Some clients are by nature, negatively biased and so it’s important to recognise and understand the impact these ideas can have on their overall wellbeing.
Not all clients possess resilience and a positive mindset… negative thinking clients will [usually unconsciously] sabotage their own success, no matter how much better they feel during or straight after the session. Sometimes clients ‘reframe’ success and turn it into failure because they’re not sure the hypnosis will work, or their reality is the only reality, or perhaps they are just naturally pessimistic and feel destined for failure.
Some self-doubt can be helpful, especially if it stops people taking part in very dangerous pursuits, such as driving at 100 miles an hour through the Mersey Tunnel, or just visiting Liverpool. But positive changes in their thinking and behaviour might be beneficial, and that’s the important message they should take on board. Clients should also be prepared to ditch their past emotional conditioning and embrace new positive advantages.
With some clients, the certainty of a bad outcome might even provide them with a sense of security and even protect them from disappointment. But substituting emotional resilience peppered with a dash of optimism is better!
Clients often harbour extreme all-or-nothing thoughts and these simply have to go! This kind of thinking is known as cognitive distortion. Nothing is all good or all bad! Added to which, it’s the mindset of children which can result in anger, self-sabotage and anything in between. So one way to deal with this is to get them to think of a few examples of how they might be able to put things in perspective. You might have to provide a couple of examples, but once they get the hang of this new way of thinking, they’ll be on their way to thinking more clearly. By doing this, we can help eliminate all-or-nothing thinking.
Some clients will think that everything in their life is awful and everything they attempt to do is a failure. But these clients are rare. Well guess what? We all go through times like these, but there are some easy ways to break free — and the best way is to visualise a success and also visualise how that success feels! Not everything in life is permanent. More important, a more balanced view means there will be a solution. Some might call it ‘positive thinking.’
So it’s great when a client stops dismissing positives. One way of course is to get the client to imagine themselves having a conversation with someone they really admire… someone they respect… even if they’ve never met them… and then ask them to imagine (in as much detail as possible) what advice this person would give them. It works every time because they are able to see barriers and setbacks as temporary and the concept of ‘try, try, try again…’ something everyone in the world has to do from time to time.
Some negative thought is triggered by pessimism or low self-esteem. Negative thinking often leads to people assuming the worst and these thoughts then manifest themselves as stress and anxiety. It’s easy to imagine the worst, which is again, where perspective comes in handy. It’s always possible to consider the different meanings of thoughts, no matter how uncertain things are. There will always be other explanations — even positive ones.
Another important step is to recognise that these thoughts have already surfaced many times in the past… and they never happen! Maybe the answer is a ‘meaning box’ where all the familiar negative thoughts and imaginings can be kept… locked up and locked in a cupboard somewhere.
And if the client doesn’t know what the outcome will be, they can just keep the box in the ‘pending’ drawer.
Some people might blame themselves for past mistakes or failures, but the past doesn’t mean the same thing is going to happen again any time in the future. They might imagine the problem is someone else’s fault and they have no power to deal with it, in which case you should explain to the client the meaning of ‘learned helplessness’ and how negative thoughts and emotions can adversely influence our logical thinking — “why should I be held back or blamed because so-and-so failed to get such-and-such finished in time?’
This is not meant to absolve the client from blame, it’s simply to get them to consider alternatives. Nobody is perfect… the client is not perfect.. things don’t always turn out the way we want all the time… even clever people also make mistakes you know… and that’s just part of life.
Humour also helps. As a former stage hypnotist, I was renowned for my off-the-cuff rapier-like wit and I occasionally allow my sense of humour into therapy sessions. I once told a client who was having trouble coming to terms with her poor memory that I had accidentally taken my grandmother to Dignitas (the Swiss end of life clinic) instead of Disneyland. There was a look of horror on my client’s face before she realised I was kidding. But it worked and she became a different person. I really do believe that humour helps clients to see problems in a different light.
Constant negative thinking and expectation is not the way life unfolds. Sure, we all have disappointments from time to time and the client has to understand this. Neither is life always a breeze, but it’s never as bad as the client imagines. The real problem is that negativity sometimes encourages people to expect more from like than is reasonable.
The imagination is a powerful tool — for good and bad. It’s how we use it that matters. So… getting the client to visualise positive outcomes and all the good feelings they bring. Guided imagery can switch a client’s thought processes from negative to positive in the blink of an eye. Immersive imagery — and imagination — can help clients move forward in record time. Hypnosis provides a calm, peaceful pathway that makes those images vivid and meaningful to the client.
