The Power of Hypnotherapy and NLP

Hypnotherapy and NLP are two very powerful entities...

Hypnotherapy was established as a legitimate healing modality by the American Medical Association in 1955, and yet many people are still unaware of its real power.

NLP as well has now been around for decades but is still largely unknown among the general population of adults, at least in the United States.

(This is likely to change as the power of hypnotherapy and NLP become more known and brought into popularity by individuals such as Derrin Brown. If you don’t know Derrin Brown yet, he is the host of an extremely popular television show in the U.K. called, ‘Mind Trick’. On that program, he combines his understanding of magic and showmanship with that of hypnosis and NLP in order to produce some pretty amazing shifts in human behavior.)

As fascinating as hypnotic stage shows and demonstrations can be to the average person though, they still conceal the real power of NLP hypnotherapy.

For example, in my own hypnotherapy practice, I once worked with a woman who had been brutally raped. When she entered my office, she was a small shadow of a woman. Her confidence and sense of self-sufficiency were so minute that she needed to be brought to my office by a relative for each visit, even though she was perfectly healthy in every way except emotionally.

She decided to give me a try because she had finally run out of options- she had already been to numerous counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists and none of them seemed able to really help her. Her presenting problem was a recurrent nightmare in which she relived this particularly brutal assault that had occurred a full seven years before she came to see me. She told me that this dream usually repeated itself at least two times an evening and she could do nothing to stop it. Every night it was as if it were all happening again for the first time.

I listened very carefully to her story. I used several NLP techniques to establish and build rapport. I used questions to elicit her thought processes and how she progressed through this experience each evening.

After her initial consultation, I proceeded with a rather typical course of hypnotherapy. My first session with her consisted of two parts: 1) testing to gauge her basic hypnotizability and characteristic responses to different methods of hypnotic induction and, 2) the induction of a deep level of hypnosis and accompanying ‘ego strengthening’ suggestions.

It was in her second session that I switched things up a bit; Between sessions 1 and 2, I had asked her to carefully write out a full description of her nightmare from start to finish. Upon receipt of this written description, I began to analyze her language patterns and other various elements, such as whether or not she was ‘away from’ or ‘toward’ motivated, whether she relied on inner or outer references to make decisions, etc.

With the results of my analysis and the sequencing of her constructions, I created a metaphorical story to be delivered to her while in hypnosis. This story matched in every way her own manner and syntax of communicating, so although from the perspective of content it might sound strange to her on a conscious level, unconsciously it made perfect sense. An uninformed outside observer might even wonder why I was telling her the story at all since it was apparently about a little boy who had once fallen into a lion pit at the zoo and seemingly had nothing whatsoever to do with how to cope with having been raped.

So, what was the result? After seven continuous years of horrifying, recurring nightmares she was ‘cured’ in about two hours. How can I be sure? She came to see me for many sessions afterward, but they all had to do with learning how to relax and be more confident in social situations. After session 2, the nightmares were simply gone.

Now, are you beginning to become aware of some of the incredible power of hypnotherapy and NLP? If we can use hypnotherapy and NLP to help a person rapidly overcome something as terrifying and ego-shattering as rape, what positive changes could hypnotherapy and NLP create in your life? Could it help you to develop a vastly expanded sense of your own capabilities and potential? Could it deepen your ability to forge deeper and more meaningful relationships with those you love? Could it help you in your career?

When you begin to study hypnotherapy and NLP seriously and with the proper trainers, I think you’ll find the answer to all of the above questions to be a resounding YES!

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