A Tip For Working with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

When working with clients who suffer from GAD (general anxiety disorder) I have often found that they present with ‘my anxiety just happens, it’s not about anything specific…’. In the past this was quite the barrier for me to work with, and after some time and experience with those clients I have notice some interesting things. I’ll give you two of them here, and you can let me know in the comments what you think.

1. In the intake, even with GAD clients, I have always been able to notice some triggers that make the anxiety worse or add to it. While I don’t find the ultimate trigger for everything (which is what the client is looking for), I do find something that does something. I will often start with that, and once I open those up, more often then not the rest starts to open as well.

2. When I don’t know the triggers, I check for the idea that this that there are no specific triggers and the anxiety ‘just happens’ is itself quite anxiety provoking. That idea has so far always been on the mark. Now that I have identified that global trigger, I open it up by acknowledging the positive intent behind that anxiety (more often then not it’s ‘try to figure it out so I can know why it happens so I can fix it’). Once the client clearly sees that benefit, they let it go, and that bit of anxiety is gone.

At that point I have found that the rest becomes explorable as well. And there’s a simple explanation. The anxiety of ‘just happens’ creates the tight hold on ‘I need to completely figure this out’ which makes it that the client automatically rejects anything that isn’t a full blown perfect explanation for everything, which presents as ‘I don’t know what my triggers are’. Opening up the ‘just happens’ now opens the space for us to pinpoint and pick apart the triggers as well.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section.

Joe

NLP’s Fatal Flaw

Hypnosis, NLP, EFT, TFT, 3d mind…

All those beautiful ‘magical’ therapies.

They all have something in common.

A fatal flaw.

A deadly paradox.

It’s always there. Always lurking below the surface. Poking its head up from time to time, only to be quickly misdirected and shifted aside.

It comes up for the practitioners. Especially the ones who get long term feedback from clients. When they dare ask the unaskable questions, they are quickly taught to get in line.

And so what delicious flaw is it that I speak of?

It’s quite simple. The one thing those therapies have in common is the core belief that problems are simply ‘mistakes’. Things that truly don’t belong, shouldn’t be there, and are therefore easily removed.

It might be with a swish pattern, a direct suggestion, a release of energy, a collapsing of anchors.

The core premise being that change is quick and easy. There is no need to work or suffer. That to assume that any change needs hard work or suffering puts one into the category of the evil psychologists and therapists (or The-Rapists as many will quip).

Well whats wrong with that! What’s so terrible about that premise! After all, I had a friend with a phobia, we did the fast phobia sure, and 4 minutes later he was standing on the roof! No pain, plenty of gain!

Well here’s the thing. While it’s certainly true that you can make change without pain. Even significant change. The idea that ALL change is easy and painless is dead wrong (and harmful).

Here’s a simple way to prove it to your next NLP trainer. Ask him why he’s overweight, or why he smokes, or why he bites his nails, or why he gets angry, or why he has any bad habits, emotions, or behaviors at all.

And he will answer that he is human and isn’t perfect.

But what does that really mean? If all change is easy and painless, then why not? Why not take an hour, and zap em all away? Why have any problem more than once in your lifetime? Why once any issue ever comes up for the first time, don’t you simply run the magical process and rid yourself of it forever and ever?

And to that, the answer is simple. While there is a lot of things you can change that is simple and easy, there are many things that will be quite difficult to change.

This makes a lot of sense as well. Sometimes the problems we have are simply the product of a larger dysfunctional system. While simple phobias are almost always an isolated pattern, things like OCD, GAD, depression, and other issues can often be part of a global stable system of dysfunction (quite often they aren’t as well and are fixed easily). If it is a whole system that supports the problem, then a simple 6 step reframe won’t do the trick.

To solve these problems you often need to do a specific piece and then let the rest of the system ‘catch up’ and fall into a new order before you can know which bit to shift next.

A good example is building an idea and a product. While some businesses and ideas can be built big straight off the bat, in some industries you need to start with one bit, let the market shape itself around that bit, then evolve the next bit, wait for the market, and so on. The internet as it is now could not have been built in one shot 20 years ago. There are simply too many supporting factors that make it possible (the amount of people with computers, the mindset of society in regards to the web, the people trained in creating content, the users trained in consuming that content, the advertisers and their mind set, and a million other things) that were not there 20 years ago. The only way for the web to be as it is today is because it evolved step by step.

The truth is, you knew this already. You knew that your NLP trainer wasn’t perfect or God. It’s simply that you never put two and two together. That your NLP trainer not being perfect clearly leads to the idea that not all change is simple or easy. That sometimes change needs to be done step by step with the system reorganizing itself at each point. That sometimes the middle steps aren’t pleasant and that’s where many people flee back to the safety of the old system.

If you actually work with clients in the real world and follow up with them long term, you will see this truth as well. Not all future pacing is foolproof. Not all clients stay ‘fixed’. People change, and then change back.

And if your NLP trainer denies that, well then ask him why he isn’t perfect!

Ah. So now here’s your big question.

But hold on. One second here Joe. Don’t you do brief therapy as well? Don’t you get your clients out the door in 1-5 sessions?

But how? What if it’s a difficult issue? What if it needs longer than that.

It’s a good question. And the answer has 2 parts.

Firstly, there is almost always some change you can make instantly. I have yet to find the client that I couldn’t make some sort of instant impact.

Which leads to the second bit. And that is, when I identify a system-wide issue with my client, my goal of therapy is to train him to take himself through those steps all by himself. That although he might not be all ‘fixed’ when he leaves my office, he does know how to move forward and most importantly, he has learned to ‘sit’ in the middle step of a system wide change even thought it may be uncomfortable.

When my client ‘gets it’, I know I’m done.

Your thoughts?

PS I teach all this (and more) on my online supervision course. I will have the recording for sale soon enough. If you would like to be put on a notification list (and get a chance at the early bird discount), simply sign up here.

‘Focusing’ by Gendlin

Here are some thoughts on the book ‘Focusing’ by Gendlin.

For ages and ages there has been a debate about change and therapy. It runs roughly along these lines. I will present the extreme sides to make it clearer.

Side A. Cause/effect is a scam. The past is a red herring. All problems, all change is in the now. There is no ‘root cause’ and looking for it simply brings pain and anguish. It’s like trying to fix a broken bone by chasing after the attacker. Proponents of this position are CBT, REBT, NLP, Behaviorism, Solution Focused Therapy (also look into the philosopher Karl Popper).

Side B. If you don’t get the root, you’ll just have symptom removal and the issue will either come back or pop up elsewhere. It’s like putting a bandaid on a broken bone. In this camp lie the Freudians, Regression Hypnotists (the ones who think it’s ‘real’), The Inner Child People.

Now obviously the sides are more nuanced. But the debate falls roughly along those lines.

Now many people find that position B is more intuitive. We are used to cause effect in our lives (or at leas the illusion of it) and when we have a problem we can’t get rid of, we can tend to feel that it has a deep ‘root’ and ’cause’ and if we get to that, it will all be solved.

Many people who use CBT feel that although they don’t feel anxiety any more, it’s almost like they are covering over a deeper problem. That it’s a ‘fake’ ‘temporary’ fix. The CBT therapist will say that those thoughts are just thoughts and you can CBT them away as well!

At the same time the people in side A have a very good point. And that is, how can you prove it? How do you know that you need to get to the root? How do you know that all regression isn’t simply suggestion and metaphor?

In addition, Freud was woefully ineffective while CBT and it’s sister therapies have been verified to work quite well in randomized trials. While that doesn’t disprove Side B, it certainly doesn’t help them.

Gendlin is the first person I have found that bridges the gap. He talks about a knowing that we have that isn’t word thoughts. That isn’t logical, liner, and simple. He talks about the ‘felt sense’.

Imagine going on a trip. You’re on the plane, and you feel something bothering you. You know you forgot something, but you can’t remember what! Now, even thought you know that you can’t do anything about it, it still eats at you and gnaws at you.

And then you remember. AHA! You forgot the pocketwatch Uncle Jack asked you to bring to his brother. Now even though you can’t do anything, you feel a relief. A tangible ‘letting go’.

When your mind flags something as ‘important’ and it’s not addressed, it goes into the background felt sense as this uneasy feeling. The more critical the thing that you haven’t addressed, the more uneasy the feeling.

Now in the trip example, even if you never remember what it was, after a while you’ll stop thinking about it. It won’t quite bother you anymore (CBT). But it’s a very different solution than getting at what was bothering you. One takes time, is gradual, and doesn’t feel like a solution (the forgetting one). The other feels like AHA!.

What regression people and Freud try to do is get at the felt sense. Get to the hidden stuff to get that release. The CBT people say to just feel better and forget that.

Gendlin beautifully describes how that root is experienced in the moment in the therapy room. And so now, instead of Freud and regression being mere ideas, you have a tangible something to point at. The body sense.

He makes explicit what people have been trying to talk about for a long long long time.

To me, Gendlin is the synthesis between the two approaches. It’s something I have been looking for for a long long time. He gave me that AHA.

Get the book. Read it. Do the exercises. It will open you up.

Joe

Skype Conference Call Recording

So the Skype call went quite well. We had a very distinguished audience and a couple of really good questions.

As there were technical difficulties and some people couldn’t get on the call, I have decided to release the recoding of the call for free to ya’ll. Enjoy and comment if you have anything to ask or add.

Here are all the clips from the call…

Enjoy!

What is Hypnosis?

Context and Expectation

How Inductions Work

Indirect and Covert Hypnosis

Hypnosculpture and Win E

Instant Inductions and Nonverbal Inductions Explained

IM and Street Hypnosis

Triggering Models

Difficult and Analytical Subjects

Imagination and Stories

Answering the Questions

Emotion and Cognitive Dissonance

Hypnosis Doesn’t Exist

If you found these ideas useful, you might be interested in joining my online supervision group.

Skype Conference Call

I recently put a few dots together and collected a whole lot of information ‘under one roof’. I’m going to be doing a free conference call on skype on Wed Jan 5th at 3:30PM EST and I’m going to be giving it all over…

You probably already know a lot of this information… and at the same time you might have not put it all together as a cohesive whole. That will be my goal.

Here are some of the issues I’m addressing.

What is hypnosis?

What is an induction?

How do instant inductions work?

We always hear the experts say “tell them whats going to happen when you say sleep… or else they don’t know what to do…” Isn’t that cheating/faking hypnosis?

Can you hypnotize someone who has never heard of hypnosis?

I always hear about ‘being confident’ and being ‘The Hypnotist’. What does that have to do with my subject going under?

I hear alot about compliance and getting the subject to listen to you. What does that have to do with hypnosis? Isn’t that just compliance?

Why is the pretalk so important? Why can’t we just zap them under?

I have heard ‘inductions aren’t magic spells’, if they aren’t that what are they?

I have heard that inductions are rituals… What does that mean?

You can add me on skype at joe.10000 and IM me if you want to join.

This is all free as I haven’t yet gotten savvy enough at the internet marketing thing to figure out how to sign you up for a never-ending email newsletter…

Looking forward to seeing ya’ll.

Secrets of the Subconscious Part II

(You can find part I here)

Imagine a small child, around the age of 18 months or so, who is just beginning to learn about language and abstraction. Learning that there can be ‘the thing’ and ‘the thing but not the thing’. This understanding is key in learning language as words are an abstraction, an idea. They symbolize the thing but are not the thing themselves.

This is what differentiates humans from animals. This is why animals can’t learn language (outside of a few words that are pushed in via brute force Pavlovian conditioning). They can’t grasp ‘ideas’. That something can mean something but not be that thing itself. And so they are restricted to the world of concrete things and realities, they can’t go beyond that and think about pure ideas.

As this child ‘gets’ this concept and begins learning language a wonderful thing starts to happen. The child begins to engage in imaginary play.

How are those two things related?

It’s simple. Before one can distinguish between a reality and an idea, they can’t distinguish between fake and real. After all, ‘fake’ is real with the idea of fake wrapped around it. One who can’t understand abstract ideas can’t understand fake.

And so before a child knows about fake and real they can’t imagine, as if they did imagine they would be psychotic! They wouldn’t be able to realize that their imagination isn’t the reality, and they would respond to their imagined world as if it were real. That would be quite dangerous. If a child imagined that there was no fire and there was, and they didn’t realize that their imagination wasn’t the reality, they would stick their hand in that spot and get burned.

And so once we gain the ability to distinguish between real and fake, it becomes safe to imagine. Losing that ability to know whats real and whats fake would be the most dangerous thing that can happen to us.

We mentioned in Secrets of the Subconscious Part I that when we find our beliefs challenged we get very emotional. When our beliefs are challenged, we are in essence being told ‘your reality is not reality, something else is reality’. That to our subconscious, the message that you should start believing a fantasy as reality, is a very dangerous message.

This brings us to why techniques like EFT work so well. When someone does EFT, instead of fighting their emotions and reality as they usually do, instead they accept it and allow it to be. The moment you do that, your SC feels very safe and no longer needs to fight you.

The lesson is a simple one. Just like when you argue with others they get very defensive and try to defend themselves at any cost, when you argue with yourself and your own SC mind, it fights back to protect it’s reality and won’t give an inch. The secret is kindness, understanding, and diplomacy… with your own mind.

In the next segment of Secrets of the Subconscious, I will give you a super powerful tool that holds the key to controlling how you feel in any situation. This is what I teach and give to almost to all my clients right after the very first session. Using that magic technique, you can respect the message that your SC sends you and you can then persuade it to act differently. Once you do that, you become unstoppable!

Expectancy

Here are a few questions a fellow named Swoop posted on a a forum, and here are my responses and ideas.

1. Do you believe that expectancy is important when hypnotising?

Yes.

2. If so, what active measures do you take to increase your subjects expectancy?

I tell them whats going to happen.
I tell them about the thousands I’ve tranced.
I zap someone in front of them.
I tell them that someone with their unique qualities (it’s rather easy to find out what someone thinks is special about them rather quickly, just ask “so what are you especially good at?”) is especially good for trance.
I explain trance in a way that makes sense to them and fits with their experience. I use examples from their own life (driving on the highway, daydreaming, not seeing the milk in the fridge…).
I use magnetic hands to show them that it “works”.
I tell them after they pass magnetic hands that it’s the hardest part to do and if they can do that then trance is 100 times simpler.
I believe.
I believe some more.
I add on some belief on top of that.

3. Is expectancy the main determinant of the success or failure of hypnosis? Or is the subjects innate ‘hypnotizability’ level more important? Are they both important?

One of the main main things. One might say that high hypnotizables can generate high levels of expectancy very quickly. I would rather have a 20% somnambulist with medium expectancy over an analytical with high expectancy. Once you get to super high expectancy, you already have trance.

4. If you believe that expectancy is highly important, how stable do you believe expectancy is? Does it depend more on the subjects preconceived notions and experiences with hypnosis? Or does it more depend on the skill of the hypnotist in the current hypnosis session? If a subject was to fail the current suggestion, how does this affect future expectancy?

Here is a key rule. The subjects subjective experience is king. Into this category goes past experience.
If we want to create a powerful expectancy, we must create a powerful subjective experience.
How do we do that? First of all we must believe 1000%. This creates a strong experience in our subject of knowing it will work. It’s not a rational thing, its a subjective thing. Ever heard me talk about being THE HYPNOTIST?
This is also why having the subject see you trance someone is so powerful. It’s a subjective experience for the subject, having them see with their very own eyes that it works.
The third way we do this is by doing exercises with them and then framing them properly. This is why magnetic hands done right is so very powerful.

Happy trancing!

Turning Nothing Into Something

So I was hypnotizing a friend the other day and I was working on name amnesia. I gave him the suggestion, woke him, and asked for his name.

He opens his eyes….. and he actually WAS able to say his name after a second. Big problem!!

But remember, if you are THE HYPNOTIST then everything always works and we use whatever we get to plow on. So what did I do?

I pointed out to him that it did take him a full second to remember his name, and showed him how everyone else remembered their names right away without a seconds delay.

Once he realized that and agreed, I told him that 2 seconds are just 1 plus 1 seconds, and if he drew a blank for one second then he could draw a blank for 1 plus one seconds. So I tested it, and it took him 2 seconds! Then we doubled that. And tested. And doubled that. And tested. And doubled that and tested. So it took him 16 SECONDS to remember his name!!

And we now had name amnesia!

The point is, even if it doesn’t “work” MAKE BELIEVE IT DID and grab any little tiny part of it that worked and then double that effect. And double that……

Remember, be THE HYPNOTIST!

Happy Trancing!

Being The Hypnotist…. The Magical 10 Minute Confidence Maker

One of the most important things you want to have as a hypnotist is the attitude that you are The Hypnotist. That you can hypnotize anyone anywhere at anytime. I once heard someone tell a hypnotist “I am not easy to hypnotize”. The immediate answer was a laugh and “EVERYONE is easy to hypnotize”. You have to have an attitude that you have done this a million times before, there is no question it will work, and there is no possibility of failure.

Once you are The Hypnotist everything you do is exponentially more powerful.

But hey! How are you supposed to feel like The Hypnotist if you have never hypnotized before?

The short answer is…. fake it till you make it. But that can be a bit hard when your insides feel like mushed jelly and you are scared to death.

So here is a powerful method that I used back when I was a beginner and trying to get that magical attitude.

Take a deep breath and relax, let yourself relax completely.

Then close your eyes and picture yourself doing something that you are totally confident about. I used a very simple example, that when I drive to work every day I know where my office is. If someone asked me “you sure?” I would look at him like he was crazy and go “hell yeah”.

I KNOW I will find my office. I’m 1000% certain. A visitor wouldn’t be so certain that they know where to get off the highway and will be able to turn at the right  place. I do know. Clear. Sure. Certain. Confident. 1 Million Percent. Think of an example that works for you. I’m SURE you have one.

Then notice how it looks, sounds, feels, and what happens to your body when you imaging those thoughts and feelings. By me it happened to be a low steady powerful sound, a feeling of thick honey spreading in my lower chest, and a narrowing of my vision until I had the thing in sight like a laser beam. I also leaned an tiny bit forward and expelled our air through my nose. Hey, that’s how confidence feels and exists for me. Everyone has their own exact personalized version.

OK, now that you have that, squeeze your fist and see everything get cranked up a notch. So I squeezed my fist, and made the sound more powerful, deeper, felt the honey get thicker, bigger, expelled air more forcefully….. I cranked everything up. The harder I squeezed, the more I cranked it up. Harder and harder, more and more confident. Within a minute I was squeezing like hell and feeling that the most confident I’ve ever felt. Then I let go and let the confidence linger in me. I imagined that I had just filled myself up with confidence, and that even after I stopped pouring it in it was still there. And I squeezed again, and again, and again. Bam Bam BAM.

Now every time I squeeze like hell I get an absurd boost of confidence. It’s automatic.

Then I saw myself going over to do hypnosis. I felt high, flaky, and shaky. The opposite of confidence. I change the picture to look like the confident one. Low, strong, deep, honey….. and I squeezed and let the confidence grow and spread.

Rinse and repeat.

Viola!

The whole thing took 10 minutes total. Yep that’s all it was. 🙂

Good luck, try it NOW, and drop us a comment when you are done to tell us how it went!