 We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself Jackie Jones and the wonderful, as always, Mr Bob Cook. It's very nice of you to say so. It's very true. It's very true. The topic of this episode is not a conduction in the therapy process. This is all down to you, Bob. This is not something that I do in the therapy room that I know of. Ah, that's the last bit. I was going to say consciously. Yes. I have a sneaking suspicion that you're going to tell me that I do do it at some point. You've got a nice, for people on the actual YouTube, you've got a very nice blue jumper on. I have. Thank you. So one thing, I'd like the jumper and very good for relaxation. Blue. So I'm not saying you have to wear a blue jumper to do hypnotic inductions or to actually do hypnotherapy if you want to go that far, but it's a nice jumper and a very nice relaxing colour. Interesting. I've got no blue in my therapy room. As you can see behind. So it's an interesting subject area. I mean, when I trained as a psychotherapist, I never learned about hypnotic induction. So I'm not saying it's in a psychotherapy training programme. However, I went on to learn about hypnotic induction when I wanted to work regressively. For people who perhaps don't know the word regression, it means how people go back to a younger developmental age where the deficit needs healing or the emotional problems have occurred. So often by regression, you can help people go back to a younger self to do the emotional healing that's needed so they can be different today. Yeah. And does it help bypass the logical thought process? The filters, the barriers, all those defence mechanisms that we put up? Yeah, if we go on to hypnotic induction, certainly, but if we just slightly go back, if I may, before that question, then I quite happily talk about that question. I just want to say the purpose why you would do hypnotic induction. For me, why I liked it is because it helped people relax and help people go to what is often called the alpha state in hypnotherapy terms, which is really a state of increased awareness and relaxation. So in some ways, that's the best way to look at this. And why would you do it in learning? You'd learn it as a psychotherapist, mainly to help people when you might do it to help them relax. I wanted to learn hypnotic induction to actually help people go back to younger developmental ages quicker. You said then increased awareness and relaxation. Yeah. I didn't know that those two things went together. Well, I'll read out a definition of what hypnosis, if you like, is, which I just got from Google just before we got on. Yeah. And this says hypnosis is a changed state of awareness and increased relaxation that allows for more focus and specific concentration. Wow. So I'll do it again. Yeah. It's a changed state of awareness. So you go into a different state of awareness than being an adult. Yeah. In the eight terms. And then increased relaxation. Because you've gone to a different ego state, if you want to look at that way. That allows for more focus and specific concentration. That's really interesting. It's just I did hypnosis as part of NLP training years ago, but it never fits comfortably with me. But that's probably my stuff. Well, no, no, say a little bit more, but no, it's not your stuff. I understand it because, because, you know, I actually know I do a lot of travelling. And on many aspects of my travelling, I was thinking only in Cyprus last year. I was going to my family. It was a family holiday and we were going out to have a meal. And we were walking down the Mall or the Chores Strip, if you want. On one of the cafes, there was a hypnotist or somebody doing hypnosis. And that was what I call stage hypnosis, which has this major focus to help, you know, it's entertainment. Talking about that purpose. I'm not even talking about when people do self-hypnosis. I'm talking about when we help people relax in a different state of awareness. A different state of specific concentration to achieve a particular goal. It makes sense now that you're saying that. I, I, when you would, you know, the hypnotic induction or whatever in the title, I was thinking that you put somebody in a hypnotic state, not necessarily, not like the stage. But for me, I know at times when I'm driving, I go into that hypnotic stage where, you know, I can't remember every part of getting from A to B. When I was nine, eight or nine, I lived in Acock's screen in Birmingham. And I had a bicycle. I did a bicycle world sort of. I went and stopped at Alton and had a newspaper around. But basically, I had bicycles to make a screen to know, which I probably is. At the age of eight, it seemed a long way, but actually probably is about five, four miles or something. It is a long way. Quite often. I didn't know how I got from Alton. Now I don't think that's hypnosis. I think that's a form of dissociation. The other thing that again, it's my beliefs around hypnosis, which isn't what you're talking about. Now we've clarified that is that when I was doing, you know, NLP and did use hypnosis. The thing that I didn't like was that the responsibility for cure was put on the therapist. Well, let's just start separating terms out just from the point. I'm glad you didn't. I'm glad you had an aversion to that. That's great because I also believe in bilateral communication between therapist and client. So on contracts, you know, in the TA world. But let's just start splitting out term, shall we? So you've got hypnotherapists with the therapy. Psychotherapist to do psychotherapy. Yes. You've got counsellers to do counselling. Yes. You've got psychoanalysts that usually do psychodynamic psychotherapy. So you've got different terms. So if you looked up, if you wanted hypnotherapy and most common, most common sort of procedures that hypnotherapists work with are usually when people want to stop smoking. The specific things got a fear of flying. They want to desensitise themselves from some sort of trauma. They have panic attacks. So there's usually specific things they want. And I bet my bottom dollar that probably the top one would be about stopping smoking. Maybe the second top one would be about intrusive thoughts or panic attacks. But they're usually specific goals. Yes. And they want to, let's say, stop smoking. They want to stop smoking and be more relaxed, say. So, you know, hypnotherapy specialise in that. Six sessions or something like that. And usually what they do is relax the person, take them to an alpha state, and then carve them through metaphors if you like. Look at what stops the person smoking and go through a desensitisation techniques with them. And we have a specific outcome because they've gone to a different level of awareness if you want to put it that way. So that's sort of hypnotherapy. And I was just thinking of a good friend of mine who ran a school training people to be hypnotherapists. I think it was about nine months or maybe a year. But they usually were around those particular areas I'm talking about. Yes, yeah. The objective is to help people get relaxed, move to a different energetic state, usually called the alpha state, where they moved away from TA terms adult being an adult legal state. They go to height and centre of awareness, height and state of relaxation, and a place where you would sort of tap into their subconsciousness. Yes, yeah. To help them through metaphors usually to achieve the specific goal of being relaxed rather than have the addictive habit whatever the spoken is about. So there's often a specific goal with hypnotherapists and usually only six to nine sessions. In fact, with smoking you might only be two or three sessions. Yeah, yeah. Of course, hypnotherapists do a lot more than that. Somebody might come with a specific goal I've said of desensitising trauma. And then you'll go deeper into their subconsciousness, I think. But if we move into the world of psychotherapists which is much more longer, I mean, somebody comes to see you, you might well be with you. I don't know, up to a year or so. Yes, yeah. It's a very, very small number of sessions usually. I suppose there are some hypnotherapists, usually psychotherapy trained as well, which might look at longer term trauma. And that's different. There often been psychotherapy trained as well, I think. And then you get counselling training and you get NLP like you've just mentioned and different things like that. You might use aspects, not counselling, but certainly NLP. You might use aspects of what I would call hypnotic induction. The hypnotic induction is a technique that takes people into a different state of awareness and relaxation so that it supports the regression quicker. Yes, yeah. Now, somebody who listened to this might say, well, that's hypnosis. Well, I'm talking about the transactions that lead to a hypnotic state, which is what I call hypnotic induction. Yes, good. I just think that needed clarifying for me if nothing else. Which bit? The difference between hypnotherapy or hypnotising somebody and the hypnotic induction used within psychotherapy. Yeah, okay. So, if you've been trained to be a hypnotherapist, you will, by definition, learn the transactions that lead up to hypnotic induction that leads to full-blown hypnotic states, if you like. In hypnotherapy, that process or that procedure, the aim is to, as I say, to relax people, get a different state of awareness in the energetic process, leading to more specific concentration, focus. And then usually through metaphor, take them down to a different place where they can start to be desensitised, if you like. Yeah. Now, if we go back to what you said at the beginning, which is an interesting one, by the way, which is what you didn't like in an LP, was the... Well, you didn't say it this way, but I'm going to say that the contract is unilateral and not bilateral. Yeah. That's how I feel. Yeah. I don't know enough about hypnotherapy as a profession to know how contractual hypnotherapy is. I'm assuming it's adult to adult contractual, and then after that, the techniques and the procedure will be in the hands of a hypnotherapist, if you like. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, I would imagine, general consensus of opinion is that if you go to a hypnotherapist to give up smoking, and you have one, two, three, four sessions, however many that is, and you still smoke, then the hypnotherapist isn't any good. Usually people would leave. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's kind of like they don't take responsibility for what happens. You mean the hypnotherapist doesn't? No, the client doesn't take any responsibility. It's done to them rather than with them, if that makes sense. Do you understand what I mean? Yeah. The hypnotherapist is either good at the job or not if they give up smoking or they don't. Oh, so for you it's not relational? Yes. It's more like a... Yeah, it's more unilateral than bilateral. Yeah. It's a great subject for podcasts we could invite a hypnotherapist on. Yeah. You actually talk about that because I don't know. No, but I think that's general consensus of opinion, but that's a very dated one probably. I've never thought about the contractual processes for hypnotherapists. So it's an interesting one to talk about, just about accountability of responsibility. Yeah. Yeah, because... I just think that if a client is really relaxed in a session, one, it's a good thing to feel that amount of trust with somebody, but I think that trust needs to be built up over time with somebody that you can let yourself go and be relaxed in a room with somebody else. Yeah. Yes. I mean, when I went to Google and put down what is, I forget the definition from those, I also came along a very quick plan that said that if these things happen, then psychoso... What's the word? Hypnotherapy will happen. Yeah. It's a number of their procedure into hypnotherapy. One, the client needs to limit possible distractions in any way, let the mind be calmer and not think about lots of other things or wander away. Two, their breathing needs to be even and calm and big breaths. Yeah. Secondly, it needs to be a focus, this is the client, focus on what you want to achieve, so specific and achievable. Yeah. They need to, in all the therapy procedures, the client needs to visualise a safe place to be. So, wherever that might be. Yeah. Most hypnotherapists may use metaphors in the search for a specific outcome. And finally, the client needs to trust the process. Yeah. Those are six interesting bullet points that are, I don't know whether it's a universal six-point, so I'm sure it's just that person's plan, if you like. But what is interesting there is the use of metaphors. Well, I think it's lots of interesting, so most hypnotherapists I talk about use metaphors because of what you said right at the beginning, that the metaphors bypass the logical cognitive process. You go to a different place in your brain. Yes. You mean like when you're talking about metaphors, like seeing an open door and walking through an open door and those sort of things, right? Yeah. Also, 100% out of 100% of bona fide psychotherapists would ask the client to create their own safe space. Yes. Which is, I think, a really important point in this procedure. Yeah. I can remember when I was doing my NLP training and we had to practise on each other. And one of the ways that they took you into that relaxed state was being at the top of a very high staircase and walking down and counting down the steps as you were going. I'm frightened of heights, so as soon as they said that, I had a visual representation of being really high up, looking down. There wasn't a cat and else chance that I was going to be relaxed at that point. See, I think that's not a very good... Wait, it wasn't for me. I think they should check out things before that. Because what you're talking about is very common. I can understand that, but I think it's a challenging one if you've got problems about heights and things. Yeah. But finding your own safe place is a common process and metaphors is a common process. Yeah. And it's how people go to a different state of awareness, a deep relaxation, where specific outcomes can happen. Yes, yeah. And I only know that, find your own safe space because it is different for all of us. And I think that's a really valid point is that we don't presume or assume what that safe space is. And that's why we're trying to find goals there themselves. Yeah. So when I thought of this title, because I'll pass this down upon to you, I was thinking about why it might be important for psychotherapists to think about. Perhaps even if they learn a hypnotic induction, if not full blown hypnosis, because a lot of therapists, therapists that work developmentally will use supported regression. Yeah. So that means they will help the client identify, in our case, TA, with through script analysis, early deficits or the early and met relational needs. And in TA, through inquiry, treatment involvement, help them go back to a younger ego state or younger self, if you like. TA, often called child ego state. And then from there, help the client heal and make new redecisions which will then get integrated in the present. Yes. Now, in my career, that procedure I have done thousands and thousands of times. And I'm not joking when I say a thousand times. Many, many, many, many times. First step is a contract, of course, script analysis, and then that whole procedure I've just told you about. Yeah. However, you do need to enable the client or the client needs to be in a relaxed place to a certain extent, or trust if you want to put it that way. Certainly wouldn't need to be done later on in a psychotherapy sequence where the client has built up a rapport and trust with me. However, as Ty went on, and I started to watch a therapist who uses hypnotic induction and used supported regression a lot to obtain that procedure I just talked about. And what I noticed was that as you did certain things, certain techniques, a person would relax quicker and, I think, took in the protection from the therapist quicker, you know, or deeply through these techniques, or technique if you want to put it that way. And I want to say that I quite went into a trance that there was a level of relaxation awareness consultation of specific outcome and was very supported by the therapist in a protective place. Yeah. So, some of the hypnotic induction techniques I would indicate would probably be to say to the person something like, okay, so let's go back to the age that we're talking about. Now, imagine that you are at the age, I'll make one up for you. Imagine you're at the age of seven. Let's just go back there and tell me what's happening for you. Let's go back in time to that important time in your life. Yeah, so what I'm doing there, and two things I'm doing there, one, well, in TA terms, we'll be using nurturing channel. So my voice is quite warm if you like. Nurturing. Secondly, I've lowered my voice to a much more nurturing channel. Yeah. Thirdly, I talk slower. And fourthly, by definition, I'm quite repetitive. Yeah. All those things are aimed at helping the person not only relax, but go back in time with the therapist who is a supportive, protective other to a place where it might have been quite challenging for them in terms of what was happening around them. Yeah. So on your voice down, a repetitive structure, slower, nurture, help them go down, be more specific in your instructions, help them go down, and then ask them to say what's happening, thinking, feeling and what age they are. Then you might move into metaphors. I probably wouldn't so much actually, but I could do. I'm not going on there, but those are hypnotic inductions. It would become hypnosis. In fact, if I moved into metaphors probably, or I thought in terms of trans-like states, which I don't. But hypnotic induction in terms of the way I've just talked about it, aids regression. Yeah. It's really interesting. Maybe we should have done a warning when we started this podcast that you might feel more relaxed just listening to your voice when you're doing that. Don't listen while you're driving or something, because it is as soon as you slow your voice down and lower the tone and do that nurturing, it is very relaxing. It's very nurturing parent, or parent to child. In other words, it's an invitation for the person to drop into their younger self. Now, it's very important that the client has built up the therapist as a positive object or somebody that they trust. That's why Paul has supported regression, because they've built up a trusting relationship. You have become the other that's supporting them. Yeah. And the other one that provides a protective stance so they can just drop into this. Yeah. Yeah, because for me, it just feels a very intimate thing between, you know... Hopefully. Hopefully. Because you need to... It has to be intimate in the sense of protection. Yes, yeah. So for the client to be able to assimilate the other as a protective other, there has to be a sense of nurturing and if you're going to call that intimacy, hopefully positive intimacy with the therapist as the protective other. So by definition then, you've almost got a re-corrective experience from the beginning. Yeah, yes, yeah. Because I would imagine, part of that session as a whole, whether it's done while they're in that relaxed state or after it is to integrate whatever it is that you've done. Not just kind of do that and then come out the session and I'll see you next week type of thing. No, so there'd be a contract at the beginning. Yeah. I think the contract is about they'd like to be able to be more self-confident or they want to be assertive or they want to whatever it is. You'd find out what stops them being assertive or what's at the bottom of their process about not having self-confidence. So I'm not very assertive because I wasn't ever allowed to grow up in my childhood. Yeah. I was always kept quite young because I was the third boy in the family and I always felt that I was the baby in the family. I didn't feel I was very assertive and I was always defined as a child. So if I ever started to say my values or belief systems I was put down well who put you down there? Well my mother she was just always jealous of me I think as you defined in a certain way. Okay, so would it be important for you to perhaps just go back and tell your mother things that you couldn't tell her? Oh I can't do that she's too much like a dragon or whatever. Well I tell you what let's put her in a sort of one-way mirror situation in a room and you've got the keys so she can't get out but she can hear you. What do you think of that situation? So maybe you can find your own voice in a way that was denied you all those years ago. Yeah. If you find it too challenging you can always stop. That's a contract for regression. Yes, yeah. For the purpose. So the therapist would support that process and go back and in this case it is a metaphor isn't it but there are all the things I've talked about. The person finds their voice for the first time and has a sense of empowerment which perhaps they've never had in their life and then we come back and we debrief it and look at how they feel and do they need to do other things which obviously will need to do other things but then take it from there. Yeah because to me the way that you've just described that then I can see that it is really really useful around limiting beliefs and beliefs which is all connected with our decisions and our life scripts and everything so it makes sense that regression is a really good thing to do. I think it's a very important technique but it's also very important that there's a contract that they trust the therapist that they've done a lot of the contractual work and therapy before they get to that stage. And it's not done right in the first four or five sessions or something. Yes, yes. The person builds a lot of trust up in the therapist to be able to get to that stage in the first place because the therapist needs to be more powerful than in this scenario I'm talking here, the mother. Yes, yeah. I know we've spoken about that in the past about being more potent in the therapy room generally so I can imagine that it's even more important in this situation. How the therapist would know that or at least maximise the chances that that would be is through script analysis and learning about how the mother in this case could be father or anyone else but the mother has been with the client or the younger self of the client. So the therapist has a good sense of the type of mother they're going to come across and in this case anyway we've set up a sort of metaphor situation where the client's got the keys anyway in the mother car here. Yes, which again is you protecting them and taking care in a supportive way, absolutely. And if it gets too challenging anyway we can stop and come back and look at and do the briefing. In many ways you're rewiring if you like in your logical terms. What happened all those years ago? Changing of fantasy. It's a really interesting tool. The latest research on the brain backs up what we're talking anyway. I mean the latest research by people like Shaw is that we have a sense of plasticity in our brain structure, in other words our mind is like form with a sense of plasticity or plastic and that the neuro channels there's a lot of them which are formed that you can create other neuro pathways by what we're talking about here through fantasy and rewiring the brain that will sit on your old toxic neuro pathways and eventually those old toxic neuro pathways will dissipate and that you neuro pathways what you're creating through these types of techniques become the reality of the day. Yeah neuro plasticity I absolutely agree with that it's like new thoughts and new belief pathways can be formed instead of falling into old behaviour patterns which is what we tend to do and the more you use it the more stronger that pathway becomes. But for people listening to this I know a lot of people listening to the therapist this type of aggressive work we want to talk about, hypnotic induction or not has to be done in the therapy process in the room with the therapist when they're alone at home by themselves because if they do that they're repeating history they're repeating the trauma actually because they've got no other supportive person to enable a difference of change to happen. So I think learning hypnotic induction on what I simply mean by that technique or relaxation if you like to let the person get to a different energetic state is a good way to enable regression to happen in the therapeutic process. I think that's a really good way of putting it to get them into a relaxed state or a technique used to put them in that relaxed state and of course for people listening again this would all be bilaterally contracted for. So we don't spring it on them on the second time we've seen it. This is the whole contractual process from beginning to end and hopefully therapy is that way. I mean Byrn created transaction analysis and part of the reason he created it was he came from the psychoanalytical background where the psychoanalyst was the expert and the client was the patient and if there was any contracts they were unilateral imposed by the so-called experts Now Byrn wanted to get to bilateral contracts whether it's an I'm okay, you're okay position. Which I 100% agree with That's the way So we're very important. Thank you Bob, that's been really interesting. So what we're going to talk about next time is the importance for the therapist to think developmentally in the therapy process. That was sort of leading on aren't we? You did, you mentioned that earlier on in this about working developmentally. Yes, that's what the regression is all part of a developmental process. It's good, it's as if we work this out Bob. It's as if we know what we're doing. Thank goodness for that in these conversations. Okay, so I'll speak to you in the next one. Okay, bye bye. Take care, bye. We'll be back next week with another episode.