Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 8.2

It was the final batch of NLP on this course today. Unlike yesterday, we did cover some stuff that would be directly useful in therapy. The first was the swish pattern, this one went down pretty well. Even with the minor stuff we were using to practice this technique, quite a few people found they had a positive change because of it. I can see myself using the swish a lot for helping people break bad habits, and I'll probably incorporate it into my smoking cessation sessions.

We went through the 6 step reframe as well, which I found interesting, but it was presented as being almost the same thing as parts therapy (which we covered back on weekend 3), so most folks on the course didn't seem to find it very useful, instead just choosing to use parts work in hypnosis for this kind of thing.

Given that this was the final lot of NLP on the course, it's a bit of a shame we didn't go through the fast phobia cure. I find that one of the most useful NLP therapy techniques (and a very easy to use one), and I think we could have went into more detail on some of the things we did cover. But this is a hypnosis course after all, not an NLP one - so I should be looking for an NLP course if I want more of that kind of thing. Speaking of which, the ones Paul McKenna's company is running look like they could be pretty good, so I'm thinking about giving one of those a try sometime.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 8.1

Another NLP weekend this one, I didn't find it as interesting as the last NLP weekend though. The topics we covered today felt a bit dull, I think that was mostly because none of the things we covered would be used to produce a change in therapy. They were things that would help, but they're not much use by themselves. We started the day with Congruity vs Incongruity, then moved onto to prosuppositions, well-formed outcomes and perceptual positions. All pretty useful things (and I'm a big fan of the NLP presuppositions), but I think the NLP jargon got in the way for a lot of people - thankfully with my day job being in IT, I'm already used to an overabundance of jargon and I've already learnt a bit about various NLP methods.

So for today, I thought the content was useful but the delivery of that content could have a been a lot better. We've got another NLP day tomorrow, which should be teaching more directly useful things as well - so maybe it'll go down better than this one.

Learning Hypnotherapy, weekend 7.2

We had an introduction to Inner Child work today. It's based of the idea that to resolve issues which originate in your childhood, you need to connect with heal your 'inner child'. The reasoning behind this one doesn’t really fit with my beliefs, but it is useful for some people so that makes it a valuable technique. Obviously, in the classroom setting we're not going to be dealing with real problems - so we were just practicing fairly generic stuff. Even doing that, one of the students did get some fairly strong emotions back from her childhood. So much so in fact, that she ended up too emotionally drained to continue with the rest of the day, so she headed home early. I can't really see myself using this technique very much when doing therapy for real though, but it's still interesting.

We also briefly covered dealing with sexual abuse, not in any detail though - it was mostly just to say "if you want to work in this area, you're going to need lots of specialist training".

Something that I've started to notice recently in that the learning weekends don't seem to be as useful as they were at the start of the course. I suspect it's a combination of a couple of things. Firstly, we've mostly covered the big things that hypnotherapy is useful for, so we're dealing with smaller (and more specific) areas now. And secondly, in my out-of-course studying I'm already applying the things I've already learnt on the course to stuff that I'm reading about - so it doesn't feel like the things we're covering now are new to me. I've already come across them (or similar things) outside of the course. So recently I feel like I've been getting more out of just being there, even just to improve my focus in learning hypnotherapy by being there and to speak to the other folks on the course. But there's no reason to only speak to those people on school weekends, maybe I should try and get some regular meetings going for us to share ideas, etc.

Also, the end of the course is isn't far away, final exam is in November.