Hannah Leach Hypnotherapy

Here’s an article that appeared in the Guardian this week. It’s the author’s account of his own clinical depression, which he says is still a taboo subject.

I wanted to write this blog because, funnily enough, depression is taboo in the hypnotherapy world. Much has been written in textbooks and journals to discourage hypnotherapists from going anywhere near it. Some therapists believe that we shouldn’t work with clinically depressed clients without written consent from their psychiatrist. I’m uncomfortable with this because it denies clients the right to choose their own method of treatment, in confidence. Other authors have said that we shouldn’t treat the clinically depressed at all.

Apart from the logistical farce of separating clinical depression from the layman’s variety, I think this view perpetuates myths of both hypnosis and mental illness. Depressed people are represented as being pathological and potentially dangerous. Hypnosis is, supposedly, an unpredictable, potentially dangerous form of mind-tampering which risks unhinging the depressive’s already fragile sense of reality. How strange for hypnotherapists to take such a suspicious view of our own profession!

I think these authors fail to recognise the normality of depression. In any one year, 8-12% of the UK population will meet the diagnostic criteria – and many of those people are still going to work, having relationships, remembering not to talk to strangers and looking both ways before they cross the road.

Our perceptions of depression are simply too dramatic. Some otherwise capable people stop functioning dramatically because of mental illness, but so many others simply live with the symptoms of depression, month after month, year after year.

Hypnotherapy lends itself to changing the behavioural aspects of depression. When a person ‘lives with’ depression, they start learning patterns of behaviour, ways of coping or responding to situations, which in the long term can be more destructive than the original low mood. Hypnosis transforms those patterns into something more positive. As a result, the person’s confidence increases and their mood lifts.

Ericksonian hypnosis is wonderful for tapping into a person’s unconscious resources. Milton H. Erickson taught that each of us possesses whatever awareness and abilities we need within ourselves – and in hypnosis, we can come up with solutions that hadn’t otherwise occurred to us. It’s such a simple, but epiphanic, way to help a depressed person out of their ‘rut’.

Over the years I’ve developed my own formula for keeping out of the doldrums. For me, it consists simply of company, dancing, mornings (that is, getting up in the morning), nights out, and writing stories.

If you can think of something that has helped you or someone you know with depression, or if you can imagine something that would help, I’m always interested to hear. You can post here for all the world to see, or if you prefer, get in touch here. And as I learn more great solutions, I’ll let you know…!

(Thanks for the image to A Bitter Animator of my medicated cartoon life.)

Past Life Regression was the first thing I wanted to do when I started my hypnotherapy training. I’ve since branched out, and I trained at CECCH, where I learnt about Eriksonian hypnosis, cognitive approaches and NLP.

But Past Life Therapy is still close to my heart, so last weekend I adventured to Sheffield, to spend 3 days with Lionheart Training and 14 other therapists. Through pair work and group meditation, we looked briefly into several lives each. I remembered being a bored young woman in Colonial England, a pilot, and an adolescent boy in Thailand.

Often clients seek past life regression simply out of curiosity. Other times, a client has a long-standing issue which evades treatment – and past lives turn out to be the reason. Trainer Steve Burgess teaches a system for asking the client’s subconscious to ‘diagnose’ whether a problem comes from this life or a previous one, and exactly how many past lives need to be explored before the client’s difficulties are resolved!

By the end of the second day, I was feeling very low. I had a sad feeling all that evening which I couldn’t find a reason for, so the next morning I asked whether anyone else in the group had been feeling similar. Steve suggested I ‘volunteer’ to be a client in the demonstration of a full hour-long session. Another student, Sue, also wanted to work on a particular issue, so we began a joint session, while the other students sat in a circle around us to observe!

Almost immediately I felt so miserable that I couldn’t keep from crying. I saw myself as a youngish woman living in a cold country, and I felt that my partner in that life was dying. I hadn’t forgotten that a group of people were watching me; in fact I was wearing a biofeedback monitor which suggested that I was only in the lightest level of trance. These dejected feelings were already so strong that I barely needed to be taken into hypnosis, yet when I arrived on the course, I hadn’t been aware of anything that was troubling me that much.

While I was wailing, Sue was re-enacting being violently sick. She described being a baby, seriously ill in hospital. We could both hear and understand each other throughout the session. I honestly felt that I could be making the details of this past life up – it felt like daydreaming, except I wasn’t in control of where the daydream went. But the emotions and physical sensations that Sue and I both experienced were overwhelming.

There’s a popular argument that past life experiences are not ‘real,’ but are metaphors for how the client feels in this life. I think that if you get strong images or impressions during hypnosis or meditation, it’s a good idea to work with these, whether or not they be literal recall of actual events. To me, it’s more important that clients get better, than that they can check the factual accuracy of every memory. But Steve refutes the ‘metaphor’ idea and says that past life sessions are too intense to be the client’s imagination.

Not all past life ventures are as dramatic – or traumatic – as mine and Sue’s were last week! If it’s just an ‘interest session’ you’re after, then you don’t need to delve into any difficult memories at all. But for clients with problems they want to resolve, discovering that those problems come from a past life can be a huge release. Once the locked-in emotion from past events had been expressed, clients can then move on from their old limitations. If you’ve experienced this kind of therapy, you’ll almost certainly feel fantastic after it, and the healing it brings is very long-lasting and deep.

Click here for more info about the Past Life Therapy I offer.

…SELF-HYPNOSIS!

The above ‘golden rule’ was coined by American hypnotherapist Charles Tebbetts.  I often tell my clients that hypnosis is basically like a guided meditation – I act as a guide, but the real hypnotic ‘power’ comes from the client’s own mind.

A hypnotherapist’s techniques can often be adapted safely for you to use at home.* You’ll probably find these techniques quite easy to remember. But if you like, you can always record your own suggestions onto a tape – or ask a friend to do it if your own voice on tape is too awful!

The simplest approach is to use an induction followed by a deepener. You can then give yourself post-hypnotic suggestions: these are any suggestions which are given while you’re in hypnosis, but designed to take effect after the session has ended.

It simply isn’t possible to get ’stuck’ in hypnosis. The worst that can happen is you fall asleep – you may want to set an alarm if you’ve got somewhere to be.

* Please don’t attempt this while driving or operating machinery.

INDUCTION

• Notice your breathing. The rate and quality of your breath relates directly to your state of mind – people with high stress levels generally breathe more quickly. But you can change the cause-and-effect around: by deliberately breathing slower or more deeply, you can cause your body to relax. So think about slowing your breathing just a touch – this doesn’t need to be a big effort. Breathe from the abdomen instead of the chest, and notice how your tummy rises and falls with your breath. Notice your heartbeat too, and see if you can use the power of your mind to slow down your heartbeat just a little.

• If your mind tends to wander, you might like to focus on counting. Some people count slowly backwards from three hundred. Another exercise is to count from ten down to one, then nine down to one, then eight to one and so on. Either way, if you lose track or miss a bit out at any point, that’s fine – just start again at roughly the same point. The more you do these exercises, the more your concentration will improve, along with your ability to relax deeply.

• If you want to, you can think about relaxing each part of your body in turn. Start at the top of your head, and imagine a wave of relaxation spreading down into your face and jaw, then down to your neck, your shoulders, and so on right down to the tips of your toes. Take small sections of the body in turn – your right shoulder, your upper arm, then your elbow, your forearm, your wrist – and make sure every bit of yourself is included.

DEEPENING

The ’staircase’ image is probably the most frequently used deepener. Here, I’m counting down, from ten down to one, but you can count up if you prefer. Instead of a staircase, you might like a ladder – so, you might be indoors, stepping down into a richly carpeted hallway, or you could be outdoors, climbing a rope-ladder into the sky, and alighting on a fluffy cloud. Whatever you like!

• Imagine yourself at the top of a staircase, with ten steps down.

• Tell yourself that with each step down you take, you’ll become more and more relaxed – deeper into self-hypnosis.

• Begin counting slowly from ten….down to one, and with each count, you take another step further down that staircase. Often people find they relax even more quickly in the second half of the staircase.

At the bottom of the staircase, if you like, you can imagine a door which leads to a special room where you can be totally safe, without any distractions from outside. No-one but you goes in this room, and can decorate it however you choose.

Now is a good time to give yourself some positive affirmations (post-hypnotic suggestions). But if you’d prefer to just enjoy relaxing without doing any extra ‘work’, that’s ok too – when you relax this deeply, the mind and body can miraculously heal.

Some examples of affirmations are:

My confidence is growing steadily with each day that goes by

I now move beyond old limitations and create my own life just as I choose

Each day, I am finding it much easier than I ever imagined to relax in all situations.

(My next blog will include more about affirmations, and how to change your not-so-helpful thought patterns into something more positive.)

CLOSING

When you’re ready to finish, take yourself out of your safe room and close the door behind you. Go back to your staircase and in your own time, climb slowly back up the ten steps. Tell yourself that with each step / count you are becoming more energised, more awake and alert, so that by the time you reach the top you’ll feel totally refreshed. When you’re ready, you can open your eyes and take a few moments to stretch and adjust before you get up.

Clients often ask me about self-hypnosis. This can be very easy to learn indeed, and a lot of the techniques I use in sessions are ones that clients can easily repeat and continue using alone. In this blog and the next one, I’ll give you some ideas about meditation and self-hypnosis, which you can safely do at your leisure!

I’m starting simple today. This very straightforward technique was described by Dr Herbert Benson in his book, Timeless Healing. Dr Benson is an Associate Professor of Medicine with the Harvard Medical School. He is one of many clinicians who promote the view that regular relaxation – which can take the form of meditation or prayer, or any mundane activity in which the mind is focused and relaxed – dramatically improves physical health. When we meditate, we create neurological responses which naturally cause the body to start healing itself.

This is all you need to do:

1.Choose a focus word or short phrase. This could be something like ‘relax,’ or anything practical that has a calming effect. Or you might choose something with a spiritual significance, a prayer or mantra – it doesn’t matter what, if any, religion you follow. Pick whatever word or phrase resonates for you and your personal belief system.

2. Sit quietly in a place you can comfortably relax. Close your eyes and relax your muscles.

3. Breathe slowly but naturally, and as you breathe out, say to yourself the word you have chosen. You can say it out loud or in your head.

4.The point of this is not to test how ‘well’ you can do. It is totally normal to have other thoughts buzzing round your mind. Whenever thoughts come to mind, just say to yourself ‘oh well,’ and quietly come back to the phrase you’re repeating. It really doesn’t matter whether you have seconds, minutes, or no time at all in which other thoughts don’t pop up. Stay with it.

5.Do this for about ten to twenty minutes.

6.When you’re ready to finish, stay sitting quietly for a few long moments. Open your eyes in your own time and sit for another minute or two before you stand up and start moving around.

If you can do this every day, great. Twice a day – great! But every single time you do this, however often, you’ll be getting benefits. The effect on your body is that your blood pressure, metabolism, breathing and heart rate all slow down. Muscle tension decreases, and blood flow around the body becomes more stable. Your brain begins to produce more of the slow brain waves associated with deep relaxation, hypnosis and sleep – which naturally combats the mental effects of exhaustion and stress.

Next time I’m going to be writing about the importance of ’self-talk’ – the negative or positive beliefs we hold about ourselves, and how these affect our experiences of life. I’ll outline a simple hypnotic induction and deepener – the kind I typically use in sessions with clients – and (probably) give a brief script on confidence and self-belief which you can use for a simple session of self-hypnosis.

I went back to school last weekend – or should I say back to playgroup?  Steve Burgess, a well-known regression specialist from my old stomping ground of East Yorkshire, visited CECCH with a two-day masterclass on Inner Child Healing.

Group members drew pictures with crayons, using our non-dominant hands in order to connect more naturally with our unconscious minds – as well as to create authentically ‘childlike’ drawings! We wrote letters to our inner children, imagined them sitting on empty chairs in the room, used meditation and regression techniques to help the children feel good about themselves.

Raw nerves were hit; tears were shed. Many of the problems which adults stumble through life with can be traced back to childhood hurts, whether those hurts were intentionally or unintentionally caused. By creating ‘dialogues’ between our child selves and our selves now, we can start to heal.

What’s your inner child saying to you? It might be as simple as “I’m scared.” “I’m lonely / angry / bored.” What would be a great way to have fun together? Draw some colourful pictures using crayons, and remember to tell your child self how talented they are! Spend some time watching cartoons or a kids’ movie, read yourself a story, or just have a little daydream about happy events….

You may have read this article, which questioned how qualified a hypnotherapist really needs to be.

George, a handsome ginger and white cat, successfully registered with three professional organisations in the field. He had a diploma certificate from the Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists, but unfortunately…no such college exists. George is a fraud.

I’m pleased to say that the Association for Professional Hypnosis and Psychotherapy was cat-egorically NOT one of the organisations embarrassed by this story.

To join the APHP you definitely must be trained to a high standard, have regular clinical supervisions, and commit to ongoing training or other professional development throughout your career.

Hypnotherapy is a self-regulating industry. We’re not monitored by the government, so professional organisations are set up to promote integrity and good practice. As a therapist, being a member of an association is one way for me to reassure clients that I take my professional responsibilities seriously.

I won’t be at all offended if you’d like to see a copy of my Diploma, my APHP certificate, or insurance details. All therapists working from Centre Aum have these or equivalent documents, and this is true of most holistic therapy centres. So if you’re seeing any kind of alternative therapist, and you’re not sure what qualifications they hold, please don’t be afraid to ask.