Breaking Your Comfort Zonr

Breaking Your Comfort Zone

Gerald F. Kein

Ó1998 

In the privacy of our hypnosis sessions, many of us have gotten into a professional rut.  We may have attended great training programs which gave us lots of tools with which to do our work, but, we no longer use these tools or have forgotten them.  We seem to use the same induction, the same deepening technique, the same patter and our outcome does not seem to be as good as it once was. 

After  completing our training, most of us were excited about starting our profession.  We felt  there was nothing we couldn’t do.  We had a fire of confidence in our soul which we radiated to each and every client we saw and they achieved great success.  When clients in pain were in our presence, they just seemed to know they were going to be successful.  We transmitted that positive energy to each client.  But then after a while, things began to change.  Somehow we began to lose our confidence.  We began to question our abilities.  The percentage of failures began to increase.  What was wrong?  We got ourselves into a rut!  We lost our positive energy.  The fear of not having a successful session began to grow.  Why did this happen?  What can be done to  re-gain our excitement and positive mental attitude?  Let us look, at the possible contributing factors.

The Pre-Talk – Look back at your training.  You were taught that the pre-talk is the most important part of the hypnosis session.  We now know that there is basically no such thing as a good subject or bad subject.  We know clients accept hypnosis in direct relationship to the fear they have period!  If your clients are not entering trance as quickly or deeply as they use to, perhaps you have changed or shortened your pre-talk?  Have you left out important information which would have removed any lingering fears? Have you become lazy?  Have you become too friendly with your clients and lost your professional demeanor?  Are you no longer dressing professionally? Are you presenting a too casual appearance?  In your conversations with clients, do you present a self-confident attitude?  It is to your benefit to review these things periodically and make the necessary corrections.

The Induction – This is where the challenges of getting clients into a workable level of trance begin.  Are you using just one type induction with all of your clients?  Unfortunately, some  trainings only teach one method of trance induction, the progressive relaxation method.  It is unbelievable that this should be the case but I hear it over and over from my students who have had previous training elsewhere.  This induction is fine for some people, but many others will not respond well enough to obtain the necessary level of trance for a successful session.  Because there is no testing built into this induction, the hypnotist has no idea what level of trance the client has achieved at the induction’s completion.  On the other hand, perhaps you learned many fine inductions during your training.  When you learned them, they excited you and made you feel that you could hypnotize anyone.  But for some reason you no longer use these inductions and have reverted to using just the progressive relaxation method.  Why?  It’s safe! It does not challenge you!  It takes away your fear! Clients look like they are hypnotized. Unfortunatly, with this induction many people do not think they were hypnotized.  A deep enough level of trance might not be achieved and your outcome could suffer. Okay, you can correct this.  If all you learned was the fractional relaxation induction, seek out someone to teach you many of the inductions that are available.  Learn how to match the proper induction to your clients personality.  If you learned many different inductions in your trainings, dust them off and start using them with your clients.  Force yourself to break your comfort zone by using other inductions and watch your excitement begin to return!

Depth Testing – Okay, be honest with yourself.  Do you test your clients for depth after the induction process?  Or, do you look at the client and say to yourself,  “He looks plenty relaxed so I’ll start reading him some patter.”  Remember, a relaxed person is not necessarily a hypnotized person.  The client may just be relaxed so you must do some testing.  I know. In the privacy of your session room, depth testing can be an uncomfortable prospect.  It’s easy to think if the client  fails the test he will look at you as an incompetent hypnotist.  You need to break your comfort zone and test your clients.  Testing is the major factor in eliminating the, “I don’t think I was hypnotized” syndrome.  Many inductions have disguised testing built into them.  The test is actually part of the induction and  the client is unaware that he is being tested.  The Elman induction is probably the best in  having disguised testing built into the technique.  Successfully testing your clients gives them and you the confidence of a promising successful session.

The Therapy – You have learned many different transformational tools during your training.  Each of these tools are affective in applicable situations. Some of the tools could include direct suggestion, regression, abreaction exploration, ISE discovery, death bed or chair therapy, inner child work, self-trance discovery and more.  Are you still using these exciting challenging tools or have you reverted to just giving direct suggestions for all your clients?  If you are just using direct suggestion, are you using the powerful law of compounding to make those suggestions as powerful and long lasting as they can be?  Dust off those powerful discovery and transformational techniques your instructors taught you and start using them again!  Sure they’re more work.  Sure they’re challenging.  Sure they require you to think and work in uncomfortable areas but, they are the powerful and exciting tools you need to use. When you see again how quickly these interventions transform your clients, once again that original feeling of being able to do anything and the excitement of the profession will return. 

Session Summation – After all your work has been completed while the client is still in deep trance, this is a great time to summarize the session.  It is the time to place your client into those situations that previously caused him to react in a negative way and show him that he is now cool and comfortable.  For example, if your client came to you for phobia removal, place him in a situation that would have caused the phobia attack to begin and say, “Try to find the fear.  Try hard and discover the harder you try to find the fear, the more cool and comfortable you become.”  This will really bring home to the client that his problem has really disappeared and he is free.

Trance Termination – This is a frequently overlooked yet very important part of a successful session.  If you use an up count (1-5) to emerge your client, between each number, compound suggestions and affirmations of their success. Say these suggestions with emotion so they penetrate into the deepest part of the client’s subconscious mind and further enhance his belief in his success.  Get your client excited!  You get excited!

The Post-Hypnotic Interview – Another often overlooked part of a successful session.  Let your mind drift back to your basic training when your first instructor explained it’s importance.  Remember after you emerge your client and his eyes are open he is still in a hyper state of suggestibility for 30-90 seconds.   Once more don’t miss this opportunity to use direct suggestion in a summation format to compound  the fact that your client has attained the success he came to you to achieve.  Again, give these suggestions with a degree of emotion attached to them to guarantee deep penetration of the concepts.

Getting back to the basics of what you learned will re-energize you.  Re-reading one of the first books you ever read about hypnosis will clearly show you how much you have learned since reading it the first time.  Go out and give some lecture/demonstrations again.  Go and redo the things that stirred your excitement when you first started in the work.  You are a member of the finest, most exciting transformational profession in the world.  Few people have the skills to do what you do.  Few people have the ability to positively transform people in the twinkling of an eye.  Get out of the rut!  Dust off the old skills you were taught.  Learn the new skills that will get you excited again.  Spend 10% of each session in experimenting with new techniques.  You can again feel the power and excitement that comes with every successful session.  Get excited.  Stay excited and you can make this the finest, most successful professional year of your career.

Best regards,

Gerald F. Kein