Client Stories

I counseled them separately for 3 months, listening carefully to be certain that they were in total agreement for getting back together. Since they were, I used NLP tools to first, neutralize the old hurtful memories, and then give them new possibilities for living their lives together in the future. They responded to this stage of the counseling by calling and seeing each other more frequently.

Lastly, I had them come in together for 3 sessions, where they discussed the details of how to tell their children that they were going to be a family again, and where they would live.

In addition, I taught them a mutual hypnosis technique that increased the good feelings they now had toward each other, adding post hypnotic suggestions so they could repeat the process at home.

Epilogue

About ten years later, I was shopping at the mall and guess who I saw.

That’s right, it was them, arm in arm, laughing, their teenage kids going in three different directions. They saw me and came over to give me a hug and let me know that their marriage was stronger than ever. Their words made my day, I can tell you...maybe the whole week.

It became clear that the wife had grown up with a very difficult Mother, who was overly dramatic, would often yell and belittle her children when she was upset or give them the “silent treatment” for days at a time. As a child, the wife had felt overwhelmed and helpless in the face of her Mother’s anger, and had unconsciously developed the belief that she was unloveable. The recent changes in her husbands behavior triggered these old feeling and beliefs.

Her husband was the youngest of three boys, whose parents favored the oldest son quite openly. He had been held up to the other two boys as a shining example of how they should be. Both younger boys were deeply hurt by the continual comparisons, but were ridiculed if they expressed their hurt. They tried even harder to receive praise and recognition from their parents, with little success. As a result, both boys learned to feel inadequate, even though each of them achieved a fair amount of success in their adult lives.

Through counseling, the husband realized that the death of his Father removed forever, any hope he’d ever had, to redeem himself in his Father’s eyes, and receive the recognition and praise he hungered for. His sense of inadequacy remained. This realization had made him very angry and he was taking his anger out on his wife.

They discovered that the adaptive patterns each had learned in childhood were being played out in their marriage. Neither of them had developed the skills of intimacy and attachment that are so essential in a child’s development.

It was important to repair the damage these early childhood experiences had created, before the difficulties in the marriage could be addressed. So at this point, I saw them separately several times and helped them connect with the parts of themselves that are resilient, and they began to own their strengths and feel empowered.

When their individual sessions concluded, they came to the sessions together and together they set new relationship goals for their future. They worked co-operatively with each other and the wife was happy again that the man she married had returned.

During our sessions, I discovered that he isolated himself from everyone, because he couldn’t sort out his thoughts. “I feel there are a thousand voices in my head”. He was born and raised in a “third world country”, and his parents had been quite strict with him and his brother. In a misguided effort to protect them, the parents taught their sons to consider every possible bad thing that could happen to them before they made a decision. These admonitions were usually followed with a reminder of how their actions would be interpreted by other family members, thus reflecting badly on the parents.

Those lessons had been well learned by my client and now he had developed an intellectual and emotional paralysis that had completely shredded his self-esteem. When I asked him, which voice was the loudest and which he heard the most often, he quickly replied “Mother”, but the voice was accompanied with an image of his Father’s face.

My first step was to use both hypnosis and NLP to de-activate the vocal trigger of his mother and the visual image of his father. Then it was necessary to prepare him for the change this would bring. That is, his thoughts would be less chaotic and he would have the chance to decide which ones he’d pay attention to or act on.

As he discovered his own voice, his self-esteem began to improve and at each session, I would build on it with hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestions, so that long after he left counseling his confidence would continue to develop.

I explored his way of preparing for his interview a bit further, and it seems he had an entire chorus of voices criticizing all his past performances, including a book report he gave to his 5th grade class! Well, anyone’s self-esteem would be undermined with a barrage of negativity like that.

After I neutralized the critical voices with NLP tools, I prepared him for his next job interview. I hypnotized him to retain his new state of detachment and rebuild his self-esteem. And I gave him post-hypnotic suggestions to help him in the interview.

He called me three weeks later to tell me he’d gotten the job. (I do love happy endings)

She had been raised with fundamentalist Christian beliefs (her Father was a minister) and she was often frightened of her Father. Because of her fear, she hid anything she thought would reap her Father’s disapproval or worse, the corporal punishment he unhesitatingly would deliver. She coped by “stuffing” her feelings and “putting them behind me”.

A new relationship was triggering many of the old feelings of shame and guilt she’d had as a child. Since she liked the man she was dating, she had been trying to ignore his need to control everything she did and the fact that she didn’t like it.

As she learned the meaning of her dreams, and how they were alerting her to the danger she was inviting, she realized that our real work together was just beginning.

Using hypnosis, EFT and NLP I was successful in neutralizing the old painful experiences and started building her self-worth. She read the books I recommended, mastered the communication skills necessary to stand up to him, and eventually ended the relationship. A year later, she called to tell me she was getting married to a wonderful man who supported her without trying to control her.

I listened carefully to how she spoke about her problem, which included the phrase, “I don’t know how many more times I can prepare to take this exam.” So I lowered my voice and said, “You’ve successfully failed the bar 5 times. How many more times do you think you need to successfully pass it?” There was a moment or two of silence and then she replied in a very strong voice, “One!”

I knew then that she would pass the bar on the next try and the only thing left to do was a bit of hypnosis to reinforce her self-esteem and give her post hypnotic suggestions for when the exam was in front of her.

She passed the exam with very high scores on her next attempt, three weeks later.

Prior to her first engagement, Mother’s levels of anxiety were quite high, because she only had a 9th grade education and she had always considered men to be far above her in every way. To make matters worse, she imagined that all these men, in their double breasted suits, would be judging her. But she was determined to do her best.

Fortunately, she had a good friend who knew about the benefits of hypnosis and he persuaded her to see a hypnotist. She couldn’t remember what suggestions she was given, but she clearly remembered that when she stepped up to the podium, with her heart pounding, and looked out at that sea of men...instead of double breasted suits, she saw red longjohns on all of them. Yessir, buttons and flaps everywhere!

Mind you, most of these men were also in their forties and rather portly, which caused Mother to burst out laughing. This of course, broke the ice for her and she went on to “wow” the crowd and was in big demand as a speaker after that.

The biggest hurdle he faced was making “cold” calls. As he spoke, it was obvious that he anticipated feeling rejected, by the possibility of being told NO. And every time he made a call and received a NO, or the other person hung up, it proved to him that “cold calls” were hard. So he would postpone making the calls until he felt so guilty that he’d force himself to try again.

This was a negative feedback loop that he was stuck in, which would only get worse without proper intervention. So I neutralized the failure he had attached to making the calls, with 2 NLP techniques and then using hypnosis, I built up his self-esteem and gave him several post-hypnotic suggestions for successful calls in the future.

Several months later he wrote me that in the months following our sessions, his sales calls had tripled and he was receiving more commissions than he had thought possible when he started.

After using NLP questioning skills, I had her list all the things she liked about her current position with the state job. Then I asked her to make a second list for all the things she disliked about the job, ranking the stated items from bad to intolerable. She quickly realized that the intolerable items, which were completely out of her control, were the primary cause of her health being so compromised.

I linked this realization to the ongoing well being of her children, which then provided a powerful motivation for her to seek other job opportunities. We also developed a criteria list for the kind of job she desired, retaining all the things she liked about her current state job, and generating the opposite criteria for all the things she disliked in the job.

Three months later she called to tell me she had given her 2 week notice to the state and was starting her new private sector job in a month. She was so excited, because now she would have 2 weeks to spend with her children before the new job started.

I asked him a number of questions, two of which were; how had he healed injuries in the past, and what was important to him about playing in this particular competition? He had seen the x-rays and described to me the exact nature of the tear. We were ready to begin.

He readily went deeply into trance and I gave him a number of healing suggestions and imagery, all of which were tied to the reminder, to trust his unconscious, since this part of his brain knew exactly how to fulfill each one of the suggestions. I also suggested that his unconscious would accomplish his healing at “10 times the normal rate”.

This was the only time I ever worked with him and it took about 1 hour and fifteen minutes. Three weeks later, he called to tell me that he could put his full weight on his foot, he no longer needed his crutches and he was due to see his doctor for a follow-up appointment.

He told me a week, later that his doctor had expressed amazement at how fast the ligament was healing. Happy ending...he played in the soccer tournament.

So I called the hypnotist who had helped me lose 60 pounds after the birth of my 5th child. He said I didn’t need to come in, that he would do the hypnosis over the phone.

He easily put me in trance (I have to confess, I’m a bit of a trance junkie) and gave me suggestions to numb my left hand as though it was in a bucket of ice water. When I told him I couldn’t feel my hand, he instructed me to use my left hand to cover the incisions and hold it there until the surgical site felt numb too. He then gave me a post hypnotic suggestion, that each time I repeated this procedure, the numbness would last 3 times longer than the first time.

The phone call had lasted about 15 minutes. I did repeat the process one more time about 4 hours later and never had to do it again.

In our first session, I learned that “J” had been at the top of his game, winning every match he entered and then he and his wife of 10 years divorced. As a man with very traditional values and a very strong commitment to family, the divorce was seen by him as a failure and now that new belief was affecting his boxing. He hadn’t won a fight for over a year.

I questioned him as to how he physically and mentally prepared himself for a fight. I soon discovered that his mental preparation was exactly right prior to entering the ring. What seemed to be missing when he was in the ring, was the desire to win. So my next question was “What is the most important thing in your life?” He said without hesitation, “My son”. (And I said silently to myself, “Thank you, God”.)

First, I asked him to tell me all the things he loved about his son, to determine and strengthen his desire to protect him. Then I suggested a variety of scenarios that he believed would be a serious threat to his son. I bundled the threat scenarios all together and linked ‘J’’s protective response for his son to any opponent he would meet in the ring. Then, using hypnosis, I created a post-hypnotic suggestion that every time he entered the ring during a scheduled bout, he would perceive his opponent as a dangerous threat to his son. Once he had knocked out his opponent and left the ring the suggestion was cancelled.

Two weeks later, his trainer called to tell me he had won all three of his scheduled bouts.

As I was explaining how hypnosis and NLP would help him, I used examples of how it was used in sports, because frankly, he was built like a quarterback. He interrupted me to ask if these methods could be used to win dance contests. I told him I didn’t see why not, but that I personally had never worked with anyone to improve their dancing skills. He replied, “Not a problem. The fellow, who referred me to you, said you’re the best.” (Great……no pressure there).

After doing two sessions with him for weight loss, I set up 3, two hour sessions with him for the contest and requested that he have his wife join him for the last two. He agreed.

He explained to me that the judges penalized their performance because they could see him mouthing, “1-2-3-4” and he wanted to stop doing that. Several times, those lost points made the difference between 1st and 2nd place trophies. They had never won a first place trophy in the many years they had been competing and that even had their dance teachers puzzled.

He mouthed 1-2-3-4, not only to keep the tempo, but he also saw a diagram of his foot placement for the steps, in his head. Even though he knew the steps thoroughly, he couldn’t stop himself from seeing the diagram and counting.

Since he was an engineer, I understood exactly what he was doing. He was “putting tab A in slot A”, so to speak so he wouldn’t make a mistake! So I asked him to tell me about his football days (Yup, I got that one right) and how he made the plays during a game. I figured the patterns of movement he had mastered on the field, were very similar to what he needed on the dance floor, and it was also a competitive setting. So in the first two hour session, I transferred the competence and skill from his football days to his competitive dancing.

In the 2nd two hour session, his wife joined him (she was a professional anesthesiologist and an excellent amateur classical pianist).  I taught them how to do a mutual trance induction and gave them a post-hypnotic suggestion, that as soon as their hands touched and the music began, they would automatically slip into a light, eyes open, trance state.

His wife had often found his leading to be overly forceful and she would miss a step because of it.  So in the 3rd two hour session, I asked them to reverse their roles. That is, she would lead him and he would follow her. This reversal brought up a few issues of control in their relationship, as they literally and figuratively “stepped on each others toes.” But, they were able to work it out in their dancing!

Epilogue

They invited me to attend one of the nights of the competition at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco. I was pretty amazed when I saw that my clients, who were both in their mid 60’s, were in competition with much younger and far more athletic couples, whose costumes appeared to have been molded directly onto their bodies!

As I watched the dancing, my heart sank a bit, as I realized that I hadn’t had a clue what they were up against in the competition. My clients came by my table during the intermission and I asked them how they were doing. They were exultant! They told me that their usual behavior following a dance was to pick at their performance, vowing to do better. This night they were thrilled with what they had done and two of their favorite dance instructors told them they were doing so much better than in their previous competitions. I left that evening and on the drive home, I was feeling a little glum, because they had not won even a third place.

I had one last session with the husband the Tuesday following the competition. He walked down the hall holding out one of the trophies I had seen awarded to the winners. I thought, “Oh, how nice, at least they one something.” He had a huge smile on his face and he said “You may want to sit down for this.” Then he told me this was one of 5 trophies they had won the following evening and he and his wife had decided to give this one to me.

When I got closer, I read the plaque on the trophy. “First Place, Latin Dancing”. I really couldn’t believe my eyes. Still skeptical, I asked him if those much younger, athletic couples had also danced in the Latin Dancing category. “Yup”, he replied, "but they won second and third place." I was amazed and speechless!  I could hardly finish the session because my brain was flying all over the place and frankly, my body was vibrating from the sheer wonder of it all.

That trophy has a place of honor in my counseling room to this day.