Before you regress a client into painful events in the past, you need to assess their readiness. Not only will you have much less resistance to deal with in your regression hypnosis sessions, you’ll get better results.
If you’ve ever tried to regress a client only to find yourself in a wrestling match with either their Conscious or Subconscious mind you already know this. It’s no picnic. You can do away with the struggle by using the 3 Rs in R-R-Results to assess the client's readiness for regression before you regress.
The 3 Rs in R-R-Results
- R-R-Reasonable?
- R-R-Right?
- R-R-Ready?
R-R-Reasonable? Hypnosis is not magic. Sure. It can seem like magic but it’s not a cure-all. While there is a great deal you can do with hypnosis, you need to be very clear about what’s reasonable. So, make sure the issue you are taking on is something you can reasonably expect to resolve with hypnosis.
R-R-Right? The client needs to be a “fit” for you and your level of skill and experience. So ask yourself the following questions.
- Are you the right choice for this person?
- Are you a match for their specific problem?
- Are they the right client for you?
R-R-Ready? The client needs to be consciously prepared for the work you’ll ask them to do. And you need permission from their Conscious Mind to allow feelings and memories from the past to surface. YOU can’t do it for them. The client must be ready, willing, and able to do the work necessary to be successful. So, before you regress – assess!
Use the 3 R's in R-R-Results to help ensure that your clients are prepared to do the work necessary to get the results they're after and that you're capable of delivering.
Once you have assessed that your client's issue is reasonable, that you're the right fit for one another, and that they're ready to being a healing journey, the next step is to create your ideal client using the S.E.T. for Success Formula.
The S.E.T. for Success Formula.
S.E.T. stands for 3 objectives that will support you in facilitating successful regression hypnotherapy sessions.
1. Satisfy
The client made a conscious decision to come to see YOU. That’s because their Conscious Mind has been struggling to come up with a way to resolve the problem. And it can’t. So, the first step is to satisfy the conscious mind's need to be heard.
Listen to what the conscious mind has to say. Show it respect by listening and it will be more willing to follow your instructions. Keep in mind that during the intake process, the subconscious mind is assessing YOU. It’s deciding whether or not you can be trusted.
As you demonstrate a willingness to listen to the conscious mind, you are showing the subconscious mind what to expect. You are showing the subconscious mind how it can expect to be treated by you in session. That’s important. Satisfying the conscious, thinking mind is a way to establish rapport with the subconscious, feeling mind. That’s the key to getting rapid results.
2. Educate
The conscious mind uses reason and logic to make sense of things. Being able to make sense of the world around us gives us a sense of control. So, educate the client about how the mind works, how hypnosis works, and how you will be working together in sessions to achieve the client's goal. This empowers the client by satisfying the conscious mind’s need for control. And makes it safe for it to step aside when you ask it to.
Therapeutic hypnosis is an interactive process. So when the conscious mind understands how things work and what to expect it will accept your leadership. because NOW it makes sense.
You need a client to be willing to follow your instructions and just let the answers be revealed to them. So give your client good reason to trust you. This gives you a much more willing participant in the process.
3. Train
The conscious mind also needs reasons to believe. For example, the client needs to believe the hypnosis actually happened. That’s what they think they’re paying for. So, in the first session it helps to provide proof of hypnosis.
You can do this easily. Simply use the experience of deepening sensations of relaxation as evidence of their ability to create the positive changes they desire and create positive changes in future.
Establishing a positive expectation for results from future sessions will give you a more cooperative client. So once you have met the needs of the conscious mind – to be heard, to make sense of things, to have reason to believe – the final step is to evaluate the client’s readiness for the regression work.
Assess Before You Regress
Assessing will make it easier and faster for you to get to the Initial Sensitizing Event (ISE.) So, before you start bringing up a feeling and following it back assess the for the following:
- How ready is the conscious mind to face the past?
- How willing is the conscious mind to allow feelings to surface?
- How able is the conscious mind to be present and loving to the Inner Child?
An easy way to assess client readiness for regression is to invite the client to remember some positive memories from childhood. There’s seldom any resistance to experiencing happy times. Once you have the client in a scene from childhood you can use your uncovering techniques to teach your client how to work with you in an actual event. At the same time you can assess their readiness for regression. That way, if they bump into some unresolved pain from the past, you'll know what you're dealing with. You won’t make the mistake of taking them back into a painful event in childhood before they’re ready.
This approach will give you the information you need to know what the next step needs to be for the client and prepare them for the work you will do together.
If you take the time to prepare your clients, YOU won’t have to work so hard.
Human beings tend to fear the unknown. This tends to generate resistance in sessions. Dealing with resistance takes time. Allowing the client to experience the healing process in a non-threatening way will make your job easier by reducing the overall resistance. You won’t be subjecting the client to stuff they’re not ready to deal with. And making the client ready for regression will make things easier for both of you.
This is probably a much gentler approach than what you might have been taught. And it does require a little more time on the front end. That's because the focus is on the preliminary set-up. But it will save you both time and trouble, in the long run.
If you take the time to prepare the client for a healing journey, you won’t lose precious session time wrestling with resistance. Then, when it comes time to guide the client through the actual regression to cause process, you'll have a much more cooperative client to work with.
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