Please Just Scrub My Brain Clean and Make Me Better!

We’ll all guilty of struggling with a bad habit or personal issue and just wanting to find somebody that’ll make it all better with no work required of us.

I call it the “take out my brain and scrub it clean for me” fix. These days I can usually spot this person quickly with a few questions during an interview or intake process.

I’d like to be able to say I could really “scrub a client’s brain” and it would work – but the reality is I politely turn these clients away.

Why?

Well, firstly their expectation is way beyond what can be delivered by a therapist of any discipline, and secondarily it hints they’re not ready to do the work necessary to be successful on a permanent basis. Or put another way they’re not ready to be responsible for their own habits and challenges – they want somebody else to take on responsibility – usually so they can say if it doesn’t work it wasn’t their fault but the therapists.

Sometimes it is the therapist at fault – it happens. Most of us can remember a situation where the diagnosis or treatment from a professional was just plain wrong and we went elsewhere to get the treatment we needed.

But this is not typical. And a quitting smoking hypnosis or weight loss program requires more than a hypnotherapist performing some magic to your brain so you never smoke again, or sneak a piece of chocolate on a regular basis.

You have to be ready to do whatever it takes to quit smoking or losing weight. The hypnotist is there to guide you and show you the resources you already have to overcome your bad habits. They’re also there to provide you with techniques and suggestions of what to do when the going gets tough.

They are not there to “fix you” and make you better without your active engagement. Your brain remains in your head at all times during the hypnosis sessions.

Sessions with a therapeutic hypnotist can remove barriers and damaging thoughts that impeded progress in removing a bad habit using methods proven to work with clients with similar challenges. But these sessions are far from passive interludes between the hypnotherapist and you.

Approach the work you do with a hypnotist with the responsibility for the outcome staying with you – this also includes “firing” the therapist if you’re not seeing the results you expect – and any “scrubbing of the brain” is as much about your contribution to overcoming your habit or issue, as the hypnotists. Adopt this attitude towards your sessions and you’ll increase the likelihood of your success.

I’ll leave with a quote I read awhile ago which sums up in one sentence what it’s taken me a few hundred words to convey:

“Action springs not from thought, but from readiness for responsibility.”

Erika Slater, CH
Director
Free At Last Hypnosis
http://www.freeatlasthypnosis.com
http://www.smoke-free-at-last.com