Session #234: Joseph Onesta on Really Difficult Clients

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 234 Joseph OTA on really difficult clients. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. It’s kind of an amazing thing how sometimes just one single statement changes the way you look at how you work with your clients as a hypnotist, or in some ways even motivates how you kind of address the entire world around you.

And it comes back for me to a moment where I had been trained at one point to ask a lot of very heavy screening questions before a client comes in to deem whether or not they are absolutely motivated to come in. And it was the late great Michael Elner who then muttered around the phrase about, Oh, I screened away this person for stop smoking because quote, they were more difficult.

And as he put it, you’re only taking the easy ones. Part of them’s calling you for a reason. You could help them out. And I give you that as a framework and that’s a bit of a nuance that this conversation is gonna revisit because over the years going to the hypno thoughts, live convention and interacting online, getting to know and getting to meet Joseph OTA out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and just clearly from the first interaction, realizing this is a person and I’m sure gonna hear it as well, is absolutely sincere and genuine in the work that he does and really quite openly as most of these podcast sessions are.

This was a conversation I’ve been wanting to. For years and so glad we were able to record it and share it with you, that you’re gonna hear the incredible backstory of transitioning out of a career in education, doing incredible support work, and then out of random circumstances connecting with hypnosis, having a bit of a miraculous shift in his own life to the place where now clearly there are events that were still there.

Yet it’s the perception around it that truly changed. What really drew me to having Joseph come on here and just have this conversation was the theme of exactly what the title of this episode is all about, working with quote, really difficult clients. The mindset that very often we’re led to believe that this thing is gonna be more difficult than others.

And you’re gonna hear an incredible mindset around, yes, sometimes clients are coming in with, let’s use this terminology of preexisting conditions beyond the habitual thing, the situational thing they wish to address. And this very artful, very respectful, very appropriate way of still maintaining that scope of practice while still serving that person.

Whether their goal is to change some habits, let go of a specific fear, improve themselves in a way that they are certain they can. And yet they need one more little element, and perhaps it’s hypnosis, perhaps it’s us that could help them to make that happen. So this is a conversation that I’m going to be listening to myself once again, just some amazing nuances, some amazing stories.

And check out Joseph’s website, which is linked over in the show [email protected]. And plus as well, if you head over to Hypnosis Training Institute. Org. That’s where you’ll actually see the link for the upcoming 2020 Winter Hypnosis Conference. This is happening in February, 2020 at the rather Familiar Orleans Hotel in Casino.

This is the convention hosted by the I C B C H H P T I put on by Richard Non Guard. The keynote this coming year is some guy who wears a little too much purple and talks about money and something about weather patterns, making it rain. We’ll have to have him on sometime soon. And actually last week we had Richard non guard talking about this upcoming event as well, so you can check out that site.

I’m mentioning it here because Joseph is one of the speakers at that convention who I’m gonna be there in the room myself, listening to some of the work he’s got on using Schema theory. Theory to sharpen hypnosis sessions. Just an amazing topic, which this conversation peaked my curiosity of that. And also, while you’re online, check out hypnotic business systems.com.

Towards the end of the conversation, Joseph talks about a strategy that he and I had discussed. It’s something that I’ve been doing for years. Something that we call the Velvet Rope Strategy. The method of making it so there’s one more extra step between your client calling and scheduling with you, which you’re gonna hear.

Joseph’s results mirror mine, that it really helps to streamline your practice and really help to set the foundation for a successful client experience. Hypnotic business Systems is the entire all access pass to my Hypnosis business training library, not just theory. It’s also done for you marketing methods and plugin tools you can put in right away within your business.

Get the all access pass over at Hypnotic Business Systems. Dot com. And with that, here comes an amazing conversation, discussing everything to when and where to use regression or not how it is. We may or may not remember the hypnotic experience. An incredible story of Joseph amazingly looks fantastic.

Dropping about 60 or 70 pounds through fasting and identifying, here’s a specific market that needs hypnosis and needs to learn more. And plus some amazing nuances of working on, we’ll phrase it this way, the perception of difficult clients. And with that, this is an amazing conversation. You’re gonna wanna listen to this one a few more times.

Here we go. Session number 234, Joseph OTA on really difficult clients. I was actually running a program at AIDS Project Los Angeles that was mostly volunteers. And I had two volunteers who were hypnotists. One did group self hypnosis training, the other did one on one. And I was impressed by both of them.

I didn’t believe in hypnosis at the time, but my clients loved them. And the one that thing that really convinced me to actually pursue hypnosis was when the single session lady hypnotized me and regressed me. She act was actually a regression to a time when I was being bullied. And she had me see those people, those kids who were bullying me.

And, uh, it happened a lot when I was a kid. So, uh, there I am, she asks me what I want to do. She expected me to karate chop them or, or do something violent. And I simply said, I want to forgive them. And she allowed that. We named them, forgave them. We went through. Maybe seven or eight of them that were habitual bullies.

I walked out of there thinking this was stupid. I believed that I was completely conscious the whole time. 25 years later, I get a call from somebody from my school on a 12 step program wanting to make amends, , and I’m, I’m listening to this guy tell me these terrible things that he did to me. And it’s like, Dude, I remember you, but I don’t remember any of these things that you did to me.

So you want forgiveness, You got it. You know, I’m, I’m glad you’re getting sober. I, I, I, I, I just don’t remember this clearly, it meant more to you than it does to me. And so, uh, forgiveness is yours and if I can help you in your path, let me know. After that, I sat down and I thought, I can’t name. Like, I don’t know their names.

I can’t even see their faces anymore. And while we didn’t erase that memory, the forgiveness and the experience of that was so powerful that it actually. Healed me. And so I walked away, uh, from that moment thinking there was much more to this hypnosis stuff than I thought. And I started looking into it right away looking for schools and contacted the other guy that, the lady who hypnotized me, she was in her seventies back in 95, so I didn’t really expect her to be around.

But the other guy, the other volunteer, Timothy Truheo, I don’t know if, Oh, yeah, Yeah. So he was my volunteer and I contacted him. I, I basically said, Hey, Timothy, has this worked out for you? Like you’ve been a hypnotist for a long time, you know, is it okay? And he was so excited and he pointed me in the right direction and helped me make some choices and eternally.

Yeah. I love that. What’s, what’s really amazing about that story is that, you know, we do find sometimes find ourselves in that culture of, you know, this technique versus that technique and, you know, where we can start to build these massive generalizations about yeah, what techniques are good and bad. And to which I’d say of course, never ever, ever use absolutes.

Um Right. Which of course that statement itself is an absolute sure. But from that experience that it wasn’t quite, that dragging through the mud and you know, the expectation of, let’s call it out, systematic desensitization. Oh, relive it over and over so it doesn’t have the sting. Right. That even in that process, you were able to make that decision.

I mean, I’ll reference something here, which is not meant to be a criticism that there were some who were trained in the pound, the pillow style of forgiveness. Yeah. Which just never was a fit for me. And I know some who still use that, and that’s their choice, their decision. But in that place of still, you know, hypnosis being, if we want to use the Dave Alman line, the bypassing.

Of those critical elements of the mind, Right. It’s not the deletion. You were able to make that judgment for yourself in the process that here’s how I want to handle that. Right, Right. It was amazing. And, uh, you know, the thing is, is I grew up in a pretty tough area of Pittsburgh, and so when I was looking at those kids, I had my adult wisdom with me and I’m thinking, These are just kids.

They’re just kids. Even though I was feeling the spitballs, I was feeling the tauts. I was, I was there. I wasn’t reliving it, but I was feeling it. I, I knew what it was like. I remembered it and I’m thinking these are just kids raised by people who have a hard life and, you know, anything that I can do to, to, to help these kids.

Now, the amazing thing was just last year I went to my 40th high school reunion. And I’m walking around, I’m seeing people whose names I, I can’t, I don’t know who, who was my abuser, and I’m having great conversations and enjoying this event with these people that I probably didn’t speak 10 words to for 12 years.

But all of a sudden there was no anger, there was no fear, there was no animosity. I’m shaking their hands and I’m, I walked away from that event thinking, you know, they aren’t bad human beings. It it, it was like the best decision of my life. . So makes me feel good. Jason makes me feel real good. Yeah, I love that.

I love that. And I especially love the aspect of, you know, to have that hands on experience yourself, that there you were leaving that experience going. I don’t know if that did anything. I was conscious of the entire thing, and yet very clearly, here’s the result. Right, Right. Yeah. And you know, sometimes when my clients say to me, Jason, I, I don’t think I was hypnotized.

I remember everything. I just point out that they think they remember everything. They might, they might remember everything, but they think they do. And so there may be parts that they don’t remember at all. And I’m certainly not gonna quiz them to find out which parts are which. But that, that idea that you think, you remember that that’s possible just like you remember your dreams, but at the same time, we don’t know that.

And we’ve gotten around that, that critical element of the, the conscious mind and we’ve had our effect. And that’s the good. Yeah. And out of curiosity, you mentioned early on that, uh, it was like a support group that you were helping to run. Yeah. At AIDS project, like back in 1995, I ran a, it was called the Living Skills Program.

It was social, educational, recreational, and it was meant to give people with symptomatic HIV infection, something to do really. Back then AIDS meant an AIDS diagnosis meant that it was a two year death sentence. A Z T was the only drug available. And, uh, Timothy Truheo walked into my office and said that he wanted to teach self hypnosis.

And, uh, I thought, Sure, you know, why not? That’s a, it’s an unusual thing. We’ll see who shows. The clients loved him and he went on to do major, really major work with HIV and AIDS and so proud of him. But the clients, one of the things he did, and it sounds kind of silly almost, he ma had them envision Pacman and the little Pacman gobbler eating their viruses.

And my clients kept coming into my office saying, You know, my viral load went down, my VA. I’m kind of a scientifically minded guy, so it’s like, okay, this wasn’t controlled. I, you know, this is anecdotal. It’s interesting that they’re all saying this at the same time. I don’t know how true that is. I, I, I basically was a, a scientific skeptic, and the thing is, is that when it comes down to the results, who cares?

Mm-hmm. , you know, they, they got, they got better. Even if it was just playing a game and relaxing that did it. I, I don’t know, but I tend to believe on the hypnosis side of things now. Right. Well, I go back to previous guests in the program, Mark Car. And this was his perception of how he talked about the virtual gastric band program.

That it’s the imagination that played the game that I need more of this food. So let’s stretch the imagination in a different direction. Yeah. And I found that to be just this amazing framework that, I mean, I share a similar moment of here’s a counselor that was in as a client for weight loss. And yes, we’re talking nutrition.

Yes, we’re dealing with some of the emotional triggers. But in like one little sort of transition, I told the story of Popeye that, you know, Popeye eats the spinach, his muscles immediately flex. He saves the day. So the difference is not only you define yourself, more satisfied with the right amount of food, you can feel the nutrition cosing through your body.

And it’s the next session as she’s going, Popeye, what are you talking about? Well, here’s all the emotional stuff that I’ve let go of, but what if I’ve been thinking about all week. Popeye, I’m down six pounds , so That’s wonderful. Pac Man as well. Yes. Yeah, Pac Man. And you know, like I said, I, I don’t know what actually did it and, uh, but I can say, I mean, I, I, obviously it was something that Timothy did with them that help them, and that’s the best thing.

What I love about this is, again, coming and I came from a similar place of the, the scientific skeptic. Of looking at it from a place and being very critical. My, I, I had a result of, you know, not quite buying into it, and yet three weeks later going, Oh, I haven’t bitten my nails at all. Um, is, is there something from that initial skepticism that’s helped to inform, let’s say now, the way that you work with your clients?

Yeah. You know, whenever I see my, I, I’ve become a great observer so I can actually see, you know, hypnosis kind of follows a sign curve, . And so when they, when they come up and I see them coming up just a little bit, uh, you know, I can see where they’re actually. I I, in, in the back of my mind, I’m saying, Okay, they’re probably gonna remember some of this.

So I’m using that moment where they’re remembering, I think they’re remembering something, and then I’m using that moment to throw in a little bit more of the cognitive buy-in. You know, I think when we talk to our clients before the session, really mostly what I’m doing is achieving a kind of cognitive buy in so that the cognitive mind gives up its filter, whether they go deep into trance or not.

The cognitive mind says, Yes, this is what I want. So when I can see them coming up, just like when I, the parts that I remember, I, I think to myself, this is what they’re gonna remember. Let’s strengthen that cognitive buy. So my pattern, my, my language changes just a little bit to address that. I might even address what might come up as an objection only in a very, very positive way.

Not like a salesperson saying, So what objections do you have? But, um, , I didn’t, I didn’t have them yet now exactly, but, so I’ll just throw in, I’ll throw in something just a little bit more cognitive, and then I watch them because any defense is gone. I watch them then go right back in, and then I can continue on with my metaphor.

It’s almost like it’s embedded or I continue on with my narrative. I, I just, I watch them come up and I watch them go down and it’s amazing. And I just, I’m so jazzed about what I do. It’s, it’s just great. Can you give us an example of a moment of, you know, harnessing that cognitive buy in? Yeah, sure. It happens all the time.

Maybe we started off talking about, I don’t know, let’s use an example of weight loss and we’re talking about hunger, so I’ll, we’ll talk about what causes hunger and how hunger could be just circadian rhythm. It’s time to eat breakfast or lunch. Hunger could be an emotional feeling. Hunger could be an empty stomach, but sometimes even when we’re, when our stomach growls, we think that’s hunger.

But it’s really just our intestines processing. It has nothing to do with hunger directly. It’s not our stomach growing, it’s our intestine. And I had a client, we were in a session, it was for weight loss. . And as she was coming up, her stomach started to grow so loudly and so I just threw it in. I said, And of course we know that that’s not a, a feeling of hunger.

That’s just a feeling of your body efficiently digesting the food and getting all of the nutrients that it needs from that food. And, you know, and she went right back down. And the next week I always kind of ask, you know, so what’s happened this week? And they tell me. And like you with Popeye, she was saying, You know, every time my stomach grows, I feel really full.

And that wasn’t even a direct suggestion, but she said, Every time my stomach grows I feel like I’m so full. Yeah. And it’s like, Great. Good for you. That’s wonderful. That’s really wonderful. So I hope that answered that question. No, that’s great cuz it’s a way of looking at, you know, how do we make use of what’s there rather than try to claim you’re not going to feel hungry, you’re not gonna feel a craving, calling attention to the fact that these are things that will be there.

Right. Right. And the differences now that reaction to it is what’s different. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and, and, and clients need to know, I mean, particularly for something like weight loss, they need to know that, that what makes them feel hungry isn’t necessarily the need to. , but she got it and she got it in her own way.

It wasn’t, anyway, so that was a good thing. Yeah. So from the journey of, uh, having your own experience, then reaching out, we’ll phrase it this way, to a future guest or the program, Timothy, what was that step then for you in terms of deciding to turn this into a profession to open up shop and start seeing clients?

Well, I, I had been teaching at the college level for 30 years. And where were you teaching? And, uh, I taught English and English as a second language. And education was getting a little frustrating. When we moved back to Pittsburgh, the, uh, the, it was the end of full-time teaching for me, and I was an adjunct and I was going between three different colleges.

And in my mid fifties, I’m realizing that I have to find something that I can do until I’m dead. My retirement is gone. I can’t be driving, you know, 30 miles to three different schools in three different directions and jockeying for classes. And that was about the time that the old school school friend called me up.

I call him a friend now, but because he’s a friend now, not because he was, then I, it occurred to me that this worked. And I thought, you know, gosh, I, I have to look more into this. And the more that I looked into it, the more excited I got. I wrote to Timothy, he pointed me in the direction, and, and I thought, this is something for heaven’s sakes, Mil Erickson sat in a wheelchair.

So, uh, if I have my right, my Eric Ericsson Wright, wasn’t he in a wheelchair? That guy? Yeah. And so he sat in a wheelchair if he could do it from a wheelchair, with that, ah, that gravelly voice that he had. I certainly could do this from a, a chair in my office, , mm-hmm. until I’m dead, if that’s necessary. And, uh, that’s so, it, it, it was natural.

And Timothy pointed me in the direction of H P T. So I went to the website. Scott Sandlin had this introductory free course and I has already been taking the introductory free course from another school and I, I don’t care to name it cuz I know a lot of hypnotists from that school and their great. But between the two, between that introductory course and Scott’s, the integrity that I saw with Scott Sandlin was just amazing and it struck a deep nerve.

Integrity’s always been very important to me. And so I thought, this is the guy that I wanna study with and gosh, it was the best decision I ever made. And so thank you Timothy and thank you Scott. Yeah, absolutely. So then that journey then, I love that decision point. I mean it’s, there’s one small category of students that as much as I can go, Oh, we can target online, we can do all this focused marketing.

I don’t know yet know how to find these people, but somehow I end up with a lot of dental hygienist with arthritis. Wow, . I know that’s about as specific as you can get, which is the mindset of, again, I want to keep helping. I want to keep doing something positive. Yet clearly the time of working in the mouth is going away,

So there is something to be said about the stamina of what we do. I had to, in the course of buying the location that I’m in now, having to defend, Look, if something happened to me, I’d probably still be able to see clients. Right, Right. That that helped them to relax . Wow. Now that I’ve said that, watch what happens.

Yeah. So that experience then of deciding to open up, were you then looking for, let’s say, your own space looking to kind of be in someone else’s space? What was kind of that next step on the business side of things? I started immediately looking for my own space. Yeah. So I ended up being in a candle shop that also catered to a lot of Pagan’s

So it was like the pagan candle shop, but they had a private space, you know, the. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was like, I had a great time. I enjoyed my time there, learned a lot. I, I, lots of things that I didn’t know about the Pagan community, but they closed and all of a sudden I, it was, I had no place to practice.

I had a number, I was still in supervised practice, uh, at the time, H P T I had 200 hours of supervised practice, and so I needed to continue. I started seeing my existing clients in my home, and I know that a lot of people do that quite successfully, but there was this inherent creepy factor of having people come to my house.

And the idea for them, it was a little creepy. And for me, it felt creepy. Inviting strangers into my. So I knew that I, that wasn’t gonna be the option for me. A home office wasn’t gonna do it. You know, I think most of the people who have been on this program and had that chat too, the conversation eventually just led to, you know, there’s just certain things I work with and there’s certain things I don’t work with.

Right? Yeah. Right. And so I found some massage there. I now have two offices in Pittsburgh. Both are in wellness centers. One is almost uniquely massage. The other has mixed practitioners. Everything from acupuncture to reiki and, uh, sound healing. . So I, I rent these two, they’re my office. I had to furnish them.

So I have to pay that and they sustain themselves. I, I, I always make rent. I don’t always make salary, but I always make rent and I always get money. So I’m doing fine. I really am doing quite well. I’ve been in full-time practice since 2016, so it’s three years now. And like I said, I’m not well enough to count on the salary cuz there are ups and downs and I’m still learning that aspect of it.

But I always make money and I always get enough money to cover my expenses in my life. So that’s the important thing. Do you find in that environment where there’s other practitioners that there’s some crossover, there’s some referrals that are happening? The referrals happen a lot. Yes. The, and, and we find things that we can collaborate on.

Like one of the things that I do is I work with people who are clenching and grinding teeth and massage therapists have a lot of contribution there if they’ve been trained in how to deal with bism. So I, I, whenever I have someone who’s coming in brooking or, or clenching, I always refer to a massage therapist and sometimes that comes back at me.

I’ve been, I’ve received re referrals from, gosh, even the C b D people in the one center. They, and the medical marijuana people, they, there’s a doctor who comes and, and certifies medical marijuana and I’ve reserved, you know, Oh, they told me about you and I came here to be certified for medical marijuana and you know, for my pain.

And somebody said, and I don’t know if it was the doctor or the. You know, the reception, I have no idea who it was, the nurse maybe, but, oh, there’s this guy, you know, you have this pain. You should try, you know, you wanna get off of opioids. This is one way to do it. We’re gonna help you out with the marijuana, and then we’re also gonna, you know, here, why don’t you go and see this guy?

So it it, it works. It’s amazing. And I refer to them. They refer to me. Yeah. It’s where, you know, the classic advice. Business networking groups, is that the best way to get referrals is of course to also be the one who gives them, Right. And what you’ve described there, I mean, to use the language of bni, business Networking International, Yeah.

They refer to of there can be a power team, which these are all the health and wellness people, yet really health and wellness. We kind of fall into a terminology of what they call a contact sphere, which is that if someone, let’s say, had standard headaches, you know, you would have a solution for that. So would the massage therapist, so would the medicinal marijuana person.

You all would have different ways of resolving that simple issue. Yet we would all likely end up at the same end result and as soon as we acknowledge that, that, you know, we can share these streams, we can actually help people even better by going, Hey, this would be helpful to you as well. That’s where we’re really helping to build that entire ecosystem of that client’s success.

Absolutely. And so much I, I, you know, the integrity of doing that. You know, I had a, I had a client who was coming to me for tinnitus, and I, I have to admit that we didn’t have very much success. We had a little. , he was considering a, a, a bunch of different protocols and hypnosis was something he was gonna try.

And while I’m, I, I, I’m the first to admit that I can’t help everybody, but we did all right. We, we stopped working together because he wanted to try other things, and I was okay with that. Came across some study and I, I, you know, looked up, looked up too many clients. I couldn’t remember which one it was, but I found him, looked him up, sent him an email with the study.

The most profused thank you letter for the study, even though he had already read it. The fact that I had thought of him and I, and, and said, Here, you know, I’m thinking about you. Maybe this’ll. And I, I’ve already gotten referrals from that guy, so I, and I, he wasn’t like, I didn’t get the sound to go away.

I’m sure there’s somebody out there who can, and I’ll find a referral, I’m sure, but did my best and, and just that, the integrity of that really. Well. Yeah, that’s, Well that’s one of those themes, which is why I invited you to be on here, is that, you know, sincerity, that integrity behind a lot of what you do and something that I know you and I have brought up before in conversation, I is working with really difficult clients.

Yeah. People that normally others would be scared or turning away and perhaps even cautious about. Love to hear some of your thoughts on that. Well, I, I, I seem to be a magnet for really hard cases and in my training I’m very, very much well aware of my scope of practice and I know what I can do and what I can’t do.

But when I have someone who comes to me and says, Look, I’ve been in. I’ve been in counseling since I was 12 and no one’s been able to help me. I’m working with a counselor. I asked her should I try hypnosis, and she was enthusiastic and they’re sitting in my office and as it turns out, I can’t diagnose, but as it she, she puts me in contact with her therapist.

And just by the nature of the kind of therapy that the, that the therapist does, I know that this person probably has borderline personality disorder. I can’t guess it, but, And the, the therapist didn’t say that. Well, that would’ve been a, a big no-no to me. Back early, but here’s a person who needs to stop reacting and stop having such dramatic responses to things.

And I use my regular stuff. Uh, I work with her, I, I help her, and she’s, she’s now one of my biggest champions. She, she runs around pa passing my cards out to people. It’s kind of amazing. And of course, we’ve never used the phrase borderline personality disorder. Never. But I, I would say as long as I’m, I’m comfortable with what I can do and know that what I’m not doing is treating borderline personality disorder.

I’m not gonna be afraid of that person. And I’ve had several, One was a young girl. She was cutting herself. Her parents came with her. And, um, she had had lots of trauma in addition to the borderline personality disorder and. She wanted to stop cutting herself. And so I just asked her, uh, okay, so what do you do when you, you know, I go to my room and I cut myself.

Well, I taught her bilateral stimulation. Melissa tears, you know, she has that water bottle. She passes, you know, from side to side in the book about anxiety. I used bilateral stimulation with her. I gave her a ball. I said, Here, instead of cutting yourself, go into your room and play with this ball, move it back and forth the way I to do bilateral stimulation.

She was ecstatic. She thought that was amazing. She came back for another visit and now she wants to stop blowing up and, uh, you know, yelling at people and reacting badly. And so I said to her, I said, Do you know when that’s gonna happen? And she said, Yeah. I said, How do you know? She said, My hands get warm.

And I said, That’s wonderful. , , you have an automatic stop sign when your hands get warm. All you have to do is say to the people that you’re talking to, you know what, I need a break. Everybody understands. Everybody knows what’s going on. Just say, I need a break. Go into your room. You could use your ball.

You could, you know, calm down. Do your breathing. I gave her a mindfulness breathing exercise. Do your mindfulness breathing until it goes away. You have an an amazing stop saying, The family’s, they’re now referring to me, left, right, and center. Of course, they’re not telling anybody why their daughter was coming to me.

Obviously I wouldn’t want them to do that, but they’re sending people to me all the time and I think, Gosh, have I created. This practice that seems to focus on really hard clients just because of that. But you know what, I don’t care. Mm-hmm. , I love when people get results. It hurts me a little bit. Maybe a lot when they don’t.

Yeah. That’s an amazing insight. It’s something that I quite openly struggled with when I was first getting started that, you know, here was, you know, one school of thought, which is that if they don’t answer these questions, if they don’t say 10 out of 10 for motivation, don’t work with them. Right. And then it was spending time around people like Michael Elner who would say that, well, part of the mind is calling, part of their mind is calling you for a reason.

Right. Um, you know, the folks who would screen heavily for stop smoking and the his joke was, Oh, you’re only taking the easy ones. Um Right, right. And sometimes there is just simply put some other things to be addressed. Yeah. Before going after that one big change and kind of looking at it as, you know, the domino process of now that we’ve done this, What also also needs that attention, but I think it’s that willingness, as much as you can use the language of really difficult clients, it it’s that perception that that’s what someone else has labeled them.

Instead, at the core of it, here’s something that’s going on, here are some symptoms and reactions within their body. And the mindset is perhaps just to use everything as some sort of pivot point and go, How do we put this to use now the way that beautifully, well, my hands get warm. Oh, great. That means you can do this now.

Right? Right. And, and so Jason, when I think about how having known that that particular client would’ve been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder early in my training, I would’ve said, No, I’m sorry. I can’t work with that. And then Richard Long Guard won in, in one of the classes that I took with him, he said, Look, you know, I, I may not be able to help us, a paranoid schizophrenic with paranoid schizophrenia with hypnosis, but if they wanna quit smoking, I can help.

And that sort of clicked with me. It was, you know, there are things that I can do. It’s okay for me to do this. I’m not stepping over my scope of practice just because this person comes to me with this diagnosis. I, I’m not overstepping, I’m making it very clear and I’m, I’m helping them with what they’re asking me to do, but I can’t fix the, I I, I’m not like Richard Nagar says, you know, we’re not treating mental illness.

We’re, we’re helping people with symptoms. And That’s right. That’s exactly right. And so I find, I find when people, you know, they come to me for things. I, I get a lot of addictive behavior people, they’re coming to me usually after they’ve tried everything else. and it hasn’t worked. Or particularly with alcohol, they’re not willing to think about, Okay, I’m never gonna drink again.

They’re just not willing. Like my smoking cessation says, Call me when my little business card I have, it says, Call me when you’re ready to quit. Or even if you’re not quite there yet, call me. Mm-hmm. , because then we can talk about those things. And I’ve had more than one client who came to me cuz they wanted to cut down drinking after three or four sessions.

Say, You know what? I think I’m ready for a detox. I, I think I’m ready to give this up. And I didn’t counsel them that way. I, I didn’t try to convince them. It’s just that our work together, dealing with the things around drinking revealed to them that maybe this is not a good thing to do. And so with the smoking clients, I have to admit, one of the things that.

Sort of bothers me in our community, in our tribe, is that if you don’t stop someone smoking in a single session, that somehow you’re a bad hypnotist, Like you’re not well trained or, you know, and I think about that and it’s like, yeah, I, I did that single session work early on and o out of all of the clients that I saw, I only had two that didn’t succeed.

But it’s, it matters on how you measure success. Do they leave my office wanting a cigarette? I if, if the answer is no, and that’s success, great. Do they smoke a cigarette in two weeks or six months? If that’s failure, then rather than blaming them, it’s like, well, did we miss something? Why is it that this is still attractive?

So my smoking cessation is not designed to be done in one session. I admit that in that first session. I give them a lot and a fair number of them don’t smoke after the first session, but I tell them, You can smoke through the, I do four sessions. You can smoke through the first two . And so they like that.

They, it makes them, it’s the pressure is off. Fair number of them, Never smoke again. But lots of them do. They follow the protocol that I’ve set up, and in that time, I’m able to deal with other things. Jason, I want you to know when somebody calls me to ask me to help them quit smoking, I always ask them two questions.

The first is, are you in recovery from another addiction? And a lot of hypnotists would tell me it’s, smoking is not an addiction. It’s just a habit. I, I don’t care about the terminology. Mm-hmm. , I’m talking to a client who thinks it’s an addiction and I was a smoker. I, I happen to, to agree, but at the end I’ll say, Are you, Because if, if they’re recovering from a heroin addiction, the last thing I wanna do is to take away the one thing that stops them from doing heroin on the other hand, then I’ll also ask them, Can you list any other binge like behaviors that you engage in?

And I’ll go down the list. Alcohol, gambling, eating. And there’s always 99% of the time, always at least one more. Mm-hmm. . And so I’ve read some things that call smoking a comorbid addictive behavior that it’s always. Paired up with something else. I don’t know if always is the truth, but if I, if I know that this person is also a binge eater or I know that they’re a binge gambler or an addictive gambler, then I have additional tools in my toolbox and I, I can see sort of a triangulation between those two behaviors and what they’re telling me in, in our session.

And that gives me sort of a foothold to say, Okay, we’re not just dealing with this habit, We’re dealing with what caused it and, and what makes it so strong. And you know, like I said, when I get those people who tell me, Well, if you can’t get somebody to quit smoking in a single session, I kind of wanna rail at them.

I usually keep my mouth shut. I wanna just say, you know, okay, let’s measure success. Mm-hmm. . , you know, do you send six month follow ups, one year follow ups? Because if you’re not, I don’t believe that you’re a hundred percent. It’s where there’s, you know, there’s different ways of presenting that type of option that I, I actually am someone who went from doing the three or four session style program to then doing something in part modeled after what I’ve seen, uh, learned from Ken gso and then also building the support system after it as well.

That, Yeah, you know, the finding that, as you mentioned, most of them were indeed stopping at that first session and building out those resources, that now the process really has that pivot point that now it’s about, here’s what you can do better, here’s what you can create instead. So, you know, the, the mindset of, you know, the Oh, they don’t call back.

It means it works. No, cuz I call ’em up, I follow up with these people. Similar to Ken, uh, nowadays, seeing the results that yeah, the people who did need that extra support and came back give some of the most genuine feedback, some of the most genuine referrals as well. Right. So Right. It really comes down to the, you know, the, the next phase of it.

That it’s not just the, Oh, let’s use the old terminology now. This really is old. Shocking off . Yeah. Yeah. Of we either got it or we didn’t to go, No, hey, here’s why we make that option and Right. You know, the, the backup support offer that I do is that, you know, if you have the need, you’re able to come back, You know, there.

I love that they’re surprised at going, You sent me the scheduling link. I go, Yeah, I wouldn’t make the offer. Or if I wasn’t sincere about it, come on in. That’s why we make this available. Right. That’s so to look at, you know, again, it comes down to the intention, the presentation. Kinda like how we started the conversation, that there’s some, Who would say who would’ve turned off as soon as you opened up with a story of regression?

Well, it’s a matter of how it’s put to use. It’s a matter of what the context is that’s built around. , right? Yeah. Right. And along those lines, I have to admit, regression’s not my first go to, but there have been times, you know, I, my theory of hypnosis goes back to a thing called schema theory, and I don’t know if you know what that is.

Not many people seem to, No, no. Schema theory postulates that we create subconscious structures, inductively meaning our brains gather this information. And creates a kind of systematic response to our environment and our personality, a kind of an agreement and creates this structure by which we respond to things.

So in in regression, we go back to the initial sensitizing event, and it’s like, in order for that to be always true, that event has to be somewhat traumatic. It has to be a kind of trauma for it to stick that way. Schema theory would say, Let’s look at that initial sensitizing condition, what was going on when you were a kid, You know?

And so, and while I’m not a therapist and I don’t practice schema therapy, I do use that, that understanding that there’s some, some reason why. Taken place here with you, and it hasn’t taken place with somebody else. Not all people are the same. So if we can figure that out and we can address those feelings or those, that schema, that structure that says, If this react this way, if we can address that in some sort of broader sense, gentle, not even direct, but very gentle and very broad, we’re able to help them in a way that goes well beyond biting their nails.

Mm-hmm. , you know, biting your nails can be a habit. Something you just did because you had a hangnail when you were a kid and you enjoyed it, or you were stressed out because your, you know, family was fighting and bickering and there was no food. You know, who knows what that is, But it, it’s a, it’s a condition, It’s something that goes on longer than a single event.

What’s beautiful about that is it presents that logic that the same part of the mind that can create the issue. Is really the same part that can also find its way out of it too. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it can be absolutely that simple. It could be as simple as a reframe. Mm-hmm. , it might, it might take, you know, some tears.

I, I have to admit, sometimes I have a box of tissue next to my chair and people might be crying. It happens from time to time, but it could be as simple as a reframe. And so why, why work hard? , why, You know, on, on the discussion forums, sometimes, sometimes people will post, you know, what do you do if a client comes with this and maybe 10 or 15 people will just, you know, regress to Cause without even reading the other suggestions, I mean, how many times did it have to be said, regress to cause?

And it’s like, okay, that’s one way. But if that’s your only way, I I, I don’t mean to be rude, but if that’s the way, that’s the only way you have, then maybe some more learning and more expansion. Because there are people out there. If you’re, you know, if you’re a hypnotist that basically uses one tool, then all of a sudden you’re not, there’s a whole bunch of people that you can’t help.

You know, I had a client who came to me for fear of flying, and he described his experience with another hypnotist, cuz when they say they’ve been with another hypnotist, I wanna know what went wrong. I, I wanna know. Oh, well I went in, I told her that I had fear flying. She put me into a trance. I went in really easy.

Okay, good. And then she did her stuff and I left and I still have. And so, and I said it was a one time deal. Did she ask you questions about X, Y, and Z? No, I just said fear of flying. And what that says to me is that there was someone out there who was trained in hypnosis, certified in hypnosis, but has a script book.

Mm-hmm. . And they opened up to page 43, Fear of Flying and Reddit. And so, Okay. I asked a few more questions and with a few more questions. Jason, I found out this had nothing to do with flying. It had to do with being sealed in a container that he couldn’t get out of voluntarily. And so if that’s the case, then the session is different.

It’s different, and I may not have a script for that. So I’m creating my scripts as I go along. One of the things I admire a, about Richard non guard is that he’s, he tells people that learn from him, You should be writing your own scripts. You should be cataloging them. You know, you don’t have to read them.

Mm-hmm. , but you know, processing through what you’ve done with a client is an amazing skill that, Yeah. To always look at. I mean, we can learn a lot from them to look at them as if they were transcripts of one specific session with one specific client on that one specific day. And now we have models that I know, you know, you have a background as well with comedy and the way that the comedian may have a specific chunk on this topic, a specific chunk on that topic.

And we can make use of some of that knowledge to dip into something that we know, okay, here’s that old faithful routine, right, that I can fall upon. But then here’s something which is like something different where, you know, it could be a mix of if the regression technique isn’t a fit for that one, instead I’ve got this instead I’ve got that when, meanwhile I can’t think of a scenario, but maybe here’s that person that, yeah, that bilateral thing is not where I should go with this person.

Right. Just that flexibility of the nature of the process. Well, I can tell you one client that I wouldn’t use bilateral stimulation with, at least self-administered. Please don’t say no arms, . No, I won’t say no arms , but I, someone who, who has gripping issues and maybe Parkinson’s. Mm. Yeah. And so like, this is not gonna be a, a positive thing because they’re, they’re, they’re losing control of their physical body, at least at this point.

So I wouldn’t use that. I might use therapist administered bilateral, like emdr, like thing or something. Mm-hmm. , but certainly not. Here, I want you to do this. I could use tapping, You know, one thing’s like bilateral stimulation, you can just tap your knees and if you can create a kind of rhythm, it’ll be bilateral stimulation.

And so you can do that. But that’s one person that I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that with. Yeah. But again, that flexibility of going, when it’s the right technique, it’s the right technique, and when it’s not the right technique, do something else. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. The old, the old line that if everything in life was a hammer, everything would start to look like.

Absolutely. Yeah. Which, uh, before we wrap things up, I wanted to chat with you a bit because I know that there’s a bit of a project you’ve been working towards in terms of with your clients and supporting a very specific community, but also something that you’ve personally had a lot of great success with yourself.

The idea of working with people with fasting. Yes. Fasting, intermittent fasting is now trending, as they say. Yeah. And for me, I read a book by Jason Fung called The Diabetes Code. I was diabetic and note the word was nice. I was diabetic, I was taking two medications and my doctor wanted me to take a third medication and I just, that just sent me into a tailspin mentally.

And so I started doing some research and I found the diabetes code and I started following, uh, what it said, intermittent fasting, a low carbohydrate diet, and so inside of three months, I had to stop taking, actually it was inside of three weeks. I had to cut my medications down because I was having low blood sugar.

And then I had to cut, I cut them out because for the same reason and I dropped, like, now it’s about 75 pounds. Wow. Awesome. And I, I never really cared about the weight, cuz I, you know, I’m a jolly guy, . When it, when it, when the weights just started pouring off, I was talking to a colleague who also has quite similar issues, although not exactly, we, we, I was telling her about fasting and low carbohydrate diet and we just started talking about it.

She started doing, it’s working great. And, uh, she’s another hypnotist and we’ve put together a program that we’re calling Hypno Fast. Now, we can’t trademark that because someone else has, by the way, I don’t know who it is, but we’re calling it hypno Fast. And the, the community is, Specifically for the people who have decided that they want to fast, that they want to do intermittent fasting, but are struggling, you know, they can’t deal with the hunger, they can’t deal with the, the side effects or what they think are the side effects of fasting.

So we’re doing a 10 session protocol where we’re online, we’re talking to people about fasting strategy. Of course, if you’re a diabetic, you need to talk to your doctor or at least, uh, at least test very aggressively and know what you’re doing. But talk to your doctor is the best advice. And so you want to do this, and here we are.

The hypnosis can turn all of those things around. We can deal with the hunger, we can deal with the cravings, We can deal with all of those things through hypnosis. The anxiety that comes from all of the training that we’ve had to tell us when to eat and how much to eat, and eating until we’re full, Knowing what full means.

So 10 session protocol. People who want to fast. But are struggling and we take them through step by step and at the end of the day, they’re able to actually do their, their fast. And of course people who fast can do anything from, you know, 14 or 15 hours giving themselves a window to eat during the day to upwards of a week or two of not eating.

And that’s of course up to them and how up to how they feel, what’s beautiful about this. And not just saying, This is someone who for about a year and a half actually did this. I did until I, I found that I was eating in a six hour window, just cuz that’s what hit my, fit, my schedule. And was great for weight loss, great for energy and focus throughout the day, but then deciding to dramatically increase my weight.

Lifting I needed calories, . But to look at the, the communities online, my, my journey of trying to figure out ways to, you know, modify my health and get into the strength training. Everything was written for a man, 5, 1080 pounds. And I’m five foot four if I’m wearing shoes. And you know, to see that there is such a huge need for, you know, on one side of it, you’re helping to, you know, it’s one of the most well researched forms of, you know, eating.

It’s one of the things that’s documented through all different faiths, religions, cultures, right? The revelation that breakfast is the most important meal of the day was an advertising slogan, absolutely . And to look and see that phase one of it is very often getting past that mental expectation that it’s got to be hard.

Phase two is just, just to call it out. If you’ve conditioned the body to do anything, it’s gonna expect more of it. So to then break that pattern, to have this, that’s why I love to hear that this is a multiple session protocol, that that’s fantastic. I love that. That’s a very clear need. And to even be one of your own best spokespeople for that, clearly as.

Yeah. Uh, we’re both very excited about it, and we’re gonna be doing, we’re gonna be doing it online for people all over the country. You know, the, the typical sort of Zoom event, of course, they can turn off their cameras if they don’t want people to see them. We’re gonna be doing it online and guiding people through, and very excited about that because it can, I participated in these fasting chatline groups, like on Facebook and things, and every day there are people saying, I can’t get past X number of hours.

Or, you know, what do you do when this happens? Or How do you handle this? And it’s, we immediately thought this is something, every problem that someone has with intermittent fasting or even a low carbohydrate diet, switching from, from a carbohydrate centric diet to a vegetable centric diet, or, you know, Just rearranging those macronutrients a bit to benefit from health.

Just doing that, just being able to help those people. They want that, they need it and it works. It’s going to be just wonderful and so we’re very, very excited. Probably gonna have that class starting up in October and I’ll make sure I get you the link when that’s available. Yeah, well eventually when that’s available, we’ll update the show notes [email protected].

And Joseph, where can people learn more about you and check you out? My, my website is easy to remember. It’s Mind Power Pittsburgh, and you don’t even have to spell Pittsburgh out. You can just use pgh mind power pgh.com and you can find me there. My email’s there, my phone number’s there. You can call me, You can make a, an appointment for, and I got this from you Jason.

Free 20 minute consultation. I still use the word consultation. That works. But you know, the thing is, is I, I, with all of the telemarketers answering the phone, my clients, I can interrupt. It’s just so much better. People going on my website, they see, oh, they click here, they can make an appointment for. Con that conversation.

And in that conversation we can decide together whether or not we should move forward with hypnosis, if it’s gonna help them or not. And it’s just, it has made my life 10,000 times easier because no more phone tag. And you know, people who are at least willing to make that appointment, quite frankly, are willing to.

and it’s just a wonderful thing. Thank you Jason for that. Oh, absolutely. And I, I ran a bit of an unofficial experiment in the last month because sitting here in the office, I’ll sometimes play the mental game of the phone lights up that it’s ringing. Yeah. And one thought would be, Oh, I can stop the project I’m working on right now and take that call, or I can let it go to my voicemail, which then instructs people to go to that site and schedule a time.

And very often the phone lights up minute it goes by ping, here’s the scheduled call for tomorrow, . But not everybody does that. But what I experimented with was I gave it about five, 10 minutes and then I just called the number back. And consistently those were not the people who were gonna be booking.

Right. So it does work, as you know, we publish that online as the velvet rope strategy. You know, it, it’s that little bit of an extra checkpoint. That you’re exactly right. The person who would go through that little step process is gonna be that person who’s ready to have that conversation. Now, I know you’re also gonna be a speaker at the H P T I Winter Hypnosis Conference, right?

Yes. And you’re actually talking about the schema concept there too, right? Yeah, I’m talking, I’m gonna be doing the schema theory and how it can inform a hypnosis practice so that when a client, the, the big benefit from understanding even rudimentary schema theory, and it was later developed into a therapeutic practice, but I don’t, we’re not practicing schema.

The schema therapy, just being able to understand it. For example, a client comes in and they are, they’re saying that they lack motivation. They can’t, uh, engage in even rudimentary tasks. They’re looking for motivation. Well, we can treat that directly, but if you ask a few more questions and find out that that client also is a kind of a perfectionist, then we’re not dealing with.

Procrastination. We’re not dealing with just a lack of motivation. We’re dealing with a bigger problem. And schema theory would point us in, or sche of therapy would point us in the direction perhaps, and we’d have to ask a few more questions, but in the the direction of failure. And so if we’re looking at failure, failure can result in perfectionism and demanding too much of yourself Failure, fear of failure can also deal with not being willing to try.

And it might even present as avoidance of any situation in which their performance might be judged. And so if we know that, I’m not gonna deal, if I can label that and just say they could be this. If I throw in a few little segments about fear of failure and what failure is all about, then I’m not only dealing with what they’ve asked me to deal with.

I’m digging just a little bit deeper. It’s not gonna hurt ’em. Everybody has little tiny fears of failure. So if I deal with that just a little bit, then they’re gonna leave and they’re gonna be able to apply this, this experience in hypnosis that they probably don’t even remember, they’re gonna apply it to every aspect where failure comes up.

And if this is schema, it’s deep, It’s way deep in their psyche. It’s way deep. So I’m not going to ferret out the whole thing, but I’m gonna give them a tool, a, a way of understanding, a way of free reframing in that session that they may not even be consciously aware of. They can walk away and be able to handle those situations much, much better, much, much more easily, and in a much more contented manner, which is really what we’re after, right?

Happiness is the the thing we’re all looking for. Outstanding. Yeah. So looking forward, I’ll be, I’ll be in the room for that one. Uh, I can’t wait. Yeah. Thanks for coming on here again. Any final thoughts to share before we wrap it up for the audience? You know what, I, I just, If your audience is new to hypnosis, if some of the, some of you out there are new to hypnosis, don’t stop learning.

Don’t think you know the answer, but keep growing and look at every client as an opportunity to help another human being and to improve your practice. Remember that you’re an ambassador for hypnosis as well as for yourself and what you do with your clients. Says a lot about our profession and if we’re ever going to be a first line intervention, if we’re ever gonna have doctors say, You know what?

You need a lot. You need to lose 30 pounds before we start prescribing medications, or you’re, you’re having a down moment before I give you this antidepressant. I’d like you to go and see this hypnotist. If we’re gonna expect something like that, we’re gonna have to live up to that. And that’s it. Jason, Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, sharing it on your social media streams, and of course, we got a ton of reviews leaving your reviews online as well.

With that too, again, a thank you to Joseph for coming on to the program. Check out the links and resources [email protected]. Join us both at the upcoming H PTI Winter Hypno Conference. Get the details [email protected]. Again, this is why I always point to the show [email protected].

And for more on running your own successful business, check out hypnotic business systems.com. We’ll see you in Vegas. We’ll see you on the inside. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.