Session #247: Dr. Fredric Mau on Anxiety and Trauma

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 247, Dr. Frederick Mau on anxiety and trauma. 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. So before we actually get into this week’s episode, you need to go to the show [email protected].

A photo of myself, Dr. Mau, as well as Sheila Grainger hanging out and holding a koala. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette here. Welcome you to the program. And let’s rewind part of the story back to, uh, September this year, 2019, when I was invited out to give the closing keynote at the Australian Hypnotherapist Association Worldwide Conference.

This event was happening in Brisbane, and as the saying often goes, as I’ve learned it to be for many of our conventions, let me fly somewhere. To hang out with the locals that the setup of that event, the opening keynote was Dr. Frederick Mau from Columbia, South Carolina. And then, let’s frame it this way, a bunch of Australian speakers, and then I closed it out.

So they kind of put the Americans on the outskirts of the event, but an amazing, amazing opportunity. And I have to put Frederick in one of those categories of someone who I’ve known. For all these years, and quite honestly, the first time hanging out was of course walking around the lone Pine koala sanctuary as you do, and just really getting to know someone who truly was not only a worker in this profession, but also a true thinker about looking about, I mean, you’re gonna hear this in this conversation about looking at where we can start to build protocols, build systems, build foundations of how we help our clients, but also when and where to break away from.

And just this one little rule that he shares in terms of his work, that when in doubt work on anxiety and if that’s not working, work on trauma as a possible through line for the work and really the whole mindset. You’re gonna hear this amazing dialogue about looking at. The evidence based approach to hypnosis and even better looking at the specific research that backs up what we do and how it is that we can begin to update our terminology beyond the old school, uh, bypassing critical faculty.

Bypassing the language of conscious and subconscious mind, and instead speaking specifically about the limbic system within the body, the part of us that drives that emotional landscape of our physicality, our physiological experiences, but then also a really succinct. Definition as to well, how it is.

Hypnosis actually works to address these things. So definitely a conversation you’re gonna wanna take some notes on and follow up with afterwards. I’m gonna link over in the show [email protected], not only to the koala photo, as imported as that is, but also over to watermark Columbia. Dot com, which if you head over to that website and specifically click on the upcoming events tab on that website, that’s where you can see the upcoming conferences, where Frederick is gonna be speaking, the upcoming trainings that he’s hosting, and plus there too.

You’ll see links, specifically the three books that Frederick refers to in this conversation, which I’d happily endorse. Pick them up when we first met, and I’d happily endorse them. And, uh, there’s some really workable information that’s inside of there. And like many others who’s been on this podcast before.

Almost a bit of a plea to you, the modern practitioner out there to be out there. Please work with hypnotic pain relief. Yes, of course. Follow the appropriate ethical steps in order to do so. But on top of that, just looking at the nature that as soon as we get the body relaxing, you know, it’s not just the.

Phenomenon of the esda state that you don’t even have to suggest the full anesthesia, that it just may naturally occur. The simple nature of getting someone into that hypnotic state naturally begins to produce that hypnotic pain relief sensation, and by doing so, starts to kind of clean up a lot of these, as we nickname it in this dialogue, those residual trance effects.

So if you haven’t. Heard Dr. Mal speak, you’re gonna hear a lot of really fascinating takes on things, some really workable strategies in his books, which again, happily endorse. And again, the links are [email protected]. Click on the upcoming events tab, or just simply look at the show [email protected].

We’ll link directly from there as well. And while you’re there, Check out hypnotic workers.com. This is the all access pass to my Hypnosis training library. And not just techniques for change, but also full client sessions from genuinely walking in the door to walking out the door. Every word of it has been meticulously transcribed.

To model the specific language patterns and the how, and the why, and what to do working with your clients. Check that out and get the all access today over at Hypnotic Workers. Dot com. And with that, let’s jump directly into this content pack session with a good friend, a good, uh, person to learn from, and an outstanding practitioner of hypnosis.

Here we go, episode number 247, Dr. Frederick Mal on anxiety. And trauma. It was really kind of crazy. I got laid off from my corporate job because they laid everyone off and closed the entire office down and I was, uh, running around doing some consulting work and looking to, um, you know, make an honest living.

And went to the Chamber of Commerce to, uh, meet other businesses in town and network, and ended up meeting a gentleman who owned a hypnosis place. Um, he was with a group that at the time was trying to franchise hypnosis, which is kind of a strange thought to me. Now, at any rate, he said, You should come in, uh, and work with me.

You’d be great. And I was like, You know, that is, Completely crazy, but we kept running into each other and I thought, well, this will be a lot of fun at parties and I’ve got some extra time, so I’m doing, since I’m doing consulting work, so I may as well go ahead and give it a shot. I went over and started working with them and it totally is fun at parties, but I saw how powerful it was to help people make changes in their life.

I had a significant pain issue, physical pain issue at that time that it, around that time that it helped me with and. I just fell in love with it. And so eventually I ended up going into practice as a late hypnotist, as a consulting hypnotist, and then subsequently, um, wanted to my game and got my, uh, my license as a counselor.

So I’m a clinical mental health counselor psychotherapist. Yeah. And I’d love to unpack that for a moment. What was that thought process like you said, of the Fraser UN level up that game? What was the thought process to then begin as the hypnotist and then seek out the counseling license? When we, when I was working for the other gentleman, we were mostly doing things like smoking cessation and weight loss.

And then, you know, occasionally other things would walk through the door like working with athletes. And I enjoy doing all of those things today. Those are still things that I do. What I found was people started coming to me with more and more difficult problems, stress and anxiety problems, depression, phobias, that sort of, and I was able to do a lot to, to help, but I knew that there were things that were beyond my competence or beyond my legal ability to work with, and I decided that in order to really best serve my clients, I needed to my game.

And so that was, that was the process. I ended up getting an additional degree and go, going through the entire process of getting the license. It took several years, but that has, that has really helped my game. I now am sort of the place where people come when there’s something strange and it don’t look good.

So I’m, you know, I treat a lot of stress anxiety disorders. I treat a lot of phobias and that kind of thing, but I also get more esoteric things, conversion disorders. I do very well with ticks and tourette. I actually have a number of clients, perennially have a number of clients from within the psychotherapy community that end up coming to me, psychiatrist, counselors, psychologists, as clients.

I end up with a lot of referrals from colleagues where, you know, they have worked with things and they’ve not gotten the progress that they wanted. And I was recognized by the, The State Counseling Association, the South Carolina Counseling Association this year is the outstanding counselor in the state.

Oh, awesome. Congrats. Mm-hmm. . So I love that dynamic, that that’s something that even as, I guess I can be put into that category too, of lay hypnotist that, you know, just a. Kind of pull back and realize these are still people that here’s the time that it’s the doctor and is the client, here’s the psychotherapist and is the client, here’s the local hypnotist, and is the client, Do you tend to find that there’s a specific category that they’re coming in for or is it kind of across the board just like everything else?

Well, I mean, I’m in private practice, so I take what wash through the door, and one of the things that I dearly love is that every person is a puzzle. So I usually see seven clients a day, five days a week. My, I’m generally with people for six sessions, and those are not, that’s not a hard and fast number on the number of sessions.

So, Pretty, pretty stable. And I, I love the, um, the experience of it because it’s something constantly challenging and a constant puzzle to figure out. I feel like the major thing, of course is, you know, the connection with the client and when someone comes in and sits in, in my office, they have. My full, my full investment, my full attention.

If I take you as my client, I am completely a hundred percent in that. I want you to, to accomplish your goal, to be better. And, and that’s just the level of commitment there. And so when, when I was confronted with people that I felt I would be able to help, needed up my game, that was an easy decision. It was just a natural progression of the business.

One thing that comes through the door is anxiety disorders. A lot of generalized anxiety disorder, just stress all over the place. It can be family stress, can be stressed with career, a lot of sort of phobias and ticks and, and depression. Depression is essentially a fire alarm, and the fire is the, is the stress.

So I find that if you treat for anxiety, depression tends to go away. So I even though those, you know, depression and anxiety stories are not, The same category in the DSM five. There are a lot of things that were laid into anxiety, and that is the primary area of work that I do kind of take anxiety as like a broader category.

Right. And if you had to kind of unravel what becomes, I know there’s always customization to the individual. There’s always listening and hearing what they’re, you know, presenting issues may be, but do you follow a bit of a consistent pattern when it comes to the anxiety? Sure. I mean, I, nothing is off the rack.

But I do have a protocol that I follow, and I find that that’s helpful. I’m Eric, Sony and I, I use a lot of metaphor. There are certain sort of standard metaphors that I end up repeatedly using, even though they’re always hugely tailored to the client. The basic metaphor will get used over and over again because I know what to expect.

In other words, I generally am gonna start with a three Doors metaphor, which is a process that I do that’s in like my second book, and I present it on it at conferences and stuff, which is just engaging the creative subconscious to handle stressful situations differently. So I’ll start out with the Miracle question from like Steve Desha with brief therapy.

And then, um, as we move into the session, I’ll usually move to like a three doors process. And I know what to expect from the client. In the second session. I’m interested to see what happened between the first session and the second session. And most of the time, what I expect happens, the client makes significant progress in certain areas regarding how the anxiety is playing out.

We get good progress, significant reduction. The other thing though, Jason, that’s interesting, is the times when it doesn’t work and if, when I’m working with something that I understand and I know how it operates and I know what I should expect, and then I don’t get those results, what that tells me is there’s something else going on that needs to be addressed differently.

Yeah. That I’m not dealing with. Sort of. Yeah. Could you give an example of that please? Well, I mean, the easy example is, you know, it looks like someone’s got like, like general anxiety and stress and you know, what they disclosed to you happens has to do with like, you know, their boss and their work situation and something like that.

They come in for the second week. I’m like, What did you notice? Well, you know, things have, have really not gotten better. I haven’t noticed any sort of change. And then I’ll start talking to them. And a lot of times what pops out at that point is, Oh, I didn’t tell you about like my huge trauma that I had back a few years ago.

And then we’re, we know we’re working in sort of a different realm. It makes me flash back to working with somebody for, uh, you know, I just have a hard time falling asleep at night. And it’s like the third appointment. And they’re just raving, They’re already making referrals and oh, by the way, the night terrors are gone.

Wait, what? This kind of unravels my, my, my, my take on the whole concern about can people be made to tell secrets in hypnosis. And the answer is, Well, it doesn’t matter cuz they generally walk in the door and tell you. . Yeah. Well, if you’ve got good rapport, I’m amazed. If you have excellent rapport with someone and I, you have excellent rapport skills.

When you have good rapport with someone, it’s amazing what people just will open up and give like right off the bat. And of course, they’re walking in here for help. I don’t tend to use the word symptoms a lot because I, My approach is, is a, a postmodernist approach. It really is not a, a medical model approach.

Um, even though I’m not, you know, down on, on medications or medical treatment. But you know, when people come in with these different symptoms, I can’t sleep, I’m, you know, stressed out at work. I’ve got this, you know, I’m constantly you pulling my hair out. What I’ll tell people is, you know, each of those symptoms is a door into a room, but they’re all doors into the same room because we’re working with your emotional core with who you are as a person and it’s emotion that’s driving the behavior, and we’re working at that emotional, actually, I believe in a, in a brain level at that limbic system level.

And we’re working on the same place. So I’ve had a number of people that I, I remember one woman that I was working with, like some severe anxiety, almost bordering on a goro phobia where she didn’t wanna go outta the house. And we got that handled. And then she popped up with, Oh, and I’m driving again.

And I’m like, You mean separate from going outta the house? You weren’t driving? Oh no. I was terrified of that. What were great, like fabulous. Didn’t even know that was a problem. Dear to you. Yeah, so there you go. I’ve nicknamed that the residual trance effect . Yeah. Here’s the one that calls up and goes, Hey, my fear of flying was also gone.

They, they’d come to me for a fear of public speaking and just somehow it was connected. That one went down and so did the other. Yeah. And I, And it is connect. Well, I think what’s going on is it’s the ericson unconscious. I mean, yeah. It’s that idea that there’s a part of you that wants to naturally seeks healing.

And most of the time, even the behaviors that mess people up are the, are the subconscious trying to do something positive to help them. And a phobia is basically trying to keep you out of a dangerous situation. It’s just mis recognizing the dangerous situation. It’s, it’s like the smoke detector going off when you’re cooking dinner.

Mm-hmm. instead of when there’s actually a fire. But it’s still a part of you that’s trying to help you. And when you, when you go in and you begin to recalibrate things, it’s not just that you’re fixing, for example, the flying phobia, it’s that you’re teaching that part of the person how to handle these things differently, better.

And so that, that part of the person begins to go, Oh, oh, I can go fix this thing over here. Oh, I can go fix this thing over here. Oh, I can go fix this thing over here. And as far as cognitive processing, it just looks like, wow, lots of things are spontaneously getting better. And that emotional level of processing, that’s the part of the person that’s kicking in and is just making these repairs across the board.

Well, I mean that brings out the situation. Let’s say someone calls you up and they perhaps have a bit of a list of things they’d like to address, and you know, very often this may pop up and sometimes they all seemingly connect to each other. But then again, sometimes you get that call that, Well, I bite my nails, I smoke and I’m anxious.

And you’re hearing the sort of disconnected list. How, how do you respond to that sort of, Come on in and I’ll help you out. . Yeah. how I respond. Yeah. We, we can, we can get this done. You know, again, in that kind of situation, what I would probably do is just start with my basic anxiety protocol and work forward from there.

Mm-hmm. , and you know, it’s kind of the idea if we can pull down anxiety across the board. Most everything gets better and then whatever is less standing, we can go and particularly target that. It may be that there are a bunch of behaviors that they mention in the list and I’ve had people walk in with literal, like type written lists that are multi page Yes, but you know, it it, it may be that we don’t have to go deal with like a bunch of the things on the list cuz they just kind of vanish.

And then whatever’s left, we can go and, and hit my normal. My normal rule of thumb says if you, you know, it’s probably anxiety. Treat for that. If you don’t know what it is, treat for anxiety. If you treat for anxiety and it doesn’t work, treat for trauma . And by the time you do that, you tend to be in good shape.

Now, you know there are places where. One size doesn’t fit all, and people come in with really specific things and you’re like, Okay, this isn’t so much an anxiety thing. We’re working in another area, and that’s fine too. Happy to go do that. But you know, it’s generally around here, it’s treat for anxiety.

That’ll work. If it doesn’t work. Treat for trauma. Yeah, and I like the mindset of having some sort of framework, some sort of protocol to that, which, you know, as soon as we have that, then there’s the willingness to step away from it when there’s a specific reason to do so. But to at least look and say that frameworks are freedom, that here’s at least a good launching off point.

And you know, I probably already have the answer having, you know, hung out with you before. But these are things that you’ve kind of developed over the years just by workshopping it with patient after patient. Right. I learn a lot from my clients and I’ve recently been doing presentations at conferences where I mostly talk about things I’ve learned from clients and I, I’ve just learned a lot from clients over the years.

I pay attention to what they’re doing. I can sit here and handcraft and handcraft a new metaphor for every person that walks through the door. And I did that for a long time, but I really learned several years ago not to do that. Because if I’ve got some kind of a standard format that I’m using and then I just tailor it based on what the person tells me, and again, it it’s primarily what they tell me an answer to the miracle question where I’ve got their emotional language.

If I just tailor something that’s familiar, then that gives me a foundation to work from to understand what’s going. and you know, then in the second session I may do something like, you know, like a fading photographs process, which is a light kind of non interactive, you know, reframe history regression type process.

I may do something like, you know, where you go, you get together with your muse and you look for creative ways to move forward. Sort of a creativity decision making process. You know, I’ve got notions of several different things to do going forward. Things become much more tailored in the second, and especially the third and subsequent sessions.

But the general starting place being similar really helps because you get predictability, right to begin from a place where there’s, there’s leverage and to get that traction. And you know, at the end of the day, it really comes down to that feedback and those subsequent appointments as to what’s working best for them, what needs that attention, and what other issues have popped up if they’ve cleared away some of those initial things.

Right, and even in the rare cases, again where things don’t work, that also is tremendously valuable information at that point. Whereas if I just tried some random thing and it didn’t work, then I don’t, I don’t have any useful feedback. That lets me know how to proceed. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Which, you know, we, we could look at that phrasing of when in doubt treat for anxiety and if that doesn’t work, treat for trauma, Right.

To look at, at least here’s a framework to begin the process with. You mentioned something a little while ago, uh, in terms of the miracle question, and just for those that aren’t familiar with that, can you unpack that a little bit? Sure. This was put together by Steve Deser and, uh, Isa Kimberg. It’s one of the, basically three things you do if you’re doing solution for this brief therapy.

Deser is AIP of Ericsson, Milton Erickson. Even though the, the approach is not hypnosis, it’s a, it’s just a standard therapy protocol. The way I ask the question, which is a little different from De Shaer, and you can, I think you hit his verbiage just looking it up online or even Wikipedia. But the way I ask the question, the client will come in for the first session.

I’ll say, I’m glad you’re here. And we’ve already had like a consultation. So I’m, it’s not the first time meeting the person, so I’ll be, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been looking forward to getting started. We’ll, you know, chat back and forth for a moment. So I’ve got a standard question I’d like to ask you.

It’s really the only standard question I use, but it’s kind of good. Would that be okay? No one ever says no. Nice. And now I’ll go. So I’d like to invite you to suppose that we have a great session today and it goes really, really well, and we get done, and you head out and you’ve got this lovely fall day, beautiful, rainy spring day, whatever it is, out the window.

Eventually tonight, you go home, you go to bed, and you do go to sleep. And while you’re asleep, a miracle happens. And everything that brought you here today gets magically fixed, but you don’t know that it’s magically fixed. Because it happened while you were asleep. What would you notice tomorrow, Tomorrow night, and the next day?

What would you notice tomorrow that would be different, that would let you know things have changed and then I start writing down their emotional language? Yes. What’s a typical response to get to that, let’s say with the anxiety? I would feel refreshed. I would wake up looking forward to my day instead of dreading it.

I would have a sense of purpose as I go into my work. I would feel happy, I would feel exhilarated. You know, people will pop up with all these different terms. Occasionally people will go with not statements. Yeah, I was about to say, you, you just described the way that, uh, after further questions, we eventually get.

Most often? No. A lot of times people go with, with, with positive statements. Oh, nice. They, I think, have clients that’ll go with the, the, you know, Well, I wouldn’t dread the day when I get up and I wouldn’t feel like I wanna stay in bed for several hours. And, you know, they’ll list several of those and I write those down and then I’ll let them talk for a while and then I’ll loop back in and go.

If you, if you woke up and you weren’t dreading the day and you weren’t wanting to just stay in bed, how would you feel? Yeah. And they, you know, you can keep kind of circling back after a few minutes. I don’t say and do it as soon as they said that. I want to get more on the table and just see what they spontaneously generate.

But it, it is, I’ve in fact thought of doing a book of these things where I just go through and pull client folders and just write answers to the miracle question and turn into like a book. I think it, it’d probably be really worthwhile, but you get some amazing things and what you’re getting is the person’s emotional.

And then as you, I wrap that through all the, the remainder of sessions that I do with the person, I’m gonna be wrapping that language through there, even if it’s not about the specific thing that they were talking about and answer to the question, you know, if they use a word, and sometimes people will use unusual words, like if they use a word like, Exhilarated, then exhilarated is gonna turn up a lot in their processes.

You know, even if they’re like, I’d be exhilarated when I go to work. Then even if we’re talking about other things that don’t have anything to do with work in the process, that’s gonna show up. My processes, by the way, are typically not interact. It’s based on what the person has told me in the first part of the session, and I do record the processes for people to listen to later.

To reinforce the suggestions. So I want to put together something that’s comprehensible for them to use as a personalized recording. Mm-hmm. , I think that makes my session a little different from what some hypnotists do. I don’t do very rapid inductions. I’ll spend, you know, three or four minutes in induction to get person down.

But in a way that’s usually something just simple like, A, a story, uh, guided imagery, a progressive relaxation was something that they don’t have to like, see or feel me in order to for, to work. Cuz I’m assuming they’re listening to it on audio. Yeah, yeah. So they’re getting that first pass it live and in person, but then it becomes a resource they can make use of it, uh, long afterwards as well.

Are there sort of tips and tricks you found towards giving the instructions of when and where to listen to that? Other than of course the, uh, not while operating a for. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve had to tell people not to do it while they’re driving. I had a client one time tell me we’re listening their process on the freeway, and they missed their exit by three.

And I was like, God, no. Don’t do that. Yeah. , you know, and that’s even in my written thing where I send them the audio. It’s like, do not, do not do this. Send my disclosure. It’s in my written. Email that I send them, I verbally tell them not to do that. We, we’ll leave out, we’ll, we’ll leave out who it was, but I had a, uh, client who came into the office one time and the phrase was, I hope this goes better than what I worked with.

And they mentioned a rather well known hypnotist. And I said, Do you mind if I ask what happened while I listened to one of his recordings and nearly drove off the end of the road? And my computer was in the office. And sure enough, I had that exact audio that she had purchased from this person and played it within seconds cuz I knew where it was.

And of course the opening was, this program is hypnotic in nature. Should only be listened to in a place you can give it your full attention. Never behind the wheel of a car. And they turn, they go. Does it really say that? I’m like, They all say that . Yeah, because the person, the whoever this is that we’re not mentioning doesn’t wanna be sued.

Exactly. Yeah. And and more importantly, you don’t want your client to be injured or harmed. Well, yeah, that’s, that’s important as well. Of course. Yeah. That’s the main concern. But yeah, so, yeah, no, I, I probably have another thought here, but, um, there you. Yeah, no, I like that as the intention, which, you know, to look at the reason why we would work in a certain way that, you know, if I’m I, I’m of, I’m of a similar slant at times that my approach may sometimes be, if it is something that you know is going to be slightly interactive, we may go back in again and do part of the session once more, and that’s when I’m recording.

Or perhaps just carve out some time later in the day to produce something of that nature that I. Consistently found that giving them something of that nature does really help to enhance those results. I wanted to come around to something that I know perhaps a lot of people know you for, which is that specifically you’ve been awarded several times in terms of research, you know, advancing the science of hypnosis.

Can you elaborate on some of that, please? Oh, I really appreciate that. Yeah. I got an award, the Heino Science Award in 2013 from. The hyp most Congress in Zurich, Switzerland, which was, I was hugely honored and, and surprised the socks off of me because I didn’t really know these people at the time when they invited me over there.

And apparently they read one of my books and they, they loved it and, and so I, you know, They liked the research that was in motion, The Power of Change, which was the book. And I’ve subsequently gotten the Hypnosis Research Award from the, uh, the National Guild Papist, and really, really appreciated that recognition as well.

I think it’s important for us to understand how our processes function and operate. And at this point there enough has been learned with modern neuro imaging that I think we’ve got a very clear picture at a brain level. Of the, the, the major players, the key components and how the processes are actually functioning.

If for anyone who wonders if hypnosis is something different from just waking state conversation, like if that is still an active question that you have, I would advise you to just take a look at neurological research because definitely the brain responds differently in relaxation and waking state.

And you know, we’re, we’re clearly dealing with something that. Operating differently, not in the same territory as therapeutic conversation. So, uh, not the therapeutic conversation is bad or that cognitive therapy has no place. But I do believe firmly that emotions drive behavior and that our processes essentially operate because they engage more or less a shutdown of cognitive processing.

And an engagement at a, at a limbic system, brain level, limbic system is the part of you that’s in charge of stress, anxiety. It’s in part of your charge of your survival and keeping you safe. And most everything that we look at as far as client issues are limbic driven things. So when you’re trying to handle these things or manage these things by.

Cognitive means, which is really about the neocortex. You’re essentially working in the wrong part of the brain. It’s, it’s as if you’ve got a problem with your transmission of your car, but you decide to tinker with the engine to try to fix it. You may do some worthwhile things, but you’re not really working at the level of the problem.

I also feel like our language is very dated. We’re still using a lot of language and concepts from the 19th and early 20th centuries. I think we’re, we have the ability now to understand those things in a better way and to express ourselves more in a much more accurate manner. Yeah. What would you say is that, Is that outdated language we need to look at?

Well, I mean, I’m not sure that the subconscious or unconscious is concepts. I mean, they’re nicet metaphors, but that what we’re really, I think talking about, we’re actually talking about limbic system processing. Yeah. So you know, the notion of body experiences, like, you know, sweating, palpitations, heartbeat, sleep, all that stuff, those are limb functions when you’re talking about behaviors that seem conscious and cogniti.

But they don’t feel that way internally for the person. We’re looking at something that’s probably related to like the anterior simulate cortex, which another limbic structure that constantly comes up with this stuff. So I think the notion of limbic processing makes more sense, describes more than talking about subconscious or unconscious.

When you look at conscious mind, what we’re really talking about, Neocortex cognitive processing. Of course there’s, you know, there’s still debate in, in psychology, psychiatry, and philosophy about the nature of consciousness, but we’ve pretty much run it down to something that’s happening in the neocortex area.

You know, just talking about cognitive processing, I think is more. And it really executive function processing, and it’s that neocortex processing that’s distinct from the the limbo processing. We like to pretend that we are the little voice that we hear in our heads. Um, that we are the, the executive function voice, and we like to pretend that things happen either because I decide to do it as a conscious choice, or maybe there’s something driving it that’s like biochemical or possibly biomechanical.

The reality is the vast majority of behaviors are driven at a fundamental emotional level. They don’t necessarily make sense cognitively, although we tend to rationalize things, but that that limbic processing, that emotional loving processing is where all the power is. That’s like Advanced River. So if we’re able to work more directly at that level, , which I think is what you get when you get into a relaxation dis associated state, then I think we can work more effectively to, To eliminate the problems.

Yeah, but you just hit on something that was exactly where I wanted to go next with this, which is that we can look at this limbic system, we can look at the processing of the mind and of the body and say, this is where the issue is occurring. So what would be that sort of simple explanation as to how it is that hypnosis is that ability to then access.

Oh, it’s just very simple. Basically, when you, uh, as you relax, frontal load processing shuts down. Mm-hmm. , and what I mean by shuts down is if you look at it on neuro imaging, if you look at it with something like FM r, which is a, uh, a neuro imaging process, a brain scan process that looks at electrical activity within the brain, the electrical activity dims way down.

If you look at it with, uh, cerebral blood flow, which is another kind of neuro imaging, for example, that looks at blood flow to different parts of the brain, then what you see is blood flow to the frontal dramatically reduces as you relax. It’s like turning down a dimmer switch. As you relax, the frontal low processing goes more and more offline and, and essentially receives well the limit system process.

It’s staying stable. So it’s sort of like the tide is going out and it’s exposing this area of beach that you couldn’t see before, but is really where all the action is. And so as that cognitive processing goes offline, I believe you’re working with the person more, more directly at an emotional level, which is what’s driving behavior that, you know, what you see on the narrow imaging is consistent with suggest with subjective reports of.

I was asleep or I wasn’t thinking, you know, or I was zoned out. And it really, as you look at it in more and more detail, it makes more and more sense. Which this, Well, that’s the, this puts us into an interesting category cuz we can look back to definitions like the Dave Alman definition of bypassing the critical faculty of the conscious mind.

And we can reverse engineer that, that older definition based on exactly what you just said. But then again, let’s just use the languaging of what actually is happening rather than the older metaphorical structure, or perhaps somewhere when appropriate, a combination of the two. I think a lot of times you end up using a combination of the two because, you know, the language is , kind of why it’s own hypnotic conduction onto its own

Right. Well I yeah, mean, you know, there, it sometimes it makes sense in alo way to, to talk about the older language, but I find if I, you know, when I go to talk with physicians, I’ve got an entire workshop I do that’s on relaxation based pain relief and it, it’s a standard of care process. For non-pharmacological pain relief, and it looks at hypnosis, it looks at mindfulness, it looks at meditation and a, you know, guided images as this thing from hypnosis guided motor images, which is a physical therapy concept and, you know, looks at, at a brain level how these things are functioning.

Well, when I sit up there and the, the training is designed for physicians and other licensed medical and mental health professionals, and if I start talking to them about, you know, critical factor and conscious mind, I’ve immediately lost the audience. Mm-hmm. , I have to be talking in, in terms of neurophysiology in order for, for things to, to have credibility at all and for things to make sense.

And I’ve had physicians come up to me going, You know, now this makes sense to me. I, you know, didn’t see how this operated before. You know, you’ve tied some things together. You’ve tied together things I already knew in ways I didn’t look at. Yeah, to look at it from the description of what is happening rather than the metaphorical and you know, just call it out.

Know the audience, almost the way back to asking the client the miracle question, using a lot of their language back at them, finding that through line as to this is what is happening rather than, again, some sort of metaphorical description. Can you elaborate a bit more on that? Relaxation based pain.

Sure. I, you know, I was invited a couple years ago to be the keynote speaker for the palliative care group at the local hospital here at one of the local hospitals. Palliative care are the, I have tremendous respect to these people. These are like the, the social workers and the nurses whose patients literally are not gonna live till Tuesday.

And, you know, they’re, they’re working with critical end of life individuals and obviously pain relief is a huge issue in there. And I talked about, you know, Pain relief, which honestly, Jason, to all our listeners, if you’re not doing pain relief, you need to be doing it. Yeah. I love that you say this and it’s so simple, right?

It’s so simple that like almost, you generally get pain relief even if you don’t suggest it, but even direct suggestion of your going numb tends to work because it’s so integral to our process. The association and the relief, uh, release of natural endorphins and uh, natural opioids, uh, in the system is.

Intrinsic and a hyp body process. And so, you know, this is an excellent process for that. Mm-hmm. . And there’s a lot more that you can do besides direct suggestion, obviously that’s what the whole training is about. But I, you know, I was talking about doing this and they were like, Well that is great. Who can we refer people to to do this?

And I’m like, Well, you know, there’s me. Which is not a good answer. Right? And then I got invited to speak to the, the state Association for like employment and workforce. And this is doctors and lawyers that are basically there. And I talked about nonpharmacological, pain relief. This was all brought up by the opioid crisis.

And they were like, That is excellent. We wanna be able to refer people to this. Who can we refer ’em to? And I’m like, you know, again, there’s me, which is not a good answer. And at. And at that point I decided, you know, there just needs to be a manual on this that draws all this together. Cause all the research is there, but the research tends to be scattered.

Like when I pulled this together, I was pulling things not only from like psychology and psychiatry journals, a lot from neurological journals and other like anesthesia medical journals, but also things like, you know, physical therapy, peer review journals, and just out there like different things that were just out there.

And so the data is there, but the research tends to be to be scattered, and so. Pulling it together in one place and then talking about these different modalities. And I went ahead and decided to make it broader than hypnosis. So it included hypnosis, but included, you know, mindfulness, which everybody loves and, and a number of different approaches that are ran across and talked about the neurology of how these different things operate.

And then went through different and just put together scripts, you know, went through different scripts that you could do in different ways. You could interact with patients that would. Pain relieving. I spent a huge amount of time on waking state suggestion what eon called ordinary waking tra. I spent a huge amount of time on waking state suggestion because there’s a lot that like nurses and medical technicians can do just as they’re talking to their patient and normal interactions.

If they’re just paying attention to their language and being careful with the way they do things, emotion. They can be much, much, much more effective. And that’s not even a separate like treatment or intervention, it’s just using time that you’re already using in a more effective manner. So I was looking at processes that medical professionals could use in clinical setting that didn’t involve having to have something else you gotta bill for, but it could just be wrapped into your patient care that you’re already doing.

So very brief interventions that these professionals could do that would substantially help clients or patients with pain relief. Of course, also like counselors and psychotherapists and so forth in there. And then I think we can do a little more at our offices cuz we get a little more time with the client.

You can specifically work on it, but that’s the, the nature of that training. Right, and that specific filter of taking what they’re already doing and applying a few hypnotic principles on top of it to make it even more effective, that tends to be one of those biggest, I hate to use the term selling points, but one of those things that that community is truly looking for in terms of maximizing their efforts in that timeframe to get that best result with that, with that client, with that patient.

Well, not even, I mean, it is what they’re already doing in the sense that they’re having some kind of. Interaction with, like a couple years ago I had to hear my wife scream from the kitchen and I go running in and there’s blood. And she had was, you know, had been slicing something for dinner with a mandolin, which is, you know, not the musical instrument, but the really sharp bladed thing.

And I, you know, I had actually like bought her the Kevlar gloves and said, you know, you need to use the little guide thing with that. But she decided not to do it and so we had a nasty cut. And so we go headed off to the emergency room and I’m not faulting the nurse. But we go in and the nurse, you know, they took a right back cause blood.

The nurse is like, Wow, that looks like it really hurts. I bet. That’s really intense. Boy, you know, we get three or four mandoline cuts in here a week. They’re always really bad. We’re gonna have to put a lot of stitches in there. Oh, that’s good. And I’m sitting there going, What in the world are you doing?

I’m like, you need to be saying things. Wow. Okay. I can do some things that’ll really help you. We’re gonna get this. We’re gonna take care of you. We’ll get this feeling better. I can do something that’s gonna be really useful. We’re on top of this. You know, that kind of thing. I mean, just re just rephrasing the things.

Would my mother, who’s 93, the last time she was in the hospital, they’re like walking her to the bathroom. They’re like, Don’t fall. Be careful not to fall. Don’t fall. I’m like, Do you want the woman to. They need to be saying things like, You’re steady on your feet, you’re stable, you’ve got this, Be sure your handholds are good.

You know, that kind of thing. Although I have done what you want, not what you don’t want. Although I was in the hospital with a family member who was going through, uh, heart surgery and they were explaining. That, you know, the, the goal would be to go, um, you know, through the wrist, we go directly into the heart valve and it’s quick replacement.

We actually do it under local anesthesia. That way you can tell us immediately when you feel better. We’d prefer to not do full open heart, and it’s one of the first times I heard a negative, but it was phrased in the way that I go, Well, that’s honest. But the way that they followed up was gorgeous to go, Well, the first month you’re not going to be yourself.

But then after that, you are going to be amazed how rapidly you recover and feel. . I’m like, Well, at least there’s the opening end of the mind . But again, to look at it well, Yeah, I mean I would probably put that as like the first month you’ll probably, you may feel a little bit different, right? Yes. Things might seem to be bit off, but you know, the second month it’s gonna be great.

I love that framing, and I’m not saying that medical professionals shouldn’t ask the questions they need to ask for diagnosis and they shouldn’t, you know, gauge intensely levels of pain or whatever they need to do in order to see what’s really going on. But there’s a lot of chit chat that happens. That can be more positive.

And there’s also a lot of ways that things are framed that just need to be framed better. And there was, I, I was invited, um, recently to do a two day training in Zurich for physical therapists that specialize in head injury trauma. So their patients are people that like, have severe mobility issues as a result of brain damage.

And they wanted to work on sort of the psychological side of communicating with, with patients better. With their clients better. And so I was in, it was all liking state hypnosis stuff and I was in talking about. Suggestive language. It was really interesting because it turns out the German apparently is very, very different from English.

And so, you know, I would put up a slide, give a concept, talk about what native speakers in English would normally say what I was recommending and why it was different and the effect we were going for. And then the woman that was there that was heading up the thing who’s lived in Zurich for like, you know, 28 years but was from here, would then like say what I just said.

In German and then they would talk about it for like 10 or 15 minutes and occasionally in German and occasionally ask me a question and then they would tell me, Okay, we got it. And then they would, we would move on to the next thing. But they were really, you know, there was a really different use of language.

They tell me, you know, this is not how I’ve ever thought about using language with a client. And, you know, the sort of purposeful misuse of language in order to accomplish certain goals is something I’ve never thought of and it’s gonna really change the way I approach my clients. But that’s all about that emotional framing for success.

And so Theri based pain relief is working along the same lines of just equipping our conversation to be more positive and better. Yeah, absolutely. This has been great. And, uh, where can people check out more about you online? Watermark columbia.com. Columbia, South Carolina is the city where I am. And so if you’re, if you’re starting a new practice, you’re beginning from scratch, don’t name your website after the geographical place that you are, but with mine, watermark columbia.com works really, you know, it’s been around for years and it works really well.

If you click on upcoming events, then that always has my upcoming training there that’s on the front page, and you can just click the link on upcoming events and you’ll see whatever’s going on. I know this has kind of a long tail tool of people looking at it, but I’m teaching the National Guild Epi Professionaly Hypnosis certification.

Beginning in January over several weekends, and then I’ll be teaching the relaxation based, uh, pain relief certification for license medical and mental health professionals at the Medical University of South Carolina, which is a, a major teaching in research hospital in, uh, in Charleston, South Carolina.

And that’s March 12th and 13th. Um, 2020. I’m looking forward this year to going to. Hit no thoughts in the NG and had really good feedback from the UK Hypnosis Convention. So I’m looking forward to that in October, November, as well as the hyp most Congress in Zurich. So that, you know, looking forward to the year coming ahead.

Watermark columbia.com. Click on upcoming events. Awesome. And give us a quick intro to your books as well, which we’ll link over in the show notes along with those links to, uh, at work smart hypnosis.com. Well, the first book is a Motion, The Power of Change, which is sort of a basic introduction to hypnosis.

It’s. The science in it is still really good, but it’s essentially from 2013. So, um, the workshops, you’re getting a lot more, but the book is, is a really good, like if you’re, if you’re learning hypnosis or if you wanna add arien principles in, you’re already an excellent hypnotist, but you want to kind of explore a new area up your game there.

Or if you just wanna know about more about the neurology of how it works, again, the sciences. Everything it says is still really solid and, and really good emotion. The power of change, uh, is that, The second book is a different, it’s called a Different Reality. That one is a six session protocol for, for treating anxiety disorders.

And so it involves six different hypnosis processes and how I use ’em and you know, generally how I approach anxiety issues and disorders. And it’s, it’s a really nice approach. We were talking about, you know, having kind of protocol thinking at the beginning. That book is really good and it’s got the three doors process in it, which I had mentioned.

The other book I have generally is only available if you take the uh, relaxation based Pain relief certification workshop, but it’s the relaxation based Pain Relief certification manual. I’ve got it available online, overseas, some places, so if you’re over there, hey, pick it up, it’ll be great. And I really want you to look into coming to the workshops here because they’re really.

So those will be the three books that are currently out. Well outstanding. And I’ve got all three. I’ve read through them and definitely recommend them as well. So thanks for sharing those. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that comment on my books too, Jason. Yeah, so any final thoughts before we wrap it up here?

You can do great things for your client. We have the ability with the processes that we use to help people make tremendous deep blasting changes to do it very, very quickly. I would encourage you to constantly learn from your clients, study up your game, play with new processes. Listen to the feedback that you get.

There is a lot that we bring to the table using the hypnotic arts that just is not available in any other way in our society. And so I’m glad you’re a practitioner and I hope you will up your game and if I can help you. Let me know. I’m always happy to interact with people. Enjoy the books. Come to the workshops.

Jason Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for sharing it on your social media streams or even, hey, reaching out to the guests and saying, I heard you on the program. This is what I learned from you, and this is what I’d like to learn more from. I’ll put all the contact information for Frederick Mal in the podcast links [email protected].

Be sure to check out his books. We link directly to those [email protected]. You could find out about the upcoming [email protected]. And again, check out hypnotic workers. Dot com. It’s the all access pass to the digital version of my hypnosis training library. Not just techniques for change, but real client sessions from start to finish to model what’s working now.

Check that out. Get inside. Join the community hypnotic workers.com. We’ll see you soon. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.