In the first class I attended at The Northwest Hypnosis Intitute, Bruce Terrill, our instructor, went around the room and asked each student a series of casual questions, one of which was if they had an idea what kind of hypnosis they might want to specialize in if they successfully completed the course. The majority of students, including myself, did not have a clear-cut answer. Two professionals in health care mentioned that they wanted to use their hypnotherapy training to advance their careers. One fellow wants to be a stage-hypnotist and one woman wants to use it for birthing – as part of natural childbirth. This proved interesting and the conversation quickly moved on to how hypnosis is working for children with challenges.
In the medical field, textbooks state that children do not fully develop cognitive processes until about 11 or 12. They have fewer imprints and they don’t worry so much about the facts on how the world should be. They don’t critically evaluate things as readily. And why should they? They’re kids. They daydream, often their attention spans are very short, and they are easily distracted. And all these tendencies make them excellent candidates for hypnosis. When a child listens to a fairy tale, they tend to get completely absorbed, forgetting about the outside world. They’re in a trance, and when the story is finished, they take from the story impressions that become operative in their everyday life. Because of these factors and more, it is commonly accepted in the world of hypnotherapy that children are much more responsive to hypnosis than adults.
Children often play games alone – especially when they want to get out of their current reality. By accessing their unconscious, kids create images that force themselves to focus on something other than the pain they are feeling. Children are more in touch with their imaginations than adults. They easily drift from reality to make-believe. It makes sense that children can be taught to easily go back to that make-believe reality and heal themselves.
Getting kids involved with stories seems like an obvious route to go if you’re a hypnotist. But oftentimes, kids are smarter that you think, and quite skeptical if we don’t have their trust. And with kids, trust can be tricky. You never know what might upset them. So once again, it comes down to reading the client, creating rapport and deciding, with tests along the way, which route is best for that particular client.
Dr. Robert Schacter of New York’s Mt. Sinai School of Medicine talks about on The Early Show, “the easiest way to hypnotize a child is to have them focus on a point. They will do that until their eyes get heavy and they become sleepy. Then, you know you have them in a trance-like state. Once they are in this state, you begin to tell the child stories that can alleviate whatever problems they may have.”
Now that sounds O.K., and I’m sure it works for certain types of kids, but I don’t know if I would have gone for that when I was 10 years old. In fact, I would probably have been inclined to concentrate on anything other than what he suggested. I would rather go off to someplace as far away from my current reality as possible. And that would be my trance. A good hypnotherapist would notice that and use that place to work with. Even at ten, I would appreciate the session starting out with identifying the problem and deciding what kind of outcome I wanted. Then I could make the decision to give it a try or not. I would be in control and I could then allow myself to go to that special place of mine and fix myself.
A clinical example of this type of session is explained in a University of Michigan medical study comparing a pill versus hypnotherapy to cure chronic bed-wetting.
The stages of the session are explained in the following order:
- Anatomy explained and the idea that the brain controls the body presented.
- Taught to relax and then hypnosis induced by using imagery of a favorite place.
- Emphasized the child’s capacity to control his or her own body.
- Gave instructions to awaken when the bladder was full, urinate in the toilet, and go back to sleep in bed.
- Two 30 minute sessions, followed by every other day to once per week.
Examining the results of this study determined that hypnotherapy was more effective than the most popular pill by approximately three to one.
The best story I’ve read on the subject of Pediatric Hypnosis was by Michael Castleman. He writes about Rachel McLean, a six year old girl that had to have some painful work done on her foot. It hurt so bad the first time, that the next time she and her Mom went in, she couldn’t get past the waiting room. The next time after that, they couldn’t get past the parking lot. Finally her Mom, a real skeptic, resorted to giving a hypnotherapist a try to get her girl back into that doctor’s office. The hypnotist, Judith Einzig, who happens to be a psychotherapist as well, found a sad episode in Rachel’s life – the death of her cat- as a place to use for good purpose. This was Rachel’s first experience with death. During the session, Rachel was asked if she would like it to call upon her cat to come down from heaven in a “cloud car” and be with her the next time she was in the doctor’s office. The cat and Rachel would be enveloped in their cloud car together while they were at the doctor’s office. She even encouraged Rachel to pet the cat and hear her purr and the cat would make her feel safe. Rachel agreed happily. The Mom was amazed. Now when Rachel goes to the doctor’s office, she’s getting through the rough treatments and is, I suppose, spending some quality time again with her departed cat.
