Session #344: Howard Cooper on Metaphors to Release Anxiety

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 344. Howard Cooper on metaphors to release anxiety. 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 I’m going to be brief in the introduction this week.

Because Howard Cooper has become one of our favorite guests, often have on this program, and what he does exceptionally well when he is on here is genuinely just peel back the curtain and talk about exactly what’s working for him. Right now in the shape of his business, his practice, his process of helping clients.

So it’ll link to these in the show [email protected], which you can easily find by going to work smart hypnosis.com/ 3 4 4. But previous episodes like Howard’s Marketing Epiphany where a conversation that he and I had had a number of years ago suddenly. And how he was then implementing that strategy exceptionally well in his business.

And I will say one of the most popular episodes we’ve ever put out, Howard Cooper ruins a magic trick, which if that doesn’t peak your curiosity, I don’t know what will, But it’s perhaps the most artistic and most effective way to address the question. Will the hypnosis wear off? Well, this week’s episode, Howard Cooper on metaphors to release anxiety, which by the way was actually a live interview that I did in our private Facebook work Smart Hypnosis Community, which you can go over to the show notes, the link I mentioned earlier and actually watch it in real time or continue to listen here, and it’s where as he talks about metaphor.

Howard actually completely premieres his new book, which at the time of this recording is still coming soon. However, whenever you listen to this, head over to russell of leaves.com and again, we’ll put that in the show [email protected] slash. Three. Four. Four. But that Russell of Lee’s book is one that shares a metaphor in terms of helping children to release anxiety, overcome fears, and stick around.

By the way, to the end of this conversation, because there’s an incredible process. That he shares, which, yes, it was specific about working with children for bedwetting by way of hypnotic metaphor. Yet with a little bit of creativity, you can see how it’s a formula you could apply to all sorts of different issues that hypnotist could work with a child on.

Plus the benefit of having the real time Facebook Live audience that you had. You’re gonna hear. Respond to some of the concerns that people had as they were listening. And Howard Artley gives the right answer at that point in terms of how to make sure we’re practicing within our scope of practice. So again, you can head to the show [email protected] to get all the details of how to get Howard’s book as it releases, as well as just how to keep up with this guy cuz he’s doing some great work.

And while you’re there too, check out this Easy to remember. Link velvet rope hypnosis.com. So it’s about a year and a half ago that I published something to my communities, and then we started to share it around with everyone else. A simple principle called the velvet Rope Strategy, which this one technique alone in the shape of my business, helped me to eradicate no-show.

Gain back more of my time and build a greater client expectation in the shape of my business. And I’ll tell you in advance, it’s not just about putting a calendar application on your website. Instead, what it’s really about is taking back better control of the dialogue and helping your clients to elevate themselves to the fact that yes, this is something that they are ready to address.

What we’ve actually done is we’ve spun this off and made it available for an extremely low price. So head over to velvet rope hypnosis.com, watch the video, read some of the stories, and join us inside of that easy to digest program. And with that, let’s head over to Howard Cooper in the uk. This is episode number 344.

Howard Cooper on metaphors to release anxiety. I was chatting with the good friend Howard Cooper, who’s here for us today about some of the work he’s been doing with working with kids, and even better arming the parents in terms of how to best work with them. So welcome Howard. Thank you so much for having me, Jason.

Great to be here and really excited to share so much stuff around this topic. Yeah. And you’ve been here on the program now several times. For those that don’t yet know you, could you give a bit of an introduction to yourself, Jason, I love to say I’m alot for punishment. Uh, having to keep coming back, uh, for more of your incisive questioning.

But, um, no, in a nutshell, here it is. I, uh, have a background where 15 years old I was diagnosed as having a severe panic attack and anxiety disorder. I was sent to a psychotherapist who spent, uh, a lot of time helping to understand why I was like, I was. Problem was three and a half years later, I wasn’t really any better.

So I thought, well, I’ve gotta find some stuff that really helps and really works and is more what I would call solution focused. So I came across hypnosis, I came across nlp. That helped me personally so much more effectively than anything I’d come across before. So that’s what kind of led me on this path of going, I wanna learn how to do this so I can help other people to change.

And that journey is now, I’m now coming up to 20 years working with people therapeutically. I seem to get really interesting and good results with children. Mainly because I think I’m a big kid deep down at heart and uh, I also used to work as a magician and a children’s party entertainer, so I sometimes incorporate some of that kind of playfulness within my sessions, certainly with young kids.

But it led me on this really interesting path of having some. I would say some insight and experience in helping children, uh, to deal with anxiety, uh, as well. So I’m really excited to share with you not just some of my thinking and concepts around it, but there’s actually a particular protocol or process that I often run it with a particular issue that I, I’m never released as yet.

And this will be the first airing. It gets publicly, Oh, hey, we love anticipation. Uh, you have, by the way, uh, and not because I came up with the title, uh, the best named. Episode ever of this entire work smart hypnosis series, which was of course called Howard Cooper Ruins a Magic Trick. Uh, we we’ll link to that for everybody later on in terms of exactly where to go to find that.

Could you give us like the 32nd description of that just as a preview though? Yeah. It was this thing that I used to do when people would say to me, but with it last. I, So what I wanted to do was to find a way that I could not just help them intellectually get that once they changed their perception of something, you can’t almost never go back, but to have an embodied insight of that.

So there’s a particular magic trick, which I do the trick first. They go, Oh my word. I can’t believe you’ve just managed to do that. How did you do it? And then I ruin the trick. I show them how it’s done and when they repeat the trick, when they know how it’s done, they’re. Did I fall for that? That’s ridiculous.

I can’t have fallen for that. And the point being is that they get this embodied sense of once they get more information or see something that they didn’t have before, you can’t have the same response. And that really kind of just removes that heckle of, well, how will I know if it lasts? What I, what I love about that is the fact that I, I’ve lived for many years with the premise that show is better than tell.

So rather than the game of here’s why and here’s what we can do, and here’s what you should know in this quick interactive demo, they’re suddenly getting the, the revelation of that. Um, previous episodes with Howard, he’s talked about his history of running group, fear of flying courses, a lot of the work that he does with his clients.

Um, you’ve hint at something, which is why we’re here right now about working in some respect with the parents. So that they know the methods to help their kids resolve issues like anxiety. And correct me on that, kind of walk us through exactly what this now has become. I think, I mean, I increasingly am working with children and parents often ring me to say, Can you help with X, Y, and Z?

And one of the things that I really wanted to share was I think there was sometimes danger in intervening too soon with children in that. It’s very tempting. So a new client rings up and says like, Can you help me? Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ll, I’ll do it. But I think we also have to bear in mind what I would call self-efficacy and teaching children also to naturally overcome anxiety and to help them give them like we shouldn’t immediately be going the moment they have any anxiety quick.

They have to get rid of it quick. Can you help them? So I’ll have parents and they’ll ring me and they’ll say, You know, can you help my child? It’s like, Well, how long have they been anxious? Oh, it started yesterday. Well, okay, well like give them time, let them work it through. So I think there is merit in only intervening when you have something that’s chronically going on that’s really intrusive into the quality of, uh, the child’s life.

And that the way in which we do it also empowers them. Because for me, and I think this is something that, that’s dangerous, which is if they come and see. Regardless of the issue, whether it’s anxiety, whether it’s bedwetting, whether it’s nail biting, whether it’s a fear of dogs, but what they perceive is that they just went to see Howard, Magic Howard and he magic my problem away.

What we’re really teaching them is that anytime you have a problem, someone else is gonna get rid of it for them, and I don’t think that’s winning the battle. I think much better to help children learn what techniques, what approaches can I use myself. To begin to change how I feel so that they step up and take ownership over these results and these changes.

And I think you can do that at any age. And I think sometimes, you know, having ways in which we can approach conversations that are normally, we might have psychologically oriented. Conversations with adults to help them understand what’s happening and where this is coming from. You can also have those with young kids, but we need to communicate in a slightly different way, and that’s why, um, sometimes storytelling.

Can really help people communicate what’s really going on in a way that, that, that, that young people really get. But does that make some sense, Jason, in terms of when to intervene? Go back to something that you had said a little while ago about how, you know, my kid’s anxious today, so let me make this phone call now.

You know, one of the big things that I found to be important in terms of not just helping the client, but also in some respect, Let’s call it out. We’re running a hypnosis business. The sales of the process is to recognize when there’s a specific catalyst, when there’s a specific reason that when these things line up, that’s the client that I work the best with.

And you know, one example of this is that I do a lot of work with business owners, public speaking, fears, some sort of anxiety around that. And what I’m often listening for is when they’re at that point where they’re now backing a way of opportunities because of the anticipatory fear. That’s where I’m like, Yeah, that’s what we need to do.

This is why we need to do this. Are there specific catalysts that you’re kind of looking out for when you’re on that conversation? Cause clearly the parents calling you, the kid’s not calling you. What? What are you often listening for as that catalyst? Well, I will not work with any kid unless I’ve spoken to them ahead of time.

So not often. I will set up a, like a Zoom call often with the parents so that I can speak to the kid as well, because I wanna know that they’re engaged. And I also want to empower the the kid. And I always tell the parents I’m gonna do this, that the kid is the one that says, Yes, I want to do. So they have to say to them, I always say, Listen, I’ve spoken to mom, I’ve spoken to dad.

They know that they know how we can get started if you wanna do this, but we don’t have to do anything unless you want to. And all you need to do is say yes or no to them. And, but it’s your choice. I really want them to be the person that wants the change whatever age they are. But yeah, I mean it normally, it comes around when I’m with stuff that developmentally.

They’re behind where they should be and it’s now likely to cause problem moving forward. So, for example, bedwetting, if they’re 11, 12 years old and they’re now getting embarrassed because they’re wearing naps or they have nighttime nappies and they’re gonna have sleepovers and now they’re having to turn down going to sleepovers, or they’ve got camp, school camp coming up and they, I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go.

Cuz what happens if they fight? This is now a time to now, you know, deal with it or, or look at it. I, I think there’s another interesting aspect just to touch on this with, and uh, I remember sharing this on one of my programs, which, uh, in fact I had a parent that came and did one of my online programs and got huge benefit from this point that I was about to make, which is that sometimes when we are trying to reassure very young kids, we have this tendency to go, It’ll be alright.

Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. It it, it’s okay. There’s nothing to worry about. And that tends to be these sort of stock mar like platitudes are our go-tos for helping young children with fear. And I fell guilty of this. I, I’ll give you a good example. My son George, at about five years old, I think he’d seen some YouTube clip about the great fighter of London and now became terrified of fire.

And so, you know, he had put him down to bed and he, he suddenly starts screaming, Ah, daddy, help, help. I come running up. What is it? He goes like, I’m terrified. Like, what about fire? Okay. And for the first few nights I was like, No, no, there’s nothing to worry about. You’re fine. You’re absolutely okay. Don’t worry, you’re that.

And he just carried. This, this, this obsession about fire. And it dawned on me, I was guilty of doing all of this stuff that I tell people not to do, which is just saying, Don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay. And on what planet am I living on? Where it’s okay to tell children that fire is okay and there’s nothing to fear, like fire is dangerous.

We, we do want children to have a healthy respect for fire, do we not? So, um, I tried a different approach, which is next time he screamed and went, Daddy, Daddy, I’m terrified of fire. Instead of saying, It’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about. I went, Well, you know, fire is actually dangerous and you should have seen his eye.

Guess he just went, What? I, I’m right. Like you, you’ve been, But here’s what happened. Instead of him responding for the first time with you don’t understand me, I’ve been trying to tell you. He really had, I really had his attention. He was like, Oh, wow, Dad, Daddy’s really validating this. I, I said, Well, it is dangerous.

So let me show you how we. Stay safe. And he didn’t know that we had fire alarms. He didn’t have any idea that these things existed. So I showed him the fire alarm that was outside his room that detects, uh, smoke and fire. I showed him what it sounds like when it’s beeping. And then what happened is this, the next night I put him down to bed and he starts screaming for me, Daddy help, help.

And I go running up. And he, I said, What is it? He went, It’s fire. And I went, What can you hear? And he. Nothing. And I went, Right, what does that mean? And it was like the little cogs started turning . Oh yeah. Oh it means, it means I’m safe. If I can’t, it means I’m safe. Great. We did that a few nights in a row and then it just petered out.

It stopped cuz what he had learnt was he began to develop a strategy for how he could navigate his own safety. Giving children strategies so that they can selfly and give themselves, How do I know when I’m safe? How do I know when there’s danger versus how do I not know that’s more effective than just, just relax?

It’ll be alright. And we see this with dogs, you know? You know, Uh oh, the dog’s fine. Pet the dog. Well, not all dogs. Dogs can be dangerous. So, you know, getting the kid to understand that you have to go and tell, ask the, uh, the parent, like, is this dog a friendly dog? Is it okay to pet him? These are the things that we need to do in terms of helping children navigate through wisdom rather than letting fear, uh, rule their anxiety.

So that’s a really cool insight and I mean, we can apply that to. Every client, and I love that you wrap that up by talking about a dog as when we got a dog last year, a new puppy, we’re reading these books on animal training and house training. I’m like, That’s what I do with my clients. That’s what I do with my kids.

Oh, wow. It’s all the same formulas of coming up with a strategy. So rather than trying to just simply say, That’s not an issue, don’t worry about that. Doing something that actually trains that process. And I’m imagining this is in some way a bit of a segue. To the work that you’ve been doing in terms of how we can hypnotically, make use of metaphor to instill this the same way that, again, show is better than tell that stories invite people into the experience stories.

People allow people to observe something from a different perspective. And even though, Yes, it can be at times a work of fiction. We’re still learning human skills as a result of that. So, So kind of catch us up with what you’ve been up to in the last couple of years concerning this. Right. Well, many of, uh, people will know that sometimes people, not, not not just kids, but sometimes people become afraid of things that pose no threat.

So whether that’s a fear of flying and everyone knows statistically that flying is the safest form of transport, but I’m still afraid, um, there’s often a process by which. Sort of misinterpreting threat. And a really good example of this, and actually the, it’s the first thing that popped into my mind right now.

Uh, a colleague of mine and actually someone that you’ve done a podcast with as well, Felix Eco Marcus, uh, who worked with people who are food phobic. He gave me a really good example of this the other day where he was working with a, a young kid who was terrified of, of food. And if you look back at the past, what likely had happened, they talked about they’d been, I.

And they’ve thrown up. Now you put a two year old head and you think what’s going on in their brain when they throw up and they look down? And let’s be honest, sorry, it’s gonna get a bit graphic, but there’s always diced carrots in sick, even if you haven’t been eating them. So the little kid looks down, sees the diced carrots, and thinks I felt really bad.

I’m seeing diced carrots. Carrots must be bad. So the brain jumps to the wrong conclusion. Now, of course, the young brain’s not gonna go. I think it’s microbes. I think it’s bacteria. I think it’s viruses. It’s on scene. It’s just gonna be, carrots are bad. So now their brain generalizes and now they’re afraid of carrots and other foods and so on.

So I’ve seen this a lot in my work too, and it became around, well, how can I help children to understand that? Sometimes we become afraid of things that pose no threat. Like someone who, who doesn’t really get that. So I started years ago, uh, playing around with a, a metaphor, a story that came to me and it was really about a little rabbit.

I described what would happen if a rabbit was walking down to to eat some food and heard a russell of leaves and out jumped to fox. The rabbit would obviously run away, but it would also think that anytime it hurt the Russell of leaves, there might be a fox. And I played that out in my mind. What would happen if the, the rabbit had kids?

The kids were, you know, following mum to eat some food and they heard a russell of leaves. What they would see was mum run away cuz she thinks there might be a fox, but the kids wouldn’t see a fox. They’d just see Russell of leaves, mum running away. And what happens if the kids then went, Hold on a moment.

Maybe the Russell of leaves is dangerous. And what would that happen? What would occur? Uh, and I would tell this story with kids. Until the point at which, you know, obviously then Fox comes along and they don’t know to be afraid of Fox. And Fox says, What are you doing? And they’re like, We’re trying to stay away from leaves.

And he’s obviously like, Well, can I help? Uh, and of course when I start telling them this story, kids always start going, No, no, no. It’s a fox. Stay away from the fox. The fox is dangerous. And they get really absorbed in this story. And after I started sort of playing around with this meta. I would have kids start saying like, I would go, Can you believe, I would say that they became afraid of leaves.

I mean, they were just leaves. You wouldn’t fall for anything like that, would you? And they would go, No, I wouldn’t do anything like that. And, and it would begin to bridge the gap into, well, what if this thing that you were afraid of, or actually just the Russell of leaves. That was really not the right thing to be afraid of.

You just come to the wrong conclusion, like the kids in the story, and you can sometimes just watch them begin to clock it. They get it. Anyway, this, this story, it used to end really terribly, by the way. It was, uh, in, in therapy sessions as I began, it was just like, yeah, and then the fox eats them all and they all die horribly.

And I was like, Well, I, I like the start of this story, but there needs to be a better narrative off if I’m ever to release it. I’m flashing to all the examples of. You know, there’s legends around this now where there’s like different movies that, here is the script, they got the green light, now they’re on set filming it, looking at the script and going, Oh dear, right.

We can’t do this movie. Which like, Pretty Woman and Groundhog Day fit into these categories where they show up on the set and it’s like, Yeah, just be flexible. We’re gonna give you new pages every single day. Yeah. I gotta ask what was happening in those sessions where boy who cried Wolf? Well, the Fox did show up and it didn’t end well.

How? How was it going? , Well, we just sort of gloss over and they’d be like, Oh, really? Oh, that’s bad. I’d be like, Yeah, but of course you wouldn’t fall for that, would you? And and we just segue into it. And it was never a big part of the, the, the, the session that ending. It was more about the mis understanding, the misinterpretation of fear.

But I, I then thought if I want it to translate better or for more people to get it, I, it would be nice if there was a better narrative arc. And one day it, it just dawned on me, like the ending for three years, by the way, three and a half years, it’s just been in the back of my head. This story, this matter.

And finally the ending popped up. It just occurred. And, uh, I ended up sitting, uh, and just wrote the whole thing in one evening, and I wrote it in rhyme a bit like, uh, the Gruffalo, So Julia Donaldson watched this space. Uh, but yes, I, I’m actually releasing this book. It’s called the Russell Reeds, In about a month.

And, uh, we have an amazingly talented illustrator who’s doing it. Yeah, I’ve seen and releasing it, uh, and doing the, the, the work for it. And, um, yeah, I, for those of you who are on the podcast, they won’t see it, but I can hold up and show you some of the images as well. But I’d love to share the story. Yeah, we were chatting about this before and I was, that’s why we’re recording it here in this format that I was asking Howard, are there segments you can share?

And he just said, How about I just come on and read the entire story? It’s only an eight hour reading. Oh. So I think so it’s fine. We’re gonna splice it up and this will be the podcast for the next 12 weeks. So, um, There you go. Good to go. Absolutely. No, no, it’s, it’s about a five minute reading. A five minute reading.

But I thought it would be nice to just share the story because even if people, you know, people like the story, you can start using it, start sharing it with clients, cuz it really seems to help. And I’ve had people contact me who saw the reading that I do of this on YouTube, uh, over on my YouTube channel, Howard Cooper’s Rapid Change Works.

Where people have even watched the story there and then said to me, I, I, I shared that story with my adult client that I’ve been working with, and it really spoke to them as well. So, uh, I’m hoping it translates ages as well, or traverses them, translates traverses, uh, What’s helped me out? Jason conveys, what’s the word, Conveys Value divides.

Yes. You all know what I mean. Anyway. Matches up with the neurology of you’re on check. Absolutely. You can tell my refined use of words, uh, really helps. Here’s something just as a preview in terms of how to think about this too, that yes, Howard’s got a book that’s coming out and I’ll drop it in the comments down below as soon as I can get over to another screen here in a bit.

Easy to remember. It’s Russell of Leaves dot. Easy to find, uh, but he’s about to read the entire thing. And here’s what’s cool. We were chatting about this, that your kids, how old are they now? Five and seven. So same spread as mine, minor eight and 10. And that experience that we as adults often play that game of, I’ve already read that book, I’ve already read that book with kids.

They keep coming back to the same stories. They keep coming back to the same ones. Um, Max, our youngest just checked out from the library a book. That he already owns a copy of, and it’s not that he forgot and didn’t remember he owned a copy. It’s no, because I really like that book and I want to read this one of it to which we’re then holding back the moment of going, You already have it.

No, he wants the library copy. But the kids reading the book from cover to cover once again. So let’s just let that one run. . So it’s the value of a story before we even hear it. Is this, does this become, I’ll give you my definitions of this. Sometimes in the work that I do, there’s techniques that become a bit of a thematic score.

So like for example, here’s the classic direct drive technique where you take one hypnotic suggestion and put it on a bit of a loop, and the more you repeat it, the more their confidence grows. Or here’s the classic like Heartland Ego strengthening. I think that was episode number four of this podcast.

And once I’ve done some of those suggestions, once I can then come back to those techniques once again, and they become a way of compounding advanced strategies. So I may have done. Some version of parts, some version of a six step reframe, which Howard, I don’t think I’ve told you this. I now do the six step reframe in four steps.

Why? I don’t wanna show off, but four steps is all we need , but whatever advanced strategy, I’ll come back to some framework of suggestions that we’ve done before to then compound the advanced work. Does this kind of work for you in the same respect that if it’s a subsequent appointment for some reason, you’re able to come back to some of.

The tenets of the story to further compound it. Yeah, I love that the way you talk about it being thematic. It, it’s a reoccurring theme. So just this idea of questioning could this be the russell of leaves that you’re responding to rather than something that’s actually dangerous, uh, is, is enough, provide almost is a callback.

It becomes on anchor of encompassing all the work that we’ve been doing around that. So it’s a great callback. Excellent, excellent. Hey, I think it’s story. As long as everyone’s sitting comfortably. Absolutely. Let me, uh, let me do my warmups. Me, me, me, me, me. Okay. All right. There we go. All right. Let, let, Let’s do it.

Let’s, let’s change the lighting for the story. Oh, absolutely. No, that’s good. Really works well on the podcast. I know, right? For those who we’re also live streaming this to a community, and then we’re gonna release it later as the audio of it. But Howard, the stage. Thank you. Okay, here we go. The Russell of Leaves by Howard Cooper.

That’s me. So yeah, the air was fresh. The sun was bright. Pip woke up after sleeping all night. Mm. Breakfast would be good. She pondered. So into the farmer’s field. She wandered, and then in the distance, just under some trellis, she saw the tastiest looking lettuce. She started eating. But from beyond the trees, there came a sound.

The Russell of leaves an left fox. His eyes were vicious. He looked at the rabbit and said, You’ll be delicious. Pip was scared, but before Fox could attack, she hopped out the way to avoid being his snack. Now, you might think that this is the end of the story of Fox being hungry and left without glory, but it’s just the beginning.

As soon you’ll discover how being afraid could be learnt from each other. Now, one year later, when springtime had come, Pip had changed. She’d become a mum and her two bunnies followed. Gus and Nelly wanting to find food to put in their belly, so off to the lettuce, near some trees. But as they got close, they heard a Russell of leaves and Pip who feared that it might be Fox.

Quickly ran off and hid behind rocks. Her kids followed her in a total days. Wondering why she’d shot off in a blaze. Perhaps our mum just couldn’t stay calm because something there could do us some harm. They thought this made sense, but what could it be? What had occurred that had made mum flee? And after some thought, Gus said he believes that danger might.

The Russell of leaves. Now, Pip was relieved. Fox hadn’t appeared, but didn’t explain what she’d really feared. And so later that night, her kids sat in confusion and that’s when they came to the wrong conclusion. The food looked ripe, the letters was green. There were no other dangers or threats to be seen, but the Russell of leaves had made Mum zoom.

The Russell of leaves must mean certain doom. So for the next few months, and in fact even longer, their terror of the Russell of Leaves grew stronger. So anywhere they went, they’d always stay clear of anything that rustled to avoid feeling fear. And then one day whilst out in the wood, avoiding the Russell of leaves like they should, Fox stood.

As they hopped around taking care to avoid any rustling sound. Fox haunted over to Nel and Gus, who looked at Fox and said, Don’t distract us. We’re trying to stay safe from the rustle of leaves, Fox gRED slightly. Can I help? Please? If you are looking for a place that’s Russell free, come this way and follow me.

Creeping behind Fox without making a sound. They followed him to his den. Underground. Fox pointed to a large pot that he used for cooking and said, Get in there before the Russell comes looking. The kids dived in the pot and felt safe at last, but their chance to escape was fading fast. Whilst all this went on, Fox hadn’t paid attention to Pip.

Who’d seen Fox’s true intention. She realized she needed a cunning plot to rescue her children from his cooking pot. So Pip thought that she could devise our most ingenious disguises to creep up on Fox without being beaten and save her two children from being eaten, borrowing some honey from the friendly bees.

She used it to stick on a mountain of leaves, and now she was covered in leaves of green. She could sneak up on Fox without being seen, but every time Pip moved a muscle. The leaves on her body would start to rustle. The kids heard the rustling and were terrified. Fox said, It’s coming quick, you must hide.

But as Fox was about to cook his meal, he saw the Russell Monster and said, Crikey, it’s real. And scar it off to escape the beast. So the bunnies never became his fe. Then Pip explained how the kids had been wrong. Fox had been dangerous all along, and realizing they had been mistaken. They hugged their mum and were no longer shaken, and now they were able to stay safe from Fox because outside their borough they kept a box filled to the brim with what Fox believes contains the dangerous Russell of leaves.

And then the crowd goes wild. Thank you. Awesome. Does the story come to mind after a story as to what you’ve seen as a result by sharing this with some of the kids that you’ve worked with? It’s like the little, I see. The, like the lights going on in their brains. Yeah. And, and what’s lovely is that they become the people who are poking fun, they don’t realize it’s at their own.

Misunderstandings because it’s like, Oh, aren’t the kids silly? Oh, look, how could they fall for it? But they also understand it as well. They get Well, yeah, that, and we often have a conversation about like, Well, why do you think they became afraid of the Russell Lee? Why do you think they, they didn’t know it was Fox.

How do you think they jumped to that conclusion? What would you tell them? What would you say to them if you could talk to them and they’d be like, I tell ’em it’s the rust of leaves is totally safe. You’ve just misunderstood. You just didn’t, you just became afraid of the wrong thing. I’m like, And then we’ll just keep segueing back and making the parallels and then letting their brain kind of do it.

Yeah, that was gonna ask you that, uh, there’s a story, we were teaching the last class of our work Smart Hypnosis Live last night, and we’ve got another one coming up in October. But there was a really cool question. That came from the group where someone had been actually a client. And the situation was, it was a process that was more heavily based in metaphor, and the arm was floating and then the arm was going down.

And the whole dialogue was that you never talked about my fear of flying and, and my phrasing on this is that you still always have to satisfy the conscious mind. Now, you know, we don’t want to step in that place of going and I told you that. Because you’re like, the bunnies and the leaves are the school teacher.

Right? And no, we don’t wanna go that literal in terms of breaking it down. But how, how do you bridge that gap? Well, we often, I often do this with adults too, and it’s in the framing of how you set this up at the beginning of a session. But I’ll often say to people, Has anyone ever told you a joke? And when they tell you a joke, it’s funny, so you laugh, right?

You have a full, like a full feeling of laughter in your body. But then has ever anyone ever then explained why it’s funny to you? And here’s what happens when they tell you why it’s funny, you kind of understand it, why intellectually, but notice you stop laughing. For me, when I work with people and I help someone, whether it’s an adult or a child, my job and the way I think about it is to help them make changes so that they have a, a full embodied change rather than just intellectually getting it.

Which often, if I can explain that well enough, often using that analogy of the joke that loses its power the moment you explain it, consci. You get buy in from people to be a little off the beaten track, to essentially do stuff that’s very much about putting some dots out there and then being open about the fact that I’m gonna send you away and your brain’s gonna kind of join them together.

And that’s how I normally get into that. Nice, nice. So the link for the book is russell of leaves.com. When does that officially come out? Next month. Next month. I, I wish I could be more detailed over the precise date. We’re still finalizing the images with the illustrator, but I’m just, he keeps sending stuff back and I’m like, It’s too good not to start sharing now.

Yeah. So there is a box on the website where you can sign up to be kept in the loop, and what will happen is those who sign up to the list, I will let them know ASAP as soon as we know officially. And the first few days we’re planning on having a heavily discounted, uh, sale. So you boost the ratings on Amazon Nice.

So that it’s, it’s certainly worth being on that list to be kept in the loop because you’re likely to get it at a, a much better price. Cool. And again, that’s Russell of leaves.com. When we release this as the podcast, we’ll put that in the show notes as well. We, we were chatting. Before we, uh, went live on this, uh, and the tradition is that I keep naming your episode specifically with the most clever titles.

There was Howard Cooper ruins a magic trick. There was, uh, Howard’s marketing epiphany, um, and you called it out that I was gonna, I know where you’re going. I knew where you were going. Yeah. That I was gonna call this episode. Uh, Howard Cooper Stops Wedding the Bed. But I think for your benefit and ours though, I think the click-through rate on that would be.

Through the roof. It would create, it would create a flood of traffic. Oh, seriously. So I instead this would be, um, release anxiety through. I, I think that one’s gonna be better. Uh, but we were chatting before we, uh, turn the cameras on here and the recording’s on, uh, about some of the protocols that you’ve kind of hopped in terms of working with kids for, uh, Bedwetting.

You wanna chat about that a bit? I, I do. And just because I’m not sure if everyone heard it. Jason was talking so he didn’t respond to the moment when I said you are in trouble. But, but we won’t go back there obviously. , um, Ever released it yet, We still could go with the title, How it’s like, um, the other one runner up was the Chris Thompson episode where he talks about his, uh, productivity cycle, which is that when he wakes up in the morning, he looks at his email on his phone because it’s so much faster to delete the junk mail on your phone.

That way when his workday officially begins, all that junk has been cleared away and we almost called that episode. Chris Thompson wakes up and looks at his junk. I, I, Yeah, yeah. Instead I, No words clearing away the junk song, something of that nature. But, uh, I see to us about wedding the bed, Howard, I, I have been working with bed wedding.

For a while now with young, uh, young kids. Um, and again, like before, I’m always very careful that we don’t intervene too early. So normally if they’re get into like 10 or 11 and it’s still chronically a problem, that’s when I’ll, I’ll start to do stuff with them. Um, and in fact, there’s a testimonial and it was, I, I never, I was never able to post it because the.

The wording was so ambiguous. They said, I sent my 11 year old to see Howard who’s had a problem with bedwetting for years. And I was like, Um, might wanna reorder that a little bit. People might come. The wrong conclusions. There’s been a process that seems to. I’ve been yielding really good results with, uh, bedwetting with youngsters in these situations, and I, I’ve haven’t really shared it publicly before, but I thought it might be nice to, to kind of, to, to share it.

So if anyone ever works with this kind of stuff, it’s a really kind of cool way. And I, I, So let me cut to the chase. First of all, what I often find is that they’re often very embarrassed about talking about it. So I very strategically am quite just blunt about the whole thing. And I often start with some psychoeducation and I say, Well, you know, Do you know, like what happens, uh, with bedwetting and why it happens?

And they’re like, No, I don’t get it. And I’m like, So I often go up to the whiteboard. I’m a big fan of my whiteboard here. I dive to the whiteboard and leap up into action and I draw a big bladder and I say this, and your bladder is like a bathtub. And most, and a lot of people, what happens very naturally is they get older, right?

Their body knows to close the plug at the bottom of the bar. Right, which makes sense cuz if you wanna fill up the bath and you want the water to go down, what do you do? Put the plug in. Uh, all that’s happened with you is that as you got older, you just, when you go to bed, you forget to put the plug in.

That’s all. It’s not a big deal. Just forget to put the plug in. Um, so what we’re gonna do is I’m gonna show you how you put the plug plugin, right? Little plug at the bottom of your bladder so that all night, it just doesn’t come out. But I’ll only show you this. On one condition, and I like this, uh, I, and they all giggle at this, but they get it.

I say, I, I only tell you how you can put the plug in. If you promise me, you’ll let me show you how you take the plug out so that in the morning, You can pee easily too, cuz we don’t want the pee coming all the way up and out your mouth and they go, Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll learn that too. Which I love because they’ve totally already bought into the idea that we can do this.

Mm-hmm. . Right? And here’s what we do. So, you know, the classic hand stick where you get them, you stick a hand to the the table. I get them doing it on their lap, so I’ll get their hand on their lap and I’ll get them to create the feeling that their hand is stuck on their lap and that they can’t pull it up.

That feeling of stuck. And I’ll get them to test it. And I don’t really mind, I don’t work in this kind of like, you’re in a deep trance kind of way. I, I, I work from the perspective of this is a skill and you can practice it. If they don’t get it first, like I’m gonna keep getting them to just use your imagination and imagine it until they get a real feeling of stock so vivid that they can’t move their hand even if they tried to lift it up.

When they get it, here’s what I do. I say, I want you to take that feeling of stuck in your hand and close your eyes and just imagine it moving all the way up your arm, all the way down. And just put it at to the bottom of your bladder where the bladder plug is. See it in your mind and just give me a nod when the bladder plug is sealed up and you’ll know when it’s sealed up because your arm will come up.

It’ll be on stock. And so when their hand gets unstuck and they often go, they go, Yeah, it’s stuck now. Great. I go, Fantastic. Great. So you can feel that. I said, Let’s, let’s do that in reverse so that you understand how to unlock it too. And I get them to take their hand, put it on their lap, take the stock feeling back up all the way down, and til they’re on, get stuck again.

And then I ask them, take a deep breath, and they kind of shake it off. We repeat this sometimes I’ve had people where I, cuz they like drawing. I give them my iPad with the the, with the pen and I’ll get them to like, what else would make it more secure? And they’ll design padlocks and they’ll draw like what it’ll look like or you know, old fashioned castles when you have these big bolts that go across the door.

Chunk, chunk and they’ll start creating those sorts of things or extra strong super glue and we’ll have them double seal it. Wants the stuck feelings down there. And there’s a nice question, which I often say, What color is the super glue as it? And they go, Oh, it’s pink. And I go, And what color does it change as it sets?

Mm oh, it’s gone blue now it’s sets, right? It’s like an extra. Visualization and extra hunk down and all I really do during the session is before. Before you move on, let’s highlight exactly what you just did there, cuz that’s really, really cool that the moment you have someone buying into the metaphor and then expanding it, they’re validating the work that you did worked.

This is the power of take whatever hypnotic phenomenon and then apply the question, what does that feel like? And the beauty of asking the question of what does that feel like invites the person to then respond in story by respond, by way of metaphor, it feels like it’s a steel bar. It feels like my hand is glued to my leg, and the moment they’re responding in metaphor, they’re validating it.

So that little nuance there, Howard, that’s so cool. About what color is the super glue and what color does it become as it sets? I love that, right? Yeah. It’s just a, a little dole. I love the word dole. People don’t use it enough. So, and then the rest of the session, all I will do is dole. Sorry. Go on. Yes.

There we go. All I will do is we’ll sit and we’ll practice them self applying, getting the stuck feeling, moving it down, locking it. And then unlocking. And I get really severe at one point where I will say, Right, you’ve got this. Now here’s what I want you to do tonight. When you go to bed, you’ll sit on the edge of your bed and you’ll place your hand there, and you just go through that press where you lock it down.

But promise me one thing, and this is really important, I say so seriously, we need to have a moment where if you do this, You must promise me that you’ll remember to unlock it in the morning. And if you double lock it with the super glue, you have to remove the super glue cuz that’s important. Okay. We don’t want the wee coming all the way up and out your mouth,

And they really get this, and I’ve done this so many times with kids where that the parents are almost like, it’s unbelievable. They sit at the end of their bed and they, they do this thing and then they’re, they’re dry. And what I find is that once they begin to get the confidence, That they can do it. I often give them the suggestion that once your brain has under, you’ve installed the strategy or the process for your brain to learn how to lock it, and your brain really gets it.

You’ll suddenly discover that you, your brain’s doing it all by itself without you having to remind it in the evenings. So you build in this strategy for them being able to, uh, become free of having to sit on the edge of their bed and unlock it and unlock it in the mornings. Yeah. Which we’re recording this now, streaming to the work smart hypnosis community, but I, I bring that up because there’s actually a question that popped up in the chat, which I’ll, I’ll generalize here.

Basically, someone’s asking, Would you apply this to someone else who has a disconnect between bladder signals in the brain? I would point to, I forget the chapter, and it’s on a shelf back there. Uh, but inside of Dave Elman’s hypnotherapy, there is a sequence about bringing up a headache. And then we, By the way, Sean, Michael Land Andrews does a gorgeous demo of this, bringing up the headache, and then allow yourself to go through whatever process is necessary to dissolve that away.

And once you’ve done that, Nod your head and then back to the experience again. Notice now you can bring the headache back up on its own. Run through whatever mental experience is necessary to dissolve that. Nod your head when you’ve done that and, and similar to everything that Howard just said, this creates a system of change.

This creates a formula. Which we could apply to everything. You know, we’re all familiar perhaps with like the control room metaphors, that as you bring it up, it proves you have control over it. So go ahead now. Imagine. There you are in that situation with the crowd in front of you. And notice that you’ve got more control over this feeling than perhaps you’ve ever given yourself credit for.

Bring back some of that old anxiety that used to hold you back. And if you’re listening for the linguistics, I’m distancing and I’m dissociating the problem. So pushing it further away, bring up some of that old anxiety. And now notice that without even a technique, you could observe what happens in your mind as that goes away.

Now that you know how to do that, let’s connect that to something, whether it’s a finger squeeze anchor, whether it’s a deep breath, whether a lot of my public speakers love the shift in posture as a way of kind of stepping into that peak performance state. So really, whatever the issue, whatever the, uh, situation, you know, now we’re building that environment where now here’s the sequence you can do.

On your own. Thanks for sharing that. No, no, it’s fine. And I can see someone’s done a question, but on my screen it just says, Facebook user says, And it’s a really good point, and I would like to say this, so thank you. Yeah, let me, uh, I’ll do my best to share it here. Uh, yeah. Not all bedwetting is caused by the kid not knowing how to control the spiner function of the bladder.

It can also be because the kid is not relaxing the spiner correctly when urinating. Uh, and thus is not emptying the bladder. I could see challenge with this. Um, are you insisting that the kid have a urology work? Basically? Are you working with them after they’ve seen a doctor? . Yeah. I, I will always check with this, like the first protocol is have you been and seen someone medically?

Have you been checked out? Is there anything else going on there? And unless they say to me, Yeah, no, no. Like, we’ve been to the doctors, they said it’s absolutely fine. They, they, there’s nothing physiologically going on. This is the issue. I, I won’t, I won’t do, I want them to go into someone medically because we’re not, we’re not doctors.

Right. And there might be stuff, Uh, so Absolutely. I’m really pleased that you brought that up cuz it’s, it’s something that I do. It’s just become part and parcel of how I do it. I didn’t think about it anymore. My classic story of that was, and we’ll shorten the story, was the guy who calls up. And, uh, is having some issues in the bedroom.

And as I said, well, I’m happy to work with you on that once we have a referral from your doctor. What did your doctor say about that? Well, my doctor’s gonna convince me I’m crazy and it’s something in my head and I am hearing the humor in his voice and I go, Well, what if that is the issue though, , Let’s confirm it’s not something simple that a quick procedure could resolve.

You know, I, I’ll put it out there. I will not work with you unless you’ve seen your doctor for this. And they’ve signed off on a form around that. And he goes, his next thing he says was, Who can you recommend that won’t make me do that. To which I go, Well, as someone who’s a bit of a leader in this profession, if you call around and find someone who will see you for that without first checking in that you’ve seen a doctor, I will tell you right now to turn and run away from that person.

And, uh, he says some colorful phrases and uh, wraps up the call. Three months go by and the phone rings and he goes, Hey, I just had to call and thank you. What for? He goes, You refused service. And that was the right thing you should have done, cuz I did go to the doctor and not to get onto all the details, but a quick 10 minute procedure under local anesthesia and everything is fixed.

Right? Thank you for not taking me as a client, by the way, how does this work for quitting smoking? Can I come to you for that one? I’m like, Sure, come on in. Yeah. So putting in that ethical guideline, once we’ve cleared. The plug in, the color changing, uh, super glue there, there is a bigger issue here, uh, as well, which, uh, I’ve talked about in the past, which is sometimes if we pitch ourselves as hypnotherapist and hypnotists and then someone comes with an issue, we sometimes that there’s this feeling that we have to do hypnosis or we have to do hypnotherapy in order to help.

And I’m always reminded of a guy, a kid who comes to see me and he’s like, I’m very overwhelmed about my exams coming. I feel like there’s, there’s loads and loads of work and I’m never gonna get it all done, and so on. And I was like, Well, we could do hypnosis. I’m thinking to myself, but let me ask him some more probing questions.

I was like, Well, you know, what’s your revision plan? Have you got like a timetable of how to do stuff? And he was like, What? Like, And it turned out we spent like an hour and a half and we just like literally mapped out a revision timetable for. like, and he went, Oh, thank you. I can see it’s all possible now.

This is really helpful. And his mom said like it was transformational. He didn’t feel overwhelmed anymore. But sometimes there are these solutions that aren’t hypnotically based in many ways, but it’s just like some common sense. So I think we, Well, I tell the quick story of, and this is like one example out of thousands where just, let’s use the polite word here of ignorance.

He. Did not know, you know, how’s your diet? What are you typically eating and how would you like that to be different? Oh, I don’t understand why I’m not losing weight. Cuz if I go to McDonald’s I get the burger and that’s protein so that’s gotta be healthier. Right. And it was never the moment of saying you’re wrong.

That’s stupid. Cuz that wouldn’t have helped. It was instead I created a new step of our process that day she had already paid for the program. She had already filled out the forms and at that point I’ll change the name for the story. Uh, well, great. Now that we’ve done the consultative meeting, you’re now gonna call Stephanie and meet with her.

She’ll do a session with you by phone. You can meet with her in person. Her fees are really low, but what’s great about her is she’s a nutritionist who will talk with you and give you a roadmap of what to eat. And what’s cool about what she does is she’ll tell you what to eat rather than what not to eat.

This way we can appropriate. Bombard you with the stuff that’s good for you so you don’t get caught up in the old stuff anymore. Once you’ve done that call with Stephanie, then when we meet for the next session, that will be our first hypnosis meeting and I’ll work with you to make what she’s given you really easy sounds and and to be fair, that’s the one and only time I’ve ever had to go that route just cuz didn’t have the knowledge.

So I connected her the resource that would help her to get there. Speaking of resources and artful transitions, Howard, how can people best get in contact with you? How can they. Well, let me just go through the list. I’ve gotta, I’ve got just a couple of ways in which people can, uh, check me out. , uh, for the listener of the audio program, Howard, just, uh, unsheathed a scroll, uh, that was, uh, several yards in length.

Uh, everyone should have a comedy list for, for such occasions. Know, Carry, carry it with them at all, at all moments. It’s a perfect setup that we’ve been telling folks in hypnotic business systems, like as much as you. One call to action, Maybe two. Yeah. Now that I’ve said that though, how, how could people find you?

Yeah. Uh, people go to rapid change, DotWorks, all the links. Everything you need is there as well. If you wanna head over to YouTube and what, uh, check out and subscribe on Howard Cooper’s Rapid Change Works. Um, those two places will give you access to everything you need, including information about when the book’s out and all the other stuff, and the classes that I run and, and so on.

So, Yeah, that’s sound. It’d be great to, uh, to see you on board. Draw that and I’d love to hear as well if anyone sharing this story that you heard, even just conversationally, uh, would love to hear about, uh, it and the results that people are, are getting with it. Excellent. Yeah. And we’ll, LinkedIn, the show notes says this releases as a podcast over on work smart hypnosis.com.

Before we wrap it up is we often do any final thoughts for the listeners out. Um, yeah, I think it’s better to have loved a short goal than to never have loved at all.

Jason, Lynette here walks again and, Hey, isn’t story time fun? Thank you for joining us with this episode. A reminder, you can see the video of this episode at the show [email protected] slash. Three. Four. Four. That’s where you’ll find the links to pick up Howard’s book as it releases. Subscribe to his podcast, Follow what he’s doing, doing some phenomenal work.

And if you want to do phenomenal work with your clients. Do you like that segue? If you wanna do phenomenal work with your clients, head over to velvet rope hypnosis.com. We have taken, one of the things that I’ve gotten the best feedback from over the years, a simple business strategy called the Velvet Rope Strategy, which is all about helping your client to raise their hand in a much better.

And express that they’re interested in what you have to offer. And we’ve put it out there at an extremely low price just to get this in the hands of more people. So head over to velvet rope hypnosis.com, watch the video, and pick up that easy to digest program. We’ll see you soon. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.