How to Study Stephen Brooks Style of Hypnotherapy

8/2/2019 How to Study Stephen Brooks Style of Hypnotherapy

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How To Study Stephen

Brooks Style ofHypnotherapy

The concepts, contexts, stages and components of a StephenBrooks Hypnotherapy session.

Written by Stephen Brooks

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Published by British Hypnosis Research - Copyright 2012 - Stephen Brooks

How To Study Stephen Brooks Style of Hypnotherapy - British Hypnosis Research - Copyright 2012
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Contents

Using Concepts and Contexts

Understanding The Nature Of Reality

Hypnotic Trance and Becoming One with Reality

The Six Stages of Stephen Brooks Hypnotherapy

Rapport

Information Gathering

Identifying Resources

Trance Induction

Therapeutic Interventions

Motivating Your Patients

The Meta Components of a Stephen Brooks HypnosisSession

Approach, Technique, Strategy and Skills

Approach

Technique

Strategy

Skills

Learning All Of This

Overlapping



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Introduction

So often in psychotherapy, problems remain unexplainable andsolutions elusive. This can happen despite all effort on the

patients part to explain the events and patterns that have led upto the symptoms developing, and despite the therapist asking themost pointed and searching questions. In such cases, where noconcrete answers present themselves, therapists often askpatients to trust their unconscious and to allow therapy tohappen all by itself. Trusting the unconscious is of course thestock in trade of many hypnotherapists, and while this is often apowerful tool for inner healing, it can also be a dangerous weaponin the hands of a new, if enthusiastic therapist.

The reason for prescribing this form of DIY unconscious healing isoften the therapists ignorance about what to do next, so thisapproach to therapy can sometimes deliver unpredictable results,especially if the therapist does not have a basic understanding ofhow patients experience reality, the affect of trance states on thatreality and vice versa.

Knowing that anything is possible when the unconscious decides

on its own therapy, without guidance, you might understand myconcern about the way that many therapists practice IndirectHypnosis or the Ericksonian approach.

Many trainees try to model established therapists in the hopethat they may acquire some of the therapists skills. This concepthas primarily developed from the field of NLP. While this ispositive in principle it can be misleading if the trainee thenbelieves that he now can install the therapeutic strategies that willallow him to replicate the excellence of the therapist.

Take for example the innovative work of some eminentEricksonians like Dr Ernest Rossi. Rossi appears to work withminimal verbal intervention or patient guidance. His therapysessions seem to be the closest thing to non-verbal healing you



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might find in psychotherapy, so much so that it might be easy todiscount his contribution to the talking therapies. Yet behindRossis approach lies a complete model of psychotherapy that notonly respects the integrity of the unconscious mind but also

understands the dynamic of how problems develop and aremaintained by patients.

Yet to see him working it would be all too easy to model what onesees and hears, believing that by replicating his minimalistapproach, the same results could be achieved. So easy would itbe to model in fact, that you could do it after watching onesession, and it would most likely look and sound the same. Yet itwouldnt be the same because you would not have his unique life

experience or the same understanding that lies behind theapproach.

Modeling is a good way to learn, but only if supported with adetailed and precise analysis of the strategies being employed bythe therapist being modeled. Sadly, not many great therapistsallow us the opportunity of watching them do therapy and ofthose, not many have the additional skill to accuratelycommunicate what they do at an unconscious level as theydemonstrate their art. So we are left to model well knowntherapists only on video and usually without any ongoingcommentary from the therapist themselves as to what they aredoing.

Whenever possible, therapy trainers should walk their talk anddemonstrate therapy in real time, ideally with a runningcommentary to the audience or at least a blow-by- blow analysis

afterwards. Trainers should demonstrate why they believe thatthey have the authority to teach what they teach.

Trainee therapists are often let loose on the public with only abrief experience of modeling so-called excellence, when in realitywhat they are modeling is their own limited perception ofexcellence. What they really need is to get their hands dirty on



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courses and take the therapy trainer, demonstration patient andthemselves apart piece by piece to analyze the structure of how itworks. Regrettably this rarely happens as many courses are nomore than the rote learning of inflexible techniques.

But where do you start when there is just so much going on? Isntit just easier to sit back, trust your unconscious and learn by goinginto trance and modeling what you think you see and hear? Sadlyno, this isnt the way, although it can be a useful way of filling inthe gaps that you may have missed consciously. I always try andgive my students a multi-dimensional learning experience when Iteach. There is no point in holding back and keeping strategies tomyself. I am not happy unless I too have learnt something from

my own therapy demonstrations and have been able to empowerothers by discussing those demonstrations in full.



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Using Concepts and Contexts

Over the years on my training courses I have been asked onequestion over and over again How do you know what to do first,

next and last? Of course there is no simple answer, but mostrecently I have been telling trainees that there are two simpleconcepts that you can apply that will enable you to see yourself,your patient and their problems in perspective and therefore seehow you relate to one another within the context of a therapysession. If you learn these concepts everything else will start tofall into place, often without too much effort.

The first concept relates to how we experience and maintain our

relationship with reality, and the second to what we choose toinclude in our reality.

Behind any kind of therapy there should be a basic understandingof how people experience reality. Without this understanding,therapy will be a shot in the dark. Yet rarely is the nature of realitytaught on therapy courses. Most course participants are hungryfor techniques and pursue the learning and practice of thesetechniques without realizing that a basic understanding of the

nature of reality will itself enable the trainee to develop their owninnovative therapeutic techniques.



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Understanding The Nature Of Reality

A topic such as Understanding the Nature of Reality may sounda bit daunting and a bit like a hefty PhD thesis but this is not the

case, as it can easily be learnt in just a few hours of training. Evengiven that the practice of this knowledge may require severalsessions of concentrated effort and ongoing application of thisunderstanding, it is still relatively easy to understand.

To know how a patient relates to his problem and how theproblem is maintained, you also need to understand how yourelate to your own experience of life events and how you maintainan interest in these events. By understanding the interaction

between yourself and events you will also understand howhypnosis plays a part in your experience of everyday reality andbe able to see how hypnosis also can also play a part in resolvingproblems for patients. Understanding reality will help youunderstand hypnosis and vice versa, because they are veryclosely linked.



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Hypnotic Trance and Becoming One with Reality

The above title may sound a bit esoteric but any hypnotherapistknows that if you look at a spot for long enough, your eyes will de-

focus and your visual field narrow, leading to eye fatigue andpossible internal imagery, but why does this happen? There aremany explanations, and all may play a part, but by far the mostimportant reason is that we cease to connect with reality. We arestill looking at that spot but that spot is static, as are our eyes, sothere is no movement and without movement we have no way ofmeasuring our relationship with the spot.

When reality fails us externally we seek it internally and so we

start to experience internal imagery, or at least some kind ofconnection with our inner absorption. Our internal reality becomesmore real than our external reality, because it has moremovement in terms of internal imagery and / or thoughts andfeelings, by which we can measure our relationship to it. If wecease to experience movement in our internal reality we becomeone with it and dissociate from all conscious thinking or way ofcomparing or judging.

Everyday we continually test and measure reality by adding to itand observing its response to our contribution. If you have an itchyou scratch it and then you wait to see the result, if its still thereyou scratch some more. If you do not scratch it in the firstinstance, there comes a time when it ceases to itch, not becausethe itch has gone but because you have stopped interacting with itand stopped knowing that you are separate from it. If you mergewith the itch you become part of it and no longer feel separate

from it and so no longer feel it.People naturally fidget when they are sitting still, talking, sleepingor watching TV. Every movement is a deliberate, albeitunconscious, mismatching with reality, a deliberate attempt toseparate the self from reality in order to relate to reality. Ascontradictory as this seems, people try to feel part of reality by



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separating themselves from it and comparing themselves to it,moment by moment. While this does confirm that they are part ofreality it also prevents them from becoming one with it. This is oneof the reasons some people have difficulty going into trance. They

are simply too keen to go into trance, and continually keepchecking back with reality to see how they are progressing.

If you stop fidgeting, you blend into reality, you become one withit, but it is difficult for you to tell this is happening because you areno longer separate from it. So your instinct to survive tells you tokeep checking to test that you are still independent, alive and partof the living world.

When we touch things we tend to incorporate movement into thetouching and this increases the tactile sensations. A touch withoutmovement gives you limited information. Likewise, the first thingyou do when you look at something is to look away so you cansee the difference between what you are looking at and what youhave not been looking at. By comparing the two you give solidityto each. You continually test reality to know your relationship to it.Your patients do this too. They do it to you, to everything theyexperience and especially to their problems. The more youappreciate this simple concept the easier therapy will be.

Patients check how well they are doing in order to know how goodtheir therapy is, but their observations can sabotage the benefitsof the therapy. If you can get your patients to let go of needing toknow how well they are doing then your work will be moreeffective.

There are two fundamental ways to stop your patient from

continually checking how well they are doing; by decreasing howmuch content they have in their reality (by limiting how muchaccess they have to their reality) and by increasing how muchcontent they have in their reality (by getting the patient to see theirproblem in other contexts). It is your understanding of how these



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two concepts work together that will give you the therapeutic edgeas a therapist.

Profound hypnotic trance requires a reduction in the need to

compare oneself with the external world and an acceptance of thestate of uncritical acceptance, in other words, a merging of theself with reality, initially by merging with external reality (de-focusing, immobility etc), and then by merging with internal reality(eye closure, visualization, dreaming, states of non-self etc).When the patient has truly merged with their reality their problemscan appear to cease to exist as they no longer feel themselves tobe separate from them and so can no longer be critical, objectiveor governed by the rules of their external reality or everyday

conscious ways of thinking.

However, while this is an ideal state in which to worktherapeutically during therapy sessions, it is not a practical statefor patients to maintain in the realworld. In the real world, patientsusually try and stay out of trance by fidgeting and doing anythingthat prevents a merging with reality in order to check how wellthey are doing or otherwise in therapy.

Reality contains events, behaviors and many shades ofexperience, which act as reference points by which peoplemeasure how they feel. Patients can be both limited andempowered by the amount of reference points they hold in theirreality. And this is why, by decreasing how much access theyhave to their reality, and by increasing how much content theyhave in their reality, we can break patients out their current rigidways of thinking about their problems.

When the patient enters therapy he brings in a fixed number ofreference points. He refers to these continually, usuallythroughout the first interview. Your job as therapist is to use acombination of techniques and language patterns to help thepatient increase and decrease the number of reference points



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available to him at given times during the therapeutic process soas to steer him, albeit indirectly, across the map of his recovery.

The less information patients have in their reality, the less

reference points they have with which to assess the state of theirproblem, so the harder it will be for them to make consciousdecisions. This is often useful when they are over activeconsciously and want to manipulate the treatment in some way,even with the best intentions. Some patients however need morereference points, not so much too assess their own progress intherapy, as this would not be useful, but to help them see theirproblem in a new light.

This is where the concept of contextual change comes in. Shiftingthe problem to a new or different context, either by transformingthe context through expansion to include more reference points orby moving the problem to a new and novel context or by seeingthe problem as if embedded in a different time frame, the patientcan gain insights that can then be applied therapeutically to theproblem when in trance.

If reference points are removed with hypnotic trance, either formal

or indirect, a patient can often reach the point where they loseawareness of their problem. At this stage they are ripe forchange. Armed with the insights from the prior contextual shiftsthey can enter the world of trance, often without bias orinterpretation and apply their insights unconsciously to resolvingtheir problem without the contamination of conscious interferenceand with a sense that they no longer need to check their progressas they sense that it has already started happening anyway.

Your job as therapist is to open up new worlds that have remainedillusive until the patient enters therapy with you. These newworlds require the patient to be active both consciously andunconsciously, but for different reasons and at different times andwithin a safe and caring environment. It is your responsibility as atherapist to provide this environment, to know how to affect the



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patients awareness of their reality and to know how and whereyou can learn to develop your skills to do this.



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A Brief Introduction To The Six Stages of Hypnotherapy

Rapport.

Information Gathering.

Identifying Resources.

Trance Induction.

Therapeutic Interventions.

Motivating Your Patients.



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Rapport

The first time someone telephones for an appointment, and if I getthe chance to speak to them personally, I will start work right thereon the phone. Part of this will be building rapport and part will be

giving post-hypnotic suggestions. I will start with something verysimple.

A woman phoned me because she was pregnant and wanted toknow if I could teach her self-hypnosis for pain control. To buildrapport and to insert some pre-session suggestions for paincontrol I told her this story:

I had a woman telephone me recently who wanted the samething and all I did was, ask her to come into my office and sitdown and listen to me. I told her that her hand was getting very,very numb and I allowed this to happen over the next fewminutes. I then I taught her how to do this for her self. She then

just placed her hand wherever she wanted and she was able toanesthetize that part of her body. It just happened all by itselfautomatically.

After this story, my new patient booked an appointment and whenshe turned up I started talking to her and she started to go intotrance, she just drifted off, and I said, Whats happened to yourhand?and she said. I cant feel it.

The indirect post-hypnotic suggestion was given on the phone,and shed had a few days to allow it to become integrated andfixed in her mind and it just happened by itself without mesuggesting it directly. So work starts right at the very first contact

with a patient. In this case it was on the phone before we hadeven met. The first step is always to build rapport and prime thepatient for the session. Unless you have that, nothing will happen.

This is why rapport is the prerequisite of successful therapy.



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Information Gathering

The next step is Information Gathering questioning andobservation. If you pay attention with your eyes you will pick up adifferent class of information from when you only listen. You need

to use all of your senses to pick up information because you arelooking for a mismatch in the way that the patient communicates.Every mismatch will give you valuable clues about what to do nextwith your patient.

You are looking for incongruity. For example, you ask your patientthe following question; How are things with your mother? Thepatient answers Finebut at the same time shakes her head as ifdisagreeing with herself. You then ask; How are things with yourfather?Again the patient answers Finebut then digs her heelsinto the floor as if she is uncomfortable talking about her father.The patients words sound positive but there is a mismatchbetween her positive verbal responses and the negative non-verbal communication, and these are the things you need towatch for.

You ask; Can you remember what it was like being a teenager?

The patient answers Umm yesand the heels dig in again. Whenyou see a simultaneous positive verbal and negative non-verbalbehavior repeated as a response to further questions you can besure that your line of questioning is evoking important clues aboutthe source of the patients problem.

The patients non-verbal behavior is a running commentary onwhat the patient is thinking unconsciously. For example you mayask; Please tell me about your relationship with your father, and

the patient replies, Oh we dont see each other much anymore,and as she replies, she unconsciously massages the back of herneck as if experiencing tension there. So you notice aphysiological non-verbal ideo-motor response accompanying herverbal response. You might even in some instances interpret thenon-verbal response as a kind of non-verbal metaphor, implying



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that she feels that the father is a pain in the neck. Look for verbaland non-verbal incongruities and this will give you valuableinformation.

Identifying Resources

I believe that every patient has within them the unconsciousresources necessary for solving problems, but that usually theydont know they have these resources, or, they know they havethem, but are unable to access them. Most psychologicalproblems require more than just everyday rational thinking butbecause most people have no conscious awareness of the

unconscious minds ability to solve problems effectively they onlyuse their conscious resources. The patients failed consciousattempts at problem solving usually increases their anxiety. Sowhen a patient comes in to see you they usually come with twoproblems. Firstly, they come in with their actual problem andsecondly the problem of not being able to resolve their problem.

Everyone knows how hard it is to try and do certain things whichreally ought to be done unconsciously, like tying shoelaces, tyinga necktie or driving a car. All of these things can be bestperformed at an unconscious level and once learned are reallydifficult to manage consciously.

If I asked you to explain how to tie a shoelace, your fingers couldprobably show me a lot faster than you could tell me. This isbecause, by letting your fingers demonstrate how to do it, youwould be letting go and allowing the unconscious part of you to do

it for you.So my form of Hypnotherapy is about teaching the patient how togo inside, say hello to their unconscious mind and getting it toheal them. You, as a therapist do not do any healing, you onlyhelp the patient open up the channels for their own self-healingand you do so with as little visible intervention as possible.



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You should never give your patient the impression that you aredoing the therapy - it is always the patient who does the work. Youshould be empowering them by acknowledging their ability to healthemselves, not disempowering them by being the super-talented

therapist. With your help the patient is taught to go inside to gainaccess to their natural ability to heal themselves with theresources that they have at an unconscious level, and they shouldbe encouraged to realize this so that they feel an active part oftheir success.

Lets talk about the difference and similarity between healing withunconscious resources, meditation and the placebo effect, wherethe patients belief that they will get better allows this to happen. If

the patient can get better with the unconscious mind utilizing innerresources, or by meditating on a candle flame or through theplacebo effect then I think that all of these approaches are viableand are good therapy. Therapy is only good when it gets resultsand as long as it can be reasonably replicated in others it is goodtherapy almost regardless of how you got there.

The placebo effect is very active in psychotherapy, maybe muchmore than is given credit. If I could teach therapists to becharismatic enough to just sit in front their patients, and have theirpatients get better, without them having to say anything, then Iwould do it. I think that although you are being taught therapeuticstrategies as part of your training in hypnotherapy, sometimes, theless you do, the better.

Your patients needs will determine the direction of therapy. If youforce your patient to match your model of how you believe therapy

should be, then you will severely limit your patients ability to getbetter by themselves. The more open you are in your approachand the more flexible and non-authoritarian you are with yourlanguage, the more successful the treatment will be. So ratherthan forcing your patient to follow a particular therapeutic model Isuggest that you sow the seeds of therapy indirectly and thenstep back two or three paces and just watch your patient get



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better. It can work all by itself, on one condition; that you workfrom the heart and with compassion.

Trance Induction

People go in and out of trance on a day to day basis. Your role isto evoke these naturally occurring trance states indirectly in aconversational and naturalistic way that respects the patientsintegrity. The actual art and scienceof evoking these trance statesis a lot more complicated than it at first appears, and you shouldset your sights on mastering this particular stage of thetherapeutic process.

If you are unable to put people into trance simply by yourpresence in the room with them then you havent been studyinghard enough. Keep this in mind as you learn everything and put itinto practice. Trance is both the vehicle for the therapy and theadhesive for making it stick. It is your means of accessing thepatients unconscious mind which holds the memories andresources required for problem solving.

Successful trance induction is based on two things, your ability toinduce an appropriate trance state and the patients ability toexperience it. There can be many variables and no two trancesare the same, so its a little bit like juggling with reality.

Successfully trance induction is contingent on your ability tomaster hypnotic language and to do so with integrity,understanding of unconscious processes and compassion forother people. Hypnotic language can be highly manipulative in the

wrong hands but is rarely successful in these cases because itlacks the integrity and compassion to have deep lasting meaningfor a patient.



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Therapeutic Intervention

Therapeutic Intervention is where you actually step in and dosomething when you have to. So far Ive been talking about

stepping back and being as visibly inactive as possible but ofcourse there are certain things you need to do more directlysometimes in order to help people, especially in the field of coupleor family therapy, so I often give people tasks in order to bringabout outcomes.

The indirect therapeutic skills you will learn are multiple, that is,there are many, many skills youll take away from your studiesand training, and of course you can use skills in different

combinations, which is why its never the same set of skills foreach patient.

For example, one day you may have a particular patient, and youwill suddenly decide to reach into your box of skills and pull out askill that you have never used before or a new skill that is anintegration of several others. Once you have learnt how to useeach of these skills, and to create your own by combining theprinciples behind each skill, you will be able to be very creative.

Good therapeutic intervention is based on your ability to beobservant, innovative and flexible in your approach and skilldevelopment, most of which happens spontaneously as you work.

Motivating Your Patients

Regardless of how well you progress through the various stages

of a therapy session there is one deciding, and in many cases,elusive factor that will determine your success as a therapist. Thisconcerns the patients degree of motivation.

There seem to be two common patterns that often preventpatients from getting better. Patients are usually confused about



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how to help themselves so they consistently repeat failedattempts at problem resolution, thereby increasing their anxietyand frustration, which often aggravates the symptoms. Secondlythey consistently apply these failed attempts through conscious

effort. This has the negative affect of training the brain to devaluethe role of the unconscious and often reinforces the severity of thesymptoms by giving them more conscious attention.

Many patients seem divided by doubts about their ability to getbetter. This is usually caused by previous failure, either with theirspecific problem or from a general lack of confidence caused bypast experiences of failure.

Patients sometimes say things like Theres a part of me thatwants to change and theres another part which says I cant. Thepatients chance of success is very low while they have suchdoubts. Patient motivation is the pre-requisite to the acceptanceof your therapeutic interventions and is the key to reallysuccessful therapy, so its very important that you deal with thepart that says I cant.

I believe that you can do anything you want to if the goal is

realistic. If you want to accomplish something within a reasonabletime frame, and you have the resources and the skill to do so,then I think that there is every reason to believe that it is possible.I often tell this to patients and give examples from my own history.

In therapy we are dealing with the realm of the possible. So whenpeople come to see me, I try and access whether they have theresources and time to achieve what they want. If they wantsomething reasonable I will deal with any doubts and go for their

outcome immediately. If what they want is unreasonable, either interms of time, context or resources, I will try and get them to re-evaluate their goals so they are reasonable and attainable. Then Igo for it.



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The principle is to get them motivated by convincing them thatrealistic change is possible. This is an integral part of thetherapeutic process.

When you have a patient with a habit, compulsion, or phobia thenI think its quite reasonable to believe that they can overcome it,even if they say I want, but I cant. Sometimes, when looking forthe cause or a reason why a problem has not been resolved, youmight have to look further than the patient. Often there are otherpeople, maybe at home, socially or at work that make it difficult forthe patient to overcome their problem. In which case if you reallywant the patient to achieve what they want, you also have to workon those other people as well, and you can do so in many ways.

You can either work on them directly by asking them to attend thetherapy sessions, or indirectly through the patient, by giving thepatient tasks that involve the third party outside of the therapysessions. Usually if a problem is self-contained, that is, otherpeople or contexts are not reinforcing it, you can work on itrelatively easily. Ideally, successful therapy is based upon thepatient having a good level of motivation where the patient canwork without contamination from others or external influences.

We need energy to exist, and thats how we keep going. We thriveon energy and we try and direct it into the different areas of ourlives. If you direct all your energy into negative things then life willbe negative, if you direct it into positive things then it will bepositive. It sounds very simplistic but it is true.

I believe that people are like sponges that soak up whatevercomes along and are habitually drawn towards soaking up what is

familiar, even if it is not good. I remember when I was young Icaught my hand in a door. This wasnt enough to make meobsessive. It wasnt even enough to make me cautious, because Idid it a second time. When Id done it a third time however I hadthe beginnings of a nice little phobia, which I could have nurtured



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if I had wanted to take it further. As it happened I was content tojust want to avoid doing it again.

The way people usually try to get over their problems is to avoid

them. If theyre agoraphobic, they stay indoors but this actuallymakes the problem worse. If you stay in, you become a confirmedagoraphobic because you never learn to face your fear. So if youget your hand caught in a door, you run the risk of developing aminor obsession if you subsequently deliberately start avoidingdoors. The crazy thing is that it is human nature to avoid whathurts rather than confronting it. This is why I think were basicallyvictims of our own habitual thinking. If you walk past the door andyou say to yourself I must not catch my hand in the door this

time, then you are reinforcing your fear.

A woman came to see me about a chocolate compulsion and Iasked her how often it occurred. She said Every afternoon. Shesaid I went to a hypnotherapist, but it was no good, it got worse.

He taught her self hypnosis and then instructed her to practice atthe start of every afternoon and repeat to herself that sheshouldnt eat chocolate.All she could think about all afternoon

was that she shouldnt eat chocolate, which she desired evenmore by thinking about it continually and her need became evengreater because she felt so guilty about her increased desire toeat, that she comforted herself by giving in and eating thechocolate.

Patients either avoid their problems by consciously tellingthemselves not to have them or they try and resolve them throughrepeated failed attempts, and then they wonder why the problem

is still there. The way to avoid thinking about the things you dontwant, is to think about something else entirely different.

As discussed earlier, many patients spend a lot of time negatingtheir own healing potential. I cant, maybe, yes but. This efforttakes up a lot of energy. Change the yes but to yes andand



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then everything you say will be positive. Everything you say aftera yes but is negative, the tonality is even negative. Say yesand instead and everything is positive, even the tonality. JohnGrinder taught me that trick.

If you go through life as the kind of sponge that gets your handtrapped in the door and says Done it again, just realize what youare doing to yourself. The implication is that it happens a lot andits going to happen another time. Ive done it again, cant believeitorlife has done it to me again and I wonder what will happennext. You must know patients like that? They start to look out forthings to go wrong in order to avoid them, and by looking out forthem they keep finding them, bang, bang, bang, and they have an

awful life. They have a negative life because they spend all theirtime putting energy into avoiding things that they dont want tohappen. And people who are accident-prone tend to do that.Theyre not born accident-prone, they teach themselves to beaccident-prone. They keep looking for things to go wrong, andsure enough they find them.

So often, people maintain their problems by trying to solve them.Because trying occurs at a conscious level the patient usuallyonly has his conscious resources available for problem solving,yet the root of most problems is at an unconscious level, if theywere purely conscious it would be easy for people to solve themthemselves and they wouldnt need a therapist. So its necessaryto help patients gain access to their unconscious resources forproblem solving. The word try implies difficulty; so the harderthey try to solve the problem the more difficult it becomes. This isbecause theyre using only limited conscious resources. They

may try to stop eating in order to loose weight by tellingthemselves not to eat a particular food. However the very thoughtof not eating the food requires them to think of the food beforedeciding not to eat it. By doing this theyre reinforcing the thoughtof food in their mind.



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We tend to gravitate towards what is uppermost in our minds.Think about something you dont want and you will surely get it,so if a person is constantly thinking, I dont want this anxietystate or I dont want to smoke or I dont want this phobia etc.

the thought will be reinforcing it. If you say I mustnt forget thisthen you are giving yourself a direct suggestion to forget it, thethought that should be uppermost in your mind should be, I mustremember this. Think about what you want rather than what youdont want.

I know a lady who when she was young had a father who in theprocess of doing amateur radio repairs on the kitchen table wouldcause chaos in the house. She swore to herself repeatedly that

she would never marry a radio engineer, and, yes you haveguessed it, she did.

Its only natural for a patient to try and make him or herself better,but they are usually unaware that the act of trying reinforces theproblem. Its not always a good idea to tell the patients they aredoing this. You will get better results if you introduce the ideaindirectly in the form of metaphor or with analogies, mainlybecause patients sometimes try and defend themselves if youconfront them with the reality of the situation. When people startto defend their actions it usually results in them becoming evenmore fixed in their views as they search for more evidence toprove they are right.

Often patients will get themselves into situations, which leave noroom for success. They will put themselves into double bindswhereby any decision will bring about a negative outcome. In the

same way that if you loose your keys you may return to the sameplace many times to look for them rather than looking somewheretotally new. Patients will often try to solve a problem the sameway over and over again even if it fails because the problem takesall of their attention and theyre unable to step back and look at itobjectively. This saturation of subjective experience tends toseverely limit their awareness.



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Often, when patients realize how they have been trappingthemselves through their limited awareness, they find it funny.Sometimes this realization can be very enlightening and eventherapeutic. But it isnt usually enough for them to change

because they need to learn new ways of behaving. They dontknow how to behave in a different way, so you need to help themcreate alternatives. These alternatives can be offered in the formof tasks or new strategies. Alternatively you can suggest thatchanges occur indirectly by using hypnosis and indirectsuggestion.



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The Meta Components of a Hypnotherapy Session

This section is about how to learn my way of doing Hypnosis. It isnot about my way of doing Hypnosis but about how best to study

the subject. I am going to share with you information about the setof perceptual filters that I teach my students to use when theywatch me teach hypnosis or watch me do a live demonstration. Ifyou have these filters, it will help you to home-in more specificallyon what will make a difference for you in your application ofhypnosis, especially you get to see me work live or on video.



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Approach, Technique, Strategy and Skills

There are four components that make up the way I work. Theyare Approach, Technique, Strategy and Skills. These are the four

components I am talking about here but they vary considerably.

Approach

Approaches are philosophies and interpretations:

Approaches are based on beliefs about how and why peoplehave problems and how they can be resolved.

Approach is broken down into its linguistic application and its

behavioral application.

Linguistic: General tonality, vocabulary and speech patterns.

Behavioral: Demeanor and general manner.

Are you familiar with the stone sculptures made by the artistBarbara Hepworth? I first saw her sculptures in the 1970s. I didn'tknow it was her work at the time. I saw several pieces in differentlocations and didnt realize they were by the same artist but I wasdrawn to them for some reason. When I found out they were all byBarbara Hepworth I realized that I obviously have a feeling aboutthis woman's work. Recently there was a program about her onTV. The program had archive footage of her working with a huge

block of limestone and a simple chisel and a hammer. Basicallywhat she had there were the same tools that a Neolithic homosapien would have had 3,000 years ago during the Bronze age,

just a bronze tool and a rock, nothing sophisticated. In theprogram she was shown just chipping away, chipping away,chipping away for 14 hours a day, every day of her life. When she



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started she had a solid block of rough stone and when shefinished she had created this sensual spherical shape in smoothstone. It had movement and it followed the natural forms that youalso see in nature. She discovered that she could put a hole

through the middle of a sculpture to give it another dimension,and then she could put two sculptures together and let sunlightshine through one hole and into the other hole. She created acommunication between the two sculptures. What is fascinating isthat she started with a huge solid block of rough stone and whenshe finished she had something of unbelievable beauty that had asensual quality that you felt compelled to touch.

Researchers did some research on how people feel compelled toplay with spherical objects. They secretly filmed people standingat an office reception desk on which they had deliberately left asoft rubber ball. The receptionist would say "I'll go and see to your

paperwork", then go into the back room and the person waitingwould be waiting there at the desk being filmed secretly. After aminute or so, everyone being filmed picked up the ball, playedwith it and quickly put it back when the receptionist returned.Everybody did this without exception. Barbara Hepworths

sculptures are like that. You feel that you want to touch them, theyare very sensual and tactile. You want to touch them. I think thisinstinct is hard wired into us from birth and is something to do withour maternal relationships.

At home I have some Neolithic bangles, prehistoric bangles fromThailand taken from gravesite excavations. I have one bangle,which is absolutely beautiful and made of serpentine, and it is anabsolutely perfectly circular bangle. It is about half an inch across

and about a quarter of an inch thick. These days we are so usedto seeing factory made bangles that we take their manufacture forgranted. But when you realize that this pre-historic bangle wasoriginally a solid block of serpentine rock, and that somebody hadto hollow out that bangle from a block of rock by hand 3,000 yearsago with only a basic primitive tool it is quite breath taking. The



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chance of it splitting or cracking must have been so high and toactually chip away until they had this very, very fine bangle madeof serpentine must have required a lot of patience. Just imaginethe commitment that person must have had to create something

so beautiful.

What I am talking about here is my attitude or my approach to mywork. Patients come in as a rough rock and I am here to helpshape their lives, and I have to do so with commitment and care,and if I have this, it willcommunicate through the way I speak anddo things and the results will be beautiful and strike a chord ineveryone watching.

So the first component here is approach. Every therapy has itsown approach. Erickson had an approach, which in fact is verydifferent from the approach that Ericksonian therapists havetoday. During Erickson's peak, which was in the 50s, his approachwas based on maintaining the American dream. Everybody had toget engaged first and then married by a certain age, and they hadto settle down and have x number of children and look after theirgrandparents, it was that kind of pattern, in America. If you look atErickson's case studies you will see that a lot of his work wasbased on getting people to conform to what society said was the

American ideal. That's not the case now. Ericksonianpsychotherapists in America don't follow that approach any more.If you look at the big frame, his approach was based on a modelof the perfect society. Within that was embedded anotherapproach, which was based on his belief that everybody couldhelp themselves. Bandler and Grindler have taken this belief onboard too. Erickson believed people could do this and maybe this

came about because of his own disabilities where he had to learnto walk again after being paralyzed with polio. Your view of whatto do and how people change and get better is called yourapproach.

When therapists watch one of my demonstrations or when theylisten to my lectures, I often ask them to get a filter, call it an



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approach filter, and place it over everything they here me say anddo and then to only pick up those elements of what I do that fitinto the category that we call approach. If you meet with othertherapists for supervision or practice sessions you can do the

same thing with your partners in exercises. What is theirapproach? What is it they are doing? Where are they comingfrom? Place an approach filter over what they do, to separatetheir approach from everything else they are doing.

These four components have their linguistic application and theirbehavioral application. With approach we have first got thelinguistic application which is the tonality, the vocabulary and thelanguage patterns. You communicate the linguistic application of

your approach with the words you use and by the way you usethese words. That's the linguistic side. The behavioral applicationof the approach is how you sit, how you move, your bodymovements, even the way you use your eyes, everything that isnon-verbal.

Have you ever just looked at a patient in a particular way and theyhave burst into tears? Has that ever happened to you? That's anexample of a behavioral application of an approach. You haven'tsaid anything, you have just been present. Your approach in thisexample was probably one of compassion and acceptance.

So once again:

Approaches are philosophies and interpretations of howtherapy should be done.

Approaches are based on beliefs about how and why people

have problems and how they can be resolved.

Approach is broken down into its linguistic application and itsbehavioral application.

Linguistic: General tonality, vocabulary and speech patterns.



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Behavioral: Demeanor and general manner.

Technique

Techniques are maps and templates.

Techniques are sets of instructions based on the strategiesand skills of a given approach.

Technique is broken down into its linguistic application andits behavioral application.

Linguistic: The things that you say to guide your client acrossyour map.

Behavioral: The gestures and use of non-verbal

communication.

The second component is technique. Techniques are embeddedinto the approach. So the approach is the big frame andembedded inside the approach is the technique. I rarely designtechniques before I meet a patient. I create techniques as I go on,and at the end of a session I have usually created several newtechniques. A lot of Bandler and Grindler's techniques came out ofworkshops, where they presented ideas and people just gotaround in exercise groups and would come up with new conceptsetc. and they would say "Oh, we've got a technique here. Let's tryit again next time and refine it. And they narrowed it down to a

set of refined steps.

Techniques are a great way to learn. But once you've got themjust let them go. Techniques are maps to guide you through thesession. Again, when I am demonstrating, I teach my students to



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use their technique filter so that they identify when I amdeveloping or using a technique. Techniques can also becometemplates. A template replicates a process. So techniques that donot evolve are just a replication of something that worked at one

time. NLP has succeeded because there are many hardcoretemplates within NLP that can be taught and learnt quite easily bymost people. And so it has spread like a happy virus. In the latterdays of NLP development in the 1990s people started to movearound the templates and make them into maps more than

templates, they made them more flexible, which is better.

Again with technique you've got the linguistic part of thetechnique, which is basically the instructions, the things you sayto guide the person across the map you are using, how you guidethem from A to Z etc and you have the behavioral aspect of thetechnique, for example the gestures and other non-verbal parts,which help illustrate that technique. For example, "look at myhand here, now look at my hand there."Now, if I'm demonstratinga technique, there is usually a behavioral component to thattechnique. I'm using my hand as part of the technique to get them

to hallucinate something on my hand, for example. That's thebehavioral part of the technique.

So once again:

Techniques are maps and templates.

Techniques are sets of instructions based on the strategiesand skills of a given approach.

Technique is broken down into its linguistic application andits behavioral application.

Linguistic: The things that you say to guide your client acrossyour map.



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Behavioral: The gestures and use of non-verbal

communication.

Strategies

Strategies are cognitive processes:

Strategies are based on ways of thinking within a givenapproach and are defined by the rigidity or flexibility of thatapproach.

Strategies are broken down into their linguistic application

and their behavioral application.

Linguistic: Your internal dialogue and the unconsciousmessages you receive.

Behavioral: What you visualize, hear and feel.

Embedded inside of techniques are strategies and skills.Strategies are cognitive processes, or ways you think throughthings. They are a series of steps based on what to do next. Youcan't see them because they are cognitive, so you can't seesomebody's strategy, apart from eye accessing cues or whatever.I never ever go into a session thinking I am going to use this orthat strategy because every session is unpredictable. I have to be

just there at that moment and decide what to do, based on whatthe patient gives me. The strategy comes out of the session, I

dont create it before hand.

Strategies are harder to break down into linguistic and behavioralcomponents but they are still distinct. Strategies are invisible andinternal, so they cant be seen but they are there never the less.



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When I am working with a patient I am constantly receivingunconscious internal dialogue and images from my ownunconscious. It's as though I've got somebody there in the ControlTower giving me advice all the time and telling me what to do. I

cant clearly hear a voice in my head, but I hear and I seemessages which give me instructions on what to do next. I callthese unconscious messages. I then make a decision on whatadvice to follow if the message is combined with an intuitivefeeling of some kind. The feeling is the behavioral component ofthe strategy. It is what you feel kinesthetically.

So once again:

Strategies are cognitive processes:

Strategies are based on ways of thinking within a givenapproach and are defined by the rigidity or flexibility of thatapproach.

Strategies are broken down into their linguistic applicationand their behavioral application.

Linguistic: Your internal dialogue and the unconsciousmessages you receive.

Behavioral: What you visualize, hear and feel.

Skills

Skills are behaviors and actions:

Skills are the behaviors of a therapist working within a givenapproach and are defined by the rigidity or flexibility of thatapproach.



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Skills are broken down into their linguistic application andtheir behavioral application.

Linguistic: The language patterns you use.

Behavioral: The non-verbal application of a skill.

The last component is skills or behavior. When you lift your eyesand you raise your eyebrow, and you put your hand out, what areyou doing? You are actually communicating non-verbally. That ispart of the skill base that we use here. Skills are behaviors thatyou can actually observe.

With skills we also have the linguistic and behavioral componentsas well. The linguistic component is the language pattern. Aspecific skill will use specific language patterns at that verymoment. And the behavioral component is the non-verbalapplication of that skill. For those of you who know aboutanalogue marking, this is an example of a behavioral applicationof a skill. There is the linguistic application of the skill by choosing

to place emphasis on a part of a suggestion you are giving, andthe behavioral application of the skill by maybe changing theposition of your head, pausing or maybe changing tonality.

Learning All Of This

So when you see me demonstrate a therapy session you need toobserve the approach, the technique, the strategy and the skillsand you need a different filter for each, so that you can separate

them out for study. Break down your learning into these 4components. Imagine that you have four different pairs of glasses,and use one for looking at approaches, one for techniques, onefor strategies and one for skills.



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If you want to consciously remind yourself of this, please go overit again several times. It will help you break down what I amdoing, rather than just trusting your unconscious and being asponge, trying to absorb it all first time around. If you are a

sponge and just absorb it all unconsciously, you will put down thisbook with a lot of hope and not a lot of knowledge.

You can go to a concert and watch a fantastic pianist and wishyou could play the piano as well, but unless you sit down on yourown and practice the scales you arent going to learn how to play.

OverlappingThese components are not running sequentially, they are allhappening simultaneously. You have approaches, and then withinapproaches you have techniques technique 1 and technique 2for example and within them you have strategy, and skills, andwithin all of these you have got the linguistic and the behavioralaspect for each of these. That's how they are embedded withineach other. That's the big frame, smaller frame, smaller still, and

they all happen simultaneously.

When I'm working I don't pay attention to this structure, because Iknow it well and I don't need to pay attention to it anymore but Iam able to stand back and see it in operation, almost as if I weresomeone else.

While learning this you should be mindful of it. These componentsare sieves. Use a big sieve when you want to look at approach

and smaller sieves to get the detailed stuff. So there are a seriesof sieves, or a series of filters that you use for examining what Ido and then what you yourself do. It is unlikely you will be able todo all of them simultaneously consciously. When you do therapyyou do them all simultaneously and unconsciously, but initially, tostudy someone else, it will be very difficult for you to see them all



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simultaneously. You cannot keep your mind focused clearly oneach of these filters simultaneously, so you will have to move fromone to the other. You can say "Right, for 5 minutes I'm going to

pay attention to the approach, for 5 minutes just the technique, 5

minutes to the strategy and then the skill. You move your focus ofattention from one to another and then they will become moredistinct. You will then be able to recognize the approach, withoutyou even thinking about it, because you have trained yourself todo it. The same for the other components.

You will be conditioning yourself to think along these lines. It's abit like training yourself to tie a shoelace. Initially it has to beconscious. When you play the scales on a piano for the first time

it is conscious, even if your playing is a little bit wooden. But thenafter a few times it become unconscious, you don't have to thinkabout it. It is the same with learning to see the components of ahypnotherapy session.

This will be invaluable in your work as a therapist, because if youapply the same observational model to your patients you will seepatterns in the way that they communicate with you. They havean approach too. They come to you with their problem, They havethe big frame, how they approach life, how they approachproblems. They have their own techniques for either trying to resolve the problem or trying to maintain the problem, and withinthat they will have strategies, cognitive processes, and they willhave behaviors which assist them in maintaining their problemand they will communicate that linguistically and behaviorally.

It is a model which applies to all interactions, all communication.

Once you learn this model it will be an integral part of your workas a therapist. When you look at your patients, you will be lesslikely to think, "What do I do next?" because you will have somuch more information about them. It's a model, which will enableyou to get a deeper understanding of another person. The moreyou practice it and the more mindful you are of using this whenyou are watching people and talking to people the quicker it will



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become an unconscious process and then your intuition will kickin and you will start to have feelings about people and about howthey have got their problem. You won't be paying attention anymore to all these components, you will just have the sense. That's

when you can just be with them. You just home straight in and youknow intuitively what you need to do. Its not magic, but it lookslike it.

Like all disciplines, this requires careful study. If you areuncertain, go over this book again and again until you can recall iteasily. It is worth the time and effort to get this right if you areserious about learning to study my work. The next step is toattend a Practitioner course to get first hand experience of putting

all of this into practice. Read, get good training, understand theprinciples and then help people have better lives.

For further information about training visit:

www.british-hypnosis-research.com

For further information about Stephen Brooks click here

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How to Study Stephen Brooks Style of Hypnotherapy

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