A great man once said “From all my teachers I got smart; - King David- I say, from all my clients I get great.” 

In that aforementioned quote, King David wasn’t referring to professors; he was known to take advice from the most opportune places, even if it was a child.  As long as there was something to learn, King David was willing to listen.

 

Let me share a few small scenarios that I have experienced with my clients and what I have learned from these scenarios.

The first client I had was a Rabbi who had a problem that I had dealt with in the past.  Successfully, might I add.  The way that the Rabbi was acting made me immediately feel intimidated.  Sometimes clients will not open up to you right away but you need to continue to try to build rapport so that they can become comfortable with you.  Without your clients having the comfort-ability factor, you will not be able to get any work done together.  Unfortunately this client refused to get comfortable.  In my line of work I usually spend about 2 hours for the first session and it took about 2 and a half hours with the Rabbi.  Within my sessions I teach my clients self hypnosis and I also do CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) but that usually comes during the second session.  As I had explained to him these therapies, he did not seem interested and responded with “It looks interesting but I don’t think I will do it.”  I ended up giving him a self-hypnosis CD that I had personalized for his particular issue, but yet again he did not listen to it.

The third session came around and I had originally intended to do age regression.  Unfortunately before his session I began to feel nervous and I honestly didn’t believe that he was going to respond to therapy very well.  As I began to do the age regression therapy, he wasn’t working hard enough solely because he didn’t believe in it by saying things such as, “I don’t see anything.”  Prior to doing age regression I had done significant depth testing for somnambulism but he ended up going back to where he started, not cooperating.  After these failed attempts I tried a different method, a simple talk.  He once again did not respond to the talk and so I left off with direct suggestion.  , I was telling myself that maybe the Rabbi was analyzing everything that I was doing, so he didn’t stay in somnambulism for Age regression work.

When the Rabbi came in for the next session, the only thing that I could think about was that I had a client that didn’t want to cooperate and they were costing me too much time and energy.  I even considered firing him as my client.  He came into the appointment in an extremely tired state talking about how busy he was in his school affairs.  As I began to talk to him some more, he kept his eyes closed and I had really reached the end of my rope.  At this point in time I was prepared to fire him and I started with “It doesn’t look like you are ready to work on your issue right now in your life, so you will have to make another appointment when you will be ready.”  Then the oddest thing happened.  The Rabbi began to cry and said, “Please make me another appointment, I know that if I don’t make one now, I will not make one at all.  I need to work with this issue, but I’m not ready yet.”  The next words out of his mouth REALLY surprised me.  “You think the therapy you did last week (age regression) is not working.  Last week when you did this regression you took me back to a place that I haven’t visited in a very long time and I’m not ready to revisit it yet.  Please do direct suggestion until I am ready.”  After this deep and emotional conversation, I felt more comfortable working with him and I knew he felt more comfortable working with me as well.

I learned an extremely valuable lesson from this particular client.  The situation isn’t always just black and white.  A client who is not cooperating isn’t there to solely upset you and they are not there just to prove a friend or family member that it’s not working.  I have to work hard with each client to see what they want and what they need.  I also need to determine what is holding them back from working with me on a personal level and to not lose my temper or give up on them as quickly.  After all, he is paying for the session so he wants to change and he wants to find out what it is that is wrong with him.

There is a second episode that comes to mind.  I once had a client who had a wife that made an appointment for him.  He was an extremely nice guy and he was a team leader in a large business, however there was a drastic change in the upper management department.  He felt that the new management team wanted things from his own team that were completely opposites of how they were originally working.  This belief caused him a great amount of anxiety and sadness, as he began crying each morning before he would leave for work.  His wife called me for details on my therapy techniques considering that her husband wasn’t sure about getting professional help or not.  I told her that my methods would create a positive change in his life and that I would be able to help him return to his normal self, his wife made the appointment for him, since he couldn’t say no he agreed to come see me.

As he was in the office filling out the paperwork, he saw that I am a certified hypnotherapist.  He then said, “I didn’t know I was going to see a hypnotist, my wife told me a therapist.”  I then assured him that hypnosis can help with all of his problems and that I also do other forms of therapy like CBT.  After I had explained this, he did not say a word and for the most part he was acting normal during the intake and pre-talk.  However, when I went to do the hypnosis therapy with him, he was not passing the tests that I do at the beginning of each session to see whether the client is complying.  I was not sure, he didn’t pass all tests, at one point it looked like he is working with me, ,I started to test him further, so I went on to the eye lock test, he continued to fail.  At that moment I knew that he didn’t want to do hypnosis with me and so I finished our session with direct suggestion.  That man paid and said he would let me know if he wanted to come back again, I knew he wasn’t intending on returning.  As he left my office, I asked myself what I could learn from this particular client.  Then it dawned on me.  If a client is in my office wanting to work on the problem but was surprised about the hypnosis, why not do regular therapy first?  That way I could gain their trust and then sell them hypnosis as a faster way to get results.

After my in depth experiences, I know now how to deal with cases that are similar to them.  I could have allowed myself to become upset with the client or even with myself but what good would that have done?  Instead I looked at the positive idea that the clients had taught me and I will use those lessons to become a great hypnotherapist one day!