Hypnosis, NLP and Waking up Energized in the Morning

One of my clients came to me to because she thought hypnosis could help her wake up in the morning. She wanted to be alert and rested enough that she could get out of bed without having to hit the snooze alarm five or six times. She found consistently running late and feeling sluggish in the mornings frustrating and inefficient.

So the first step was to gather information that would allow me to know what to do to help her shift her morning awakening routine. Although it is sometimes effective to just give direct commands, “When you awaken in the morning, you will feel alert, refreshed, and ready to go” while the client is in hypnosis, it is frequently more effective to take a more specific approach. It's also necessary to determine if there are any unconscious objections to the desired changes. One of the best ways that I have found to gather that information is by using the meta model from NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming).

Briefly, the meta model gives us questions that help unearth a person's underlying obstructing beliefs or objections that may be there so that they can be addressed. In this case the meta model also gave me a way to determine the structure of how my client went about making waking up a struggle every morning.

As it turns out, when she first began to wake up, my client started talking to herself in a drowsy reluctant voice telling herself that she had to get up. She also kept bargaining with herself for just a few more minutes. She would finally increase the intensity of the unpleasant inner dialog, “I'm tired. I don't want to get up. If I don't get up I'll be late, and get fired...but, I can sleep for a few more minutes" until she finally said, "If you don't get up NOW, you will be late!” at which point she dragged out of bed.

The solution was simple. After determining that there were no unconscious objections, I had my client rehearse a few simple routines to change the habitual dialog. First, I found out the location of the drowsy reluctant voice. It was on the left side of her head. Then I had her say something to herself that was untrue like, "I'm 10 feet tall," to determine the location of a statement that she knew was false. That voice seemed to come from the area of her throat.

For a great many people, the location of the internal voice determines how they respond to what they say to themselves. Typically, there will be one location for true statements, another for untrue statements, a third location for uncertainty, and so on. For others, the voice tone, volume, or other qualities will determine how much the person believes an statement.

The next step was to have my client try saying the words of the drowsy reluctant voice beginning in its usual location, and then, as she spoke, she mentally shifted the location so that the sentence ended in the untrue location, in the throat. When the sentence ended in location of false statements, her response to it was to be completely indifferent to the message. Then I had her rehearse shifting the voice enough times so that it automatically moved to her throat whenever she started hearing the original drowsy reluctant thoughts.

That may seem like it would be enough to fix the problem, but she was not yet saying anything to herself that motivated her to get out of bed. So, after some discussion, we found something that she could say to herself in an enthusiastic voice that made her feel like he day was going to be so fantastically good that she could hardly wait to get started. Then I had her rehearse starting with the old thought, which ended up in the “untrue” location, and immediately follow it with the the new thought from the left side of her head, which was the location of statements that were both true, and motivating. Talking to herself from that location had originally worked to make her to want to stay in bed. And, when she told herself she was going to have a wonderful day from that same location on the left side of her head, she really felt like getting up and enjoying her day.

My client reported that her husband was amazed to see her not only getting up much earlier, but actually cheerful every morning. She said that he almost wondered who the new person living in his wife's body was.

I finished my session with a little formal hypnosis to reinforce my client's new habits. It was simple enough to have her rehearse getting up energized and chipper in the mornings while she was in hypnosis.

Of course, a great many people use mental images to motivate themselves to get up in the mornings, or a combination of internal dialog and images. So it is useful for a hypnotherapist to determine each person's unique awakening strategy before attempting to help them change it.

Hypnosis and NLP Language Tip 1 ¾ – Dealing With Yes Butters

One of my hypnosis clients a few years ago was a yes butter. No matter what I said to her, she replied Yes...but.” Of course, the “but” negated everything that came before it in the sentence, so nothing I said was having any impact. And, to be effective in helping her, I needed to be able to communicate some new ideas to help her shift her thinking about her problems.

My NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) training had taught me that sometimes people develop patterns of thinking and speaking that support the very problems that they want to change. I'm sure that my client had found some value in “yes butting” in some situations in the past, however, she was using the pattern on autopilot in my office in a way that was frustrating my efforts to help her make her desired changes.

The solution was simple enough. I simply reversed her own pattern when I spoke to her. I started each sentence with “but” and finished it with “yes?” “But, you can realize that your desire to change those old habits is a key in making those changes now, yes?”

The look of slight confusion on her face was priceless. All of her resistance and automatic opposition to my ideas just melted away! And, reversing the “yes...but” has proven to be effective every time I have used it since.

You may be thinking, “Yes, that is an interesting story, but how could that possibly be useful for someone like me who doesn't do hypnosis or NLP?.”

But, on the other hand, it could be lots of fun to try out the reverse pattern sometime in a conversation with a potential customer, friend, coworker, child or spouse who “yes buts” you, as a way of answering that question for yourself, yes?

Using "Resistance" to Create Hypnosis and Positive Change

Like all hypnotherapists, I have had clients who did not respond to the first four or five methods that I used to guide them into hypnosis. In many schools of hypnosis the client would be considered to be “resistant” if he or she did not respond to their initial hypnosis induction techniques. My response to those clients who did not respond to the first five methods was to simply try additional and creative approaches until one of them worked. It was simply a matter of finding a way of communicating hypnotic ideas that suited the particular personality needs of the individual.

Sometimes, it is necessary to create an approach that is unique to the individual. For example, one of my clients told me that he thought that he was too tense to go into hypnosis. He seemed to think that he had to relax to be hypnotized. I simply told him to stay just as tense as he needed to to go into trance, and he did. He even relaxed quite a bit as we went along. Another client asked me, in a very meek, quiet voice, to be gentle, because it was his first time going into hypnosis. So, I spoke to him very meekly, and quietly. He went into a very nice trance as well.

Milton Erickson, MD was one of the great innovators of hypnotherapy. He used to teach his students to use whatever the client presented to assist them in achieving their goals for therapy. One of Erickson's patients who had been overweight for years, came to Erickson in desperation for help. She told Erickson that she would diet for one week, two weeks, as long as she could stand it, and then she would binge terribly. So Erickson had her diet for one week, two weeks, as long as she could stand it, and then binge for one whole day. Then she was to diet again for as long as she could stand it again, and then binge for one whole day. The woman took seven steps forward and one step back again and again, and she did lose the excess weight. Erickson used the woman's own pattern of dieting and binging to help her gain control of her weight.

One way of thinking about “resistant” behaviors, is that they are simply a message from the person's unconscious mind that it needs a different approach. As I was using guided relaxation imagery on a client's first visit, she started to move in large, broad uncontrolled movements. This was odd, and so I mentioned them as they occurred. “And, you moved your right leg. You lifted your left shoulder. You moved your right hand...” There was no change in her movements.

Then I changed what I said just a little bit, “And, I don't know if your are going to move your left elbow next. I don't know if your are going to lift your left knee, etc." listing all the sections of her body. Apparently, I left out one section, however. She lifted up her hips from the chair, and then became completely relaxed and still. She then went into a deep state of hypnosis, and had an excellent session. I have no idea why my client needed me to notice and comment on those body movements in the way that I did, or why the slight change in what I said made a difference.

Considering “resistance” as simply another message from a client's unconscious mind is an extremely powerful way to increase the effectiveness of hypnosis. From the hypnotherapist's perspective it is also a lot of fun, because it is such a creative approach to helping clients.

One Hypnosis Session Changed His Drinking Habits

One of my hypnosis clients, a man in his 50's, was having an issue with drinking. He would come home at night and drink several glasses of wine, and it was adding on inches to his waistline. He was drinking the wine as a way of winding down after a hectic day.

The problem was he didn't feel like he was in control. The drinking was on autopilot, and there were frequent regrets the next morning when he awakened tired with bleary eyes and a fuzzy mind.

The first approach we tried was to make wine less attractive. It was a simple NLP technique that caused him to associate wine with an unpleasant substance, like hair from the barbershop floor. And, that worked for a while.

However, he kept going back to over indulging in wine as a way to celebrate, or to wind down, or to socialize with friends at a restaurant. Apparently, there was more to the drinking than simple pleasures.

So, as any good hypnotherapist would, I started asking more questions about his drinking to unearth any hidden benefits that he was getting from the drinking. Questions like, "What does drinking wine mean to you?", and "Who would you be if you no longer drank wine?"

Unconscious minds are purposeful, not logical, and it turned out that there was a purpose beyond simple pleasure involved. This particular client had grown up with rigidly religious parents who never drank alcohol. And, my client started drinking as a way to distance himself from his father. If he drank, he was different from his father in some important ways.

I asked him how much he had to drink to completely realize that he was not his father. And, my client then mentally shifted gears and got very still and quiet, just like people in hypnosis do, and thought about the question for a while.

He then told me that he did not need to drink to prove to himself, or anyone else, that he is his own man. At that moment he knew for himself that he is someone who is much more flexible in his outlook and behaviors than his father.

Since that time, my client has been in control of his drinking. He may or may not have the occasional glass of wine, but it is with full conscious choice and intention. So, the drinking is no longer a problem.

It only took a few moments of deep thinking in hypnosis to finally resolve the drinking problem. However, all the other work we had done up to that point helped bring him to the point of having full conscious choice. And, he really knows that he no longer needs to prove to himself that he is not like his father.

Is Hypnosis Infallible?

After I did a short presentation to my business networking group, someone from the group asked me if there was a "failure rate" for hypnosis. The answer is, "Of course! There is no perfect technique when working with human minds". Using hypnosis for stopping smoking has a 90.6% success rate according to research done by the University of Washington School of Medicine in 2001. The success rate of NLP plus hypnosis is 95% according to Smoke Free International. The "failure rate" can easily be determined from those numbers, of course.

The individual success rate for hypnosis varies with the issue being treated, the skill and training of the hypnotherapist, and the motivation of the client. A common obstacle to success of smokers, for example, is that the smoker is attempting to stop to please someone else. Hypnosis will only work if the client is motivated to be successful for her or himself.

Someone with a habit of disagreeing, and we have all met at least one of them, can present a challenge for the less experienced hypnotherapist. However, there are some simple things that can be done to neutralize the habitual disagreement pattern. One way is to use tag questions like "isn't it?", "doesn't it?" of "haven't you?" The "not" in tag questions allows the person to focus their reflexive disagreement on the negation in the question rather than the statement that proceeds it, doesn't it?

You could, just for fun, sprinkle in a few tag questions in a conversation with someone who seems to be disagreeing with you as a pattern. That is a way just to find out for yourself how well tag questions work, isn't it? No hypnosis is necessary for the experiment.

Influence Tip: Ask the Right Ear for a Favor

One of my hypnosis teachers, Dave Dobson, used to conversationally give his clients unconscious minds suggestions while looking at the person's right ear. It turns out that he really might have been on to something. Research done in Italy showed that it made a noticeabledifference which ear was spoken into when they asked someone for a small favor.

A request spoken into the right ear resulted in a much higher positive response than the same request spoken into the left ear. They concluded that the higher number of positive responses to a request spoken into the right ear had to do with the difference in information processing between the two sides of the brain. Words spoken into the right ear are processed by the left side of the brain which is more logical, and which has localized areas for understanding language.

This information is particularly useful for those of us who use hypnosis, of course. As this information becomes more widely known, we can expect to find hypnotherapists rearranging the furniture in their offices so that they are sitting to the right of their clients. Hypnotherapists are always looking for ways to make their more effective. And, of course, teenagers will be asking Dad's right ear for that new and fancier laptop like everyone else has.