invisible until I have a few drinks when it can become so extreme that I will do anything for attention.
I tend not to drink too often. But when I do, I find it almost impossible to stop at one. I often end up blacking out before the end of the night. Until recently I always thought it was just the drinking that was the problem.
I knew there must be something deep in my sub conscious that was making me do these crazy and 'out of character' things whenever I was drunk. All of which, without fail, I do not remember the next morning.
I want to be in control of my life and I want to be able to enjoy social occasions without fear of doing something that could ruin a relationship or my career.
Hypnosis works by sorting out the core problem. Irene believes deep down that she is no good and never will be. The drinking serves to turn off this feeling Something that was put there by her mother.
Hypnotherapy will undo the years of criticism and put-downs. Her natural self will come back after reversing her mother's abusive behaviour.
Public Speaking - Hypnosis Works
Michael has never been comfortable when asked to speak in public. He stumbles through meetings 
and tries to avoid gatherings where he would have to speak in front of others.
He has a major presentation coming up. He is afraid that he will look like a fool in front of everyone. As the date approaches he is gets more and more convinced that he will ruin his career.
This type of problem is ideally suited to hypnotherapy. The treatment plan would be in two parts: 1) teach Michael how to get control of runaway thoughts, and 2) use a hypnotic technique to change how he experiences the situation. Michael will probably only need one session.
How to cure public speaking
One hypnosis option might be Regression to Cause to find the original situation that first triggered the problem. With public speaking the source is almost always due to the client getting humiliated in school when trying to answer a question.
The child's mind tries to protect the child from ever again being in that situation. It does that by creating imaginary barriers which discourage the child from entering that situation. The more the child tries to perform, the more frantically his mind tries to prevent it.
The child's mind then generalizes the fear. It's not just humiliation in the classroom, it's now a fear of speaking out anywhere. Treatment consists of reframing the source event. By giving that situation a different meaning, your mind will no longer try to avoid it.
The second hypnosis option consists of visualisation and direct suggestion aimed at replacing the fear with confidence. While in trance you client are walked through every step of the upcoming event. You associate good feelings associating with every step.
By rehearsing this mentally several times Michael's mind will come to associate positive outcomes with the actions. He will leave the office looking forward to really blowing them away with his presentation. And he will never be afraid of public speaking again.
Lack of Confidence - Hypnosis Works
Casey has a debilitating lack of self confidence. She actually likes herself, knows she is smart, knows she looks good, knows she can succeed at anything. But somehow she has no confidence in herself. She pretends to everyone.
She feels inferior all the time, but at the same time she knows she isn't. In every social situation, she feels anxious. Even going out to meet friends she will greet them warmly, settle in, and then be totally unable to give her opinion.
Part of her is aware that this is silly behaviour, she is actually smarter than these other women, but still has no confidence. 
She wants to become a consultant, but although she knows she would be good at it, has the training, the skills, the drive, she just can not accept that it would ever happen. Not for her.
Something in her would stop her from having that, even starting to have that, she couldn't even allow herself to think that it could be possible. And because of that, because she can't get rid of that irrational stupid shameful feeling. She thinks she is stupid, worthless, hates the way she can't do things she knows she can do. And she can't see any way out of it.
Finding the cause of No Confidence
Casey is crippled by totally irrational beliefs about herself. She has been to counseling. With counseling she felt totally understood. But it didn't fix anything. She had been to a psychotherapist. The therapist identified the things in childhood that probably caused it. But that didn't fix anything either.
What Casey has is a deep drive that keeps her doing what she is doing. The Metaphor Therapy consisted of associating into her feeling of inferiority. This identified her first metaphor - a huge grey ball that was crushing her. She was guided to find a way of altering it.
With encouragement, she found a way to have it 'dry out' and disappear. She then tested to see if the change had worked. She was asked to visualise being in a group and immediately said she felt 'scared'.
This feeling was used to lead to her second metaphor, a feeling like being surrounded by spikes suspended in the air. They were there to hold her back and stop her getting into trouble.
Keeping out of trouble
This was probably the actual cause of her problems, an originally helpful behaviour response that had gone out of control. Instead of keeping her out of trouble, it was now stopping her doing anything at all.
To transform the spikes she was asked to look really closely at them, and when she did so she was surprised to find that each one she looked at just popped out of existence. She cleared all the spikes this way.
When she visualized the group situation again, this time she was totally confident that she could join in and even lead the group naturally and easily. She was then asked to imagine a friend asking her to start a company, another thing she said could not imagine doing.
This immediately produced her third metaphor visualization. She was inside a cage with black steel bars, she was calling out people walking by, but they couldn't see her. She was able to transform the cage so that the walls disappeared.
But she found that she still was holding on to a few bars, even though she was now outside the cage. In reality, she actually did not want to let go. This indicated that the symbol represented some sort of resource for her, and she did want to lose it.
Valuable resources are always kept, so she was told to transform the bars into something useful that she could carry around with her. It turned into a silver ball in her hand. But as soon as she felt it in her hand part of her wanted to throw it away.
So she transformed it again and it turned into something she could keep in her pocket. As soon as it was in the pocket it merged with her body and ceased to exist separately. She then said that she was walking along with all the other people and they were not paying any attention to her.
She was again tested against all her scenarios. All her fears had totally cleared. As she was tested against each of the things she said she could not do, an immense grin appeared on her face and just kept getting wider and wider as she realized that it was all over. She was free of it.
Fear of being late - Hypnosis Works
Sylvia lives in perpetual dread of being late. She turns up half an hour early for doctor's appointments, and gets into a panic if there is even the possibility of being late for something. This applies to social engagements 
as well as to formal appointments.
For example, she had agreed to meet a friend for coffee at eleven o'clock and she is unexpectedly caught in traffic. As the minutes tick away she gets hot, her hands sweat. She begins to get palpitations i her chest. She can't breathe.
As the deadline approaches she will become too ill to carry on, and will turn around and go home. Sylvia suffers from a fairly common ailment - unprovoked dread. She is competent and able in every other part of her life.
Learning to live free
There are several possible treatments which would be effective. Regression to Cause would identify and fix the first occasion that this problem arose. Metaphor modelling would be effective in creating resources to destroy the nameless dread that lurks around the idea of being late.
It could be treated as a phobia, chronophobia, the fear of being late. However the simplest treatment is usually the best. The treatment plan in this case was to hypnotize Sylvia and use the technique of incrementalism.
The waking mind is sometimes so afraid of the thing it fears that even the thought of going near it causes anxiety. The suffferer cannot even bear to contemplate the idea. In cases like that it is often possible to creep up on the fear. You aim to show the client that it is not really as frightening as they thought. Once the client can look at the fear straight on it becomes apparent that there really isn't anything there to fear.
Visualize your own freedom
In this case I simply asked Sylvia to close her eyes and to imagine she was on the way to an appointment. I asked her how she would feel if she was ten minutes early. Then how she would feel if she was five minutes early, or four or two or one or thirty seconds early.
At each stage I confirmed that she felt good and in control. Then I asked how she would feel about being ten seconds early, then five, then one. And then how she would feel about being exactly on time. I confirmed that being exactly on time left her confident and pleased with herself.
Then I asked how she would feel if she was one second beyond being exactly on time. She said that would be OK. Then I progressed with the same questions through two seconds, five seconds, ten, thirty, forty, sixty.
By progressing in tiny increments I could get Sylvia to accept that she could be a tiny bit late and still feel OK. And then a little bit more late, and a bit more. And so on.
Accepting your problem
Sylvia was unable to tell me at what point she would feel bad. Therefore I did a few more imaginary appointments, this time starting with being ten seconds late. Then a different appointment being two minutes late. Sylvia finally accepted that she could be late and nothing would happen.
I then did some future pacing. I got Sylvia to describe how she would act if she was one minute late. Then a different scenario with five minutes late and so on, until she felt confident about being late and feeling OK.
At the end of the session Sylvia looked and sounded puzzled when she said "I really can't understand why there was a problem. There certainly isn't now!"
Driving Test - Hypnosis Works
Peter is confident about most things in his life and in fact has excelled in many areas. But he is quite
unable to bring himself to start driving lessons. He is not afraid of the car or traffic or anything logical. It is just that he is unable to get the first lesson started.
He actually owns a car and is happy to be a passenger. But cannot take that first step to getting his license. This type of problem is fairly common. It is easily solved by hypnotherapy.
The treatment plan would be to hypnotise Peter and use the hypnotic technique of Re connection. In re-connection the client is guided back into their own history and reminded of things that they know they can do, things that other people may not be able to do, things that they once could not do but now do easily, skillfully and automatically.
Connecting the subconscious with its past successes causes your mind to re-evaluate what you believe about your own abilities. When your current problem is reframed in terms of past successes, then your current problem is seen as just one more thing that you can do. The feeling of helplessness, of being unable to even start is replaced by a confidence based on past competence.
Peter would then be taken through a future pacing session where he learns to associate success with every step and stage of learning to drive. He is then guided to visualise himself being handed his pass notice and the treatment finishes with a pattern of direct suggestions aimed at boosting his self image and cementing in his confidence in learning to drive. Peter will probably only need one session.
Jealousy - Hypnosis Works
Melanie is a young woman who has never been able to sustain a relationship. 
She has no trouble meeting guys but her uncontrollable jealousy always drives them away. Almost from the first minute Melanie needs constant reassurance from the guy that he is still there, still thinks about her and there is no one else.
As the relationship progresses she gets more and more distressed, she checks his cellphone to see who he has been calling, she interrogates friends about who he was with, she follows him around in secret and watches who he talks to. If they are out together and there are other girls around she openly accuses the girls of flirting and interfering.
Fear of losing someone
This behaviour has always resulted in driving the guy away and alienating all her friends but she can't stop it. Even after the relationship is over she still stalks the guy, abuses him for breaking up and tries to stop him meeting anyone else.
She is tired of people thinking she is a nut case, she knows there is no reason not to trust the guy and just wants to have a normal relationship like everybody else. What Melanie is suffering from is an uncontrollable fear of the pain that will follow from a broken relationship.
It is the same type of fear that some people have of needles. The actual pain is next to nothing, but the fear of it is irrational, seems gigantic, causes immediate panic and has to be avoided at all costs. Everything Melanie is doing makes perfect sense to her unconscious mind.
It is all aimed at monitoring the relationship and making sure it does not end. Because she is terrified of the overwhelming pain that would cause.
Dragon Slaying therapy
In this case I decided to use Dragon Slaying. This is a metaphor therapy that works very well for formless fears tied to strong emotions. I asked Melanie "If your feelings were a dragon, what colour would it be?". She immediately said "Red".
I then asked her to describe the dragon. She answered that it was "Nasty, Scary, Fierce." I then asked her to describe its head, back, tail, feet, skin and so on. What this does is to project the set of behaviours onto a metaphorical object.
The object equals the behaviours and the behaviours equal the object. A different set of behaviours would give a different looking dragon. However, because one is exactly equal to the other, creating a different dragon will lead to different behaviour.
When Melanie had described her dragon in as much detail as she could, I then started to get her to create a replacement dragon. I asked "And what is the opposite of 'Red'?". She said "Pink". "And what is the opposite of 'Nasty'?" She said "Friendly".
I then went on to reverse every bit of the dragon. If it had a short neck originally, I asked her to think of it with a long neck, and so on. The result of this process is that by the time she had built up an image of a fluffy, pink, friendly, helpful, warm, smooth dragon her automatic behaviour about relationships had changed completely.
I tested her by asking her to imagine a situation where her current boyfriend was in the middle of a bunch of girls in a restaurant. She just shrugged and said "That's OK. He can talk to who he wants. I'm not bothered".
Sexual Confidence - Hypnosis Works
Desmond is a young man who has lost his confidence in sexually intimate situations. He had failed to perform once and that preyed on his mind. 
The result was that his girlfriend felt he didn't find her attractive enough. So she started to criticise him, which made matters even worse.
This tension caused another failure, which just confirmed her belief. A few more failures and the situation then spiralled out of control. The relationship broke up and Desmond worried so much about what might happen the next time that he stopped looking for a girlfriend.
He began to avoid situations where he might come up against the chance of sex. For a young attractive man this is a disaster.
The cause of this problem is that by going over and over in his mind what might happen Desmond has hypnotised himself into making sure that it will happen.
Male sexual problems are surprisingly common. The treatment for this consists of two sessions of hypnotherapy. The first will teach Desmond how to change his thinking style and stop catastrophizing. This consists of learning how to use visualization techniques and how to apply them to problem situations.
Clearing the problem
The second session is hypnosis. In trance I would take Desmond through the whole courtship process, and instill overwhelming confidence at every step of the way. If there is any particular aspect that triggers the problem that is targeted specifically.
The hypnosis works by installing a feeling of pride and certainty. This replaces his fear of failure. Hypnotherapy will deal with self esteem or self confidence issues caused the very first sexual failure.
Then when Desmond does meet a girl, at every stage his mind automatically fills with images of success and feelings of confidence. Hypnotherapy overcomes his fear of failure and embarrassment. When the time comes, he will just automatically do what comes naturally.
Out of Control Eating - Hypnosis Works
Hypnosis Cases: Helen has a problem with her weight. She is not obese but from time to time she gets into a state where she just gorges on food. She will eat a whole packet of biscuits and then go back to the fridge for ice cream. 
This will happen for a couple of days, and then she gets back on the diet and stays on it until the next binge.
The interview revealed that she also has a history of other self destructive behaviour, hurting herself and sometimes cutting her arms. This was all part of a pattern: at college she had drank too much, over worked, over partied and now she was over eating. Her pattern seemed to be overdoing it and then withdrawing into herself. She was generally bright and cheerful but just could not break this pattern.
The nature of Helen's problems indicated that she probably had deep self esteem issues and didn't like herself much. She reported that she had a bad childhood. I did not want to go back and revisit old hurts so I chose to use Metaphor Modelling as the therapy.
Self loathing and eating
In the session I started by asking Helen "When you are bingeing, what is that like". She immediately came up with the words "absolute self loathing". I then asked what absolute self loathing looked like. She said "It's grey, sludgy, oppressive and heavy".
I then started exploring that metaphor and came to 'lonely' as a main theme. I then started exploring 'lonely' and arrived at a metaphor of a figure standing on a beach. This then eventually led to the figure getting into a car and driving to Helen's home and falling asleep. The sleeping figure put a 'warm yellow blanket around the house'.
Testing what 'bingeing' was like now revealed another metaphor, a rock. Helen was reluctant to get rid of the rock. When asked what it was for, she said "To hold memories". Further questioning revealed that it held memories of 'rejection'.
She couldn't let the memories of rejection go because remembering about rejection kept her safe from future rejection. But remembering about rejection made her feel bad all the time. The inability to let go was causing inner frustration, which was causing the behaviour.
Further development of the rock metaphor allowed her to be able to keep just one of the memories to stay safe, but to let the rest 'trickle away into the sand on the beach'. By letting go of the constant feeling of rejection Helen was able to resume a normal life again.
Cheating - Hypnosis Works
Vanessa recently discovered that her husband had been having an affair with another woman, and for more than seven years she had been quite unaware of it. She feels betrayed, hurt, angry, stupid, confused. She has decided to give the marriage another go, but she just cannot get rid of the feeling of betrayal.
She knows it is time to move on and get her life back on track. But something inside her just isn't right.
She cannot get rid of this dread feeling inside. She cannot laugh and has lost all her confidence.
All she wants is to feel the way she used to feel before this terrible thing happened. Her mind has forgiven her husband, but in her heart, it still isn't right. Vanessa has been hurt and embarrassed and feels numb.
She needs to get out of that feeling if she is to start working on her marriage again. She has been to counselling for a few weeks but it is not helping. The problem with Vanessa is that "I keep seeing the two of them together, I keep imagining how stupid I must look. I cannot get the image out of my mind". That feeling is the core of her problem. Hypnosis works by changing the way she sees herself and her relationship.
Replace the bad images
The way to get back to normal is for her to learn how to deal with these horrible images. I taught her a series of mental exercises. These exercises were a form of self hypnosis. They allowed her to get control of the images, to create different images, and to alter the images she had. This way she was able to cancel out the unhappy memories, and to deal with anything that might come up in the future.
Then I dealt with the immediate problem, the whole thing about the affair. I did not ask any questions about it or get her to go over any of it. The hypnosis works by getting her to visualise the affair as one picture in the middle of a noticeboard. Then she is encouraged to describe it: dark, angry, pulsating, evil. Next, she is asked to remember a happy occasion, and to create a picture of that.
Insert good images
I then instructed her to sneak the happy picture on to the noticeboard without the dark picture being aware of it, and to pin the happy picture high up near one corner. Then I got her to grab the happy picture by the corners and suddenly stretch it out like a tablecloth.
Then she wrapped the ugly dark picture in the bright happy picture. And finally, wring the dark picture inside the tablecloth and smash it up. And then to do it again and again until the dark picture had been completely wiped out by the happy picture. At the end of the session the dark picture had gone, and so had her dark feelings.
The hypnotherapy had brought her confidence back. When she thought about it, the affair now seemed old news. It seemed a long time ago, and no longer hurt. She was able to go back and start over with her husband.
Drinking - Hypnosis Works
Bob came to therapy because his wife insisted that he do something about his drinking. He didn't drink all that often, but when he did he couldn't just go home when he should. Instead he would stay out drinking to the last and then arrive home drunk many hours after he had promised. 
This upset his wife. She thought he was unreliable and disrespectful. She was unhappy and the marriage was under strain. Bob was also unhappy. He loved his wife and family and generally was a good husband, worked hard and contributed to the household.
But when he went out for a drink with his friends he just could not bring himself to go home at the time he had agreed to. He felt bad about his behaviour. He realised it was upsetting his wife. And he did not want to upset her.
But he just did not seem to be able to leave the bar and go home when he was supposed to. He had thought about his behaviour, tried to understand it. He could not see any reason for it, he tried to change. But still could not go home at the right time.
The origin of the problem
Questioning Bob uncovered the reason for his behaviour. He had been born in Turkey but his parents left him with his grandparents while they went to Germany to look for work. Bob had a wonderful childhood living on a farm with his grandmother and dozens of aunts and cousins and cats, dogs, pigs and everything else that a young boy could love.
That all ended abruptly when he was five and half. His mother came to the farm one day to take him away. Suddenly he was living in a tiny apartment, alone most of the day, with adults who were complete strangers and where he couldn't understand a word anyone said. And instead of a warm loving circle of indulgent relatives, he now had these strangers pushing him around.
Teenage Rebellion
So he rebelled. He decided that no one was going to tell him what to do. That frightened little boy decided that defiance was how to get control back into his life. And so he grew up with a determination never to let anyone tell him what to do. He learned that he could happily obey some rules, but would not tolerate anything relating to his personal freedom. He did what he wanted.
And this rule served him very well, most of the time. It got him thrown out his family home at seventeen, but he became successful in business, never working for anyone else, because he would not have anyone telling him when to go for lunch or what time to get to work.
Marriage changes everything
But then he got married. And he could no longer have everything his own way. He had to make allowances for somebody else. Someone who had their own rights and expectations: who wanted him home by a certain time. So now Bob had a problem.
His internal rule was to never let anyone tell him what to do, but if he followed that rule he would make his wife unhappy which made him unhappy. So he found himself in a bind.
He could not go home when he said he would because that meant he was being told what to do in his personal life, but he actually wanted to go home, and he dreaded the phone calls from his wife reminding him to get home on time because that made him even more anxious.
The more anxious he got the more he drank and the easier it was to stay on and drink some more. Part of him wanted to leave and go home to a welcoming wife and family, and part of him was determined to show that he wasn't going to be pushed around. Logically he knew what he should do, but his mind just wouldn't let him.
The Treatment: Cognitive Modelling
The treatment consisted of getting Bob to accept one part of the dilemma, and to reject the other. The way to do that was to get him to realise that he could control his drinking by controlling the way he thought.
Metaphor therapy is based on the idea that every feeling and memory is associated with a picture. That picture is actually a metaphor that represents the feeling or memory. Metaphor Therapy consists of changing the feeling by changing the image.
I taught Bob how to visualise his feelings, and then how to alter the images that represented the feelings. Then I showed him the Swish Technique and he was able to transfer images that represented success to the image that represented his problem. One cancelled out the other. He was able to alter his behaviour immediately and get his marriage back.
Anger - Hypnosis Works
Angela had recently fallen out with her business partner. The business had failed and left her with lots of debt. She came to therapy to try to get rid of feelings of anger about the whole thing, and specifically about any communication she got from the ex-partner. 
When I started talking with her a pattern emerged. She was a people pleaser and would to anything, agree to anything to avoid conflict. She knew that other people were doing things less well than she could, but she still couldn't confront them. So she bottled it up inside.
Over time she was losing it. She would turn up to work, stay sitting in the car, unable to force herself to get out. Or, she would decide on a plan, but when it came time to do it, she would find an excuse to not do anything.
She was becoming bitchy to her husband for no reason, always finding fault. She wasn't sleeping, worrying about the debt. Life just lost its interest, and things just seemed pointless.
The origin of the problem
Angela had been brought up in a very religious household. There was always tension in the home between her parents. From an early age she was aware of having sudden outbursts against things the she saw as wrong.
She was always looking at ways that things might go wrong, going over things from the past. Her mind was always busy. She had a loving husband, happy children but still found everything was a struggle.
The origin of her problem actually started way back. She is suffering from a form of depression that shows itself mainly as anger. In her mind, things should be done one way, the right way, or she got angry at herself and others.
This is called Black and White thinking: a thing is either completely right or it is completely wrong. Not every thing. But definitely some things. The depression was making her procrastinate, lose interest in life, and causing unrealistic thoughts about her future.
What she has is a condition inherited from her parents - a tendency to get depressed following stress. Although it is genetic, it can be treated successfully. What works is life style changes and learning how to deal with her circular thinking patterns.
So she was referred to her doctor to get her physical needs sorted, and given mental exercises to do to combat the tendency to over-analyze. That stops things getting out of control and letting her mind run away with her.
Fear of Dating - Hypnosis Works
Dorothy is an attractive woman in her early 30s. She is successful at work, people envy her, and think that her life must be wonderful. The fact is that she hasn't had a date for seven years. When men ask her for a date, she immediately finds reasons why she can't.
The reality is that she has no confidence. She knows that she will never be good enough to be in a successful relationship. And the more attractive the man is, the more she feels that she could never be what he wants, and that the relationship will be a failure.
Single and lonely
So to avoid having another failed relationship she stays single and lonely. She tells herself that her career comes first, that she really doesn't have time for a relationship, that she likes being on her own. Part of her longs for a loving relationship but at the same time the idea terrifies her.
She blames herself for this state of affairs. She is secretly afraid that somehow she is tainted. Her mother and father both have depression. Her father has been suicidal for much of his life. She feels that some of this must have somehow affected her. She thinks that is why she just doesn't feel good enough: it's because she actually is not good enough.
Not good enough for a good relationship
I spent some time talking to Dorothy about her past relationships and how they ended. In every case, she was the one who finished it. As the relationships grew closer she felt overwhelmed by her partner's expectations. She just knew that she just could not live up to them. So she bailed out.
She came to me for hypnotherapy because a new man wants to start a relationship with her. He is kind, gentle, understanding and everything she's ever wanted in a man. He could be the one. And that is what is terrifying her.
So I asked her what she felt when she thought about being in a relationship with this man. About how she felt about what he expected. And she said "Inside, I'm just that cowering little girl".
Inner Child Therapy
That one sentence was what it was all about. I led her into trance, and I gradually took her back to when she was a girl. I got her to remember that "cowering little girl". Then I got her to be that little girl. She described being seven years old, in school, surrounded by her classmates.
Her classmates had just told her that they didn't want her, that she should go away, nobody wanted to be her friend. She felt utterly rejected. She knew that she would never be good enough to be part of that class. Nobody wanted her.
It was that belief that she was bringing to her adult relationships. I used regression hypnotherapy to get her adult self emotionally attached to that frightened child. I got her to tell that frightened little girl that she was loved, and wanted, and had done nothing wrong.
The little girl was then gradually allowed to grow into the successful attractive woman who she really was. Clearing away this childhood fear allowed her to fully embrace an adult relationship openly for the first time.
