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Hypnosis Training & Coaching
By
David Quigley
Hypnosis therapy has proven itself over the past twenty years to
be enormously practical and valuable for many kinds of personal problems. It
has been demonstrated effective for long term weight loss, smoking cessation,
pain control, and recovery from illness in conjunction with medical treatment,
treatment of the underlying causes of phobias, anxiety, and depression and for
a host of other problems. Unlike most medical or pharmaceutical interventions
which mask the symptoms of illness or treat only its outer physical
manifestations, hypnosis therapy can address the causes of our behavioral and
disease conditions in the subconscious mind. It is also proven to be far safer
and more rapid than other strategies. I have been told by thousands of clients
over the years that a few sessions of hypnosis have achieved more powerful
results than years of psychotherapy, and have often freed them from long term
dependence on medical treatment, or the self administered "therapy"
of illegal drugs and alcohol. If anyone has any doubts about the effectiveness
of hypnosis in all of these areas, a perusal of my web library at www.alchemyinstitute.com/articles.htm
will suffice to inform them of the vast potential of hypnosis therapy.
But for all of its successes, there is still a great deal of
ambivalence in the medical and counseling communities about the effectiveness
of hypnotherapy. Research results are often mixed. And in my work with clients
I frequently hear that other hypnotists were unable to achieve the results they
were looking for, and which they readily achieved with me.
To me there is no mystery about the ambivalent results many people
experience from hypnosis therapy. There are no consistent standards of training
or Certification in the field. Hypnosis trainings vary widely from one school
to another. Many reputable schools, including my own, require up to a year of
intensive training, with extensive testing and supervised practice. But
thousands of hypnotherapists have been "Certified" by private
membership organizations with little more than a weekend of training. How could
a single weekend of training prepare anyone for a successful practice in a
field that requires a profound understanding of human nature? Other programs
require only 50 hours of training; some can be completed online, with no
documented practice or clinical supervision.
As a result, Hypnotherapists are often poorly trained. And many
"Certified" hypnotists lack the essential skills necessary to deal
with a wide variety of client issues. A scandal erupted recently when a
skeptical psychotherapist had his
cat certified as both a Hypnotherapist and a
Board-Certified Psychologist by some major Certification organizations. While
it is unlikely that anyone would trust a cat with their deepest issues,
regardless of the framed Certificate on his wall, there are plenty of
"weekend wonders" out there (that is our name for them in our
profession) who are scarcely better equipped than this furry friend to help you
solve your problems.
Alas, these imposters aren't the only problem for our profession.
I must caution you about another popular misconception in the field. Some
professional hypnosis organizations offer this stern warning to the consumer:
"Only put your trust in a licensed professional (Doctor, Psychotherapist,
or Social Worker) who is trained in hypnosis!" And given the anarchy of
our profession, I can sympathize with this position. But, years of experience
in the field with such licensed professionals has taught me a lesson. While
Doctors and other licensees certainly have more years in the classroom and in
the clinic learning their art, there is no guarantee that they have the
extensive training in hypnosis technology necessary to give you the maximum
help that hypnosis therapy can provide. Most doctors and psychotherapists had
no training in hypnosis skills during their education or internship. Courses in
Hypnotherapy are not even offered as electives in many accredited training institutions
within these professions. Post graduate training in hypnosis for certification
as a hypnosis specialist can usually be completed in as little as one weekend
or as much as 40 hours (one week) of instruction. Many licensed professionals
justify this ridiculously inadequate training by claiming that hypnosis therapy
is nothing more than the use of hypnotic suggestion and guided imagery, so it
is not difficult to master for the professional clinician. This is an entirely
erroneous attitude. Hypnotherapy if done right requires a complex set of skills
that no one can master in 40 hours of instruction. Period.
Don't get me wrong. Many licensed professionals are indeed as
highly skilled and reliable in hypnosis as any unlicensed practitioner. And
they certainly will bring the rich resources of years of professional education
and clinical experience with patients to this practice, which is no small
contribution to their value as healers. But if you are counting on the presence
of a license to prove the ability of a hypnotist to assist you with the latest
in hypnosis techniques, this is your wake up call. Licensure alone is no
guarantee of adequate training or effectiveness.
In addition, if you limit your search to licensed professionals,
you may pay a stiff price for their licensed status, if you pay out of pocket.
Or, if you want insurance coverage, which is one significant advantage of
working with these practitioners, you will need to accept a diagnosis as having
a medical condition, and it will sit on your medical file all your life. Of
course, if you are seeking treatment for a mental or physical illness, working
with a licensed professional is an advantage, because of their clinical
experience. Just be aware that their training and experience in hypnotherapy may be less
thorough than that of the typical non-licensed but well trained hypnotherapist.
So how are you to make a wise selection
of a hypnotherapist who is right for you? There is a way! This article is
written to help you choose a hypnotist who can really make a difference for
your life.
First, ask
around among your friends who have benefitted from hypnosis
therapy. Is there anyone they recommend? If you have a physician, chiropractor,
or psychotherapist you trust who is open to alternative therapies (they aren't
all!) ask them who they recommend.
If neither of these options proves fruitful, look in the telephone book
under "hypnosis", or "hypnotherapy." Of course, this type
of ad is no guarantee of anything, but I have learned that only reasonably
successful hypnotherapists advertise consistently in this media. Very few of
the "weekend wonder" crowd are listed there.
Another good strategy is to search
the web. When using a search engine, be sure to include three
items in your search process. List your search for Hypnotherapy, a
Hypnotherapist or Hypnotist, list the problem you want to solve, and list the
city you live closest to. For example:
<Hypnotherapist smoking
cessation Tulsa OK> or
<hypnotist stop smoking Tulsa OK> or
<Stop smoking hypnosis, Tulsa, OK>
Most reputable hypnotherapists nowadays have a website in which
you can review their credentials, training, and years of experience, even their
areas of specialization. Even better is if they have written and published on
their website articles about their work with clients. My website is an example
of a site that includes all of these factors. www.alchemyinstitute.com
You can also look
up hypnosis organizations and check to see if they have a
referral network. I recommend the National Guild of Hypnotists (www.ngh.net) and the
International Medical and Dental Hypnosis Association (www.imdha.com) for starters.
So now you have a potential hypnotherapist on the phone. Don’t
hesitate to describe the nature of the problem in exact detail. And be sure to
ask what training and experience this hypnotist has in the exact area you want
to work in. While most practitioners work with weight loss, few have
specialized training in peak performance in athletics, for example, or work
with chronic pain. And if they do work with weight, for example, ask how they
get their results. The techniques used by hypnotists vary widely, as do the
successes they achieve. To learn what technologies actually work with weight
loss and a host of other problems, check my web library, or visit the
organizational sites listed above.
Nearly everyone who calls my office wants to know three things:
how long will it take, how much will it cost, and what kind of guarantee can
you offer? Many are shopping for the quickest, easiest, and least expensive
program to achieve results. I think such concerns are quite normal. But as a
hypnotist with 30 years of experience, I have to tell them that shopping for
hypnosis therapy is not like shopping for clothes or auto repair. If you are
focused only on time or cost, you will almost certainly receive an inferior
product. And you may get no permanent results at all. The old adage "you
get what you pay for" is nowhere more true than
in the fields of therapy and counseling.
Unfortunately, it is often the inexperienced amateurs who
enthusiastically offer quick fixes and unconditional guarantees of success at
low prices. I met a newly certified hypnotist at a conference, with 50 hours of
training and a tiny part-time practice who bragged about her 100% success rate
with smokers. "They are so easy to fix in one session!" she blithely
assured me. I asked how she knew they were all so successful, since with all my
skill my success rate is only about 85%. She replied, "Well, they don’t
call me back, so obviously they have quit." Actually, I could think of a
number of reasons why they wouldn't call her back besides having quit smoking.
I recommend that you avoid working with practitioners who offer these kinds of
easy guarantees. If promises sound too good to be true, they probably are. In
other words, if you smell snake oil on the phone or in the office, trust your
nose.
The response I give to these questions about cost and
effectiveness is typical of most experienced professionals. First, I listen
closely for several minutes to gather the details of the problem. Then I decide
if I can help this person. If I can’t, I tell them so. If I have lots of
experience in their area of concern, I will assure them that if they are a good trance subject,
that I can probably get excellent results in approximately X number of
sessions, based upon my years of experience, which will cost $X. I remind them
that the underlying causes of their condition may be numerous, so I can make no
absolute guarantee. But I promise that if all goes well, they will begin to
feel some improvement after the second session. (The first is usually a lengthy
interview.) And I assure them that my results with clients are sufficiently
reliable, that if they are not achieving results by the end of the third
session, that I will no longer continue to work with them, because I don't want
them to waste their money and my time. I also tell them that there will be
homework to do on a daily basis on their own to achieve these rapid results. I
tell them I will train them in how to use easy and fun self-hypnosis
techniques.
With these things in mind, then, it is important to ask certain
questions of your potential practitioner and of yourself as well.
First, you should know what kind of training and experience this
practitioner has in the area
of your problem. Knowing whether this practitioner is a medical
doctor for 20 years or a non-licensed practitioner with only two years
experience is ultimately of very little importance compared to whether this
person has specific training and experience with chronic anxiety, if that is
your issue.
In addition, you will want to know how this practitioner will
achieve results. Many practitioners rely exclusively on direct hypnotic
suggestion. But I have found over and over that having a wide variety of
available tools to address the deep underlying causes of the problem makes for
more effective, and permanent, results. A skilled hypnosis practitioner should
have in their tool bag specific training in several of these modalities:
regression therapy, Gestalt therapy, neuro-linguistic
programming (NLP), sub-personality therapy (sometimes called parts therapy), Ericksonian hypnosis, inner-child work, emotional freedom
technique (EFT), idiomotor questioning. Not every
hypnotherapist will have skills in all of these areas. But at least 4 or 5 of
the above is the bottom line for most skilled practitioners. Of course, you may
not even know what the words listed above mean. But mention these words anyway.
If your hypnotist does not recognize these words and know these technologies,
then they probably don't have all the skills they need to assist you.
I have heard from some psychotherapists and hypnotists that the
above mentioned methods can only be legally used by licensed psychotherapists.
This reflects the common belief that non-licensed hypnotists can only use
direct suggestion with clients or else they are illegally practicing
psychotherapy. As an expert in the legal and ethical limits of a hypnosis
practice, let me clarify: the legal definition of a psychology or psychotherapy
practice is the treatment of mental and emotional illness, as defined by the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). No specific therapy strategies such as
regression are defined as the exclusive territory of such licensed
practitioners, in any law, in any state. Therefore, to suggest, for example,
that a hypnotist using parts therapy to help a client quit smoking is
practicing psychotherapy, is to suggest that he is “treating a mental
disorder.” My stop-smoking clients would, I am sure, be surprised to know they
have a mental illness! Most understand that a non-licensed hypnotist’s job is
to help healthy
individuals who wish to improve their lives. If any
practitioner attempts to foist the belief upon you that unlicensed hypnotists
must not practice such methods as regression or Gestalt, I recommend you seek
help elsewhere. You might also wish to inform them that most of the great innovations in the
field of hypnotherapy over the last 50 years have emerged from the unlicensed pioneers of modern hypnosis
therapy.
You may not know all the methods that hypnotherapists are trained
in. So, your hypnotist should be ready to explain how they will achieve results
with you in simple layman’s terms. For example, a client comes to me for
sessions to heal their cancer. Here is how I will explain my work:
"I will help you access the underlying causes of the cancer
in your subconscious mind as an adjunct to your medical treatment. There may be
traumatic memories stored in the area of the tumor which we will be able to
change, by actively rescuing your past self, perhaps your inner child, from
those memories. We may need to release emotion from your body that is trapped
in the area of the tumor. We will then insert into the area of the tumor
blissful new memories of being nurtured, safe, and loved, perhaps by your adult
self, perhaps by loving inner parents. I will then teach you how to focus this
love every day on this area of your body, especially before and after each
medical procedure, to increase the effectiveness of your treatment regimen. We
may also discover any parts of your subconscious mind that have 'hired' this
disease. We can then help these parts to get their needs met, so they can
release this illness, and help you recover more quickly."
Note that this explanation, while complex, is easy for any lay
person to understand. It also includes far more strategies than simply: "I
will use hypnosis to give your subconscious mind suggestions to shrink your
tumor in conjunction with medical treatment." A skilled practitioner must
have more tools than this to make a real difference. Unfortunately, nearly all
clinical research using hypnosis with cancer patients is limited to these
overly simplistic methods, which is why the results of hypnosis on cancer are
ambivalent in the existing clinical trials. As physicians become better
informed about the recent advances in hypnosis technology, I am sure the
research results will more accurately reflect the healing potential of
hypnotherapy.
There is yet another factor that must be considered in choosing a
hypnotist. That peculiar quality called "chemistry"
is a critical factor, which must be honored. If I notice that the chemistry
between me and a client is not right, if I don’t feel a mutual pleasure in each
others company and a sense of warmth and trust
developing during an interview, I will often stop the interview and tell the
client as compassionately as possible that we cannot work together. Likewise,
no matter how skilled your therapist is at answering all the questions posed
above, if you do not feel safety, trust, and fun from this
therapist, find somebody else. Hypnotherapy is far too intimate a
process to be effective with someone you don’t like or trust. And it is okay
even in the third or fourth session, if you realize you don't like this person,
if you dread each appointment, or you are not already feeling results, to call
it quits, and resume your search for a better fit. And you don't need to make
yourself or this hypnotist wrong for this either. Trust your guts! You deserve
the best.
Yes, it sounds complicated finding a hypnotist whose services you
can trust. But frankly it is not in my opinion more difficult that finding the
right Doctor, the right Dentist, or the right Counselor for you. And the
benefits of effective hypnosis therapy are so phenomenal that I can guarantee
one thing:
Effective hypnotherapy is worth the effort
and the costs, a thousand times over!
Good luck in your search.
David Quigley
http://www.alchemyinstitute.com/
To schedule sessions with David Quigley, click here.
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Article
posted: August 19, 2008
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