Client Testimony

LIFE CHANGING

“Definitely an awesome, new way of looking at the world and highly recommend as a way of developing the self. Hopefully others will be able to see the difference this course has made in my life.”

Melanie Silberbauer , Internal Communications Manager, BPSA

What is Ericksonian Hypnotherapy?

Frequently Asked Questions

Milton Erickson (1901-1980) was an exceptional therapist. He used a naturalistic and flexible method for trance induction that worked with the client, not on the client.

He varied his approach all the time, depending on the client’s individual problem and personality. He would gather information about his client by questions and observation to find what they wanted and what sort of person they were. He would then know the best way to induce trance for that person and would be able to work with them on their own terms. This is why Ericksonian hypnotherapy is known as “permissive” hypnosis as opposed to other schools of “authoritarian” hypnosis. It is not about one script to use on all clients, but about learning enough about the client and their needs to create an induction that will be best suited to them.
It is about assisting the client to get the outcomes they are looking for.
It is not about following a prescribed script and expecting the client to “do what they are told”.
It is extremely pragmatic as opposed to authoritarian.

“I invent a new theory and a new approach for each individual” said Erickson

The genius of Milton H Erickson was his ability to find within each person, through hypnotherapy, the answers to long standing personality problems, to somatic complaints, or to interpersonal difficulties. He was able to touch those answers and enable each person to use his or her unique learnings and inner resources in creatively approaching the problems of living. Erickson’s unique ability to convert symptoms into signals and psychological problems into creative resources appeals to all those who intuitively sense that we all hold within ourselves the key to our own health and well-being.

It has been made possible to teach Erickson’s unique and incredibly successful form of Hypnotherapy to hundreds of thousands of people thanks to the modelling work done by the founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and to the plethora of books that he co-wrote in his lifetime. The core of his work is the use of artfully vague language; this allows the client to take whatever meaning from what is said that is most appropriate for them. The therapist uses language to induce and maintain a trance state whereby the client can connect with the hidden resources of their personality.

Trance is a state where you are highly motivated to learn from your unconscious in an inner direct way. As opposed to being under the control of another person or totally passive in the receipt of instructions, the trance state allows the client to respond in ways that are different to their normal ‘conscious” way of responding and the therapist works with the responses that result. It’s like a journey where the responses of the client direct the therapist as to what to do next.

Erickson’s work was based on certain presuppositions, which have become some of the presuppositions of NLP, namely:

•   That the client already has all the resources they need – albeit at a level that they are not normally conscious of.

•   That all behaviour, even the most bizarre, has a positive intention.

•   That individuals make the best choices available to them at an given time. Thus, by increasing the information available to the client about any situation, they have access to more resources and can use these resources to change their response to situations both in the past and to situations in the now where they may have been feeling “stuck” or unresourceful.

•   That not only can everyone enter trance, but that trance is a naturally occurring state that all people flow in and out of during the course of normal experience.

•   There is no such thing as a resistant client, only an inflexible communicator. In Ericksonian hypnotherapy the onus is on the therapist to be flexible enough in their approach to allow the client to tap into their unconscious and access the resources that they have available to them at an unconscious level.

Erickson also believed that clients came to him because their conscious and unconscious brains were out of rapport. So Ericksonian hypnotherapy is about enabling the client’s conscious and unconscious brain to come into rapport with each other – to work towards the same outcome, to pull in the same direction, to see that they are part of the same team and to listen to the small voice that adds information to the given scenario.

•   Milton model language is multi-layered and rich in possible meanings. It involves the use of metaphors – the art of telling a story that while seemingly random, actually get to the heart of the client’s problem. It is based on acute observation (sensory acuity) both of very small changes in a patient’s physiology and of the patterns that a client runs and when and how these patterns occur.