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Hypnosis
- Not Quite Utopia.
Look,
I want to have loads and loads of money, but I don't want
to do any work in order to have it. Have you any suggestions?
Seriously, apart from buying a lottery ticket - do you have
any suggestions? I want to laze around all day and just have
money arrive in my bank account, and not just little bits
of money - loads and loads of it, and I want it guaranteed
for life. Not only that but I want it right now, and I'm only
prepared to pay you £40 for you to give that to me,
and even that seems a little steep, so if you could give it
for free that'd be great. I don't want to hear you saying
that you might be able to help me, or that I might be able
to learn something that might take a couple of months, I need
it and I need it now.
I
hope you are laughing.
I
hope you are at least smiling.
Sounds
a bit like a child doesn't it?
If
you change money, to a cure for anxiety, or stress, or phobia,
or smoking, or losing weight, or nail biting, or marital problems,
or excessive drinking, or blushing, or headaches, or pain,
or a whole host of other physical and psychological problems…
then what you have in the opening paragraph is what most people
expect from hypnosis.
Many
don't want to be responsible for their own health, and don't
want to put any personal effort (other than turning up for
one, or at most two, appointments) into getting better and
although a hypnotherapist is always the last resort, they
expect miracles from him or her that they wouldn't dream of
expecting from a psychologist, psychiatrist or medical doctor.
Hypnosis
needs the full involvement of the patient in order for results
to be achieved. It needs a commitment to stick with treatment
until the problem is resolved or it is quite clear that the
treatment is having no further impact on the problem. Sometimes
we need our problems, but that's another article. And when
we need our problems we are quite often strongly resistant
to having someone help us to resolve them - or even to allow
someone sufficient access to our minds to discover what exactly
the reason is.
Another
reason for the unreasonable expectations people have of hypnosis
and hypnotherapists is that hypnosis is seen as some sort
of general anaesthetic. I've lost track of the number of people
(even doctors) who expect me to 'put them out', and are disappointed
when that doesn't happen. But because they see hypnosis as
a general anaesthetic they expect some sort of 'mental operation'
to take place while they are 'out' and to be 'fixed' when
they 'come round', as if their life-long anxiety pattern,
or over-eating habit was some appendix that could be whipped
out, the hole sewn up and the pain gone.
These
problems can be helped, eased, or restored to what might be
considered normal, using hypnosis. Sometimes it's straightforward,
sometimes it takes effort and determination to resolve the
issues that are reducing quality of life. I remember in my
early days as a hypnotherapist, at the end of a course of
treatment a patient said to me that what I had given her was
like coming down on Christmas morning and opening a gift to
find in it what she most desired in the world, it was like
I'd given her her life back.
That's
the potential of hypnosis.
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