Month 24 In Therapy

Yesterday, I entered into the 24th month of therapy. It's a good feeling. I look forward to next month to celebrate my second anniversary.

Yesterday evening, I had another session with my hypnotherapist. It was a good session. Seeing a hypnotherapist does not necessary mean every session involves the use of hypnosis. Initially, I was also under the impression that all my session would be sort of under hypnosis. Except for my first two sessions, this rests of the sessions was not the case.

The technicalities aside, most of my sessions with my hypnotherapist was informal conversational in nature using various approaches.

My hypnotherapist who is also a qualified medical doctor told me that the darkened blood from my legs are expected because those blood are from the veins, meaning they are carrying carbon dioxide on the way back to the heart and lungs for re-oxygenation. She reminded me in future, to contact her for an explanation if I had some medical condition instead of second guessing.

My hypnotherapist also told me how she got started in the hypnotherapy and specialises on cancer patients. During her housemanship days when she was on call, she was visiting the cancer ward. Suddenly, a patient would called to her and talk to her. So what she did was to sit down and listen to what the patient has to say. The next day, the patient passed away! It would seem that for some reasons, patients would seek her out and she would then listen to what they have to say and the very next day the patients would die. In one case, a 17 year old boy asked her if he would survive the cancer. Being a newly qualified doctor, only a few months into the job, she answered if he work together with the doctors. He died the very next day too. Later she had a dream and the boy asked her why he died? Then she woke up. After a while, she became worried if this pattern is going to repeat. Later she learned to handle such situations. Because she has a passion for such work, patients would seek her out under the "law of attraction".

She said the dynamics of dealing with cancer patients are very different from other type of patients. Next month, she has invited me to join her in a talk, where she will be giving a presentation to a group of hypnotherapy students on working with cancer patients. She said the students would be asking me questions and reminded me to answer truthfully. I am excited to meet the future hypnotherapists.

Different Forms of Hypnotism
Ericksonian hypnotherapy
In the 1950s, Milton H. Erickson developed a radically different approach to hypnotism, which has subsequently become known as "Ericksonian hypnotherapy" or "Neo-Ericksonian hypnotherapy." Erickson made use of an informal conversational approach with many clients and complex language patterns, and therapeutic strategies. This divergence from tradition led some of his colleagues, including Andre Weitzenhoffer, to dispute whether Erickson was right to label his approach "hypnosis" at all.

The founders of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), a methodology similar in some regards to hypnotism, claimed that they had modelled the work of Erickson extensively and assimilated it into their approach called the Milton Model. Weitzenhoffer disputed whether NLP bears any genuine resemblance to Erickson's work.

Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy
Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy (CBH) is an integrated psychological therapy employing clinical hypnosis and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

In 1974, Theodore Barber and his colleagues published an influential review of the research which argued, following the earlier social psychology of Theodore R. Sarbin, that hypnotism was better understood not as a "special state" but as the result of normal psychological variables, such as active imagination, expectation, appropriate attitudes, and motivation. Barber introduced the term "cognitive-behavioral" to describe the nonstate theory of hypnotism, and discussed its application to behavior therapy.

The growing application of cognitive and behavioral psychological theories and concepts to the explanation of hypnosis paved the way for a closer integration of hypnotherapy with various cognitive and behavioral therapies. However, many cognitive and behavioral therapies were themselves originally influenced by older hypnotherapy techniques, e.g., the systematic desensitisation of Joseph Wolpe, the cardinal technique of early behavior therapy, was originally called "hypnotic desensitisation" and derived from the Medical Hypnotism (1948) of Lewis Wolberg.

CBT works on changing your negative cognitions, (or thoughts) about yourself or your circumstances into positive cognitions, which will allow you to approach life from a more positive perspective. A cognitive behavioural therapist will also work with you on learning new behaviour skills to enable you to deal with issues arising in your life, for example working on techniques to control panic attacks. They may also work with you on thought stopping exercises, or teach you relaxation techniques designed to counteract stressful situations.

Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) is where CBT is combined with hypnotherapy to produce a more effective form of therapy which often can produce more rapid results than standard CBT alone.

Source: Wikipedia and www.carolynpotter.co.uk