Denise Billen-Mejia 0:07
Welcome to Two hypnotherapists talking with me, Denise Billen-Mejia in Delaware, USA.
Martin Furber 0:13
And me Martin Furber in Preston UK.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:16
This weekly podcast is for anyone and everyone who would like to know more about fascinating subject of hypnosis, and the benefits that it offers.
Martin Furber 0:24
I'm a clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist,
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:27
I'm a retired medical doctor turned consulting hypnotist.
Martin Furber 0:31
We are two hypnotherapists talking.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:34
So let's get on with the episode. Yes, let's get on with the show.
Martin Furber 0:38
Let's get on with the show indeed. What are we talking about this week Denise?
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:40
I think we need to dial it back a bit and get back a bit more hypnosis because we've been really enjoying our calls with people who are not hypnotists, but are hypno adjacent. But let's dial it back a bit. How do you talk to somebody who just calls up and says, I want to know whether this hypnosis will work for me.
Martin Furber 1:03
Right?
Denise Billen-Mejia 1:04
So I had one of those calls yesterday. It started out as one thing and ended up as being something else, which was lovely. But why don't you tell me what your, what's your basics.
Martin Furber 1:15
The first thing I ask anybody is what just for them to tell me in their own words, what they would like help with. Okay, because it could be anything, as you know, yourself, it could just be something that they've got an event coming up, and they're a bit anxious, and they'd like some help with that. Or it could be that they've been suffering with chronic back pain for years, and their doctor suggested they try to hypnotherapy, or anything in between, really. So I find out what it is they want from therapy. And then I give a very brief explanation over the phone of how it works, the main point being to let them know that it's not a magic wand. We can't just snap our fingers and fix anything. And then I arrange an initial consultation with them either on Zoom or face to face. But it's during that initial consultation, a major part of it for me, is an explanation of how the brain works about the intellectual side of the brain and the primitive side. Because most things people come to see me about are either something that's exacerbated by stress or something that is caused by some kind of fear or anxiety. So I always find that explanation of how the brain works, how our minds work, resonates. Now, it's relatable to most people. So I give an explanation of that. And then of course, they want to know about the actual hypnotherapy, the hypnosis side of it. So how do you explain that side of it to people?
Denise Billen-Mejia 2:48
Probably very similar. Usually, I have a little bit of information. When they book in for the initial consult. I ask them why? Sometimes, it'll be I want to talk about hypnosis, not terribly helpful. Most people will say, I've got a big talk coming up, I'm fear of speaking or anxiety. Yesterday, I had been to, I wouldn't say a class exactly, but it was I was in a group of doctors who I didn't know personally, I knew them sort of within the greater group, but I hadn't had any individual contact with them. And one of them booked a call. And so which was very nice. And we chatted for a while, and she just wanted to know more about, she didn't know very much about hypnosis. And so we were talking about hypnosis, and it's suddenly morphed into, Oh, I think I want this for me. Because we were talking about pain, and she actually had a headache. So we were talking about that and how it works with that. So it is different every time I speak to somebody. But yes, you do have to talk about, one, it's not a magic bullet. Silver bullet - magic pill. It's not that, it's not what you see on TV where somebody goes, oh, and then they're flat out on the couch. It just you wouldn't want it to work like that anyway. But of course, once you've been hypnotised several times, somebody could say to you as they do to you and I when they want to practice would you like to be hypnotise, oh yes please! But that takes, it takes trust in the person you're talking to. But also just trust in the process. So as long as they need, whatever questions they have about it, we spend that time talking about whatever their questions are, with me making sure that they know it isn't instant. It can be remarkably fast. It's certainly faster than many other ways of dealing with these issues. But it isn't me doing something to them. It's them using something that they naturally have, with me guiding them through that process.
Martin Furber 4:56
The ability to get into it. I always like to say is the ability to enter into a daydream. It's that kind of thing. I always like to give simple analogies things people can relate to.
Denise Billen-Mejia 5:10
That's usually what it feels like, oh, sorry, miles away.
Martin Furber 5:16
If you've ever sat there with your elbow, and you have your chin on your elbow, and you start to feel, you know, daydream sort of thing, when you it's a bit like this, that point, as I like to describe it,
Denise Billen-Mejia 5:28
Yeah, that's it, you were I would see somebody who wanted to be hypnotised who had gotten to that point, and be able to take them past it instead of having them start awake, as you do. But I mean, it one or two things will happen when you go into that state. You either wake up, because a bell rings or somebody speaks to you or your stop comes, if you're on the bus.
Martin Furber 5:49
Or the teacher throws a board eraser at you.
Denise Billen-Mejia 5:53
There you go, exactly. Yeah. It's just, learning to relax in not necessarily good circumstances.
Martin Furber 6:00
Yeah, that's how I liken it. But again, with the initial consultation, because a lot of people have, a lot of the questions I get, are the same kind of thing, you know, what's it like, and you've got to manage expectations, because if they are expecting you to click your fingers, and they just go like that, you know that that expectation needs to be managed. And I think, sometimes when you do give that explanation to people who then think, well, how can it work, then you know, if that isn't how it works. So then a further explanation... An analogy I give, you know, is when people say, you know about how it worked, if you speak to the subconscious, and this that and the other. I say to them, Have you ever watched a really good film either on the television or at the cinema, you've really, really enjoyed it, it's resonated with you. And then the following week, as you're walking around, little bits of the film, keep coming back to your mind bits that you enjoyed and make you feel good again. And I say hypnotherapy is similar to that. What I say to you, while you're in the trance state will keep repeating itself, the positive suggestions will keep repeating to you over the following week.
Denise Billen-Mejia 7:09
But even of course, the same thing, negative suggestions, though not being given to you by a hypnotist, good gracious, but they have gotten in there either when you were a kid, because of constant repetition, or because you weren't paying attention consciously when you know. Hypnosis is a natural phenomenon you are affected by that. There are ways for less than positive things to get into your brain.
Martin Furber 7:10
Absolutely.
Denise Billen-Mejia 7:10
Like, I'm too fat. I'm too short. I'm too thin, I'm not good enough. Imposter syndrome there's all these things that just get in there. And you and I work with the person to find out what they would rather be hearing.
Martin Furber 7:53
Exactly, exactly. We can replace it. I mean, I use a lot of computer analogies. So I just say we, we overwrite a faulty template with a more helpful one, or an unhelpful template with a more helpful one.
Denise Billen-Mejia 8:06
What did hypnotists do before the computer came along? It's so much, it's so easy. It's so it's so nice to talk about all the tabs are open, and you need to close them down. What did they say before this?
Martin Furber 8:18
I was talking to somebody yesterday and I can't remember whom. And they were talking about somebody else who had 500 tabs open on their phone
Denise Billen-Mejia 8:27
It must have been really hot. Yeah.
Martin Furber 8:30
That's what I was thinking. I get overexcited when I've got four open. But no, yeah, so I like to give that analogy to explain more. Because, you know, people ask well, you know, you go through the process of hypnotherapy what happens then? And I say, well, the positivity starts to repeat back to you. And the analogy I give when the negativity repeats back when people are troubled by that. I say again, when we hear bad things, especially when we're children, we get bullied we get called names and that kind of thing, or negative statements like you're not as good as your brother or your sister, all that kind of thing. When we're adults in times of stress. And again, I use that stress bucket analogy, when our stress bucket is full, a lot of the things we heard that were negative about us when we were younger, will come back and start repeating.
Denise Billen-Mejia 9:29
And some people's never go away, unless they meet a hypnotherapist to help them. Yeah, all right, good. I mean, other kinds of therapy too. There are lots of lots of ways they can be helped. But hypnotherapy is amazing for those kinds of things. And what, the other thing that came up, when I was talking to this physician yesterday, was the fact that I and I'm sure you teach my clients how to do it for themselves, right because you give them, I give them an audio that's specific to the issue we've talked about. And they can listen to that whatever they want, but they can make their own, and hear their own voice telling them whatever they need to think. Once they trust the process, they know how, and just getting enough sleep, just allowing that turning off the negative thoughts all the time.
Martin Furber 10:21
Yeah, I mean, that negative sleep thing again, this is something else I explain to people in the initial consultation, because I always ask everybody about their sleeping habits. And I explain to them how we detach the emotion from memories when we're getting the REM sleep. And I also, I don't make a direct comparison, but I do liken REM sleep to the hypnotic trance state. I don't know how you feel about that. Do you feel that's a good likening. I know. It's not the same thing.
Denise Billen-Mejia 10:52
I don't I talk about daydreaming. That's that's the usual way. I don't think daydreaming and REM sleep are really the same. But yeah, I guess. Although there's been a lot of research and we know a lot more about hypnosis than we used to. It's still pretty magical.
Martin Furber 11:12
Oh, yeah.
Denise Billen-Mejia 11:13
No, no, I don't want people to think it's literally magic. But an unexplained scientific thing, that appears to be magic.
Martin Furber 11:21
Yeah, well, I would gently challenge the unexplained but it's getting more and more explained all the time these years, isn't it?
Denise Billen-Mejia 11:28
Right. But with everything in science, you think one way and then something else comes along, and you say oh, no, we were wrong about that. It works like this. And that's fine. It doesn't make the thing that's being looked at invalid. It just means we haven't yet finished understanding it.
Martin Furber 11:45
Yeah, something else I was thinking of as well. I'm veering slightly off here. But well, only slightly. Okay.
Denise Billen-Mejia 11:55
Martin it's you and I talking, when don't we veer off!
Martin Furber 11:58
No, but I'm just thinking again about explaining during giving the initial consultation to people about how, like all the therapies, hypnotherapy won't work with everybody. Okay. You know, there are some people it doesn't work with but it got me thinking about is, could that possibly be down with some people to learning styles?
Denise Billen-Mejia 12:18
Yeah, it is yeah. And that's and that's the thing it's not it doesn't work with everybody is it doesn't work with everybody all the time, for every single issue. There is no magic bullet, no magic bullet, silver bullet!
Martin Furber 12:32
You're mixing your metaphors!
Denise Billen-Mejia 12:37
Constantly. It is, and there is essentially no side effects. There tends to be if you wake too quickly out of a trance, a lot of people will complain about vaguely funny feeling or, you know, feel foggy. As you would if you were really deep asleep and your alarm clock goes off. A lot of us get very discombobulated when that happens.
Martin Furber 12:58
Yeah, like me the other afternoon, when I said I'd had a sleep.
Denise Billen-Mejia 13:05
But it is a completely natural thing that you do all the time. As you're falling asleep. As you're waking up, you go through exactly what and we aren't making that happen to you. We're just helping you facilitate it for yourself. We're giving you a nice quiet place, we're giving you a boring, listen to our voice. And you can just naturally go into that state and then use it for something useful, but you've actually asked to be introduced to you, although otherwise you're asleep on it. You're falling asleep on the couch and you're listening to the news and you don't know why you wake up in a bad mood. It's everything that your brain hears is gonna go somewhere.
Martin Furber 13:47
It's gonna get absorbed isn't it? It goes in getting back to initial consultation. Something else I talk to people about, because I again, I know our clientele varies, but there are some similarities in the symptomology. I help a lot of people who are experiencing depression. As you know, I get in-house referrals as well of people who may well have been prescribed SSRIs which you know, for general viewers is that antidepressants, one type of antidepressant and I explain to them how they work. As in you have to generate your own feel good, happy serotonin, yourself, and the tablets will stop you reabsorbing it so quickly. And I find a lot of people have never had that explained to them when it's been prescribed to them probably down to time restrictions over here, the length of appointments. But I do find with people once you explain that to them, how their medication works, and how hypnotherapy can help alongside it. You know, and help.
Denise Billen-Mejia 14:54
And again, we point out, that we don't see anybody without their doctor knowing
Martin Furber 14:59
Absolutely, yeah. But as I say, I'm talking about clients who have been referred by the prescribers who have recommended hypnotherapy in preference to other therapies, or instead of, and it works really well. Years ago, if you go back 20 years, Denise, when I look back through my National Council of hypnotherapy stuff. Hypnotherapy was a big no-no for depression. Yeah. When you talk about science moving on, whereas now, it's widely accepted, yes, it's helpful. It's useful for helping people with depression. So yeah, so that's another thing I explain to people during the initial consultation, because I do get a lot of people who are on prescribed medication.
Denise Billen-Mejia 15:45
The first session is usually longer than subsequent sessions, because they just got to, you go over again, how your brain works, what we're going to be doing, refine, even though they may have explained in great detail the first time what they want you to talk about, they may walk in on the first session and actually prefer to talk about something else.
Martin Furber 16:05
Yeah, that's happened, but also again, it's in terms of getting stuff, offloading certain things, okay? When people come with various situations, they could have had a troubled past, they say they've got depression, for example, they're experiencing depression. They may want to talk about it, and with a lot of people, they still regard all kinds of therapy as being sort of like, you know, looking backwards. And they might say, and I feel like this, they say, I think it's because this happened, and I think it's because of that, and what do you think? I let them get it off their chest in the first session, like them offload? Okay? Because straightaway, it's building rapport, they feel, if they feel they can trust you and tell you all these things, that's gonna be a good thing. But we don't want to concentrate on those things in the future. So I explain everything to them, like, okay, you've explained all this to me, I understand. You know, thank you for telling me but we're not going to concentrate on that in the future. In the future, we're going to concentrate on where you want to be not where you've been. That sometimes needs explaining in quite some detail as to why, because you've got to be very careful not to, or I've got to be very careful ,not to make people think that I'm being dismissive. If you say, well, thank you telling me that, but we're not going to examine that any further now. Because again, you remember it is an initial consultation. First impressions are everything, aren't they? You know, people could feel that their thing you know, their their issue is not being validated.
Denise Billen-Mejia 17:41
One of the things that I don't usually have too much trouble explaining that to people. You don't have to sit here in a session and go over every single horrible thing that you want to get rid of we can, hypnosis doesn't require you to relive the issue. But the most common thing I am asked well that I have to say I'm sorry, I can't do that, is people who want to remove the memory of an ex. That's not the way don't get rid of a memory. You make it totally unimportant.
Martin Furber 18:14
Yeah, we can change the way we feel about the memory.
Denise Billen-Mejia 18:17
Until you can't remember this guy's name? Because I always give the explanation to my clients that you know, they've got three kids with this guy, you don't want to forget, who is this guy that keeps coming on Saturdays and taking them away? It just, it isn't a practical thing. Even if I physically could do that. It would not be helpful, and hypnosis is to help people.
Martin Furber 18:17
Exactly. And that's it, isn't it, it's getting that point across. Because I've been asked something similar before. Now can I do that? And he's like, No, we can't erase the memories, we can detach the emotion from bad memories. Okay, and we can help you fade that memory out so that you react to it very differently. Because it's not the memory that's causing the issue, it's how you react to it. And how it makes you feel.
Denise Billen-Mejia 19:03
Yeah, that's the whole the whole problem with stress. We call it stress if it's negative, but actually, anything that's changing what's going on around you is stressful, for your mind, it doesn't like that.
Martin Furber 19:13
What was it somebody said to me once? Pressure is when there's all the things to do, when it's all going right. Stress is when it's all going wrong.
Denise Billen-Mejia 19:22
Excellent. But when you say pressure to me I immediately think of a pressure cooker.
Martin Furber 19:30
Yeah, and science moves on these days we use air-fryers!
Denise Billen-Mejia 19:40
So my dear, what do you do in that first session? They listen to this and they understand that this is where they want to go. What do you, what is your first session generally?
Martin Furber 19:51
Okay. The first session after the initial consultation.
Denise Billen-Mejia 19:53
Yeah.
Martin Furber 19:54
All right. Okay. So after the initial consultation, they will have been given a bedtime recording to listen to every night for a week.
Denise Billen-Mejia 20:01
Which is specific to the issue or just generalised.
Martin Furber 20:04
General relaxation, it's to get them used to the sound of my voice, to get them used to taking some nice breaths and relaxing at bedtime, to hopefully help them sleep better as well. And to, as I say, get them used to my voice, get them used to the whole idea of the process and to hopefully help their sleeping patterns and habits. So they're already in a better place when they come to see me the following week. And I've also asked them to write down the three good things from the previous day, each night, and bring those into me as well. And I explain in greater detail what that's about, and how that works, and why it works. And then when they come to see me for that first session, now, this is interesting, we go through these things that have been good, the reason being is get them in that left prefrontal cortex to get them relaxed to get them thinking, and to switch down the other side. And then I generally run over the main points of the initial consultation again, because most people are, you know, there's a lot of information for them to take in, and you do need to repeat certain bits of it. And then I do scaling. And on the first full session only, not on any of the sessions, I ask them where they are on, if they're coming to see me about confidence, for example, where they are on a confidence scale, from one to 10 At that moment, and then I ask them, the least confident they've ever felt, What score would they give that out of 10? And then they move very quickly on to the best they've ever felt. When was that? And get them to describe that in more detail and give that a figure? I don't ask them to describe the lowest one in detail. Okay, we don't concentrate on that.
Denise Billen-Mejia 21:48
Again, we don't want to reinforce negative memories. Yeah,
Martin Furber 21:52
Exactly, so we just want the number though. And then, so say, for example, we say the worst thing I ever felt was a two, at the moment, they're feeling a five, but they can remember in the past when they felt an eight out of 10. So I'll ask them to tell me about that. How was it? And I will get them to really delve into that and tell me in detail how it was who was there? What was different then, what was better then, and get them primed into that mindset, because that's the way they want to be again. So, you know, I do all that, and then we chat about all the things I do, based on solution focus, brief therapy, the miracle question. And then we're go in to the trance.
Denise Billen-Mejia 22:36
And most of that cognitive portion is also you learning their speech patterns, because you want to repeat the ideas that if they said, I want to be more confident, that you're not going to sit there and hypnotise me and say you are more confident, you are more confident.
Martin Furber 22:49
No, I would ask them what does confident look like. Describe it to me and again, especially where I live in the north of England, people speak in a certain way and use certain phraseology, which will be very different from, say, 60 miles away. You know, obviously, I'm well in-tune with that, oh, there you go. There's one example I'm well in-tune with that, I'm in tune with that really well, I can phrase my language accordingly. On Zoom, when I'm dealing with somebody in another country or at the other end of the country, then, again, pay more particular attention to the patterns they use.
Denise Billen-Mejia 23:29
Right? If you were hypnotising. Me, you'd have to also you have to figure the Salisbury bit and on the American bit
Martin Furber 23:34
Hi Y'all
Denise Billen-Mejia 23:36
I've never said that in my life! And also, I'm in the northeast of America.
Denise Billen-Mejia 23:43
That's Texas drawl isn't it?
Denise Billen-Mejia 23:46
So okay, so that first one is going to take you longer, because you won't really know the client. Do you require people, I i being honest here, I ask people to book for two sessions. Because I want to know, that I want them to know, again reinforcing is it's not magic. If and it has happened before I see somebody and that first session, we fix the problem. They can keep that second session in their back pocket if it's needed again, but it doesn't usually, it doesn't really wear off. But you know if it's not been a problem, no say you are worried about a particularly posh event you have to go to, and you're feeling like a wallflower. You want to go away. So you get get rid of that. You may not have another one of those kinds of events for a long time. So you won't be able to test whether you still feel the same way.
Martin Furber 24:46
Yeah, or if were best-man at a wedding or something
Denise Billen-Mejia 24:49
Exactly that kind of thing. So if, I'm assuming, I'm alive 10 years down the road, they have this! That's not negative thinking it's realism. I cannot come back and do this from the grave. So they want to see me again and 10 years from now. They've they've got that session in their pocket if they, and subsequent sessions are slightly less expensive because I already know them. And I know how they're gonna sound they will be slightly shorter. I always, a day or two after the session, I try really hard for it to only be a day or two after the session, they get an audio that's made specifically for with that, for what their issue is. Yeah, most of my clients will use that as a self hypnosis tape. You know, every every so often, they'll listen to it, just to make sure they keep topped up
Martin Furber 25:45
that brings up the whole subject again, what we were talking about, of self-hypnosis, different, if you ask different hypnotists even, whatr is self-hypnosis, you'll get different answers.
Denise Billen-Mejia 25:57
Or 'All hypnosis is self hypnosis'.
Martin Furber 25:58
Yeah, that's that's one. But also in terms of, you know, literally getting somebody to be able to take themselves into a state of hypnosis, you will get different answers from different therapists as to what that is or what it entails. I mean, I can do it pretty easily.
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:18
You can hypnotise yourself, or you can tell other people how to do it?
Martin Furber 26:21
I can. No, I can hypnotise myself very, very easily.
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:25
Again, we've had lots of practice, because we are trained in doing this.
Martin Furber 26:31
Have you ever trained anybody to literally take themselves into trance without any other aid? I know I'd be lying if I said I had.
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:38
Oh, really? Yeah, okay.
Martin Furber 26:41
Okay, have you?
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:42
Yeah, I do. I mean, really, it's just like, you're gonna do this exact thing, your going to take some deep breaths. And you know, it just won't be me talking at you, while you're doing it. And that's often when we're talking about sleep in particular, because you want to, you're going to be in different a hotel room, it's hard to get to. So there's all sorts of things that can affect you.
Martin Furber 27:03
I've done it with recordings for them, which is a form of self-hypnosis. And I've said, if you sit, if you don't want to do this as a go to bed at night time sort of thing. I'm thinking of one client in particular, now, sit there in the chair, put the recording on what before you hit play, do some 777, breathing for a minute or two, then hit the play and then start the recording.
Denise Billen-Mejia 27:28
My recording always says, If you are not going to bed right now set an alarm for 30 minutes after this tape, because you will go to sleep. That's the natural thing to do.
Martin Furber 27:39
Yeah, no, my count-ups are a lot more forceful than yours!
Denise Billen-Mejia 27:42
I don't know if people need it, I will count them up. And one of the great things about working online is I don't have to because they're already in their own home, they don't have to go deal with traffic and get all discombobulated. That's the second time I've used that word! It is, I find it very annoying. I stopped using that count up because when I was being used as a practice, dummy. I would I go out completely now. You know, would you like to be hypnotised? Yes, please, thank you very much. I'm gone. And then the next thing I hear is Three! What happened to one and two? I don't know. But I hear three. And I hear my voice saying NO! You know, and I think it's my little girl voice that's talking to me. It's not quite yet the tone. But it's, I don't want my clients to feel like that. I want them to be completely relaxing cominig into the room and they want to. And because I'm working on line because I put big buffers around my appointment times. I can just sit there until I see them their eyes open and I say bye see you next time. So don't want them to use that front part of their brain yet I want them just to chill.
Martin Furber 28:53
Just to stay in the zone as it were. Yeah. Interestingly, do you have to make sure you've brought your client out of trance before you terminate the call for your insurance.
Denise Billen-Mejia 29:05
My insurance has never told me that I need to do this. Unless a client has told me they are, usually that some of them will use it for their naptime in the afternoon. I have quite a lot of older clients. So if I can see they're lying on the bed and they've drifted off to sleep, I just turn off my end computer when they wake up. But no, you would, you certainly would need to know that somebody was truly awake if they were gonna go down an elevator, find their car and drive home and be very sure they are, because at the next traffic light, they may just decide to go back. Again, though, do remember, everybody listening, that your conscious mind is not, I mean, you're not unconscious, unconscious. It's in that that middle road? If something dramatic happens, it will wake up.
Martin Furber 29:53
Oh yeah, it's the same if you're, you can be completely engrossed in something on television, which is not dissimilar from hypnosis, really, really engrossed in it and then somebody will ring the doorbell. And yes, you've jumped out of oyur skin, but you come out of it instantly, don't you?
Denise Billen-Mejia 30:07
Yeah. It's not a pleasant feeling. So I don't want to do that to my clients, I want them to have as nice of a period as possible. Yeah, I do want them. I do warn them every time that is, get all your talking done, all your I can't see you next Tuesday because, out of the way before, because I don't want any of that getting in the way of this integrating when when you finish the session. Just sit there in your chair for 20 minutes. Go deal with the kids later unless you hear screaming, and a lot of worrisome noise. And I think most people do better with that. Because it is annoying to be woken up. Well, you're having a nice dream. Why would you need to do that?
Martin Furber 30:55
Well, yeah, I mean, that's like waking up on a Monday morning, when you've, you're in the middle of a really, really good dream. And something wakes you up, or you have to wake up and it's like, No, I was really enjoying that, you know,
Denise Billen-Mejia 31:07
But what's worse is you wake up you think is it Sunday? I don't know what day it is. Working from home can make that even more pronounced.
Martin Furber 31:18
Also, also, I think we've talked about sensory input before weren't we? I think so do you ever get it when clients come to you say, I want to lose weight, I want to feel this, I want to do this once. And it's like, well, whoa, hold on, let's do one thing at a time,
Denise Billen-Mejia 31:32
When not only you know, I want to learn how to ride a horse and I want to lose weight, which are obviously, different things. But if
Martin Furber 31:39
You might need to lose one to be able to learn to do the other, though.
Denise Billen-Mejia 31:43
Correct. But you also wouldn't say everything about weight loss to a client. No, that first session? Because unless you know, it's two pounds, in which case why are they sitting in your room, or on Zoom? You want to make tiny, but really impactful changes.
Martin Furber 32:04
Small steps. Yeah, right.
Denise Billen-Mejia 32:06
If you were in trance right now, and I said, and you are going to be confident and you're going to learn to ski and you're going to drive to London tomorrow and blah blah blah, and 15 things...Your subconscious mind exists to keep you safe. This does not sound like a safe environment. It's not going to like it.
Martin Furber 32:24
You're going to be bombarding you with different things no. No, no, I think that's quite important to point out to people as well that yes, whilst it can help with many, many things, not all at once.
Denise Billen-Mejia 32:38
It's also reasonable we can't specify how long somebody's going to need to work with you. Or, when they don't want to come to you anymore, they don't come to you anymore. But generally speaking with anxiety, it's three to five. So it definitely differs for the person. But when you make that change, it helps the other changes go faster. So things really speed up as you go along.
Martin Furber 33:04
Yeah, I mean, I have had it though with people with depression, and they've come to see me for depression. And they've mentioned they wanted to lose weight. As they've been feeling better, they've lost the weight anyway.
Denise Billen-Mejia 33:19
Yeah, exactly.
Martin Furber 33:19
And that's not what we've been concentrating on. Because then you're in that cycle. Am I fat because I'm unhappy, or am I unhappy, because I'm fat? Again that feeds off each other, doesn't it.
Denise Billen-Mejia 33:30
So when you see a hypnotist, you tell him all the things that you want to change, and then you choose the one that is the most important to you right now. And within that there may be several little steps that you need to make. But you make I never do more than two or three. They're variations on a theme suggestions. But I don't ever make more than really two changes in a session. Because it's too, just here we go again, and it's discombobulating. I don't know why I need a thesaurus today. It just it's unsettling, and that is, your subconscious is your safe zone. It's your comfort zone. It's there to keep you comfortable. And if anything is going to be disquieting to your subconscious, it will not cooperate. Which is why people stay. It's why people can't imagine getting themselves out of dangerous or unpleasant relationships.
Martin Furber 34:29
No because they take comfort from the repetition of that bad relationship.
Denise Billen-Mejia 34:34
Well, and not only that, but change is dangerous. You don't know what's going to happen when things change.
Martin Furber 34:39
We automatically perceive change as a threat even good change, don't we?
Denise Billen-Mejia 34:43
Yeah, exactly. Which is why you can be stressed by really fun things like flying to Australia or whatever. Anyway, my dear, I think we need to end this today, and we'll blather on about something else the next time but the next episode We're talking to mystery person. I don't remember who it is, but there will be another person, so it will be two hypnotherapists and somebody else.
Martin Furber 35:11
Alright, catch you on the next one. Okay, bye
Denise Billen-Mejia 35:21
We hope you've enjoyed listening. Please remember this podcast is designed to give you an insight into therapeutic hypnosis, and is for educational purposes only. So remember, consult with your own healthcare professional if you think something you've heard may apply to you or a loved one.
Martin Furber 35:38
If you found this episode useful, you can apply for free continuing professional development or CME credits. Using the link provided in the show notes. Feel free to contact either of us through the links in the show notes. Join us again next week.
