For many people, a process based approach to resolving trauma and anxiety or depression is far more effective than talking it through. This is because ‘over-talking’ can actually embed the problems deeper inside, confirming the issues.

Some counselors are brilliant at steering the conversation away to a positive or at least a constructive spin, but this can take many sessions to achieve. Hypnotherapy and NLP can be applied without the ‘nitty gritty’ details of the issue because they represent a process based approach.

One example is with a client, Paul, who was referred to me by a psychologist, for the very reason that talking just wasn’t getting though and change simply wasn’t being made. The client had a violent history and harbored much deep seated pain. Every time I asked him to access a positive memory it was intertwined with a painful one. This meant that my best opportunity for success, at least at the start, was straight hypnosis in order to calm the mind and begin to help him to gain a new perspective.

After two sessions we were able to do some NLP where further changework could happen. At this stage of the process I still did not need to know the details of what happened. Every time he started to ruminate I told him that it was better that we didn’t discuss it. I simply ran the process, with just a rough idea of what he had experienced. I didn’t want to give Paul the opportunity to begin ruminating as he had with the psychologist.

Only when Paul had shown some progress did we look at the issue in more detail, but even then, it was not necessary. Hypnotherapy is a process based approach, as is NLP. You don’t need to be as psychologically damaged as Paul was back then to appreciate this great benefit. There are many clients who do not wish to discuss the details of their issues, and I don’t need to know. I just need an outline so that i can better gauge where to tread and how softly, but the process does the heavy lifting.

If you need to talk – that’s fine too, as long as you are not hammering the nail in deeper, so to speak. If you are, I will whisk in and divert your attention with my process based approach. Do you have something to sort out?