What happens in the first hour of hypnotherapy with me

The first hour with me is a conversation. It is a careful one, and quieter than you expect.

You arrive with a picture in your head. A stage, a swinging watch, a stranger who wants you to say things you would rather keep to yourself. Most people describe their version within the first few minutes, and a fair few laugh as they do. The chicken comes up more often than you would think.

What happens instead is a run of plain questions, asked in an order I have found works.

What I ask first

I begin with why you are here, in your own words. The short temper, the sleep that has gone, the feeling of being on edge before the day has started. I ask how long it has been like this, what it costs you at home and at work, and who notices first.

Then I ask for a number from 0 to 10 for how bad it is at the moment.

For the sleep I ask how many hours you get and how often you wake. Those figures give you and me something to measure against later.

After that comes the history, and it takes the longest. I ask what home was like when you were small, how you slept as a child, and when you first remember feeling this wound up.

I am looking for the pattern and where it started. Many people open by telling me they had a perfectly good childhood, and that is often true. I take it as said. What I am after is smaller: the first time the fuse was short, the first stretch of bad nights, and what else was going on in your life then.

Every pattern has a first appearance, and most people can place theirs once the questions come in the right order.

You choose what you tell me. I need enough to see the shape of the pattern, and nothing more than that. People often say afterwards that it was easier than they feared, because my questions are short and I leave a gap for the answer.

Some go quiet at the same point, usually when they reach the first time they remember feeling it. I wait.

What I explain before any hypnotherapy begins

Before any hypnotherapy begins, I explain what it is. Hypnosis is a focused, relaxed state, and you already slip into it when you drive a familiar road and arrive with no memory of the last few miles. You hear me throughout, you can move, and you can open your eyes whenever you like. Everything that happens in my room, you have agreed to first.

Then I explain what I do with it. Behaviour pattern reprogramming means finding the pattern and where it started, changing it at the level beneath conscious thinking, and making the change hold in ordinary life. For a temper that goes off before you have chosen, and for sleep, the work is usually hypnotherapy.

Where one specific memory is still firing in the present, I use EMDR, a method that uses side-to-side eye movements to settle that memory. If it comes to that, I explain it properly first.

What I ask of you is short. Answer honestly, including when the honest answer is "I do not know". Tell me if something is too much, or if I have misread you. You do not need to prepare, to be a good subject or to believe a word of it.

How the hour ends

Some people have a short first experience of hypnosis before they leave. Others would rather save it for the next time, and I am happy with either. It depends on what the history shows and on how you feel about it by then.

You leave the first hour knowing where I think the pattern started and what I would work on first.

Near the end of the hour I tell you what I have found: where the pattern seems to begin, what keeps it going now, and what I would work on first. You ask whatever you like. You and I agree the next step.

Afterwards, people tell me what they had braced for. Being put on the spot, being made to cry, being told something about themselves they did not want to hear. What they say instead is that it went quickly, and that they talked more than they had planned to.

Most go home and have their tea. Plenty feel pleasantly tired, so I suggest leaving the next hour free.