Session #243: Jess Marion on Debunking Secondary Gain

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 243. Jess Marion on Debunking Secondary Gain. 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. Welcome back to the program, and a welcome back to Jess Marion, who is here on the podcast once again.

Five years later to the date from the first time that she was on back on episode number 26 again, nearly five years ago. And, uh, let’s call that out appropriately before I ever figured out what this thing was actually going to become. Hey, podcasting is just like your favorite sitcom The first season wasn’t that good.

So in this conversation though, we’re gonna get into the topics of working interactively with our clients and more importantly, sort. Unraveling these concepts of resistant clients or the concept of secondary gain, which just does a great job of defining that. But here’s a brief preview of it. The concept would be that when someone is holding onto the problem, because there’s some sort of unknown unconscious benefit of keeping it, which immediately both gonna kind of call out the dialogue that they wouldn’t still have the.

If on some level it wasn’t giving them something. So in, in a colorful story involving a slightly unfortunate interaction with one specific life coach, not the entire industry, uh, you’re gonna hear how other people would often look at this concept of why perhaps is it that someone would not produce a positive change.

Within our hypnotic process, and rather than go to the mindset of blaming our client and unconsciously shaming them in some inappropriate, let’s call it out rather unhelpful way, you’re gonna hear us really get into a dialogue of different conversational points, different bits of conversational influence, some strategies of what you can actually do inside of your actual hypnosis session, and just a whole lot of really great resources to help you to.

Benefit your clients. Now, the content in this episode goes above and beyond just what you’re about to listen to because the launching point of this conversation that you’re about to hear was a presentation that Jess did at the MidAmerica Hypnosis Conference in October, 2019, which the camera was rolling.

I know, cuz it was actually my camera. The camera was rolling and she’s gonna make that entire video available to you, which if you simply go to the intelligent. hypnotist.com/gain, G A I n. That will bring you right over to the page. We can get access to that entire one hour presentation with a lot of great content in there.

We’re gonna link to that in the show [email protected]. But again, here it is, the intelligent hypnotist.com. Forward slash gain, g a i n. Also, do make sure you head over to the show [email protected] because even though we don’t actually talk about it in this conversation, just did a TEDx presentation earlier this year, which was absolutely phenomenal and inspirational.

And we’re gonna embed that video in the show notes over at the Work Smart Hypnosis website too. Uh, plus very comfortably when you’re [email protected] check. All of the courses, all of the books put out by Jess, as well as Sean and Sarah Carson, most of them, if not all of them, I believe are in my library.

And you’re gonna hear some nice credit where it’s due in terms of a concept that I picked up from interacting with their material. So everything from going to the website to get the entire video present. Watching the TEDx talk. And hey, if you want more like this, uh, Jess is also gonna speak, be a speaker at the upcoming 2020 I C B C H and H P T I Winter hypno conference happening in Las Vegas.

It’s happening, uh, towards the end of. February, 2020, which, um, as Richard non guard likes to keep reminding us right now I’m recording this. It’s November, 2019 and, uh, it is currently 24 degrees Fahrenheit outside. So yes, it’s below freezing and Vegas is a whole lot nicer. You can actually find it really easy to find link over the show notes for this.

But simply, Um, that’s a really long link, so I’m just not gonna say it. A here over the recording, , we’ve played this game with websites, hypnosis training institute.org/product/ 2020 dash Yeah. Um, just go to the show notes for this episode. There’s a giant banner with pictures of a Vegas casino on that banner.

That’s how you can find out about this upcoming hypnosis conference. With more than 35 expert hypnotic speakers, sharing the exact tools they use to create therapeutic success. And while you’re online too, check out hypnotic workers dot. This is where you can get the all access pass to my hypnosis training library.

Everything from Techniques for Change, rethinking some of the hypnotic induction methods, plus entire real client sessions from walking in the door to walking out the door. Yes, we’ve all got our classroom demos and our video training libraries. But these are real clients who, yes, they signed a waiver, everything from weight loss to even overcoming sleepwalking, uh, and some new videos coming into the library rather soon.

Check that out. Get the all access pass [email protected]. And with that, let’s jump directly into this content pack session. You’ve only got good things to gain by listening to. See what I did there. All right. Here we go. Episode number 243. Jess Marion on debunking secondary gain. So when I first started learning hypnosis and coaching and NLP and everything, this topic of secondary gain came up fairly frequently, especially when we would talk about patterns like, uh, the visual squash or the six step reframe or parts integration, depending on who you’ve trained with.

While the attitude never came from the trainers, that secondary gain was kind of like this frustrating thing. Just talking to other students and other practitioners who at the time maybe had just started out in their practice, there was always kind of this attitude that, well, if a client had a secondary gain, they must want to hold the problem in place.

Yeah, which I was taught the same thing too, that it was, that it was the reason why the person had the issue. And even worse, it was kind of presented in my, in some of the training that I went through as well. That’s just why they’re not gonna change that. It was just kind of a brick wall and that was it.

And thanks for coming in. Ouch. Yeah. . So I think we’re all already on the same page on this, about a minute into this conversation that we don’t agree with that anymore. No, it doesn’t. Okay, good. Great podcast session. Wonderful to have you back on. So everybody, uh, check out. No . Let’s keep that problem solved.

Problem solved. So let me ask you this, have you. The basic idea of this just to, again, reiterate the framework in case someone doesn’t, doesn’t have the awareness of it. And let’s give some examples of this that perhaps there’s some unseen benefit to having the issue. I think the most extreme that I’ve ever had was one that I think I successfully resolved in about 20 seconds time, that in my office, paperwork, you know, someone’s coming in and they’re writing, what are the goals they want to achieve?

What’s gonna happen a month from now, a year from now? And I used to have, I’ve since removed this. What’s been holding you? In, uh, creating this outcome, I, I, I do that now in advance. I don’t do that in my office. Paperwork, uh, just basically re wounded up to be sooner. But this woman basically expressed that if she were to quit smoking, her son would stop calling her.

Which, that’s all I have to work with at this point. And I have to pause and go, What the heck does that mean? And she goes, Well, my son has a long commute in the morning to drive to work. And every time he calls me, that’s his morning. That’s his version of saying, Good morning. Hey ma, have you quit smoking yet?

So if I quit smoking, what’s he gonna call me and say, And I had to invent a brand new technique that day to go, You know what? Do you still have your cigarette? Well, here’s what I want you to do. We’ve got all the time that you need. Go outside, smoke your last cigarette, and call your son and tell him what you wrote on my piece of paper, and when you’re ready to come in and throw the rest of them out, then we’ll get started.

She comes back in big smiles and going, He said he’d call me more . So you know that that could have been a moment of secondary gain if that wasn’t expressed. That here’s the benefit or just the, the stereotype of this is that let’s go genders. His back pain is not going to improve as long as she’s bringing every meal to him at the sofa watching tv.

Right. And, you know, secondary gain, but a lot of my pushback is not so much in this idea. There, there is a payoff. Every single problem a client comes in with every problem that we have in our lives when it comes to emotions and behavior, there is a payoff for it. Mm-hmm. , the problem that I’m, and you as well, we’re, we’re pushing against is the attitude o of the average practitioner because, This view of, Oh, well the back pain isn’t gonna get better because the client wants to keep getting, you know, served food on the couch.

You know, sure at one level that that could be accurate, but it sets up a really problematic dynamic between the hypnotist and the client. Sometimes I, I’ve seen it manifest some, in some instances, as being almost a aggressive or adversarial, so I don’t. How we as trainers have talked about and conceptualized secondary gain thus far has been really all that helpful for our clients.

Are all that helpful for our students? So then I think we are agreeing this does exist. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But perhaps it’s not that brick wall that it’s often presented as. Yeah. . Yeah. Or perhaps it’s not necessarily the route, cuz I know, you know, we had this dialogue a little while ago that there’s all these different strategies, all these different approaches where the story of the woman with the son and quitting smoking, it just came down to finding some sort of conversational moment to create that prestige change.

That shifted that belief system so that now all the other work was now gonna be effective. Is there a story that comes to mind of perhaps working with someone where this could have been an issue? If that was the belief system, that this is just what it is? You know, I, I think honestly, any, any client situation, if the belief system is, well, this is just how it is.

it’s a brick wall. I mean, as a, as a practitioner, you’re screwed before you even get started. , I mean, what, what’s the point? But I think we have to really broaden our aperture and understand that yeah, sure. Every problem has a payoff. Mm-hmm. , uh, every, the way I talk about it is it has a, a highest positive intention or highest intent, a highest purpose.

And you know, if, if there is a problem, the highest pur highest purpose is going to always be in conflict with the emotion and the behavior. So sometimes we have to go, we have to abstract up to this next level of, okay, what, what’s the, what’s the purpose here? And make the shift there. A lot of times we don’t, a lot of times you can do the shift at the level of emotions and behavior and that will create enough neurological leverage that that.

Highest intention will begin to shift or automatically find new ways of meeting that intent. But you’ll know that this is going to be a roadblock in the client’s beliefs as they’re talking about the problem. So if they start to say things like, Well, this is just how it is. I’ve always be, I’ve always been this way, it’s impossible to.

If they’re telling me those types of statements, I’m gonna start thinking, Okay, first, there’s definitely a par thing going on here. Mm-hmm. , there’s definitely a higher purpose going on here. There might be a regression thing going on here. Yeah. And I love the way that, you know, as we have these conversations that it’s getting into, we hear these things and you know, I think I’ve heard you say this too before, that clients talk and techniques mm-hmm.

that, you know, sometimes it just may be so bold as well. Part of me wants this, part of me wants that. If only we had something for that. I know, right? I know, right? Yeah. Trademark pending. But to look at too soon No. To look at how. You know, what is that higher purpose? I mean, it’s where, you know, the, the person coming in and even let’s say for stop smoking, and they say that they actually enjoy it.

Yep. You know, and that can be a red flag for some people. But you know, I, I call that out immediately to go, Well, look, you wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t giving you something. In fact, if you absolutely hated this and detested the flavor of it and you know, hated the world while you did it and you were still doing it simply, I think we’d have bigger issues to be addressing here.

So it had to have been giving you something. We just need to find better ways to satisfy that. And when a, when a smoker comes in and they say, Well, I enjoy it. That is like a gift from the Gods because first they’re being authentic. You know, a lot of clients will be kind of ashamed or afraid to say it, and that’s a potential roadblock if you’re not aware, I, if they’re just kind of towing the party line.

And the second reason is, is they’re highlighting the parts conflict. Mm-hmm. part of them enjoys it, and then a part of them wants to stop. Yeah. So it’s like, okay, now we know exactly where to go to create the change. Clients will tell us what the actual problem is. It’s usually like in the first couple sentences out of their.

mm-hmm. . And it’s not always what we mind read it to be. Yeah. So one of the, the key things, um, I don’t consider myself as strict hypnotist. I don’t market myself as a hypnotist anymore. I’m a hypnotic coach because I blend lots of things and it’s the lineage that I, that I work in. And in hypnotic coaching, you know, we say, Okay, the client’s gonna tell us exactly what the problem is as long as we listen literal.

Hmm. So, you know, I lost count the number of times that a part of the client’s problem was literally a submodality issue. And that’s something in NLP that we kind of downlight, like, you do that in your first weekend or your first couple days of a practitioner course, but you know, a client comes in and says, Well, you know, it, it’s just that, you know, I wanna achieve this thing.

And it’s just, it’s too big to. Yeah. So can you unpack that for a moment? That that concept, that methodology is new to them? How I would handle that is I have in the back of my mind that, okay, at some point in the session, I need to address the sub modalities. We can do lots of other stuff, but if I don’t clean this up because this is what the client’s unconscious mind is telling me, then I mean, then it becomes more of a gamble.

Yeah. Can I still get the change without doing that? Sure. But you know, it’s a lot easier just to go where the client is saying the problem. Yeah. Um, and it, and it comes out in like really interesting ways. So that’s, that’s one thing, like on the, on the generative side, if I’m working with a long term client to achieve goals, that’s kind of a common one.

Or, Oh, well, I feel overwhelmed. Well, what are they telling you they’re doing there? They’re telling you they’re putting all of their internal representations on top of their head. Yeah. And sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes it is as easy as having them put it below their feet. Yeah. And to spread it out.

And even if that doesn’t get the full change, what that’s going to do is that’s going to open the door for change, because now it’s going to make the situation more manageable. This is driving me to now tell the story of the session I did about maybe 90 minutes ago, . So clearly this is research and evidence based now, which was that it involved as soon as you’re in my space and you say, I don’t think I can relax today.

Oh, game on . Um, and even though, you know, I’m like many people who go, it’s not about relaxation. The relaxation is from the suggestion, the instruction to create relaxation. Yet it became, here I am stuck in this problem, and here’s the things I can’t resolve. and looking for this ability to create logic out of something.

And I maybe have to tell the specific reference where I’ve modeled this from after I explained it. This is gonna seem completely ridiculous. And it’s basically non awareness. Mm-hmm. , bring your attention to how relaxed your nose is. Yep. And this is gonna seem silly, but go ahead, relax your nose a little bit more and once you’ve done that, nod your head.

So I know, And they did it and they validated that they were able to do. And suddenly then this, then, you know, translated over to toggling up the emotion, toggling it down, ending up in the classic, try to bring back that anxiety. What’s different now, and they can’t reproduce it. So to look at again, how do we make use of what’s already there and recognize it’s all flexible.

Now the, the thing I wanted to highlight earlier was sometimes it is the simplest of methods. That they come in and here’s this representation of where they’re placing that issue when they move it. What do you notice now, And let’s go Dave Mond on this. That can be that opening wedge that can be that initial foot in the door to then make everything else more effective.

Yep. If you create that small aha moment in the beginning. Or for some clients it’s a big aha moment. Especially like with the overwhelm example, a lot of people like this is the first time that they realize that they’re having a relationship with an internal world. Mm-hmm. , you know, as, as soon as you have that you have a spike and dopamine, all of a sudden their sensory channels are open and they’re focused on you because you’ve thrown everything that they know into uncertainty.

So now you become the voice of certainty, which is great. On the hypnotic side because it’s an opportunity to continue on with suggestions. So yeah, you know, leverage whatever the client gives you. And coming back to this idea of, you know, the clients will tell us, and the technique is in what they’re saying.

The client who says, Well, you know, I can’t relax. I would start wondering what the relationship is between that and their actual, the actual issue they’re coming to be coming to see you for. Because clients will show you their patterns. So I had a client, this is, and the reason why this is in my mind is we, we, Sean and I developed an induction because of this client.

This was years ago. This lady, she was an m. She was Russian doctor, so like very, uh, type A personality. Everything was like conscious mind, ver very intelligent, but very inflexible in her worldview and very much so a polarity responder. Well, she was coming to see me for anxiety. I had to start thinking, okay, well what’s the relationship between inflexibility and anxiety?

Well, it’s kind of clear. Hmm. So I’d start to do, I’d start to do any induction and I, I don’t even remember what I was doing back then. And it was the same thing. I can’t relax. I can’t relax. Well, no shit. If you could relax, you wouldn’t have the anxiety and you wouldn’t be here. . Yeah. So then it’s like, okay, well, Do I force it or do I do something like you do by moving the attention to somewhere that they weren’t aware of?

Or do I amplify the tension? Cause that’s the other direction. You can take this in, You can exasperate, you can create a threshold pattern. Because if you tell them, Okay, great, you can’t relax, get more tense. That’s going to first indirectly communicate. It’s a very kind of neo ericsonian thing. It’s gonna communicate that yes, they are in fact in control of their states.

and it will blow out. It’s a, it’s a blowout pattern. It’s a threshold pattern. They will get to the point where they cannot get any more tense, and the only option is to relax. Mm-hmm. . So there’s lots of, lots of cool ways, lots of cool ways of playing with this stuff. And your clients? Our clients, they have the answer to the problem.

They really do. They don’t consciously know they have. and I really see, like our job is to help pull that out of them. But they have the ability to change. They have the answers inside of them, and we create a space where that comes out. Uh, the whole point of any technique, at least in, in my worldview, is that it facilitates a relationship in which change can happen.

Nice. So ultimately it doesn’t matter what technique, although based on what the client says, one technique, one technique is likely going to make more sense than another. So then it becomes just what’s the passive least resistance, right? And to listen for the language that they’re using, the issues that they’re presenting, and then frame it.

Back that I’ve been, I’ve been living under the premise for the last year or so ago, and I think this may be a reference to one of your books, so we’ll give credit there. that describing, as I phrase it, describing the technique as doing the technique. Yep. And I think remember reading in the Swish book about how describing what’s gonna be happening is already running that sequence.

Yep. Yeah, so it’s where, I mean, let’s use the session. I just did. I gave the person a full play by play of, Okay, so I think we’re gonna do this, followed by that, and then we’ll wrap up with this because this is what you came in with. And they go, Yes. Which is already establishing that contract that yes, this is going to be effective.

But now I’m also only going in and doing things that we’ve both ratified are going to be effective for that person that if I’m not getting that agreement, Ahead of time, how well is it gonna go in terms of the interactive nature of that. So, so to bring this back to that original conversation, I, I think there’s a quick anecdote here, which this is not a story about the life coaching industry.

This is a story about one specific life coach. There’s the disclaimer that it’s a networking event, and it wasn’t even a BNI group, where in BNI there’s one person who is the accountant, one person who’s the real estate agent. Luckily, we don’t have much of an issue of being the one person who’s the hypnotist.

Though I’m probably the credit for a couple of three dozen people joining BNI chapters around the world. So it wasn’t even that environment. It was this life coach who walked up to me unprompted to go, I see people for the same issues you see people for. So I would never refer to you. To which I respond, extending my hand with a smile.

Hi, I’m Jason. This is how normal people will have conversations. Tell me more about the work that you do, cuz clearly I’d already decided this was not gonna go well, so why not have some fun . And we got onto the topic point of, Oh, let me ask you a question, cuz at this point I was about a year or two into my business of seeing clients and I had referral sources that were coaches, business coaches, life coaches and so forth, psychologists and everything else.

And the statement was, what do you do when you’ve worked with that person and you’ve created that perfect plan and then the next week they haven’t done anything? How do you handle that? And this person responded well, It means they’re not motivated enough and I fire them as a client to which I go, Well, that’s a moment where my world, We go, Hallelujah.

We have found a point of unconscious resistance. Let’s now uncover and release that and do something about that. So, curious to ask you this, have there been moments where you found yourself stuck and then by thinking outside of the box, you found a better way around that? Yeah. Like with lots of clients, I actually, I, I had a client who’s still kind of an on knock end client, and they were, I would task them and they were, they were very good about doing the tasks.

So it wasn’t quite the life coach situation. Mm. But one of the big tasks that I give my long term coaching clients is to begin to sortt for difference in their everyday life. So even if it’s a small change, notice it bring conscious awareness to it because this does a couple of things neurologically.

First, it increases dopamine release, so we’re gonna have better feelings. Uh, the next thing is novelty stimulates the release of bdnf, which is, it’s a chemical in our brain that leads to neurogenesis. It’s the only thing in our bodies that leads to neurogenesis in the brain. So it’s, Can you define that, bdnf?

So it’s bio, bio drive, neurotropic factor. It’s a chemical that leads to the growth of new brain cells. Nice. Yeah. So it’s really good. And novelty exercise and sleep are like, the proper sleep are the three components for that to be released in ample supply. So this guy, his client, They would do everything and except for this sort for difference mm-hmm.

there was a lot of pushback on that and I was kind of exactly where their problem was. So I got to the point of, well, you know what, yeah, we could keep going in circles, but I think I need to shake his world. So I fired him. Mm-hmm. , and I said, This isn’t gonna work. I’m not, I’m not going down this road with you.

And sure enough, Two weeks later, I, I get a message from them and they’re like, Well, I’ve been, I’ve just spent the last two weeks sorting for difference and here’s all the great things that have happened. Nice. Can I see you first session? So I’m like, Sure. So I think having flexibility and willingness to, you know, really kind of hold our own in terms of our integrity as professionals, uh, but also thinking outside the box instead of trying to keep spinning is going to be really, really important.

I have another client. There are another long term coaching client. Um, do you mind if I, if I branch off of that for a, a second? Cause you brought up something beautiful, which you and I have nerded out for years talking about the business side of things. Mm-hmm. , where, you know, if you’re around the two of us at a convention, we’ll often.

Be heard off in the corner going, Oh yeah, here’s how I run this sequence and here’s how I’m using this tool now. . Yep. And this is a passion, and this is, this is not meant to be that part of that conversation in terms of sales and online marketing, but it’s, And it’s not even meant to be what’s classically referred to as the takeaway sale, which is that if you’re not familiar with this as a concept out there of.

Wanting to haggle the purchase of a car and the moment where you then ask for something a little out of the ordinary and they, they attempted this when I did the trade on, on my current car of going, Well, look, if you don’t wanna buy it, you know, we don’t have to sign the paperwork. And they’d expect me to go, Oh, no, no, no, it’s fine.

I don’t need that. To which I go, Yeah, I’m a no hurry. And they suddenly realized that I was turning the takeaway back on them cuz I was, I was quite honestly ready to walk because I really wasn’t No hurry. So this is not meant to be that, but it’s the value of, let’s say it, creating the hypnotic environment of pushing someone away in order to bring them back in.

Yeah. I think this, which is not even, I mean, let me phrase it this way, that, you know, it’s, it’s that moment of, it’s a bit of a test. And it’s letting them realize that this is an actual real thing that they need to address. And I mean, I’ll do everything I can to be polite. But here’s the thing, this is not the typical style of rapport that I’m sitting like you, and I’m using your words.

I’m building rapport by helping you to drive yourself into the decision point that you’ve hired me to help you. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I, I think this is, this is a really important point, you know, as practitioners, and I see this, and I don’t mean to be like to stereotype, but this is my experience that I see this a lot more from female practitioners than I do.

With guys, and it’s this idea of being really gentle and like, Okay, I don’t wanna hurt any feelings, you know, I’m gonna be soft and air fairy . And hey, look, if that’s, if that’s how you work and you getting results, awesome. But I’m from Philly, that’s not that, you know, I do, I, I have, I have another, I had another coaching client a while back.

This individual, I had to, I had to like lay down the law with them and say, Look, you know, we can do all this fancy hypnotic stuff, but unless you do like steps one, two, and three, this isn’t gonna work. And they, they came back to me and they’re like, You know, I don’t know if I wanna do this. You were really harsh.

And I’m like, It, you know, my job is not to be, You know, soft if there’s something that you’re avoiding doing that’s causing the problem. Uh, so this is very different from like a sales take. The, the takeaway sale, which I actually, I do that when I do a consult, but I mainly do that because, uh, I don’t sell packages anymore except for smoking.

So I just tell my clients, Hey, come for as many sessions as you want. But I do it with a sense of detach. If you’re going to do any of this takeaway stuff, whether it’s in the sales or it’s because a client isn’t following through, or you know, you know, you’re wondering what is in the best therapeutic interest of the client, you have to be congruent with it.

So this isn’t like doing it to be sneaky or shady. I had when I fired. I don’t do it very often. I have to say I, I can count in all my years. Practice on one hand the number of times I fired clients. Mm-hmm. . But when you did, Yeah. I’d say same here. Yeah. You, you have to be congruent. I had to be in a space where I was cool with like, Hey, you know, I did everything I could.

They were not doing everything that they could out of a conscious choice. So it’s okay. This, this is obviously not working. So if, if you’re gonna go that route as a practitioner, be very comfortable with losing clients. Mm-hmm. , there is a way to do it that is gentle. So like I’m, I’m like not a bitch about it or anything, but there is, you know, you do have to have boundaries.

And if a client comes in and they say they have these goals, . Then you have to think, okay, with this client and their personality, what’s going to be the best to get them there? Now, I don’t have that kind of tough edge with every client because it’s not appropriate. Myself. I think if my coach was like that with me, I’d probably cry.

So I would not be the ideal client to use this kind of takeaway approach with. Yeah, and as a reference, there’s the, there’s a podcast session that I did with Scott Sandlin, I think last year, and it’s, the title will link to it in the show notes [email protected]. But we were talking about the difference between be the hypnotist or be the hypnotist, and we, we have the whole conversation around.

You need to also have the level of rapport if you’re going to make that type of statement. Yeah. That the, the whole thing that bridged the conversation was someone who’d reached out to both of us and they had pulled off the phrasing of, Yeah, well, how’s that working out for you? And it was a crash and burn moment because they did not yet have the report to say that.

Yeah. You know, so, so recognizing this is something where I’ll, I’ll use the catch phrase in my trainings of depending on the rapport in the room, which means that it had to go something of a provocative nature or a playful nature. I mean, the person who was just in is someone who I’d worked with years ago for something else.

So there was a level of knowledge there already. So I was able to jump in more directly rather than still playing the, here’s the pre-talk, here’s everything else, here’s the formality. And so, so know where you are in that communication and that gives you a much greater leverage point. Oh, absolutely. And, and knowing where you are in the relationship and understanding your client profile, their personality profile, understanding what their meta programs are, just through like, Discussion with them that’s going inform how the interaction is going to go.

And yeah. You know, the hell is that working out for you? That can be like really charming and playful and fun, but if the rapport’s not there, it’s, it’s gonna go, it’s into the section. Yeah. It’s crash and burn. So re rapport is king. Like I know in classical hypnosis you don’t need rapport, you need compliance.

But in the work I do, and I, even when I do classical hypnosis, Rapport’s. Way more pleasant. More pleasant for the client, more pleasant for the practitioner. So let’s go that way. Mm-hmm. , you know, I’m at the point now where like we’re talking about with techniques, it’s the relationship that creates the change.

It’s not the technique, it’s not, not even the tasking, although that does help and the techniques do help. It’s the relationship and us as practitioners to the extent that we can cultivate within ourselves. The best way I can describe it is a healing energy. Mm-hmm. , the more effective we’re going to be regardless of what we do, and the more easily we’re going to be able to create the type of hypnotic relationship that will allow the space for playfulness, tasking, sometimes laying down the law when you have to, but that really starts, That starts with us in our own, our own in our world.

I like to think of it as, you know, when a client comes in or when I get on the phone with a. , I almost have this sensation of, it’s really hard to describe, but it’s almost like energetically just pushing the change that they want onto them. Mm-hmm. . And for us, what this does is it allows us to handle the, the highest positive intention behind the problem.

It also allows us to handle pushback, and it’s gonna put us in a space that’s more receptive to our client’s current state and what the next step is going to be. That’s going to be in their best interest. Which I was about to ask you, how do you do that? And then you immediately said all of that, and that’s how you do that.

I love that . That was, I, I mean, I can break it down a bit more because that comes out of years of practice. The way to get started with this, we call this the coaching state in the H N L P world. So this comes from John Odor. Uh, the way to do it is to first have inside of your mind a representation of your client having all of the change that they want and much more.

So you have to be able to see them in the resource, in the outcome state and the outcome behavior from the onset of the session. Which to pauses off of that, holding onto that framework, here’s the dangerous question that there’s so many workshops and discussions around this in online forms. Mm-hmm. , um, this kind of negates the whole resistant client conversation.

Yeah, yeah. About that , which, which, I mean, this is the dialogue, the, the, the. The criticism I got for one of my live events, which I wear like a badge of honor, is that, well, you only had us practice with other people in the class. You didn’t bring in real people for us to work with and practice with. So we only seemed to be able to practice in a perfect environment.

And I responded, You’re welcome, , because I go into every session and I can credit back to Jeffrey Ronning, who was the website, stage hypnosis center.com. He’s now in the webinar business of all things, but to look. As the stage hypnosis instructor, the fear of the stage hypnotist was one, no one’s gonna volunteer, and two, if they do volunteer, I’m not gonna be able to hypnotize them.

Yeah. And he would train his community to go, I’m gonna have more people than necessary to fill the stage. And they’re gonna demonstrate everything I need to see to help them to get to the appropriate level of hypnosis so I can pull off this stage Hypnosis entertainment program a and similar to that, you’re calling me because you’re motivated to change and you’re gonna express everything I need to notice, so I can choose the best environment and the best methods to help you to do.

And holding onto that framework and that your issue is not who you are, it’s just a thing you’re going through. You know, yes, there’s resistance to change, otherwise they wouldn’t be calling us. They would’ve resolved this thing on their own. But in terms of resistance to the process, you know, and, and yes, let’s call out the fact that yes, they are calling a person who either represents themselves as a hypnotist or hypnotic coach, but clearly they’re already past that hypnosis conversation.

Otherwise they wouldn’t be reaching out to us. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, this idea of resistance, it makes me kind of cringe a bit. And so you’re saying your resistance to the idea of re your mind. Yeah. I’m very resistant to it. Congruent with that Resistance to resistance? No. Um, stop with resistance. There’s a couple of things going on there.

Resistance as a temporary phenomenon can exist. Mm-hmm. , but it’s gonna let us know that. A few possibilities of what’s happening there. The first question I would have is, where’s the hypnotic relationship at? Where are you at in that process? Because resistance right off the bat is going to emerge if there isn’t rapport.

Cause there isn’t trust. So it absolutely is correct that there should be resistance if trust isn’t there. Mm-hmm. , that’s the first way that it can appear. So, which means we have to do more work the second. Instance comes back to this idea of secondary gain. This is also one of the reasons why I don’t like secondary gain, because it’s not really resistance.

It’s the unconscious saying, Hey, but wait, there’s this thing that I need. In my life, this state I need in my life, this purpose. And if I change it, then I, I don’t have that purpose anymore. So it’s not resistance, but it can appear that way. The third instance is actually something that a client taught me, uh, and I am eternally grateful for, for, for this.

This was a lesson. I was doing a, a phone session with them, and this individual happened to be like very self-aware in terms of their own inner. And we’re like halfway through the process, they’re getting lots of great shift. And I say something, I don’t even remember what it was, and they say to me, Well, you know, a part of me is really pushing back against this.

I’m feeling resistant to this. But they weren’t totally into the part that was resistant. So they had enough awareness to point that out. So the other time that you might quote unquote get resistance is when someone steps into a problem part. Mm. Which is not all of them. So they’re not being a resistant client, but they have a parts issue that needs to be address.

So, yeah, but most of the time if you walk in with seeing your client already having the change, it becomes a lot harder for, you know, at least the first type of resistance to appear. And if the other two instances come up within the session, that’s great because they’re telling you what the next step is.

So it’s not really resistance, it’s it’s a gift. Yeah. Which you mentioned setting the environment. And my phrasing is that the, the rapport, the relationship is what allows the techniques to actually work as techniques. Otherwise they’re just tools. Yep. Which are ineffective sitting on their own. So, I mean, this morning, Was an interesting appointment that there was no, the, the backstory is that my wife and I have an ongoing catchphrase of, Oh, that explains everything, which we will use on each other in very offensive ways to Wonderful delight.

Mm-hmm. . Um, and this could have been the moment where the adult. Male is coming in to stop smoking and his mother is coming with him. And it could have been a moment of, oh, that explains everything. But he had driven in some distance and she was curious to beat me. So she came in and she was there for the first half I do in the lobby, and then he went in the back room with me for the hypnosis.

And at the end of it, she said something which she probably didn’t know she was delivering a prestige suggestion, but she expertly did in a very good way, which was that you two were having too much fun back there for you to think this is a serious issue anymore. Yeah, you’ve definitely smoking. I’m like, And here’s your $20 under the table

That’s beautiful because everything from the dialogue on the phone is how serious this has been. And yes, there’s the aspect that one of the main motivators for quitting is that he’s been wanting to for quite some time, and yet because of this surgery that he can’t do until he’s quit Now it’s a, you know, immediate type issue as it’s should have been for years.

And the fact that the process was mostly him laughing at the issue, breaking apart how solid that was. Which, you know, we, we’ve talked quite a bit about some of the conversational structure of how to sort of unravel what could have been labeled as secondary gain. You mentioned in a bit of a list earlier possible strategies, and I love that you brought up progress.

Which tends to be one of those very polarizing topics. But as I’d say, the technique is only as good as it’s put into use and when it’s put to use. So when, when would you make that decision call to go in that direction? So I have some key times that I’ll use regression. I mean I do, I don’t do like a standard regression.

It’s slightly different cuz I don’t believe in an ise. Yeah. Which I know is gonna be hy to some people out dare. But. Yeah, that’s not how memory actually works. . So I’m gonna use regression or reimprinting if the client regresses spontaneously. Mm-hmm. . So this doesn’t mean like all of a sudden they’re like having a fit rolling around on the floor, but I’m listening for the quality of voice.

And if there’s an instance where the voice gets younger. or their physiology gets younger. I’m gonna have, in the back of my head, I might not jump right to regression, but I’m gonna have in the back of my head that some component, some part of this neural network is really young. So then it becomes a question of, okay.

Is that part of the neural network? Does it have enough leverage? Is it strong enough that if we change that it’s gonna change everything else? Maybe, yes, maybe no. The next instance is going to be, which honestly, I’ve not ever had this in a, in a office session. I’ve only ever managed this in, in large trainings, is a reactions.

And by a reaction, I do not mean tears. Tears are not an a reaction. Mm-hmm. negative emotions are not an a reaction. An a reaction is a split from reality. It is a spontaneous, intense regression where the individual, for all intensive purposes loses track of their current age and where, and their environment.

I don’t see this. In private sessions, like I said, but I’ve had to manage it in larger training situations. Uh, that’s gonna be a time where, okay, we’re at least gonna use some components of a reimprinting to help get them out of that. Now, the next instance is going to be when clients say something like, Oh, well, you know, I, I’ve had this problem forever.

Or if they say, Look, I had this problem and it started when I was seven. Mm-hmm. or six or whatever. You know, if they have, if, if they’re trailing back their problem to a specific. I don’t care if the event actually happened or not. You better believe I’m gonna be using that metaphor to help leverage change.

Yeah. And then the final time, which that’s a very different way of discussing how regression has typically been taught, which is that, you know, you branch off of the emotion, you write it back to that ise, and I’ll generalize this next reference for polite purposes. But there’s a person who was once a godfather of all things regression, who suddenly posted on Facebook one day.

If I sign, if I find something reasonable to branch off of, that’s just as effective. It’s often more direct. Yeah. That it’s still, it’s changing the metaphor of the story that’s holding onto the issue. It’s changing the validation of rather than being the victim of the story, instead, now you’re the survivor, you’re the advocate, you’re the hero.

And here’s how, as I say, in the business training that I do, everything’s an asset. Now, the thing that was the reason why you had the issue now becomes the reason why you don’t have to have the. Exactly. And if you do it, if you’re working with a memory that is really young, now all of a sudden you’re leveraging countless years of change was in a very short period of time.

You know, the idea of doing the affect bridge, that was how I originally learned regression was, was using the affect bridge. And I had used it for a long time when I would do regression until I had a client who came to see me. This was probably like 2014, and they had a fear of vomit. And they were also in the position of a caregiver taking care of someone who was terminally ill, of which they would have to manage, you know, bodily functions.

Mm-hmm. . So I built the affect bridge and this person nearly vomited in my office and I very quickly learned my lesson. Yeah. not to do that. That’s not needed. Why? If you build an affect bridge, it amplifies the negative state. You need a negative state active for neuroplasticity to take place, but it does not have to be full.

And since ISDs don’t exist anyway, it’s kind of pointless. Except for if you get an early memory then you know you have a lot of time leverage. But lemme just close the loop real quick. Yeah. I’ll come back to something you said after you close this loop and then we’ll right back up. . Yeah. So the last instance in which I’m going to use regression is if the client starts talking about the, talking about like a maybe a social dynamic or something.

And they keep saying that they feel. Or they feel insignificant or, you know, it’s like people are towering over me. That type of language, that’s regression language. Mm-hmm. , that, that, that’s actually, in terms of neurology, we’re talking about scaffolding. So we’re talking about really, really old parts of the brain, like scaffolding that was laid from early childhood.

So then it’s like, okay, we’re dealing with something fairly deep and. Don’t use deep in a serious manner. Mm-hmm. , but that’s the only way I have to describe it. So that’s where I’m also gonna go to regression or at least know that, you know, regression is probably gonna be on the table. I prefer to do my work in the present, but if what I’m doing in the present isn’t working and the one of these criteria, or many of these criteria are going on at once, then okay, great.

Let’s do a regress. , you mentioned not having to bring up the full state, but needing some of it. So if you’re bringing it up in a muted format, is there a specific way that you’re doing that? Yeah, so the way we do it is the client most times is going to associate into the state as they’re talking about the issue.

Mm-hmm. , or when quote unquote, resistance comes up. I don’t know, may. It depends on where you are. I get more of these people in New York who live from like their neck up. Mm-hmm. . So we have to do a bit more to get them to associate in. But a lot of times if, if a client comes and they’re really taking this seriously, they’re gonna feel some of the emotions when they’re talking about it.

So our job is to calibrate. We’re looking for are they accessing the state, Is the state robust enough for us to either hear it or see it in their physi? As soon as I can hear or see the state, that’s enough. There’s different ways of associating in. I mean, the opening gamut is, Okay, great. Tell me about a time when you experience this problem.

Yeah. Then shift the language into present tense. Uh, you know, use this instead of that, use you be current and then just wait for the shift in physiology. If they’re not shifting, cause they’re still like living in their head, then you can ask a question like, okay. As you have the, as you’re experiencing this, this state, this problem, where are you feeling it in your body?

That’s gonna land them into the actual somatic experience. And then we know, okay, it’s lit up. We can, we can move forward. Which to highlight something out of your phrasing there, I see people make the mistake of going, and as you focus on that, do you feel that in your body? And now they’re inviting the binary and they get a know.

Yeah. Yeah. Don’t give. Cause you were pacing, pacing, pacing. You’re either driving them to discover it or represent it, and now you’ve got something to work. Yeah, and you’ll get lots of different answers. Like you’ll get some, you’ll get some clients who will go, Well, I’m not really sure. I’m feeling it great.

I can wait. Let me know. Let me know when it’s there. Mm-hmm. , tell me more about the state. I always hold the frame that, you know, the question that I’m a asking has a definite answer. Mm-hmm. . So the only time you want to give binary choice. Is like if you, if you’re doing some confusional language, if you’re doing some like attention shift in coaching, binary choice or the illusion of binary choice can be good.

The illusion of binary choice can be good for tasking and it can be good for building resource states. But when you want to ground something in physiology, which you need to, for the, the type of work I do. No, it’s okay. Where specifically are you feeling it? Mm-hmm. . And if you’re gonna go this route, be very comfortable with not trying to change it.

I, I know the NLPs out there are gonna be like, Okay, great. Spin it backwards and do this and do that. Uhuh not yet, because it needs to be grounded in the body first. And you can work with the sensation in the body. And there’s lots of techniques and patterns to do that, but you don’t have to because you’re gonna flip it.

And when you elicit the outcome state, you also wanna ground that in the. Because we’re hooking up neural networks, so perhaps rather than debunking secondary gain, it’s where the hint of it becomes this sort of choose your own adventure of shifting it conversationally. Looking at the various techniques in our hypnotic toolkit, our coaching cool toolkit to begin to unravel it.

That really, again, it’s kinda like that story back to the, uh, unfortunate interaction with the coach where here’s a moment where now, ooh, we get to go in, we get to help resolve this. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. I know that you did a presentation on this, and this is me pretending to introduce a new idea that we talked about, uh, 45 minutes ago,

But you’ve got, uh, the video of the presentation from MidAmerica Hypnosis Conference where you actually talked about this, that you said we’d make available for the, uh, for the listeners out there, how can they go about getting that? Great. So if you go to www dot the intelligent hypnotist dot. Slash gain, just drop in your email and you’ll get a copy of the video.

It’s kind of like a back of the room copy. So we we’re not gonna be releasing this anywhere else, so this is like exclusive. So I’ll talk more about, in more depth about how to reframe secondary gain. Also some of the techniques that you can use, Uh, some of the techniques that I. You know, we talked about regression.

You can also use a six step reframe or visual squash, but there’s also other conversational ways of addressing this, uh, which I talk about in that, in that presentation. So just pop over to the website, put in your email, and I’ll be sending it to you. Cool. And just to make sure I’ve got that right, it’s the intelligent hypnotist.com/gain, G a I.

That’s correct. Yeah, and we’ll link to that over in the show notes. Where can people find out more about your work? You can find [email protected]. That sounds familiar. Also have a YouTube channel. We’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram, although I don’t use it that often. So those are the the main areas you can find out more.

You can email us at the intelligent [email protected], or you can find any of our 16, 17 books on. Outstanding and highly recommend those two. So we’ll link to all that in the show notes [email protected]. And Jess, any final thoughts to share before we wrap it up? Yeah. Keep in mind, as practitioners, our clients can only ever be as good as we see them.

They will always live up to our expectation. So dream big for your clients because it isn’t the change work, whether it’s therapy or it’s generative, or both, It isn’t just about what the client asks for in the moment. Uh, in the words of my very good friend John Odor, you never know how far a change will go and the work that a client does with you.

This is about them. Reshaping their present life and their future life because they’re gonna learn things about themselves through working with you that they had no idea about you. Were gonna open up worlds for them, so see them as being absolutely amazing and see yourself as being absolutely amazing.
Jason Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, leaving your reviews online, and well continuing the conversation and sharing this as a resource in our hypnotic industry, and we will share the stage in these final points. Head over to the intelligent.

hypnotist.com/gain. That’s where you can get the video resource that Jess uh, is made available to you as a part of a bonus With this episode, check out all the phenomenal books and courses that are available on that website too. And again, check us out at the upcoming 2020 IC B C H Winter Hypnosis Conference, the extended link.

Is available over at the show notes at this episode. And again, check out hypnotic workers.com so you can get the all access passed to my hypnosis training library. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you all soon. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.