Debbie Waller - Their Worlds Your Words: The Hypnotherapists Guide to Effective Scripts and Sessions

Their worlds Your words

By Debbie Waller

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form (including electronically) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. Application for permission to reproduce should be directed to the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-9954599-5-3

Published by Ann Jaloba Publishing, 26 Tapton Mount
Close, Sheffield S10 5DJ copyright Ann Jaloba Publishing

The moral right of Debbie Waller to be identified as the author has been asserted in accordance with the copyright design and patents act 1988

The information, including opinion and analysis contained herein are based on the authors personal experiences. The information provided herein should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Readers are advised to consult a doctor for medical advice. The author and the publisher make no warranties, either expressed or implied, concerning the accuracy, applicability, activeness, reliability or suitability of the contents. If you wish to apply or follow the advice or recommendations mentioned herein, you take full responsibility for your actions. The author and the publisher of this book shall in no event be held liable for any direct, indirect, incidental or other consequential damages arising directly or indirectly from any use of the information contained in this book. All content is for information only and is not warranted for content accuracy or any other implied or explicit purpose.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, any omissions brought to the attention of the publishers will be remedied in future editions.

copyright Ann Jaloba Publishing

DEDICATION

For my family, without whose emotional - and practical - support I would have never considered writing a book: my Mum, my beautiful girls Rachel and Katharine and, of course, David, my rock as always.

CONTENTS

Debbie Waller trains hypnotherapists. This book grew out of the inevitable debates that such training raises around the use of hypnosis scripts. As a trainer she produced guidance notes in response to questions asked by her students. The end result is the book that you are now reading.

Scripts are an important part of the hypnotherapists tool-bag, but used indiscriminately and as written, by someone who has never and will never meet your clients, they can cause more harm than good. They can also be surprisingly ineffective. Theres little worse for the hypnotherapist, using as they do, some of the worlds most powerful techniques to bring about change, than being ineffective.

Scripts as supplied can contain phrases that you would never use in normal conversation. This can result in you ending up sounding like a contrived version of yourself. Clients, in their suggestible state, would pick this up. As the most important parts of communication are non-verbal you can end up achieving the opposite of what you set out to. As an experienced hypnotherapist myself, first training in 1987, Ive seen too many therapists rely on scripts as written. They end up being less effective than they should otherwise have been, or worse, doing such an unimpressive job that they put the client off hypnotherapy for ever.

A basic principle of hypnotherapy is to use what the client gives you. A client passively subjected to scripts does not contribute much to the therapeutic process. Debbie Waller addresses this by emphasising the importance of personalising a script to suit the client. This is useful as many therapists provide their clients with recordings for them to use between sessions in order to boost the suggestions given. Repetition in suggestion therapy is important as it takes a while for suggestions to become sublimated to the point where the client no longer has to invest conscious thought into maintaining a new behaviour, feeling or habit. As the author has herself stated on numerous training days, you cant adapt the scripts to an individual if you havent asked the right questions.

When all is said and done though a script remains a tool. No apology for throwing in the clich that any craftsman is only as good as their tools! There is no inherent link between having a lot of scripts making you any more effective a hypnotherapist than a bagful of wrenches automatically making you a better plumber. Thats achieved by training and experience. Part of that training and experience should be challenging scripts. A good hypnotherapist adapts a script to suit a client, a great hypnotherapist learns everything that there is to know about scripts and then moves beyond them.

In producing this book, Debbie has given you the tools to become a great hypnotherapist.

Michael OSullivan

About Michael

Mike is a former director and founder of The Emergency Services Trauma Specialists, a charity providing education, training and services to the emergency services and their families following involvement in critical incidents. The charity came to a natural conclusion after many other organisations began offering those same services and a specialist charity was no longer deemed necessary. A resounding success story.

Mike is a Fellow of the National Council of Psychotherapists (NCP) and of the National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH). He was co-author of The Hypnotherapy Resources & Careers Guide, a breakthrough publication when it first appeared helping potential hypnotherapists find their way into the profession.

Today Mike concentrates his efforts on providing quality distance learning courses.

I became a hypnotherapist pretty much by accident, shortly after completing my degree as a mature student and finding myself in a position of having lots of education, but no saleable skills. I had left school without any idea of what I wanted to do with my life and ended up in a fairly routine office job. Having taken time off to look after the kids and get the degree, I wanted to do something more meaningful.

I was looking for training that would enable me to employ myself, and my husband suggested attending the open day of a local hypnotherapy school. I went with no prior knowledge or experience, got hooked and the rest, as they say, is history.

Since then hypnotherapy has been my only career, though Im still learning more every day and have added related skills such as stress management, a form of EMDR known as the BLAST technique, and coaching.

Ive worked part time and full time, as my family commitments allowed, and loved every minute. My clients are the most wonderful people, facing their situations with such courage and commitment that I am overcome with admiration. Who wouldnt want a job like that?

Im currently a therapist, hypnotherapy trainer and supervisor. That is a lot of different roles but I think its essential to be working regularly with clients if you are training and supervising therapists. That is the only way to share their experiences out there in the real world.

Im also a blogger, contributor to The Hypnotherapy Handbook and contributor/editor of Hypnotherapy Training and Practitioner, an online magazine.

I am registered at Advanced level with the General Hypnotherapy Register, at Senior level with the British Institute of Hypnotherapy and NLP, as a Senior Member with the ACCPH and as an Accredited Stress Coach with the Stress Coaching Association. All are the highest levels of membership available.

I established Yorkshire Hypnotherapy Training in 2011, after several years of teaching for other hypnotherapy training providers. The school has developed an excellent reputation, and I am very proud of its many graduates now in practice.

This book is for them, and for everyone out there who is still training or recently graduated. And I hope that it can be useful to experienced hypnotherapists who feel they need a new approach.