Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 9.2

Another specialist area for the start of the day today, this time it was depression. We spent a fair bit of time on this one (mostly because another of the students works a lot with depression), the end result is mostly to stay away from this area unless you go for more specialist training in the area first - and not to just try and treat anything directly. Because, unless you know what you're doing, you could make things worse. So if I do get any enquires for this type of work I can just refer them on to a therapist that does work in this area. Which is pretty much what I was planning on doing anyway.

After depression, we spent some time on IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), which I had a much better idea about after reading the series of articles that James Hamilton posted recently (starting with IBS: Introduction). A lot of the work we can do is this area is to help with confidence and self esteem for people suffering from this, as well as help with stress.

We ended the day with some Pseudo Orientation (age progression), which is basically the opposite of regression - taking them forward in time rather than back. You could use this type of thing with goal setting, so you can take them forward to a time when they've achieved their goal. Personally, I didn't really like the technique very much. I'm not really sure why though, but if it seems like it'll be helpful to a client then I'd definitely still use it.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 9.1

Getting towards the end of the course now, we're spending more time covering specialist areas. Today started with alcoholism & excessive drinking, and the kind of ways hypnotherapy can help (and what not to do, such as not trying to get an alcoholic to go cold turkey). With most of the specialist areas, hypnotherapy is only really of use as part of a full care team - so you wouldn’t be dealing with type of thing on your own anyway. We also covered some more straight forward things today, such as snoring and insomnia. Insomnia is pretty straight forward to help with, but I was surprised to find that you may get people asking for help with snoring. Although the lecturers did say that they hadn't had many clients wanting help for that. Possibly because the person snoring isn't usually affected by it (apart from maybe the odd elbow in the ribs). You could help the partner of the snorer sleep better despite the snoring, which should be enough to let them get a decent nights sleep.

One of the biggest 'wow' moments on the course happened today, we were doing a mind-body disassociation technique - which basically turns off everything below your neck, as if you've been given an anesthetic. It's meant for use with some type of pain, for people that are bed-ridden and it a lot of pain. Using this technique you can put them into that state for a few hours, maybe for a visit from their facility etc. to give them some relief for a while. When it was being practiced on me, it felt very strange not being able to move any part of my body below my neck - I'm trying to tell my arm to lift up, but nothing is happening. It was pretty close to the feeling I've had in the past with sleep paralysis, but without the sleepy part. Very strange feeling indeed. Some of the people on the course decided to opt out of this one, because they didn't like the idea of not being able to move. Although, if I had needed to move (e.g. if there was a fire) then I'd still be able to move. I still don't fancy testing this one out thought :)