Hypnotherapists value getting to know client
A visit to a hypnotherapist is not the same for everyone, because each hypnotherapist works differently and each client is individual, says Laura Pagano, CHT, president of Achievement Strategies, a Roswell, GA-based company that provides life improvement services through hypnotherapy. "There is nothing for the client to do to prepare, except to show up and want to make a change," she says.
An initial session with Pagano lasts two to three hours so that she can determine how a client learns, find out their reason for seeking hypnotherapy, explain and dispel myths about hypnosis, and answer the clients questions before beginning hypnosis. To determine how they learn, she administers a questionnaire that reveals either left-brain or right-brain dominance. She also uses a verbal test to learn how strong their imagination skills are so she knows how to proceed.
"To get someone to go into a hypnotic state, there has to be a stress factor or an anxiety that overloads the mind and allows us into the deeper levels," says Michele Guzy, DCH, NLP, a hypnotherapist and owner of Personal Growth Unlimited in Encino, CA. Hypnotherapists use a variety of techniques to create this overload.
When Guzy adds a client, she does a minimum of three sessions once a week because it takes 21 days to break — or create — a habit. She makes audiotapes of the session that they can listen to repeatedly during the week to help reinforce the new behavior. Much of a session is spent in verbal dialog discussing the issue and gathering background information.
Once the client is in hypnosis, Guzy reinforces what they just talked about by giving him or her anchors and associations that will trigger the desired behavior. "Anchors trigger a thought, feeling, or behavior in your mind. For sports, an anchor might be hitting the ball perfectly or catching the ball exactly as you want to catch it."
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