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Certified Hypnotherapy Training Inc.| 4440 South - Midland Drive | Roy, UT - 84o67 | (t) 801-628-0693
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© 2010 All Rights Reserved | Site Policies | Site Map
Dennis - Story of why and how he become a Hypnotherapist - Audio :
Dennis' - Personal story of how he got into hypnotherapy.
It's All in There!
“The magic of trance, or pondering and meditation, is that everything we have experienced in life can be accessed through proper hypnotic trance methods and procedures.”
”Our subconscious mind is the area of our mind which contains our memories, imaginations, and emotions, it stores every thought, every touch, every smell, every conversation, and every sensory perception we have experienced in this life's existence, from Birth until Now, and these can all be accessed through TRANCE!!!”
Our thoughts generate our emotions; our emotions generate our behaviors as we tend to behave the way we feel. Our Imagination can amplify any thought from 0 - 2,500 times making or turning any accepted beliefs or predominant thoughts into major emotions, and behaviors.
Out of Control Maladaptive Behaviors are fixations of these predominant thoughts that when challenged and changed appropriately, can immediately bring a release of accumulated emotional content which can be volcanic, but very relieving and life changing, as the predominant thoughts are replaced by new more appropriate thoughts.
We see the Hollywood style version of this phenomena in shows like, First Blood when Stallone had finally reached his mental capacity to hold the emotional content in any longer and he broke down and cried, with the Major talking him through it, releasing the pent up feelings . Or Mel Gibson’s Balcony scene, in Ransom, where he emotionally vented the over amplified sensations of his son being kidnapped and in danger.
Some call this a mental or emotional breakdown, as the capacity of one’s ability to hold it all in or keep the lid on it as we say has been reached. There is no more room to store additional emotional content. Because trance accesses the subconscious memories, imaginations, and emotions, reviewing our life’s stimulating events in trance, may bring a release of pent up emotional content. We want to remember that trance is natural and we go in and out of varying trance states all day long. We are most readily familiar with the state of daydreaming.
We will discuss what is being called hypnotherapy as several varying methods of achieving predominant thought changes for positive goal directed purposes. We will discuss a number of the techniques associated with the various methods, but the heart of Hypnotherapy is assisting the client in this discovery of, challenging and changing of, non-productive inappropriate predominate thoughts, and the release of the accumulated emotional content. I will address and develop all of these ideas in subsequent chapters, but here is how it worked for me with my first hypnotherapy session.
My first experience with this phenomena and how I got into Hypnotherapy is as follows:
Some 22 years ago, I came to a point in my life when I began earnestly seeking personal improvement. There were a number of things that I wanted to change and overcome. Once I put my foot on the path of improving my life and circumstances, I acknowledged there were a number of things I had always known, that I wanted to do and overcome. Several of them became foremost in my mind.
For one, I wanted to overcome the habit of biting my fingernails. I bit my fingernails at emotionally tense times. I felt to pray about it and see what direction I could receive. One day, while listening to the radio in the car as I drove to work, I heard an advertisement about people who were stopping smoking, losing weight, and overcoming other habits, through hypnosis. I felt quite strongly that this might be an answer for me as well. I was surprised by my feelings, as I had never been involved with hypnosis before, nor had any understanding of what really takes place. I had all the usual prejudices that people have from seeing stage hypnosis. It must be mind control and a tool of the devil, and so forth. (This I will discuss in detail in later chapters) Yet, I felt a strong positive impression about it. I was curious to see if it could give me the assistance and help I was contemplating.
Additionally, I recognized and knew that it took very little to set me off into a rage of anger. This self-defeating, maladaptive behavior was not really working for me as a commissioned sales rep. Even though I attempted to be enthusiastic and friendly, and build instant relationships as taught by my sales trainers, my internal demeanor would come through far too often, and people had other options than having to deal with or buy from an angry pissed off salesman. This behavioral personality trait, or I should say character flaw, was really holding me back from being who I wanted to be, and keeping me from providing more substantially for my family. (11 young children all at home)
I describe this period of my life as one where my dog (Smokey) still hesitantly befriended me with coaxing, my children scattered and seemingly had other things to do besides be around me, and my wonderful wife, bless her soul, tolerated and patiently put up with me. She is truly a saint, an unselfish always serving wife, mother and grandmother, beloved of her family and all who know her. She is the heart and center of our family and the primary influence in our children’s lives. She unconditionally loved me.
Then one day, I had another of several recent altercations at the time. Someone from a boat trailer shop incorrectly repaired an axle on my boat trailer, from my point of view, and in my estimation grossly overcharged me at the same time. The situation became very heated and potentially violent. The person I was dealing with went to the back to get something and came back with a knife, strapped to his side, that wasn’t there before. I realized that I was on the edge of being completely out of control in raging anger, and was fully prepared to do what I could do, to another human being. I somehow restrained and a couple of days later while thinking about the incident finally asked myself a penetrating question, “Why Am I so Angry All the Time”? (Kind of sounds like the recent country western song, doesn't it?)
At the time I was very much involved with horses. My personal identification in life was that of a cowboy, my attire at home was the same thing I had worn most of my life, white T-shirts, Levi's, and cowboy boots. During business hours, I described myself as a cowboy in a suit, who put on slacks, a dress shirt, and a jacket to make more sales. While working one evening with a very skittish, stout, coal black, gorgeous, adopted BLM mustang horse I named Reno, my sister who had heard about the altercation, came out to the horse corrals. She told me about a friend of hers who had received real help with similar issues from a hypnotherapist in Salt Lake City. She then told me that I ought to consider seeing this therapist and gave me her name and phone number. I had already been considering hypnosis, as mentioned above, but didn’t have a contact of someone to see for the therapy.
I put the number in my front shirt pocket, but struggled with the idea of actually making the call. After all, I had this macho image of myself that could never allow taking the ridicule and chiding from my brothers or buddies, and I never wanted to explain to anyone that I was in therapy and going to a therapist. I grew up in the era of the 50’s and 60’s with my generation being raised by military experienced fathers who believed, “Big Boys Don't Cry, (another popular song from the time) and Macho Dudes Don't Show Their Emotions!” It was the razor strap generation of child rearing, “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. Then a week or two later, I had another altercation with someone on the freeway. I knew I had to get some help. I made the call.
Arriving for my session, I felt like someone I had seen on television going to their first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting getting up before the audience, giving their name, and saying, “I am ________ and I am an alcoholic.” Even though it was just me and the therapist, it was very difficult at first for me to open up and explain what the problems were and what I wanted to accomplish, but in so many words it came out, “I am Dennis, and I am a fingernail biting, anger-oholic”.
I explained that I hadn’t always been so, but in recent years it was growing worse to the point that I felt something bad was going to happen in my life if I did not seek help and get things under control. She asked me to explain to her what was going on. I told her about several instances mentioned above. She then explained, in some real detail, hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
What was most interesting and exciting to me was the concept that every conversation, every touch, every smell, every sensory perception, and every thought, from birth until now, is archived in the subconscious mind and can be made available through hypnosis or trance. She explained a fairly detailed explanation of what she called, “The Theory of The Mind”, and how we inductively generate behaviors and deductively challenge and change them. She was the first to explain to me that our thoughts generate our emotions and our emotions generate our behaviors, as we tend to behave the way we feel.
She told me that we were going to explore my subconscious mind thought processes to discover what predominant thoughts, or behavioral scripts as she called them, were driving the emotional content of my behaviors. She explained to me what I would experience in trance and what she wanted me to do, at certain points to reduce emotions and clear up false scripts or inappropriate thoughts and thinking. I was very skeptical, but intrigued as she developed my understanding of the subject of hypnosis.
I understood her explanations well and knew that she was teaching me things that I didn't know. I decided to continue to go along with the session. She began her induction ritual, which quickly became my induction, and I passed into hypnosis or trance. As with most people it was not what I expected at all. I thought I would be in some out of conscious or unconscious state, kind of like when you’re knocked out, or something like that. I was fully aware of everything going on around me, yet was becoming more internally focused the more she talked, I was going deeper and deeper into trance.
She had me go back in an age regression to the time I first started biting my fingernails, or was aware that I was biting my fingernails. She wanted me to understand where that came from and how it developed. With that knowledge I also would have the understanding of what I needed to do to correct it, and handle similar sensitizing situations differently in the future.
My mind regressed back to an experience, as clear as if it were yesterday, to the age of six. I saw myself as a young boy in my grandmother's living room with my grandmother, my mother, and two of my aunts. They were having a heated argument in which I became emotionally involved. It was a very conflicting situation for me. I saw myself standing over in the corner of the room listening to all of the bickering and fighting, biting my fingernails.
I realized then that biting my fingernails had, as the hypnotherapist pointed out to me become a pacifier or an emotional release, called an abreaction. It was something that I had undertaken to do as an emotional release in conflict situations. It was an abreaction to the thoughts and emotions of the conflict, such as people tapping their feet, twiddling fingers, and other bodily ticks, and so forth.
In trance, I could tell the therapist the exact words of the argument. The entire conversation was clear and present to me. The feelings and emotions that I experienced were just as real to me 21 years later as they were the first time I experienced the conflict. I relived the entire situation and circumstance. She took me through the desensitizing process and we discussed this experience at some length and in detail.
I understood the false beliefs and scripting that I had incorporated into my belief system as predominant thoughts, because of my youthful interpretation or misinterpretation of the circumstances and the things said in the argument. The therapist talked me through the conflicts in my mind. I mentally worked through the situation and understood why I was manifesting the external habit of biting my fingernails. I now knew why I had this problem, and habit, all these years and why I had resorted to it in times of conflict.
Again, it was a learned means of venting emotionally from an initial sensitizing event, commonly referred to as an abreaction. This understanding gave me power of choice to react differently in future similar circumstances. This personal knowledge of myself now being a live conscious memory, took on new meanings. New and different interpretations of the circumstances and argument were being developed from my now adult perspective and interpretations, instead of what I had initially thought and understood as a child. This new understanding and interpretation became a source of power to me. I gained wisdom, from this revelation of my life from my subconscious mind. The original thoughts being now altered, my emotions immediately changed and so did my behaviors.
The next thing that she picked up on was that I still had great anxiety from my other bodily abreactions. I could sense I was feeling very uneasy, and moving nervously in the chair, but I did not know what it was. She prompted me, taking me back to the time of my greatest anxiety. We were looking for whatever my subconscious would reveal to the questions she was asking. She instructed me in recollecting the time concerning my most emotional trauma. What was bothering me the most? What was the thing that was binding me down in my mind and spirit the most? (This was the moment when I came to understand the term dis-ease as an uneasiness of mind and spirit that eventually manifests itself in the body. The mind-body connection as we call it today.) She prompted me back to find it. As I regressed back to this experience containing my greatest anxiety, I could see in my minds eye my sister Sherry's face.
Sherry had been killed in a car-train accident 21 years earlier. She had been driving my car and going to a church social one December evening. She crossed a train track, not seeing the oncoming train. She was hit broadside and the car burst into pieces. It was at an unmarked crossing. There were no flashing lights or warning signs of any kind in those days. It was snowing heavily that night which is why she took my car as I had just put on new snow tires. I believe the side windows must have been steamed over or covered with the blowing snow. She drove across the tracks into the oncoming train. I saw her face in my mind, and the hypnotherapist asked me what I was seeing. I was imaging the wreck and the impact of the train hitting the car and my sister. I was seeing my sister Sherry’s face, I didn't understand what was happening.
She asked me to tell her about my sister. I related the above scenario of the accident. She prompted me back further to recall other details, times, or instances where I have experienced deep anxiety over this situation. My mind went back and recalled the circumstance where I could see myself standing in our family room. (I was sixteen at the time of the accident and my sister was 18.) It was some two or three months after Sherry had been killed. I was there alone with my mother and we were discussing the accident.
I told my mother that the accident had made me reflect upon my own life. I had stopped smoking, which I occasionally indulged in, and that I had also stopped drinking the occasional beer with my friends, and some of the other inappropriate things I had been doing. (I was doing some teenage experimenting.) I told her that I was trying to improve my life and get my life back in order because I had come to the realization of just how short life could really be. I told her I knew better than to do such things, and I realized I needed to straighten up. In hypnosis, I could hear my mother's exact words again and could repeat the lengthy conversation word for word, just as before. She was deep in thought, and then she looked at me reflectively and said, “Maybe the reason Sherry had to go was because of you.”
I could hear my mother saying it to me again as I repeated this to the hypnotherapist. The therapist said that she thought I was blaming myself for Sherry’s death. She said, "You feel responsible for her being killed." I said, “I don't think so.” It didn't make much sense to me. She said, “No I think that is it.” Your mind has brought that incident back to you. You went back to your source of your greatest anxiety.”
She handed me this large pillow and asked me to take my right hand and hit the pillow. She told me that as I hit it, I was to verbally say, “I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” I began to laugh, and try to emotionally release the pressure of having to hit the pillow in front of somebody else. I was not feeling any emotion or any real anxiety over it. I had learned to stuff these feelings well, with primary the defense mechanisms of amnesia and denial. I didn't want to believe that she was right.
She then became more insistent with me and said, “Hit the pillow Dennis, and say, I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” I told her I didn't want to do it. Then she became even more insistent and said, “Hit the pillow Dennis and say it.” The next thought that kind of chuckled through my mind was that I was paying real money for this and I ought to go ahead and try what she said.
It had brought back the memory of why I had my other habit. So I raised up my arm, took my fist, and slightly hit the pillow, and said, “I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” She demanded, “Do it again.” On the second time, as my hand came up to hit the pillow, something inside of me snapped. All of a sudden I felt this huge emotional volcano grow and then erupt inside of me. I was no longer able to contain an enormous rage of hurt and anger. My emotional content pent up for years just came bursting out all over. I started beating on the pillow with both hands punching and almost yelling.
I broke down in tears and cried and cried, something which I had not done for many years, (Another naturally healthy emotional venting abreaction.) Now Yelling, “I am not responsible for Sherry's death, I am not responsible for Sherry's death, I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” I said it over and over again, all the while beating on the pillow. I felt like I was going insane. I was losing control, or had lost it. I continued to do this until finally I had another interesting experience that I never expected. I was having this tremendous emotional release. I was hitting the pillow, yelling and venting, releasing those pent up emotions I had carried for years and then it was clear.
I realized I had been angry with my mother for thinking that I could be the cause of Sherry's death. I was angry with God for having taken my sister. I was angry that I had not been able to do something more than just loan her my car. I should have been there. I would have seen the train. I believed it; somehow, Sherry’s death was my fault. What a tremendous personal revelation and insight into my life. These thoughts had been building and compounding my emotional content inside of me for years, being amplified in my subconscious imaginations.
Then the therapist said, “Now tell yourself the truth, say I am NOT responsible for Sherry’s death,” say it over and over again. I did so and began to feel this enormous binding down effect, which had been upon my spirit for years, that I had not recognized or understood just lift off of me. For me it was normal to feel weighted down and heavy in spirit. I did not have conscious recognition that there was any other way to feel. My personality was mostly sober and these feelings were so familiar and normal to me.
I had learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable. As the emotional content was released, I stopped crying, and was again emotionally in control and feeling relieved, she asked me how I felt. I told her that I had just felt great amounts of darkness leave my soul, as though many evil spirits had just left my body. She said, "What do you feel now? I was then feeling the Spirit of the Lord as strong, or stronger, than I had ever experienced in my life. I was being filled with peace, love, light, and truth.
I knew that I had gained an understanding of a process, or one way of: mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, healing the mind-body and soul. I was feeling comforted, a feeling of peace and serenity flowed through me of a magnitude I had never before felt. My spirit and body seemed as though someone had taken a 100-pound sack of potatoes off my left shoulder, and 100 pounds off my right shoulder. I became so accustomed to carrying this mental/emotional weight around that I no longer even recognized it was there. My entire spirit and being felt lighter and free. My body immediately seemed to move more freely.
This experience reconfirmed and renewed my understanding that “the darkness is and was real" and that it left me having no more power over me when I recognized and embraced the truth. The darkness of this world looses power instantly when we finally accept the truth in place of lies, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and deceptions that we have within us. The truth has power to set us free. The understanding of our personal truths can be revealed and understood through these processes.
The therapist then brought me up to a lighter state of trance and suggested that I would remember everything that I had been through. I have clear recollections of it to this day. It has been some twenty two years ago since my first session. I had developed false-beliefs. I had believed lies. She talked me through certain necessary concepts. She re-scripted and reframed my mind and thoughts with the obvious truths about the accident. I like to call it a re-construction of the experience.
I wasn't driving the car. I am not in charge of the weather and did not make it snow so heavily. I was not responsible for Sherry not seeing the train. It was not my feet operating the peddles. After all, I was the one who loaned her my car with the new snow tires so she would be safe. I needed to recognize that good could always come from evil, or accidents. The effect that these things can have upon people can either be good or evil. If they choose to do well because of it then it was a good thing, but that did not make me responsible for what happened. God is in control; He knew and was very much aware of his daughter. I was not in control of what happened. God is still in charge of things like this, not me. Therefore I could not be responsible for the accident.
She talked me through it to where I understood the correct principles. I overcame the “false beliefs" that I had taken on, in a moment of emotional weakness, as my most predominant thoughts. My mother had inadvertently said a pondering thought out loud, trying to figure out why she had to lose a daughter. She had not known the effect it would have upon me for all those years. I had taken on a false belief, which when compounded in my imagination and dumped on my emotions in an over amplified state, weighed me down so heavily. All from the verbalized thoughts of my mother trying to figure out why it was that her daughter was called home.
Then the therapist helped me realize that my mother had not intentionally tried to hurt me, but explained that this is the way false beliefs and inappropriate predominant thoughts can become part of our belief system. It was all so vividly clear to me that what I had just experienced was a way to clear incorrect thoughts, which develop inappropriate feelings and beliefs. A way to remove the effects of those thoughts from the subconscious. It was what had been binding me down and holding me back.
I learned that we can be free from misinterpreted, misrepresented, and inappropriate beliefs brought on by our interpetations of prior experiences. We can also release the fear, guilt, anger, and other negative emotions, harbored in our minds and spirits, from the past. The truth was setting me free. I had been bound down to false beliefs that had weighted my soul. I believe that I never would have overcome these inappropriate predominant thoughts that were making me angry, unhappy, and weighted down, with the false responsibility of my sister's death, until I consciously knew that I was carrying them. It was the root of many problems in my life, of which I had no conscious recognition and yet it was there all along, up until the time of this session.
It is obvious to me now why hypnosis and hypnotherapy, or pondering and mediation, was, is, and has been the answer to many prayers. It is also obvious to me why the adversay would want others to believe these process are evil in nature and not to be studied or understood. Evil influences do attempt to use our natural trance abilities against us, and the devil promotes that it is evil, because he doesn't want people to understand that this is one of the best ways to clear up the lies and deceptions in our lives.
Now that I had this understanding and knowledge, I knew then that I needed to pursue it. I desired the same cleansing benefits for my family, loved ones, and those around me that I cared about. I began to study the materials given to me and bought the books the hypnotherapist had suggested. Over the next several weeks I repeatedly went back and did a number of sessions. I cleared up all kinds of issues in my life, from conflicts with my parents raising me as a child, to those teenage years where you have major disagreements. Everything was becoming clear and understood. Additionally, I had several other strong and powerful emotional releases, which also freed trauma from my body. My life was changing at a rapid rate for the better. I was enjoying and loving life more than I had ever experienced up to that time. My personality completely changed with all the anger, rage and hostility gone. My sales career just naturally took off, life was good, my health naturally improved.
Those who have a desire, to deal with the issues of their lives, can be helped. This can be accomplished in several ways, but for me it came through the processes of Hypnotherapy, by someone with an understanding of the principles of what is to be accomplished. My purpose here is to teach and explain the processes and benefits to be gained from seeking real personal improvement. The hypnotherapist I worked with taught me how to self-hypnotize and to reprogram myself, with positive affirmations or new predominant thoughts, in any area of weakness that I identified. I began to look for other areas of false beliefs. I learned that while in trance, which is when the conscious mind is set aside, so to speak, it being the logical thinking mind, I could call up answers. Although, formulating the basis of questions, to ask myself, while in trance was not done so quickly.
I would review the questions of my life consciously, for which I wanted answers and understanding. I would pray about my questions by asking for divine assistance and then hypnotize myself. In this state of pondering and meditation, my mind could pull up and recall the answers to my questions. I was gaining wisdom and understanding about myself never before thought possible. I also came to understand and believe that this is a process that the Lord has given us, to truly know ourselves. By coming to know and fully understand ourselves we can cleanse, purify, and clear up problems in our lives. We may become free from the chains of negative thinking and the adversary. We can learn to "become our own best behavioral therapist".
With this new found freedom and peace of mind, every relationship in my life immediately improved. My sales skyrocketed and within a few months I was asked to be the sales manager. Then several months later I was asked to be the general manager for the company where I worked. Life was improving all around me with the positive changes that I had learned to make in my predominant thought processes. Now days some call it, “The Secret” or The “Law of Attraction” wherein we attract into our lives the people, places, circumstances, and things, which harmonize with our most important predominant thoughts. We mentally put our thoughts out into the universe and begin to realize that thoughts are things of substance, and like attracts like, and kind attracts kind. It is a natural law of the harvest in that we reap what we sow. This is consistent with everything else we see all around us in nature.
Some six or seven weeks after my first session, I was out working with the horses in the evening and just about to put them up when my brother who was living next door to me came over. He said to me that he wanted to know who I was, and that he did not know me anymore. I asked him, “What do you mean?” He stated that he had been watching me for the past several weeks and that there was something different about me. He said that he had noticed a marked difference in the way I treated animals, my family, and that my overall demeanor was friendlier and happier. His observations and statements took me back because the changes I had been making did not seem to me, to be that perceptible to others. He asked, “What are you doing that is making you so different?”
I thought about it for a moment and then told him that I had been going to a therapist. As I knew would be the case, he began laughing and making fun of me. I told him that I didn't really care what he thought, because of the difference it was making in my life and the changes that I had been able to experience. When he saw that I was serious, he asked me what I had been doing. I told him that I was about finished with the chores and animals, and that if he really wanted to know I'd be happy to visit with him in the house.
We went in and sat down and I explained to him about hypnosis and hypnotherapy and my sessions. I explained to him how every thought, every word, every action, every conversation, every touch, even every sensory perception that we have experienced from birth until now is still in our subconscious mind and can be accessed through trance. I taught him that we can come to understand those things that are binding us down, holding us back, and keeping us from being all we know we want to be and that they can be addressed, dealt with, and changed in trance.
He then said that there were things that have been bothering him and asked if I would help him. I told him that I would try. I had him sit comfortably in an overstuffed chair, as I had done, and simply started doing the same things that I had become so familiar with in the sessions I had been through. He immediately went into trance and regressed back to an issue that had been bothering him, through the same processes that I had learned, he was able to clear it up. An hour or so later he walked out of the house feeling better about himself, his life, and his demeanor and nature also had somewhat changed.
The next day at work he was talking to his best friend and said, “You'll never guess what my brother did for me last night,” and he related the experience. His best friend asked if I would spend some time with him. My brother called me on the phone and we set up a time. I worked with his friend and got the same amazing results. His friend then told someone else and they came over. Then they told someone else, and this person came over. This started a pattern for about a year and a half of me practicing and doing hypnosis and hypnotherapy with a number of people, all with amazing results.
It seemed that I had an intituitive knack for it, and a real understanding, thanks to the therapy and experiences that I had been through myself. I understood the processes personally and was able to duplicate them with others. I never charged a dime for my time, they were all friends or friends of close friends and everyone felt as though they had benefited from the experience. I enjoyed assisting others, there was a satisfaction in helping someone else discover and overcome limiting beliefs in their lives.
Then one night, it was about seven o'clock in the evening, I was putting some sales proposals together at the dining room table while my wife was clearing off the table and finishing the dinner dishes with some of the children. The phone rang and my wife answered it. She started to laugh as she put her hand over the lower part of the phone covering the microphone. She looked at me and said, “Dennis, there is a man on the phone who wants to know if Dr. Parker is home?” She brought the phone over and handed it to me. I answered the phone with my usual salutation, “Dennis Speaking.”
He then asked me, “Are you Dr. Parker?” I answered that he must have the wrong number as there is no doctor here. He then inquired, “Are you the Dennis Parker who worked with __________ last week from the Seattle area while they were visiting in Utah.” I explained that I had spent some time with them as a friend, as I have known them since high school. I explained that I had learned to do a few things that seemed to be helpful to others.
The voice on the phone continued, “I have visited with ____________ and they told me what you did, and that they feel better than they have felt in many years. Whatever you did for them I want you to do for me.” He explained that he had being seeing the same counselor for the past 18 years. I told him that I was not qualified to work with him and that what I had done, I did for some friends. He persisted and told me that money was not an object for him, that he would be willing to fly to Utah, put himself up in a hotel, stay as long as I thought he needed to, and do as many sessions as it took for him to receive similar results.
I then explained to him in clearer language that I was not a therapist and that he need not buy a ticket as I would not be seeing him, nor would I work with him. He asked me what I thought he should do. I told him that I thought he should go out and find a local A.C.H.E. or other competently trained Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist.
I wished him the best of luck in his search and hoped that he would be all right. With the phone back in place hanging on the wall, my wife and I then had, “The Talk.” We discussed what I had been doing in all earnestness and decided that if I were going to continue to attempt to help others, and continue to study the processes myself, that I needed to receive further training.
I contacted the therapist that had been working with me and asked what it took to become a Hypnotherapist. She explained to me what school she had attended and where to find information on the courses and so forth. I called the school and enrolled the very next day. I spent the next year attending classes, 10 hours a day on Saturdays for most of the year, as well as doing the homework assignments and reading the books and manuals, that were required to accomplish the courses. In 1991 I became Certified as a Clinical Hypnotherapist through The American Council of Hypnotist Examiners, (A.C.H.E.). I have attended many conferences and workshops keeping up with my continuing education and recertifying requirements ever since. I have been a presenter at ACHE annual conferences, and since 2003 I have been a Board Approved Examiner, Instructor, and Approved School Operator.
I tell these stories so that you understand where I'm coming from and where I've been. Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy has greatly changed and enriched my life, or from a Christian viewpoint, pondering, mediation, and prayer, has greatly blessed my life. When you seek and obtain the spirit of the Lord in these processes, trance becomes the state of pondering and meditation spoken of in the Scriptures. The insights of the Holy Spirit, which brings all things to our remembrance makes these sessions Holy as we are healed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It becomes something different than what the world normally perceives as simply mental trance states or hypnosis. It is wonderful knowledge to obtain knowing that eventually you can, “Become your own, Best Behavioral Therapist.”
You will learn to do your own work as you persist in gaining the knowledge to work with your own subconscious and “glean the wisdom of your subconscious mind. ”May God Bless you, in learning those lessons in this life that are calculated for our learning and growth, from each of our many experiences. One day every experience of our lives can turn for our good, as we learn the good to be understood from them. My view is that this life is a school where we are to learn from our own experience, the good from the evil. We are to learn to follow our conscience and discern right from wrong, light from dark, and reason and choose appropriately. Utilizing our agency of choice to make the most out of our opportunities, whatever they may be as our starting point.
Our Father in Heaven generally attempts to stay anonymous in our lives, as much as possible, allowing us to grow in our own wisdom and understanding. After reading the above, if you should feel to move ahead in your own life, and have positive feelings of learning these processes, I would suggest to you that it might not be a coincidence. I believe that a coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous. All the therapy I do is Christian Principled and utilizes Family Values.
Please See: www.christianhypnotherapy.net
Sales Mind Management: http://salesmindmanagement.com/
Stress Mind Management: http://stressmindmanagement.com/Stress.html
Golf Mind Management: http://golfmindmanagement.com/AboutDennis.html
It's All in There!
“The magic of trance, or pondering and meditation, is that everything we have experienced in life can be accessed through proper hypnotic trance methods and procedures.”
”Our subconscious mind is the area of our mind which contains our memories, imaginations, and emotions, it stores every thought, every touch, every smell, every conversation, and every sensory perception we have experienced in this life's existence, from Birth until Now, and these can all be accessed through TRANCE!!!”
Our thoughts generate our emotions; our emotions generate our behaviors as we tend to behave the way we feel. Our Imagination can amplify any thought from 0 - 2,500 times making or turning any accepted beliefs or predominant thoughts into major emotions, and behaviors.
Out of Control Maladaptive Behaviors are fixations of these predominant thoughts that when challenged and changed appropriately, can immediately bring a release of accumulated emotional content which can be volcanic, but very relieving and life changing, as the predominant thoughts are replaced by new more appropriate thoughts.
We see the Hollywood style version of this phenomena in shows like, First Blood when Stallone had finally reached his mental capacity to hold the emotional content in any longer and he broke down and cried, with the Major talking him through it, releasing the pent up feelings . Or Mel Gibson’s Balcony scene, in Ransom, where he emotionally vented the over amplified sensations of his son being kidnapped and in danger.
Some call this a mental or emotional breakdown, as the capacity of one’s ability to hold it all in or keep the lid on it as we say has been reached. There is no more room to store additional emotional content. Because trance accesses the subconscious memories, imaginations, and emotions, reviewing our life’s stimulating events in trance, may bring a release of pent up emotional content. We want to remember that trance is natural and we go in and out of varying trance states all day long. We are most readily familiar with the state of daydreaming.
We will discuss what is being called hypnotherapy as several varying methods of achieving predominant thought changes for positive goal directed purposes. We will discuss a number of the techniques associated with the various methods, but the heart of Hypnotherapy is assisting the client in this discovery of, challenging and changing of, non-productive inappropriate predominate thoughts, and the release of the accumulated emotional content. I will address and develop all of these ideas in subsequent chapters, but here is how it worked for me with my first hypnotherapy session.
My first experience with this phenomena and how I got into Hypnotherapy is as follows:
Some 22 years ago, I came to a point in my life when I began earnestly seeking personal improvement. There were a number of things that I wanted to change and overcome. Once I put my foot on the path of improving my life and circumstances, I acknowledged there were a number of things I had always known, that I wanted to do and overcome. Several of them became foremost in my mind.
For one, I wanted to overcome the habit of biting my fingernails. I bit my fingernails at emotionally tense times. I felt to pray about it and see what direction I could receive. One day, while listening to the radio in the car as I drove to work, I heard an advertisement about people who were stopping smoking, losing weight, and overcoming other habits, through hypnosis. I felt quite strongly that this might be an answer for me as well. I was surprised by my feelings, as I had never been involved with hypnosis before, nor had any understanding of what really takes place. I had all the usual prejudices that people have from seeing stage hypnosis. It must be mind control and a tool of the devil, and so forth. (This I will discuss in detail in later chapters) Yet, I felt a strong positive impression about it. I was curious to see if it could give me the assistance and help I was contemplating.
Additionally, I recognized and knew that it took very little to set me off into a rage of anger. This self-defeating, maladaptive behavior was not really working for me as a commissioned sales rep. Even though I attempted to be enthusiastic and friendly, and build instant relationships as taught by my sales trainers, my internal demeanor would come through far too often, and people had other options than having to deal with or buy from an angry pissed off salesman. This behavioral personality trait, or I should say character flaw, was really holding me back from being who I wanted to be, and keeping me from providing more substantially for my family. (11 young children all at home)
I describe this period of my life as one where my dog (Smokey) still hesitantly befriended me with coaxing, my children scattered and seemingly had other things to do besides be around me, and my wonderful wife, bless her soul, tolerated and patiently put up with me. She is truly a saint, an unselfish always serving wife, mother and grandmother, beloved of her family and all who know her. She is the heart and center of our family and the primary influence in our children’s lives. She unconditionally loved me.
Then one day, I had another of several recent altercations at the time. Someone from a boat trailer shop incorrectly repaired an axle on my boat trailer, from my point of view, and in my estimation grossly overcharged me at the same time. The situation became very heated and potentially violent. The person I was dealing with went to the back to get something and came back with a knife, strapped to his side, that wasn’t there before. I realized that I was on the edge of being completely out of control in raging anger, and was fully prepared to do what I could do, to another human being. I somehow restrained and a couple of days later while thinking about the incident finally asked myself a penetrating question, “Why Am I so Angry All the Time”? (Kind of sounds like the recent country western song, doesn't it?)
At the time I was very much involved with horses. My personal identification in life was that of a cowboy, my attire at home was the same thing I had worn most of my life, white T-shirts, Levi's, and cowboy boots. During business hours, I described myself as a cowboy in a suit, who put on slacks, a dress shirt, and a jacket to make more sales. While working one evening with a very skittish, stout, coal black, gorgeous, adopted BLM mustang horse I named Reno, my sister who had heard about the altercation, came out to the horse corrals. She told me about a friend of hers who had received real help with similar issues from a hypnotherapist in Salt Lake City. She then told me that I ought to consider seeing this therapist and gave me her name and phone number. I had already been considering hypnosis, as mentioned above, but didn’t have a contact of someone to see for the therapy.
I put the number in my front shirt pocket, but struggled with the idea of actually making the call. After all, I had this macho image of myself that could never allow taking the ridicule and chiding from my brothers or buddies, and I never wanted to explain to anyone that I was in therapy and going to a therapist. I grew up in the era of the 50’s and 60’s with my generation being raised by military experienced fathers who believed, “Big Boys Don't Cry, (another popular song from the time) and Macho Dudes Don't Show Their Emotions!” It was the razor strap generation of child rearing, “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. Then a week or two later, I had another altercation with someone on the freeway. I knew I had to get some help. I made the call.
Arriving for my session, I felt like someone I had seen on television going to their first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting getting up before the audience, giving their name, and saying, “I am ________ and I am an alcoholic.” Even though it was just me and the therapist, it was very difficult at first for me to open up and explain what the problems were and what I wanted to accomplish, but in so many words it came out, “I am Dennis, and I am a fingernail biting, anger-oholic”.
I explained that I hadn’t always been so, but in recent years it was growing worse to the point that I felt something bad was going to happen in my life if I did not seek help and get things under control. She asked me to explain to her what was going on. I told her about several instances mentioned above. She then explained, in some real detail, hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
What was most interesting and exciting to me was the concept that every conversation, every touch, every smell, every sensory perception, and every thought, from birth until now, is archived in the subconscious mind and can be made available through hypnosis or trance. She explained a fairly detailed explanation of what she called, “The Theory of The Mind”, and how we inductively generate behaviors and deductively challenge and change them. She was the first to explain to me that our thoughts generate our emotions and our emotions generate our behaviors, as we tend to behave the way we feel.
She told me that we were going to explore my subconscious mind thought processes to discover what predominant thoughts, or behavioral scripts as she called them, were driving the emotional content of my behaviors. She explained to me what I would experience in trance and what she wanted me to do, at certain points to reduce emotions and clear up false scripts or inappropriate thoughts and thinking. I was very skeptical, but intrigued as she developed my understanding of the subject of hypnosis.
I understood her explanations well and knew that she was teaching me things that I didn't know. I decided to continue to go along with the session. She began her induction ritual, which quickly became my induction, and I passed into hypnosis or trance. As with most people it was not what I expected at all. I thought I would be in some out of conscious or unconscious state, kind of like when you’re knocked out, or something like that. I was fully aware of everything going on around me, yet was becoming more internally focused the more she talked, I was going deeper and deeper into trance.
She had me go back in an age regression to the time I first started biting my fingernails, or was aware that I was biting my fingernails. She wanted me to understand where that came from and how it developed. With that knowledge I also would have the understanding of what I needed to do to correct it, and handle similar sensitizing situations differently in the future.
My mind regressed back to an experience, as clear as if it were yesterday, to the age of six. I saw myself as a young boy in my grandmother's living room with my grandmother, my mother, and two of my aunts. They were having a heated argument in which I became emotionally involved. It was a very conflicting situation for me. I saw myself standing over in the corner of the room listening to all of the bickering and fighting, biting my fingernails.
I realized then that biting my fingernails had, as the hypnotherapist pointed out to me become a pacifier or an emotional release, called an abreaction. It was something that I had undertaken to do as an emotional release in conflict situations. It was an abreaction to the thoughts and emotions of the conflict, such as people tapping their feet, twiddling fingers, and other bodily ticks, and so forth.
In trance, I could tell the therapist the exact words of the argument. The entire conversation was clear and present to me. The feelings and emotions that I experienced were just as real to me 21 years later as they were the first time I experienced the conflict. I relived the entire situation and circumstance. She took me through the desensitizing process and we discussed this experience at some length and in detail.
I understood the false beliefs and scripting that I had incorporated into my belief system as predominant thoughts, because of my youthful interpretation or misinterpretation of the circumstances and the things said in the argument. The therapist talked me through the conflicts in my mind. I mentally worked through the situation and understood why I was manifesting the external habit of biting my fingernails. I now knew why I had this problem, and habit, all these years and why I had resorted to it in times of conflict.
Again, it was a learned means of venting emotionally from an initial sensitizing event, commonly referred to as an abreaction. This understanding gave me power of choice to react differently in future similar circumstances. This personal knowledge of myself now being a live conscious memory, took on new meanings. New and different interpretations of the circumstances and argument were being developed from my now adult perspective and interpretations, instead of what I had initially thought and understood as a child. This new understanding and interpretation became a source of power to me. I gained wisdom, from this revelation of my life from my subconscious mind. The original thoughts being now altered, my emotions immediately changed and so did my behaviors.
The next thing that she picked up on was that I still had great anxiety from my other bodily abreactions. I could sense I was feeling very uneasy, and moving nervously in the chair, but I did not know what it was. She prompted me, taking me back to the time of my greatest anxiety. We were looking for whatever my subconscious would reveal to the questions she was asking. She instructed me in recollecting the time concerning my most emotional trauma. What was bothering me the most? What was the thing that was binding me down in my mind and spirit the most? (This was the moment when I came to understand the term dis-ease as an uneasiness of mind and spirit that eventually manifests itself in the body. The mind-body connection as we call it today.) She prompted me back to find it. As I regressed back to this experience containing my greatest anxiety, I could see in my minds eye my sister Sherry's face.
Sherry had been killed in a car-train accident 21 years earlier. She had been driving my car and going to a church social one December evening. She crossed a train track, not seeing the oncoming train. She was hit broadside and the car burst into pieces. It was at an unmarked crossing. There were no flashing lights or warning signs of any kind in those days. It was snowing heavily that night which is why she took my car as I had just put on new snow tires. I believe the side windows must have been steamed over or covered with the blowing snow. She drove across the tracks into the oncoming train. I saw her face in my mind, and the hypnotherapist asked me what I was seeing. I was imaging the wreck and the impact of the train hitting the car and my sister. I was seeing my sister Sherry’s face, I didn't understand what was happening.
She asked me to tell her about my sister. I related the above scenario of the accident. She prompted me back further to recall other details, times, or instances where I have experienced deep anxiety over this situation. My mind went back and recalled the circumstance where I could see myself standing in our family room. (I was sixteen at the time of the accident and my sister was 18.) It was some two or three months after Sherry had been killed. I was there alone with my mother and we were discussing the accident.
I told my mother that the accident had made me reflect upon my own life. I had stopped smoking, which I occasionally indulged in, and that I had also stopped drinking the occasional beer with my friends, and some of the other inappropriate things I had been doing. (I was doing some teenage experimenting.) I told her that I was trying to improve my life and get my life back in order because I had come to the realization of just how short life could really be. I told her I knew better than to do such things, and I realized I needed to straighten up. In hypnosis, I could hear my mother's exact words again and could repeat the lengthy conversation word for word, just as before. She was deep in thought, and then she looked at me reflectively and said, “Maybe the reason Sherry had to go was because of you.”
I could hear my mother saying it to me again as I repeated this to the hypnotherapist. The therapist said that she thought I was blaming myself for Sherry’s death. She said, "You feel responsible for her being killed." I said, “I don't think so.” It didn't make much sense to me. She said, “No I think that is it.” Your mind has brought that incident back to you. You went back to your source of your greatest anxiety.”
She handed me this large pillow and asked me to take my right hand and hit the pillow. She told me that as I hit it, I was to verbally say, “I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” I began to laugh, and try to emotionally release the pressure of having to hit the pillow in front of somebody else. I was not feeling any emotion or any real anxiety over it. I had learned to stuff these feelings well, with primary the defense mechanisms of amnesia and denial. I didn't want to believe that she was right.
She then became more insistent with me and said, “Hit the pillow Dennis, and say, I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” I told her I didn't want to do it. Then she became even more insistent and said, “Hit the pillow Dennis and say it.” The next thought that kind of chuckled through my mind was that I was paying real money for this and I ought to go ahead and try what she said.
It had brought back the memory of why I had my other habit. So I raised up my arm, took my fist, and slightly hit the pillow, and said, “I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” She demanded, “Do it again.” On the second time, as my hand came up to hit the pillow, something inside of me snapped. All of a sudden I felt this huge emotional volcano grow and then erupt inside of me. I was no longer able to contain an enormous rage of hurt and anger. My emotional content pent up for years just came bursting out all over. I started beating on the pillow with both hands punching and almost yelling.
I broke down in tears and cried and cried, something which I had not done for many years, (Another naturally healthy emotional venting abreaction.) Now Yelling, “I am not responsible for Sherry's death, I am not responsible for Sherry's death, I am not responsible for Sherry's death.” I said it over and over again, all the while beating on the pillow. I felt like I was going insane. I was losing control, or had lost it. I continued to do this until finally I had another interesting experience that I never expected. I was having this tremendous emotional release. I was hitting the pillow, yelling and venting, releasing those pent up emotions I had carried for years and then it was clear.
I realized I had been angry with my mother for thinking that I could be the cause of Sherry's death. I was angry with God for having taken my sister. I was angry that I had not been able to do something more than just loan her my car. I should have been there. I would have seen the train. I believed it; somehow, Sherry’s death was my fault. What a tremendous personal revelation and insight into my life. These thoughts had been building and compounding my emotional content inside of me for years, being amplified in my subconscious imaginations.
Then the therapist said, “Now tell yourself the truth, say I am NOT responsible for Sherry’s death,” say it over and over again. I did so and began to feel this enormous binding down effect, which had been upon my spirit for years, that I had not recognized or understood just lift off of me. For me it was normal to feel weighted down and heavy in spirit. I did not have conscious recognition that there was any other way to feel. My personality was mostly sober and these feelings were so familiar and normal to me.
I had learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable. As the emotional content was released, I stopped crying, and was again emotionally in control and feeling relieved, she asked me how I felt. I told her that I had just felt great amounts of darkness leave my soul, as though many evil spirits had just left my body. She said, "What do you feel now? I was then feeling the Spirit of the Lord as strong, or stronger, than I had ever experienced in my life. I was being filled with peace, love, light, and truth.
I knew that I had gained an understanding of a process, or one way of: mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, healing the mind-body and soul. I was feeling comforted, a feeling of peace and serenity flowed through me of a magnitude I had never before felt. My spirit and body seemed as though someone had taken a 100-pound sack of potatoes off my left shoulder, and 100 pounds off my right shoulder. I became so accustomed to carrying this mental/emotional weight around that I no longer even recognized it was there. My entire spirit and being felt lighter and free. My body immediately seemed to move more freely.
This experience reconfirmed and renewed my understanding that “the darkness is and was real" and that it left me having no more power over me when I recognized and embraced the truth. The darkness of this world looses power instantly when we finally accept the truth in place of lies, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and deceptions that we have within us. The truth has power to set us free. The understanding of our personal truths can be revealed and understood through these processes.
The therapist then brought me up to a lighter state of trance and suggested that I would remember everything that I had been through. I have clear recollections of it to this day. It has been some twenty two years ago since my first session. I had developed false-beliefs. I had believed lies. She talked me through certain necessary concepts. She re-scripted and reframed my mind and thoughts with the obvious truths about the accident. I like to call it a re-construction of the experience.
I wasn't driving the car. I am not in charge of the weather and did not make it snow so heavily. I was not responsible for Sherry not seeing the train. It was not my feet operating the peddles. After all, I was the one who loaned her my car with the new snow tires so she would be safe. I needed to recognize that good could always come from evil, or accidents. The effect that these things can have upon people can either be good or evil. If they choose to do well because of it then it was a good thing, but that did not make me responsible for what happened. God is in control; He knew and was very much aware of his daughter. I was not in control of what happened. God is still in charge of things like this, not me. Therefore I could not be responsible for the accident.
She talked me through it to where I understood the correct principles. I overcame the “false beliefs" that I had taken on, in a moment of emotional weakness, as my most predominant thoughts. My mother had inadvertently said a pondering thought out loud, trying to figure out why she had to lose a daughter. She had not known the effect it would have upon me for all those years. I had taken on a false belief, which when compounded in my imagination and dumped on my emotions in an over amplified state, weighed me down so heavily. All from the verbalized thoughts of my mother trying to figure out why it was that her daughter was called home.
Then the therapist helped me realize that my mother had not intentionally tried to hurt me, but explained that this is the way false beliefs and inappropriate predominant thoughts can become part of our belief system. It was all so vividly clear to me that what I had just experienced was a way to clear incorrect thoughts, which develop inappropriate feelings and beliefs. A way to remove the effects of those thoughts from the subconscious. It was what had been binding me down and holding me back.
I learned that we can be free from misinterpreted, misrepresented, and inappropriate beliefs brought on by our interpetations of prior experiences. We can also release the fear, guilt, anger, and other negative emotions, harbored in our minds and spirits, from the past. The truth was setting me free. I had been bound down to false beliefs that had weighted my soul. I believe that I never would have overcome these inappropriate predominant thoughts that were making me angry, unhappy, and weighted down, with the false responsibility of my sister's death, until I consciously knew that I was carrying them. It was the root of many problems in my life, of which I had no conscious recognition and yet it was there all along, up until the time of this session.
It is obvious to me now why hypnosis and hypnotherapy, or pondering and mediation, was, is, and has been the answer to many prayers. It is also obvious to me why the adversay would want others to believe these process are evil in nature and not to be studied or understood. Evil influences do attempt to use our natural trance abilities against us, and the devil promotes that it is evil, because he doesn't want people to understand that this is one of the best ways to clear up the lies and deceptions in our lives.
Now that I had this understanding and knowledge, I knew then that I needed to pursue it. I desired the same cleansing benefits for my family, loved ones, and those around me that I cared about. I began to study the materials given to me and bought the books the hypnotherapist had suggested. Over the next several weeks I repeatedly went back and did a number of sessions. I cleared up all kinds of issues in my life, from conflicts with my parents raising me as a child, to those teenage years where you have major disagreements. Everything was becoming clear and understood. Additionally, I had several other strong and powerful emotional releases, which also freed trauma from my body. My life was changing at a rapid rate for the better. I was enjoying and loving life more than I had ever experienced up to that time. My personality completely changed with all the anger, rage and hostility gone. My sales career just naturally took off, life was good, my health naturally improved.
Those who have a desire, to deal with the issues of their lives, can be helped. This can be accomplished in several ways, but for me it came through the processes of Hypnotherapy, by someone with an understanding of the principles of what is to be accomplished. My purpose here is to teach and explain the processes and benefits to be gained from seeking real personal improvement. The hypnotherapist I worked with taught me how to self-hypnotize and to reprogram myself, with positive affirmations or new predominant thoughts, in any area of weakness that I identified. I began to look for other areas of false beliefs. I learned that while in trance, which is when the conscious mind is set aside, so to speak, it being the logical thinking mind, I could call up answers. Although, formulating the basis of questions, to ask myself, while in trance was not done so quickly.
I would review the questions of my life consciously, for which I wanted answers and understanding. I would pray about my questions by asking for divine assistance and then hypnotize myself. In this state of pondering and meditation, my mind could pull up and recall the answers to my questions. I was gaining wisdom and understanding about myself never before thought possible. I also came to understand and believe that this is a process that the Lord has given us, to truly know ourselves. By coming to know and fully understand ourselves we can cleanse, purify, and clear up problems in our lives. We may become free from the chains of negative thinking and the adversary. We can learn to "become our own best behavioral therapist".
With this new found freedom and peace of mind, every relationship in my life immediately improved. My sales skyrocketed and within a few months I was asked to be the sales manager. Then several months later I was asked to be the general manager for the company where I worked. Life was improving all around me with the positive changes that I had learned to make in my predominant thought processes. Now days some call it, “The Secret” or The “Law of Attraction” wherein we attract into our lives the people, places, circumstances, and things, which harmonize with our most important predominant thoughts. We mentally put our thoughts out into the universe and begin to realize that thoughts are things of substance, and like attracts like, and kind attracts kind. It is a natural law of the harvest in that we reap what we sow. This is consistent with everything else we see all around us in nature.
Some six or seven weeks after my first session, I was out working with the horses in the evening and just about to put them up when my brother who was living next door to me came over. He said to me that he wanted to know who I was, and that he did not know me anymore. I asked him, “What do you mean?” He stated that he had been watching me for the past several weeks and that there was something different about me. He said that he had noticed a marked difference in the way I treated animals, my family, and that my overall demeanor was friendlier and happier. His observations and statements took me back because the changes I had been making did not seem to me, to be that perceptible to others. He asked, “What are you doing that is making you so different?”
I thought about it for a moment and then told him that I had been going to a therapist. As I knew would be the case, he began laughing and making fun of me. I told him that I didn't really care what he thought, because of the difference it was making in my life and the changes that I had been able to experience. When he saw that I was serious, he asked me what I had been doing. I told him that I was about finished with the chores and animals, and that if he really wanted to know I'd be happy to visit with him in the house.
We went in and sat down and I explained to him about hypnosis and hypnotherapy and my sessions. I explained to him how every thought, every word, every action, every conversation, every touch, even every sensory perception that we have experienced from birth until now is still in our subconscious mind and can be accessed through trance. I taught him that we can come to understand those things that are binding us down, holding us back, and keeping us from being all we know we want to be and that they can be addressed, dealt with, and changed in trance.
He then said that there were things that have been bothering him and asked if I would help him. I told him that I would try. I had him sit comfortably in an overstuffed chair, as I had done, and simply started doing the same things that I had become so familiar with in the sessions I had been through. He immediately went into trance and regressed back to an issue that had been bothering him, through the same processes that I had learned, he was able to clear it up. An hour or so later he walked out of the house feeling better about himself, his life, and his demeanor and nature also had somewhat changed.
The next day at work he was talking to his best friend and said, “You'll never guess what my brother did for me last night,” and he related the experience. His best friend asked if I would spend some time with him. My brother called me on the phone and we set up a time. I worked with his friend and got the same amazing results. His friend then told someone else and they came over. Then they told someone else, and this person came over. This started a pattern for about a year and a half of me practicing and doing hypnosis and hypnotherapy with a number of people, all with amazing results.
It seemed that I had an intituitive knack for it, and a real understanding, thanks to the therapy and experiences that I had been through myself. I understood the processes personally and was able to duplicate them with others. I never charged a dime for my time, they were all friends or friends of close friends and everyone felt as though they had benefited from the experience. I enjoyed assisting others, there was a satisfaction in helping someone else discover and overcome limiting beliefs in their lives.
Then one night, it was about seven o'clock in the evening, I was putting some sales proposals together at the dining room table while my wife was clearing off the table and finishing the dinner dishes with some of the children. The phone rang and my wife answered it. She started to laugh as she put her hand over the lower part of the phone covering the microphone. She looked at me and said, “Dennis, there is a man on the phone who wants to know if Dr. Parker is home?” She brought the phone over and handed it to me. I answered the phone with my usual salutation, “Dennis Speaking.”
He then asked me, “Are you Dr. Parker?” I answered that he must have the wrong number as there is no doctor here. He then inquired, “Are you the Dennis Parker who worked with __________ last week from the Seattle area while they were visiting in Utah.” I explained that I had spent some time with them as a friend, as I have known them since high school. I explained that I had learned to do a few things that seemed to be helpful to others.
The voice on the phone continued, “I have visited with ____________ and they told me what you did, and that they feel better than they have felt in many years. Whatever you did for them I want you to do for me.” He explained that he had being seeing the same counselor for the past 18 years. I told him that I was not qualified to work with him and that what I had done, I did for some friends. He persisted and told me that money was not an object for him, that he would be willing to fly to Utah, put himself up in a hotel, stay as long as I thought he needed to, and do as many sessions as it took for him to receive similar results.
I then explained to him in clearer language that I was not a therapist and that he need not buy a ticket as I would not be seeing him, nor would I work with him. He asked me what I thought he should do. I told him that I thought he should go out and find a local A.C.H.E. or other competently trained Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist.
I wished him the best of luck in his search and hoped that he would be all right. With the phone back in place hanging on the wall, my wife and I then had, “The Talk.” We discussed what I had been doing in all earnestness and decided that if I were going to continue to attempt to help others, and continue to study the processes myself, that I needed to receive further training.
I contacted the therapist that had been working with me and asked what it took to become a Hypnotherapist. She explained to me what school she had attended and where to find information on the courses and so forth. I called the school and enrolled the very next day. I spent the next year attending classes, 10 hours a day on Saturdays for most of the year, as well as doing the homework assignments and reading the books and manuals, that were required to accomplish the courses. In 1991 I became Certified as a Clinical Hypnotherapist through The American Council of Hypnotist Examiners, (A.C.H.E.). I have attended many conferences and workshops keeping up with my continuing education and recertifying requirements ever since. I have been a presenter at ACHE annual conferences, and since 2003 I have been a Board Approved Examiner, Instructor, and Approved School Operator.
I tell these stories so that you understand where I'm coming from and where I've been. Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy has greatly changed and enriched my life, or from a Christian viewpoint, pondering, mediation, and prayer, has greatly blessed my life. When you seek and obtain the spirit of the Lord in these processes, trance becomes the state of pondering and meditation spoken of in the Scriptures. The insights of the Holy Spirit, which brings all things to our remembrance makes these sessions Holy as we are healed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It becomes something different than what the world normally perceives as simply mental trance states or hypnosis. It is wonderful knowledge to obtain knowing that eventually you can, “Become your own, Best Behavioral Therapist.”
You will learn to do your own work as you persist in gaining the knowledge to work with your own subconscious and “glean the wisdom of your subconscious mind. ”May God Bless you, in learning those lessons in this life that are calculated for our learning and growth, from each of our many experiences. One day every experience of our lives can turn for our good, as we learn the good to be understood from them. My view is that this life is a school where we are to learn from our own experience, the good from the evil. We are to learn to follow our conscience and discern right from wrong, light from dark, and reason and choose appropriately. Utilizing our agency of choice to make the most out of our opportunities, whatever they may be as our starting point.
Our Father in Heaven generally attempts to stay anonymous in our lives, as much as possible, allowing us to grow in our own wisdom and understanding. After reading the above, if you should feel to move ahead in your own life, and have positive feelings of learning these processes, I would suggest to you that it might not be a coincidence. I believe that a coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous. All the therapy I do is Christian Principled and utilizes Family Values.
Please See: www.christianhypnotherapy.net
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