The key to helping your clients achieve is listening and not analysing as a hypnotherapist.

Key to helping your clients: Are you listening or analysing?

I had a lovely client come from London to my hypnotherapy room. I found it quite amazing as there are many hypnotherapists in London. Why choose me?

My client was an agony aunt in one of the prominent magazines. I asked her one day, why choose me? Her answer was straightforward “because you listen, and you feedback to me exactly what I want.”

Indeed that’s what we all do? It’s key to helping your clients.

It is straightforward to know if you are listening to your client by the position of your tongue. When your tongue is relaxed, you are listening. When your tongue is at the top of your mouth, you analyse, think, and don’t listen.

When you listen to your client, you need to hear them—not try to fix them or diagnose them—simply listen to what they have to say.

When you hear your client from their world and perspective, you no longer need to fix it because, as one of my teachers taught me, if you listen and hear your clients, they will tell you the solution to their problem in the first few sentences.

How I work with my clients at their first session

After they have completed their intake form, I look at their answer to the question. What do you want to achieve with Hypnotherapy?

That alone is a very powerful question. We are used to talking about what we don’t want and how awful our lives are. How much pain and unhappiness we can stand? It’s not very often we are asked what do you want to achieve? How much happiness do you think you could stand without looking for something to go wrong? I find it so funny when people are having a great run of happiness and fun, and they say, “well, something bad must happen soon!”

Why can’t we bear or enjoy too much happiness?

I look at their answer to what they want to achieve. Then I say tell me about what is happening.

I sit back, and I listen, and yes, invariably, I hear in the first few sentences what is causing their problem. Without me filtering it. Without me deciding for them what their problem is. I see hypnotherapists in forums saying that a client has come to them with an issue, and the hypnotherapist thinks that the client has it wrong and that it is an entirely different issue. I have never trained in diagnosing people, and I deal with what the client wants to change in their life.

Then I say, how do you want to be? This is where our skill comes in and knowledge in the power of the mind. The messages we send to ourselves. How important it is to focus on our goals. The power of positive thinking. As we know to change our thoughts, we change our world. If the mind can believe it, we achieve it.

Client’s can find it hard coming up with positive words of what they want. They are mainly used to focusing on negatives and attracting in more of the same. It is easier to increase pain than to turn the pain down.

Suppose a client says that they want to be less anxious. I will say, what would it feel like if you were less anxious? I am looking for a positive from the client, not what I think.

FOR EXAMPLE, when I hear a positive, like a client says the word relaxed. I will ask my client what being relaxed would look like for them how their thinking would change.

When I have the words that are beneficial for my client, I now have my starting point and will proceed with the hypnosis, focusing on how they want to be.

When we were children and learning if we wanted something, somehow, we achieved it. Have you ever experienced a time when you were small, and your mum said you could not go to a party? But you decided you were, and you put all your energy into going. Sure, enough you went.

Sian and her horse Buddy

I remember a young girl Sian that I was working with regarding anxiety. She was 12 years old, and I tend to use a visual induction of them doing something they enjoyed doing. Well, Sian loved horses, and she would love to have had a horse of her own to ride every day. She would call the horse Buddy.

When I guided Sian into hypnosis, I would start with her finishing school, and on her way home, she would go to the field where Buddy was and then go for a ride etc.

A few years later, I saw her mum shopping, and as we were chatting, I asked her how Sian was. To my shock, she said she’s great and now has a horse called Buddy, and after school, she goes for a ride on Buddy every day.

I have no idea how Sian managed to manifest Buddy as the family were not particularly well off. Sian did it simply because she believed it.

As we get older, we can forget how to focus on what we want. As hypnotherapists, we can help our clients to focus on what they want and not what they don’t want.

Key to helping your clients

I have some great CPD courses and Diploma training coming up in 2022 if you’d like to book one. Plus, I offer discounts on some of my courses. If you want to grab a discount and keep up on all the latest hypnosis news subscribe to my newsletter.