I was recently asked by my close friend and colleague, Ali Burke, to document my therapeutic process, or the components of my practice that I feel help make me an effective therapist (to the degree that I am effective. I’ll let my clients decide if I actually am effective). This is part of an ongoing project to capture the subjective patterns, frameworks, or methodologies that mental health practitioners feel make the most impact, with the hopes that this can inspire others.
Hypnosis
I am biased by my own personal and professional experiences, but I believe that many types of therapeutic interventions and therapy modalities are enhanced by the client being in a state of trance.
Being relaxed, being in a state of creative flow, being somewhat dissociated from the day to day troubles, can help the client connect to the bigger picture and encompass their challenges within a broader sense of “okay-ness”. I describe my first MDMA trip as a pivotal turning point in healing my PTSD – my problems remained the same size, but for the first time, I was bigger than my suffering. This is essentially what I strive to create with hypnosis.
On a related note, I believe that
Thinking and Talking are Overrated
I think you can spend years talking about your problems, understanding them form all angles, and still doing very little to actually change. There is a part of our mind that enjoys wallowing in whatever problems we have, it revels in the masturbatory aspects of endless self-reflection.
I see talking, as an extension of thinking, as similarly futile. So much of our experience is beyond words. Oftentimes, a single well-placed sentence can capture so much. When I work with clients, my aim to see the clients speak more slowly and ponderously, to see their words be an expression of a deeper reflection, The verbalization of these experiences is limited to keeping me in the loop so that I may help guide them, and to help them solidify and express the feelings they already have. When a client starts crying when they say “I love you, you are ok” to their inner child, that’s the type of talking I am aiming for.
I believe that actually change comes from our body and our emotions, which are the source of much of our decisions. Our analyzing mind is very new to the evolutionary show, and can easily disconnect from what’s really going on in our felt and experienced reality.
One of the key tenets of the book The Body Keeps the Score, is that the mind does not keep the score. To protect us, it creates narratives and experiences that are very disconnected from our actual reality, which can help us survive, but generally prevents us from thriving when we are ready to do so.
Speaking of which, I
Believe the Client is Resilient
There is a fear, especially when treating trauma, that a client will be reminded of difficult things, or re-traumatized. I personally do not agree with this. I believe that healing from trauma can be a painful thing, one where you feel worse before you feel better.
But our body has mechanisms in place to control just how much we suffer, and it can do anything from literally passing out to dissociating from a memory, if it feels its necessary for our well-being. Conversely, you often find spontaneous negative memories emerging once a client feels safe and relaxed enough in the life. The body deems these new pieces of data safe enough to explore.
I operate from the assumption that the client is capable of dealing with difficult things, and experiencing them somatically. That their body and their mind will protect them as necessary. And that they know best what is good for them and don’t me to coddle or protect them. My role is to support them through their difficult journey.
As a result, in my sessions we
Embrace Discomfort
Life is full of uncomfortable things. My sessions with clients are there to help them process these difficult experiences in a safe way. By doing so we:
- Can revisit past negative experiences and realize that we are now more resilient and capable than we were when they occurred.
- Face our fears head on and notice that by doing so the fears actually dissipate
- Create a broader window of tolerance to experience life. If we always avoid discomfort, we will also be unable to experience many positive emotions, either.
Overall, I
Set The Standards High
Empowered by hypnosis, my goal is to have clients achieve breakthroughs each session we have.
Having longer, 90 minute sessions helps a lot with this, but the overall assumption that you can shift the way you feel about yourself, the way you see the world, and actions you want to take, in a matter of minutes, is a key guideline principle that I seek to actively convey to clients. I hope to instill them with hope that even if they’ve been struggling with an issue for years, this new set of tools they are acquiring can change their life for the better – immediately, and in an ongoing basis.
Conventional therapy seems happy to contend itself with months or years of weekly meetings. If there’s a limited window of time,the assumption is that the achievements will also be limited. But the truth is, there is empirical evidence for short term therapies, for seeing results in even a single session.
I am reminded of the client who came to see me about abusing alcohol, and was able to keep things under control for months after a single session. Or my colleague who still hasn’t drunk a soft drink after a one paragraph sentence I read to her during my hypnosis training. I have many other testimonials on my site from clients who, at the very least, experienced something very much out of the ordinary during their one single session with me. That is the standard I aim for.
There is a conflict of interest within the world of therapy where not solving a problem somehow keeps the clients coming back. Most other service providers charge per project, not per hour, and are incentivized to get the job done as quickly as possible. Much of mental health is intangible and harder to measure, and yet we do have measurements in place, and regardless, it behoves us to at least keep this bias in mind.
Explore the big picture
This is a personal preference, but I gravitate a lot to the broad, existential questions. I feel like once these are sorted out, the details often fall into place. Exploring why a suicidal person is actually still staying alive. Figuring out what makes life meaningful to you. Honing in on whose suffering you’re actually carrying around. The whys of life are the ones I gravitate to myself, and the ones I explore with others.
I hope these philosophies are insightful to you, and the very least provide you with food for thought – do you agree, disagree, or resonate with any parts of this? Is there anything here you’d want to see in your own therapy, as either a client or a therapist?
