Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 4.1

This day was pretty interesting, we started covering a bit of Behavioural Psychology (Pavlov's dog and that kind of thing), then some of things that it can be used for, with the help of hypnosis. E.g. nail biting - you could use some form of aversion therapy to make their nails taste horrible when they bite them. During the practical for this, I found it really difficult to think of any habits that I wanted to give up. So I ended up just going for Marmite - I already hate the stuff, so hating it even more should be fine :) The other students that did choose something sensible (e.g. biting their nails) seemed to have a lot of success with it when being the client.

I found it fairly straightforward from the therapist point of view as well, and I think it is a technique I'd probably use for a habit such as nail biting - and also maybe for smoking cessation if my usual 2 session method wasn't successful. It seems a bit too unpleasant for the client to use right from the start though, but it'll be handy for times when it's needed.

We also covered some desensitisation methods for dealing with phobias. I think for phobia work I'd probably start of using the NLP fast phobia technique (given that I've had such good results with it in the past), then come up with a SUDS scale to help with desensitising the client to a hierarchy of stressful situations (i.e. work from the bottom of the scale up to the top, getting them to be comfortable with each item before moving to the next one).

All in all, a pretty good day. I've already got a few people lined up that want some help with phobias, so I'll have plenty folks to practice this stuff with :)