Transcript from “Using Hypnosis to Treat Anxiety within ... · Transcript from “Using Hypnosis...

Transcript from “Using Hypnosis to Treat Anxiety within the Context of Problem Solving Therapy: Demonstration and Talk”.

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Dr. Dan Short

“Using Hypnosis to Treat Anxiety within the Context of Problem Solving Therapy: Demonstration and talk”

Original Video: http://www.hypnosis4anxiety.org/

Hello everyone. This is Dan Short, and I'm speaking to you from my office in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have what's in here, Amy. Who's gonna help me illustrating some important concepts and show me some dynamics of problem solving therapy. And particularly using hypnosis to work with anxiety. When working with hypnosis, I do not like to distinguish between alert or sleeping phases. I'm rather looking just for an altered state of consciousness. So, eyes may be open, eyes may be closed depending on what seems to be the needs at the moment. So we're gonna get started with this. Amy would you tell us a little bit about some anxiety that normally trained you in recent days

- Okay. I don't know why it keeps happening. Usually it's in the morning. I thought it was... I get itchy. There's nothing there, there's no rash, there's no bumps or anything. But I just start itching. Usually on my leg, sometimes my arms. And I thought that it was related to something about you know, I mean I have very sensitive skin. So I thought it was gonna be related to something about my soap in the shower, usually if I shave in the mornings, something about the razor. That's usually what triggers it. But then I was alarmed because this morning I woke up, and I was just thinking about some things that I had to take care of right away. And I thought I had a mosquito bite on my foot. But it wasn't there was nothing there, it was just itching. So I doctored it as if it was a mosquito bite, kind of just

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forget it. But it didn't go away and then pretty soon, it started spreading so that I was itching on my you know my lower legs and then it started on my thighs. I'll start itching there too.

- What where you thinking right before it spread?

- Well there was an issue with my son, and he had to--

- There's no need.

- Okay. Well I was just thinking I had to go and do something. You know I had to check on this and I had to tell him that I had to--

- Sure. Okay. So, you were thinking of all the things that needed to be done. You were thinking that there might be an itching problem and does he know you have you an itching problem?

- Yes.

- Sounds like that might have psychological pieces to it. At this point are you intentionally able to get it under control or get rid of it? Or is it just still a waiting game?

- Usually it's a waiting game, this morning I decided to sort of try something different. I had a little bit extra time. So I actually went and did what I needed to do. And then I came back and I just laid down.

- Okay.

- And I really tried to just sort of focus on relaxing, and I did actually go back to sleep. Which is kind of rare. I usually can't go back to sleep once I've woken up.

- When you went to sleep, the itching was gone?

- And so yeah. By the time I was relaxed and I drifted off, and I woke back up and itching was gone.


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- Okay. This is great. This is good. Okay, so you figured out a little bit of something and it kind of worked. What do you you... I know this question you can't consciously have a sure answer for but, what would you guess is the probability of you waking up tomorrow and itching?

- I would say maybe there's like a 40% chance.

- 40% chance.

- I mean it doesn't happen all the time. And I used to have this back in college actually. I had it often and then actually after college. Then it's kind of been gone, but now it's come back.

- What would make it increase to a 50 or 60% probability of itching? Probably if I went into thinking that I was going to. In fact I'm starting to itch right now.

- There you go right now. Okay. Awesome. You know about this thing about some problems being like a light switch. You can turn them on, you can turn them off.

- Right.

- Especially through of panic attack but you don't have trouble with that. But other lesser anxiety troubles, you can turn them on, you can turn them off. So being able to turn them on is a good thing.

- I have to sort of do that when I have to make a phone call. Like somebody I don't want to talk to, or something on my to do list that I just really don't wanna do. There was something this past week that I just kept putting off, putting off, and finally I just had to turn it to where I didn't care and I did it. And it actually went okay, and I got it off my to do list which was nice.

- I think you overcoming this and benefiting from this here today, is gonna benefit me personally. I think I'm gonna be happy about it. The other thing, I got a good empathetic connection with you. Because my knee started itching, as you were talking and I felt myself scratching my knees. I think I'm in rapport with you. The place that the itching is most easily started, is in your legs, is the correct?

- Mhm. Yes. Absolutely.


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- Where would be a place where you could have the itch, if you were to turn it on, where you could have it intentionally, and not be so bothered by it. Like if I was gonna have an itch anywhere in my body, here's where I would prefer to have it. Maybe it would be kind of fun to have it here. Interesting or entertaining.

- Entertaining? Okay that's hard, I don't know.

- Some people like scratch their back. They do it for the fun of it. Some people at their nose. It's a way of expressing anger. Is there any place where if you were gonna have to have an itch, this is the place where you would have it. Could be inside or outside your body. Could be the outside of your skin, or it could be inside your body. In order to contain it you start small.

- Okay the only thing that's coming to mind that usually doesn't ever itch is my elbow. So maybe my elbow.

- Elbow's a fun place. Okay. So let’s pick, this isn't a conscious test, this is a test for your unconscious. So consciously it doesn't matter which elbow you think is better. One of your elbows, I´d like your unconscious mind, started to put in a little itch. You're gonna turn it on. Your conscious laughs. You're starting to laugh. It's that laughing induction! You'll feel it start to itch. Your conscious mind just watching what happens. See you're just an observer. Okay, you're conscious mind isn't in here. Deeper. Deeper. You didn't put the itch on your elbow. You put it somewhere else. You put it somewhere else, and you turned it into laughter. Only way to scratch that itch is to laugh, right?

- Right.

- You hard to stop. Where did you put that itch? Where is it? It's somewhere inside.

- It doesn't really feel like an itch.

- No but your scratching it with laughter. Right? You can hardly stop.

- Right.

- It's okay.


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- It starting to go on my head, and I'm like that's the worst place for it to be so it's somewhere inside.

- Yeah. Somewhere in your core maybe.

- I think so.

- Kind of big zone and maybe even hard to pinpoint. Calm? If you laugh too hard it'll get hard to breath.

- Right.

- Fortunately you're not drinking anything right now it would be coming out your nose. So do you understand that you were just challenged by me to do something, and your response to that challenge you exercised and ability. A unique ability. Your unconscious mind didn't do precisely what I say and that's fine. It came up with it's own little version. And that's even better. It more uniquely belongs to you. What would it be like, if you woke up in the morning and you were tempted to start thinking about all of the things that you've been worried about. All of the things that make you feel comfortable and uncomfortable inside your own skin. What will happen if you just started laughing? You're releasing some of that tension through laughter. Sometimes people release tension through crying. And that's a legitimate way, at some times. But starting off your day, you might like to start it off with a chuckle. I wonder how much laughter it would take to override a developing itch. I don't think it would take too much. Here's an interesting thing. When you were telling me about this morning, and that you were thinking about things where you could be worried about. Worried about the wellbeing of your son, and what you need to do. Itch was coming. In order to make things better, you got up and you became active so you started doing things. It's not me but other psychologists, doctors, would say that action toward some goal is the antidote to anxiety. You’re doing something about a situation. So if you were looking at the doctor’s office, whatever you were doing that was making it to where you're either more prepared to deal with whatever is gonna happen, or if it does happen it doesn't affect your as badly. There's a lot of people there that'd agree that, that's gonna decrease anxiety. If you want to use this “laughing cure”. It'd be a matter of self-hypnosis. You altered your state on consciousness by talking to me. You can alter it again even if I'm not present. And you were to get yourself to laugh some. We laugh best when we're thinking about doing things. And when we're thinking about doing things in ways that are not what we should be doing. Should, is very connected to anxiety. Have to, and should, are best friends of anxiety. Laughter, that emotion is not compatible with anxiety. Now, trying to make anxiety leave your mind, so it puts you’re in a desperate state. You're gonna have a ironic rebound where you become more anxious because you can't get rid of the anxiety. So desperation “I have to do this”, “I should do this”. All of that will help build anxiety. But laughter and thinking of something you could do that's ridiculous like, some men, when you see there's a wife about to give birth he goes driving out the house without her, and driving to the hospital and he didn't take his wife right? Conditioning yourself that this morning you were laying there in bed, you pictured yourself running out to the car and driving out to the doctor without your


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son right. Kind of a humorous idea, as you do that you start to grow whatever emotion you're gonna associate with humor. Humor selection. It's like you are gonna start to take up the energy 'cause your brain has a limited amount of energy from emotion. It's gonna start using it up. There's less energy for anxiety. We´re gonna push it out, ground it out. However you wanna look at it. Now that's something you can consciously know about. You can consciously think it's a good idea. Your conscious mind alone won´t be able to achieve it. You really need to be able to trust spontaneous, automatic things inside of you 'cause its, it's you’re... Excuse me. It's your unconscious think you should start to crack up about. You didn't start laughing as I was talking, because you consciously thought you were right there, you thought you should of laughed while I'm talking to you. Your unconscious made it happen. Or you kept thinking it'd happen. That was wonderful. That was very good. How convinced are you that this is what, this skill we talked about here that you could use that seems to help you with your anxiety? Zero percent convinced, 30 percent convinced, 80, 90?

- Well I'm thinking like maybe 30 or 40 percent. Because like as I'm rethinking about it this morning, this morning I went into you know my son's room and I got him up because he was actually the one that had to do some of the things. I mean I was trying to help but he was doing some of it. And so, he was doing the things I was asking him to do but, as I was sitting beside him, I kept itching more and more and more and more. And finally, he said, you're making me itch, would you please leave? So I said okay. So but then you know, in the context of that like I wasn't upset. I was actually glad that he was doing what he needed to do. That we were working on it together.

- Yeah you had deep belly filled laughter with your son before.

- Yeah.

- What would have happened do you think if you'd started laughing in his room?

- He probably would have start laughing.

- Mhm. You think you would have been able to be anxious and laugh simultaneously?

- Probably not?

- Probably not, they're very incompatible.

- Right. It's like kind of being happy and angry simultaneously, it's just not gonna happen.


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- I can't conceive how I would you know, consciously get to that part. You know, as I was just sitting there itching. And I don't know how my unconscious which is turning on.

- And you ever been a time where you're doing something where it seemed like maybe you should be serious, maybe you should keep your composure and you shouldn't laugh and you just started laughing.

- Yeah.

- When you're on video camera filming something. So something like that?

- Right. Or during a prayer or--

- During a prayer.

- Yeah.

- Somebody says the wrong word--

- Right. Right.

- It's really rude to laugh. It seems as you hardly contain yourself. What would happen I wonder if you got in there telling yourself “my son is sick with a serious medical condition, he needs a very serious mother, and when I sit on his bed I'm not allowed to smile” or laugh at a single thing. What do you think your unconscious is going to do for you?

- Probably the opposite.

- Most people´s unconscious has a little bit of rebellion in it. It doesn't really wanna be controlled by the conscious mind. If you try to make yourself laugh, you probably will run into trouble.


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- Mhm.

- We'll try to make themselves feel funny it just certainly happened. You can't really, if you trust the conscious mind, you're can allow it space to work. You can be hopeful of it, but bullying it does not work, unless you're gonna bully it in the wrong direction then it shows you what is capable of .Yeah, you've gone in there with your most serious face on… you've done the best job being a worried mother once in a while you'll laugh. You might start cracking yourself up. He might laugh with you.

- I can see that.

- Okay. Let’s see if we can give all this a fly. A test. So… you think about something you're worried about, something you can get an itch… somewhere. Something that stresses you out. You could be thinking about all those parents. If they were anxious parents especially. Thinking about something.

- Actually, I got an itch down there

- Oh, there you go. Awesome. Okay. Now, be very serious. So that my readers don't see you laughing as I'm doing the kind of hypnotic treatment I am doing. You wouldn't want them to think that you're laughing at my show. Right? Okay. You can rebel against that, that's fine right? What else can you do to really let yourself go? You were doing it earlier.

- I don't even know.

- Right. You did it. Really had yourself going, it's gonna be hard to stop.

- I don't know what I did. I don't know. I didn't do anything conscious.

- Okay let’s think about something. You don't need to tell everybody what the thought was that got you to cheat again. But let’s think about you doing something in relation to that idea. But do it in a really similarly humorous way. Alright. So something where it makes you chuckle or think of handling this problem this way. Like I suppose I could do it this way, but it's a nuisance… it's. For instance if someone was worrying about cleaning their house and it was looking clean enough or straight enough. Then they could… Could you maybe imagine yourself, what would be in a humorous way of getting the house ready for people? Spending all your time just cleaning one room. It's just all we really can do to move through then there is the yellow tape, barring the doors and stuff like that. And they can't go in the rest of the house, they just have to stay in one room. It was prepared you know,


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everything's squared off so… Pictures leveled in their own rack. Humorous if could picture it. How about it yeah? Did we not have the itching of the arm and the knee?

- Yeah I don’t feel it right now.

- Now that's interesting. 'Cause initially how we were gonna test it, is we were gonna put it in your elbow, and you show that you do have the ability to put it there.

- Mhm.

- You moved it to your elbow, and to your knee. Your elbow and your knee.

- Mhm.

- And off of your shins and calfs. So it's an interesting possibility here. You can relocate it if you want, to a place that doesn't bother you so much. Or, you can go into the hysterical laughter. You're capable of it. Like anything else, the more you practice, the better you get.

- Right.

- So hopefully you'll wake up itching tomorrow. It's the best thing that could happen, because you want to use these new skills as soon as possible.

- Okay.

- If right after you go off camera, if you develop an itch it'll be perfect. If he can hear you laughing in the background, tell him that you're doing your therapy and you’re getting better and better and better at it. Tomorrow morning wake up and crack yourself up instead of itching, would just be the most awesome time you could have, it would be really fun. Release those endorphins and you'll live longer, who knows.

- It sounds good.


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- Well thanks so much for going to

- Thanks.

- Most of us have seen people use hypnosis in sleep form to get people to slow down, close their eyes. Really get there body to relax. I'm not opposed to doing that, and many times people who come into my office especially if there's PTSD, something where the person seems to be chronically over activated in the central nervous system. And they don't believe they can relax. Or they don't believe they can sleep. I'll work with them and talk with them and have them lay on a couch to where they find that they can asleep or go into a deep trance. However, I believe a more permanent solution for anxiety is to get people who touch on what their capable of doing. Not what you're capable of doing as a therapist. Not what happens in your office, we're not wanting people to become dependent on being here in your office. In order to feel okay. Now, we teach the person self-hypnosis, they go home and lay out on their couch. I don't see that's a bad thing. I see that's a great skill. However, if you got someone who can still with their eyes open, and still, while dealing with problems. Dealing with challenges at work or with their kids, or with a partner. Can implement their solutions for dealing with anxiety. Now you've got a more versatile tool. You got something that can be used anywhere. And also as we move from the negative focus in psychology looking strictly at pathology, setting pathology, categorizing people by pathology, and looking for how to “get rid” of pathology. How to eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. We're moved to a positive psychology focus. And thought (the belief) that not having symptoms is not enough for a good life. Just not having symptoms after while becomes boring. People develop existential depression, have no sense of purpose, no room for joy in their lives, no happiness. They don't feel that they're thriving, they just feel dead. Maybe they've been able to take several different medications that keeps anxiety from getting too high. There's not much joy. There's not much anger. There's not much of anything. Person comes in and describes that they're just flat. And they don't even feel that they're living life. That's not okay. What we are beginning to learn you know, from the research in positive psychology and happiness. Especially researchers such as Csikzentmihaly that when people are challenged and in the face of those challenges, they're discovering their abilities and they're using the abilities and they're using skills and they're increasing those skills. That's when people find happiness, that's when people find a sense of being glad to be alive. That's when you get time distortion. So time flies by and you don't even realize like a young teen playing a video game and realize three hours have gone by. In order for all of this to happen for the therapeutic context, you need to be looking at what tasks is being created within the therapy office. In most of training with hypnosis we´ve been told what task to give a person. You have the task of eye closure, becoming sleepy. You have the task of levitation, getting the arm to lift up in the air. If you been trained in NLP then your task is getting the person to adjust different sensory modalities within the mind, they envision things in the mind, they hear things in the mind. How far it is, or how close it is. Sense of smell, touch. The task is to alter these things, within in the office. My suggestion is (my belief) is that any time a person takes on a task, and they succeed at it, you're more confident. Any time they start to build a sense of “I can do this”, it's in relation to their anxiety. A person can be less anxious. You know, I can do something about my anxiety. You can use the same task again and again with every single client you see, if you’re trained to do psychodrama or if you trained to do like a soft slinky chair. You can give the person that task, you do it in relation to anxiety, and if they feel they're becoming more skillful at it, you don’t want to overwhelm them with the difficulty, bring down the difficulty so their ability catches up with the challenge. They will be happy


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will be proud, you can encourage the person it's all good. This particular type of Ericksonian approach however, it's not enough just to what you’re comfortable with. It's not enough just to do what eels interesting and right to you. Its all the more better to figure out what the client is comfortable with. What is interesting or meaningful and important to the client? So the first thing you think of, is a task. What can this person do right here. My first task I gave Amy was so simple it was not even notice, and that was tell me about your anxiety. She did the first task very well. Although she was doing it well, we gave her a new task. Turning on the anxiety, turning it on in a certain spot on her body. And then she did that. She succeeded at that task. Then I gave her a new tasks. I needed something that's counter the anxiety. Something that's gonna counter the anxious thoughts. She spontaneously started to laugh. Now I couldn't become frustrated, I could´ve told her she wasn't doing things “correctly”. I could of rejected her own unconscious solution of the problem. It would have been really sad if I would have done that. I definitely know what we're gonna keep treating to her, tenacious complex of the, you know, person who can't handle the tasks that I have, or the many challenges. So instead very Ericksonian thing to do is help people who trust their unconscious mind. Trust these spontaneous, intuitive ways of solving problems. I believe it's absolutely incorrect to believe that every problem has only one solution. I'd wish you'd do math homework. Life problems, complex problems, how to deal with the boss at work, how to deal with a child that is chronically unhappy. How to deal with an itch. All of these things have many different solutions, possible solutions. The best one for the individual is gonna be one that they believe they can do and they can do well. One that is interesting to one fits their personality, one that brings out interesting neat aspects of their personality. I thought maybe I'd really lovely laugh I was enjoyable to watch, this is a neat aspect of a personality. You want to encourage it's use in confronting the problem of anxiety. A great tool for her to have it's something she's been using her whole lifetime not realizing she can intentionally pull it out of herself in order to combat anxiety. So this basic formula, sometimes I'll tell people I find it very happy... I find myself very happy thinking of this when I'm working with people. And that's to view anxiety as a disparity between two things. One of these things is the person's perceived ability, and the other thing is to perceive difficulty of the challenge. Now when they're really close, you're not gonna have anxiety. But, if a person perceives their abilities down here, and the difficulty of the task is up here, they've got tremendous anxiety. I keep saying the word perceived because it's not about actual ability. You can have someone who actually has the ability to walk into a dentist office, sit and in a chair, putin her mouth, and just wait until the dentist is done and get up and leave. They do have that ability. But the perceived difficulty of being in that chair that high, and then perceiving their ability to sit in that chair down here. And that person has tremendous anxiety. They may go to dentist, If things start working well, working right, and they sit and the chair, and they're getting their teeth done, they should be able to have an adjustment. They leave, and next time they come, not be anxious, because they really, really now realize, I have the ability to take on this task. Some of our people we work with, for some reason that's not working. And so even though they've gone to the dentist, even though they've taken a, say a teenager with testings higher. Even though he's taking tests and he's been able to pass them, he remains incredibly anxious. That this test is gonna be too difficult for him. He doesn't have the ability to do it. So doing therapy, you've got a couple options. You can increase a person’s sense of ability, having them do things inside the office, having them do things outside of the office. Serve as a solution point and focus where you have them thinking about the past times when they've handled something very similar, and know that still they need it. Or just training and teaching, so that they feel better prepared, that they have the skills and need. Just simple validation encouragement. I see you willing to do this. I see those skills. Right. So you bring up the perceived sensibility or you can bring down perceived difficulty of the challenge. That teenage child anxious about their test you can have them promise you that they won't make you


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better than a D. They just, they were anxious about failing it. He said just promise me you won't get higher than a D. No B's certainly no A's. If you start getting too many answers right you think the answers some of them are all on purpose. And when you get that kind of a paradox instruction, it brings down the perceived difficulty of what their being asked to do. So now you don't have that disparate anymore. So let’s see what questions you might have after you've reviewed this material. To use it it's an essential the person’s eyes closed? I don’t think so. There is quite a bit of research. Going back all to the way the time of James Braid, more recently, Ernest Hilgard spoke on it. Some individuals who have documented all of the hypnotic phenomena that occur with eye closure also occure with eyes open. So I believe it's a waste of time to get too hung up on that. Unless teaching the person to close their eyes is a task and a challenge will somehow make them less anxious. Perhaps felling that they can be in the room with a person and not monitoring that person, and still be safe. And still be able to handle any people. Or some other irrelevant task. But unless it's relevant unless it’s a good use of time. I think really it's important to emphasize that kind of thing. Another important thing. When you're working with anxiety, you yourself should be using these concepts. If you've got someone with severe OCD, no therapist has been able to help them, and they're doing, no medications helped them and it's seems that we've never seen anything like this before. If you see the difficulty of the challenge up here, and your ability down here, you're gonna become anxious, and the person is just gonna become more anxious sitting in a room with you. They will absorbs some of your anxiety. You can bring down the task, “I don't have to cure this person”. Certainly not right away if they got this severe OCD for 40 years and they´ve been in therapy in 30 years, 35 years and no one’s cured them yet. So I don't have to have this cure done by tomorrow, I can take my time with it. I can really figure this out. You telling yourself even if I never… if there is no cure for this person. Be thinking “I decreased a lot of their suffering”. I showed them that this other person cares. I am working with him on this. They're not alone with this. You decrease the challenge so you feel less anxious. And more attention to what you're capable of, and more attention to the times when you helped a client with problems that surprised YOU that they got as well as they did. Let yourself realize this isn't all on your shoulders. It's more so on the client's shoulders. They're the ones that want to develop some stability. I believe it's the wrong idea to think this is about you solving people’s problems. That's too much pressure, to match which ability you're in. It's about helping other people figure out they can solve them problems. Helping them become better problem solvers. Learn how to use their own conscious mind. Learn how to recognize spontaneous things that are happening to form spontaneous solutions for challenges that face them so they're generating a lot of this. It's not all on you. I hope you enjoyed this talk today. These are some of the ideas that I consider most important. And hope that you will take these and really be able to use them to help others and help yourself.

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