Hypnotherapy Explained - (I Heard Every Word)
by David Lesser.

From Chapter 5: Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy or Curative Hypnotherapy?

What is hypnotherapy? The answer to this is a very short one or a very long one. The short answer is that hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis for therapeutic purposes - i.e. to relieve people of symptoms so far as is possible.

The long answer requires an explanation starting with hypnosis itself.

Like electricity, no-one is completely sure exactly what hypnosis is. However, like electricity, we can put it to very good use. Previously, I have tried to demonstrate the difference between the conscious and the sub-conscious parts of the mind. The conscious part of the mind is that part which analyses and makes decisions, whereas the subconscious holds all the memories and all the reactions, and is mainly there to keep a person healthy, happy and protected. It is the subconscious which decides when gastric juices will be released into the stomach to digest the food, it is the part which decides how fast your heart should beat according to the energy being burned up or the tension being experienced. It is the part which causes hair to grow on your head and nails on your toes, and is responsible for the regeneration of cells in your body. It thus lies at the root of all sorts of problems and illness, even such things as cancer, which is gradually being recognised as having 'stress' as a cause.

The subconscious is like a computer - it reacts. It does not think, it leaves that to the conscious mind. It reacts in accordance with its programming, relating all incidents to the best way of keeping you healthy, of keeping you happy and keeping you protected from danger. The conscious mind is rather like a computer operator, taking incoming information, putting it into the computer, and then carrying out the actions that the computer thinks is best in those circumstances. Where those actions are not under conscious control, but under the direct control of the subconscious, then that part of the mind will carry those actions out automatically. We call these automatic reactions whether they be panic, tension, depression, fear of thunder or aches and pains which apparently have no physical cause.

As these reactions are in our computer we need, during treatment, to be able to contact our computer without having our words reinterpreted by the computer operator. If someone has wrong information in their computer, the memory banks will feed this misinformation to the computer operator (i.e. the patient himself). The computer operator will measure the therapist's words against the information being fed to it from the computer's memory banks and will analyse, will reinterpret and reject much of what the therapist says. This is where the use of hypnosis cuts down the treatment time to a fraction of that necessary for other methods, as hypnosis is essentially relaxation of the conscious mind, that is to say, relaxation of the critical and decision-making part of the mind.

The patient is aware of what is said, of everything that is going on and has the ability to involve the conscious mind and to analyse and criticise, but a cooperative patient will not do so unless, of course, something is said that is in direct conflict with what they believe or feel.

Thus, hypnosis is persuading the conscious mind to take a rest, to watch what is going on, to hear but not to interfere. In other words, the secret of hypnosis is acceptance by the patient of the meaning of the words used by the therapist.

Once the conscious mind is relaxed, the therapist can talk directly to the computer without the computer operator altering any of the words. Our words can go directly into the subconscious, and the subconscious can respond directly to the therapist. Hypnosis is purely this state of relaxation of the critical and analytical faculties. It is a state in which one is fully conscious and fully aware, but so relaxed that one cannot be bothered to analyse or criticise, except if a real need arises.

Hypnotherapy is using this beautiful state to help alleviate the person's problems. There are many people who have set up in practice as hypnotherapists with the ability to use words to relax people and treat their symptoms, but one must be careful of the results to be expected from this sort of treatment. Remember - we are dealing with a computer and a computer that has already been programmed - a computer that already has an answer in it. No computer can produce a different answer to the one with which it has already been programmed. Although direct suggestion may work to alleviate problems to some extent, while the reason for the problems is still there in the patient's mind, that reason will gradually erode away the direct suggestions, or alternatively, a patient's computer will seek another set of symptoms because it has a need to feel guilty, a need to feel tense, a need to suffer headaches, a need for punishment, a need to be overweight or to suffer from a lack of confidence.

The hypnotherapist who confines himself or herself to removing symptoms can, in many cases, cause greater problems for that patient by making them develop a worse set of symptoms to replace the ones treated in the first place.

Curative hypnotherapy is, as its name implies, curing the problem. Going back to find out the cause of the problem, finding out where the misinformation, or the misinterpretation, has gone into the computer, then reinterpreting and altering the original programme in a logical way that is acceptable to the logic of the computer. Once the cause has been dealt with in this way, there is no need to treat the symptoms at all. The subconscious is there to protect, to keep you happy and healthy, and once the cause has been corrected, the subconscious will automatically correct the reactions.

Go back to the chapter on the Onion Picker. Remember how this man had done something as a child that he thought was good and helpful and had been punished. He had been questioning his actions from there on. When he was doing things that were good he was wondering where the punishment was going to come from until he was unable to make a decision as to whether his actions were right or wrong and a complete lack of confidence ensued. To take a man like that and to treat him with direct suggestion (in other words, telling him that he was going to be confident) would be a waste of time in the long run because the automatic reaction of his computer is, "No. I am not going to be confident because when I was confident, I was punished. Being without confidence has saved me from punishments - I will not be confident."

Where hypnotherapy is used for simple symptom removal many people experience replacement symptoms. Unfortunately the process may take several months and therefore many people do not associate the original problem with the one that they develop later. The nail biter who, months after stopping nail biting, with the help of hypnosis, developed a facial tic, had no idea that the two problems were connected. The person who was treated for blushing did not connect the eczema that he developed on the back of his hands with his original problem because approximately one year had gone by, but he still had a need to show the world that he was guilty. If he could not show it in his face by blushing, he showed it on the back of his hands, which is the only other part of the body that is always exposed to public gaze. The lady who lost the worst of her tension after treatment but became grossly obese was able to date her ravenous appetite to about the time she had hypnosis for her tension without making any connection between the two events, yet her obesity was causing her great distress and this distress created tension every bit as bad as the original tension for which she had treatment.

It is unfortunate that most hypnotists using this state of relaxation for symptom removal are never aware of their failures or the alternative symptoms they are creating. If a person rejects the direct suggestions because the computer cannot accept two answers to any single problem, they just stop going for treatment, and, in many cases, the 'therapists' believe they have stopped because of successful treatment.

The patients who develop alternative symptoms start right back at the beginning again with a round of doctors, pills and so on before they ever consider going back to a hypnotherapist. If they should go back to the same hypnotherapist, he will never find out the cause of the problem, will never realize that it was he who actually caused this secondary problem. He will give just straight forward symptom treatment once again, creating possible further problems in the future.

When I consider the simplicity of curative hypnotherapy, I feel a disgust for these people who will take money for such so-called treatments without any care for the problems they may cause in the future.

My advice to potential patients is to ask questions. Will your therapist find out the cause of your problems and correct it? Does he have that ability? If you get an answer that satisfies you, then make sure that no later than your second visit, the process of going back and finding out the cause is started. Do not expect this to be done in a single session, but, if your therapist has the ability, it will show by the second session. If, on that visit, there is no sign of the therapist knowing how to tackle the problem correctly, then find yourself a genuine curative hypnotherapist.

It is possible with direct suggestion to partially alleviate symptoms, but usually only on a temporary basis. Six months ago, a girl with depression was brought to me by her mother. Her mother told me that a year previously she had been to a doctor who had cured her depression then.

I asked her mother - "If this doctor cured her, why is she here for treatment today?" Obviously, the doctor only helped her symptoms temporarily and gradually the need for her depression, because this was the basic programming, overrode the direct suggestion that the doctor had given her under hypnosis. The doctor may have called it a 'cure', her mother also used the word, but the patient knew better!

Having made the above comments, we are still entitled to call use of direct suggestion in this way hypnotherapy, because it does have a therapeutic use, but genuine curative hypnotherapy means relaxing the conscious mind so that we can talk to the computer, and then getting it to go back along the programme which is causing the symptoms until it uncovers what first started that programme. Because an incorrect reaction has to be caused by incorrect information, we can then correct it and having then corrected it, the symptoms will disappear without having any direct suggestion to help them on their way.

Curative hypnotherapy means exactly what the words imply, that you will be cured, that never again can the same misinformation cause similar problems.

There is, of course, another aspect to people who treat symptoms only. One lady who came to me for treatment was a compulsive hair puller. She was steadily pulling hairs out of her head. When I went back to find out the cause of her problem I found out that originally she had been a nail biter and she had gone to a local hypnotist who had cured her of biting her nails, but she had a reason for the tension that was causing her nail biting and more than that, she had a reason to have the physical sign to the outside world that she was suffering from this tension. Her nail biting had been a visible sign and when the hypnotist stopped her biting her nails she took up something which was a lot worse and developed the habit of pulling her hair out so that she had bald patches all over her head. Had this hypnotist understood what he was doing he would have gone back, he would have found out the reason for her tension and corrected that instead of giving her worse symptoms than she had in the beginning.

There is no doubt that curative hypnotherapy can cure many mental and physical problems. It is not the answer to every single problem and even with people who have problems that are curable one cannot always guarantee success. The success rate is extremely high but because the people do not feel a benefit from the first treatment, quite a percentage never follow through to the end of the treatment. There are also people who do not wish to be cured. Because their problem may be getting special attention from members of their family - maybe they are being treated like an invalid and enjoying being pampered in this way. They will balance their problem against the benefits that their problem is bringing and in some cases will not be cured because their loss will be bigger that their gain.

Those who can find a therapist who is acceptable to them (and no-one will accept hypnosis from someone they strongly dislike or distrust) have a very high chance of being cured of their problem. But to ensure a genuine cure, to ensure that the symptoms will not come back or that the patient will not develop alternative, sometimes more distressing, symptoms it is necessary that they find a genuine curative hypnotherapist. At the back of the book I have listed the address of the examination committee which has been set up to weed out the hypnotists from the curative hypnotherapists.

I have previously tried to demonstrate that similar symptoms between patients do not necessarily mean similar incidents lying at the root of the problem and that similar causes can create completely different symptoms.

A couple of cases of bed-wetters may demonstrate the point:

The man who developed the problem of keeping his erection and the lady who developed tension both had bed-wetting at the root of the problem, although it was not bed-wetting itself that had caused the problem, it was their mothers' words.

The man was aged twenty seven when he came for treatment and had been told by his mother that he would never grow into a 'big boy' if he kept wetting the bed. Naturally enough, in accepting his mothers' words he developed a problem with his erection which was easily cured.

The lady, on the other hand, was told by her mother that she was a dirty girl and that 'no-one loves dirty little girls'. She developed tension which was greatest when she was with her friends. After all, no-one can love you if they are not a friend. It was also this feeling that had led to her divorce and to her living for a time with a man who was a drunkard because although she 'knew' that he could not love her at least it was someone who needed her.

This lady gave me temporary disappointment after we found out her problem and corrected it. She was feeling less tense and steadily improving. She had made an appointment for her final treatment and came in a few days early to tell me that she was not going to keep that appointment because, since her last treatment with me, she had been to her doctor to tell him that she no longer needed tranquilizers. The doctor has persuaded her to go to a psychiatric clinic. He admitted that she was obviously better than she had been but still had tension. I pointed out to her that she had suffered tension for well over thirty years and she could not expect to get rid of all of her habit within about four weeks. She had already told me that she had decided that she would get a job to enlarge her circle of friends and I pointed out to her that the main symptoms had been disposed of. She had told me at the consultation that her tension was worse when she was with friends, so there was no way that she was going to deliberately set out to make new friends if that was going to create additional tension in her. She understood what I was saying but the status of her doctor was too strong. She was indeed still suffering from tension, although this was tremendously reduced and I could see that it was on its way to leaving her entirely. Without any suggestion from me, she had decided to get a job as she wanted to make new friends. She knew she did not need her tablets, again without any suggestion from me. What better signs could there be of change in her? Yet she felt she had to go along with her doctor's recommendation.

Three months later, she rang to make another appointment with me. She told me that she had attended the psychiatric unit only twice, realised that they were not helping her and, feeling more confident and less tense within herself, had stopped going. She had felt the improvement in herself since the last time she had come for treatment and she wanted the final session to finish her treatment. So we took her into hypnosis again and we checked that she had lost all the detrimental effects of her mother's words and that there was no other cause for the tension from which she had been suffering.

Since that day, I have had no direct communication with that lady but I know she must be better because three people with varying problems have come for treatment on her recommendation.

Other Chapters in "Hypnotherapy Explained":-

	Chapter 1 -Imagination
	Chapter 2 - Savings Dad's Life
	Chapter 3 - The Onion Picker
	Chapter 4 - Creating Reality
	Chapter 5 - Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy or Curative Hypnotherapy?
	Chapter 6 - Enjoyment is Wrong
	Chapter 7 - Smokers
	Chapter 8 - "I Heard Every Word"
	Chapter 9 - Fear of Flying
	Chapter 10 - Acceptance
	Chapter 11 - Mummy Knows Best
	Chapter 12 - Thunder And Lightning
	Chapter 13 - Word Power
	Chapter 14 - Sexual Guilt
	Chapter 15 - The Punishment Fits The Crime
	Chapter 16 - Is Belief Necessary?
	Chapter 17 - Failures
	Chapter 18 - Travel Panic
	Chapter 19 - Forgotten Memories
	Chapter 20 - Sex is Dirty
	Chapter 21 - Logical Causes - Logical Cures
	Chapter 22 - The Last Word

"Hypnotherapy Explained (I Heard Every Word)" - By David Lesser