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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 54, Anxiety Relief with Jane and Covington. 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. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette here and welcome back to a session with a lot of great content packed inside of it.
I first met Jane Ann Covington over at the Hypno Thoughts Live Convention and just got into a great conversation that we ended up well wrapping up here as a podcast session. For your listening enjoyment, you’re gonna hear some great strategies. You’re gonna hear some great mindsets towards the work and a lot of great information.
You can check out her website [email protected]. So let’s jump right in. This is session number 54. Anxiety Relief with Jane and Covington
back in the seventies, mid seven. I was living in San Francisco where I had moved in the middle of my high school and gone to college there. So it was a sort of a mind opening experience in lots of ways. I had begun on a quest probably at about age 17 of personal development. And uh, it started out with, actually my mother was a personal growth person.
She invited me to join her at a Dale Carnegie course. How to Winfields and influence people, you know? Yeah. And I said, Sign me up. So that was the first of that kind of training, any kind of training. And so I began to immerse myself in books and reading and, and different trainings. And then in 1975, I was introduced to hypnosis.
Workshop and it went on for about 12 weekends and it was, uh, two days a week. I mean, it was Saturday and Sunday for 12 weekends. It was a group thing, and that just completely changed my life. I then went on to spend the next 10. And hypnosis became my hobby. So that’s how I first got into it. And it was just my friend said, Hey, you know, you don’t have to do this.
You don’t need it. You’re gonna be fine in life in my case, but you know, you’re gonna, we got lots of value out of it when we did it. You probably will too. So that’s how I got introduced to it. Yeah, I love that connection of especially, you know, so many of these resources such as like the Carnegie or even the hypnosis content is something that many of us start to discover later in our lives.
So, uh, what benefits would you say you got from being exposed to that information at such an early age? Well, number one, it was San Francisco in the sixties and seventies. Well, there’s enough of that right there, . And people were just questioning things and it was about consciousness and increased consciousness, so it just seemed like the right thing to do, you know?
Yeah, because it was. So much around me. That whole concept, reading books out of the norm that most people do, whether it be spiritual, whether it be psychology, I do have a degree in developmental psychology with the emphasis in gerontology, which means that you study from birth to death. So it’s the whole lifespan, a developmental process.
Is kind of cool to know, but it’s not necessary to do good hypnotherapy. Right. But that was, I was already in that frame of mind. And uh, and then when hypnosis showed up, I was mostly just curious about it because, you know, in psych degree in psychology, you don’t study anything in hypnosis or about hypnosis.
And I was in graduate school, and then I went through the hypnotherapy training. I mean, I went through the hypnotherapy process and I dropped out of graduate school in psychology because I was, uh, frustrated with psychology and fired up about hypnotherapy. And I just thought I could never be a psychologist in my case, although I do.
Of students that are psychologists and doctors and regular people and all kinds of people. So at what point did this become a profession for you? Well, for the first 10 years, I never considered it being a profession. Yeah. You know, I got out and I had my first business at age 30 cuz I was frustrated with being a female, getting paid.
Having to train guys right outta college and them already being paid more than me and stuff like that. So I started my own business, a different business service business, cuz I had worked my way through school and gone to night school for a long time. I had to pay for everything, books, school, housing, clothes, car insurance, everything.
So I’m working in the corporate world. During that time and, and then I get into my own business and you know, it was all very interesting, but in the end, it was in my late thirties that I just said, Look, I can’t do this stuff anymore. If I can’t find something that will really fulfill my heart, fill my soul, be an expression of that, I just don’t wanna do it.
So I got offered lots of opportunities and I turned them all down and I was, didn’t know what to do. I went through this sort of the dark night of the soul. Fortunately I had some income from my first business that I sold, that I started, and. And then I went to Maui for a week’s vacation and I ended up living there for 16 years.
nice. And while I was there, actually I was studying to be a minister, but I didn’t work for a couple of years. And cuz I still have that income coming in. And I was really delving into the spiritual side intensely. So some friends said, Let’s go to this self hypnosis class. I said, I, well, I could teach that, right?
And they said, Just come on and go with this. I said, And by the way, I was also, when I went there fresh out of a divorce, I used to do feasibility studies for land developers. I mean, none of that had any, which is one of the perfect prerequisites for hypnosis. Of course. Of course. . Yeah. So then I went to that class that night and I talked to the guy afterwards and he told me, The American Council, Hypnotist Examiners and Gil Boy, and that’s where he gotten trained.
And he was retired from Lockheed and had always been interested in hypnosis as he was a kid. And so when he retired, he went to that school and got trained and had a thriving practice on Maui. So within two weeks I was on a plane and I went to, there did, um, Gill. Four week, 200 hour training at that time, I think it’s 300 hours is required, an hour, two 50 in person.
Anyway, so I went back to Maui and opened up a practice, but I actually stayed in Southern California for about four months total because I went, not only studied under Gil, but I studied under other people that were masterful in particular areas that I was interested in, that I thought would increase my ability to have a good business.
And one of the things that many people do is they start to work in hypnosis is that, you know, we often begin to either select or even discover specific, let’s say, niche markets that we tend to like working with or that we’re also just more effective within. And I know you’ve really built a bit of a niche working specifically with anxiety, right?
Right. Yeah. What was it about that? What was that process of getting into that? Well, I’m a business person and going to marketing classes and so forth. They talked about pick your niche, pick your niche, find the niche that would work best for you, and that there was a market for it. Can I give you a little backstory on this?
Yeah, absolutely. When I was a kid growing up, I was extremely anxious. I had two older brothers who were seven and eight years older than me. And in our family there was a lot of tension and anxiety and perfectionism going on, and fear that you would get beat, spanked, whatever, if you didn’t do it right, and if you didn’t do it right, not only did you get punished, Whatever it was, you were totally on your own in terms of having to deal with consequences.
If it was anything outside of the family, you know, you were just on your own. And so I grew up and my, you know, my brothers, who I love dearly now, but at the time they were constantly telling me how stupid and ugly I was. So I, you know, going to school, I was very insecure and I was afraid to ask questions.
I mean, I had lots of issue. Growing up, I was a pretty good tomboy, but academically I wasn’t doing well because I had those messages going on. And so when I went through, I told you I went to college, right? ? Mm-hmm. . So I had been struggling with that anxiety all those years and just sort of the internal message that I’m not good enough.
You know, the what ifs and. Fear, just fears and worrying about things and getting in my own way. All those things that your clients, my clients have, right? And so when I went through the hypnotherapy, I just got rid of all that garbage nice. And it totally transformed my life. And in the next. I had, by that time, I still had 21 units to do in school before I could complete it.
Now, I had been lumping along, doing two classes a semester at night, and I said, I’m gonna get this over with, and I would not recommend this, but I’m just gonna say what, what I did for the next three semesters. I averaged 21 units a semester, made all A’s and before with my two classes. I had managed to get B’s, which I was pretty proud.
You know, but I really just came out, just said, Look, you know, I’m paying them to teach me, so I’m gonna get my questions answered. I read a small book on how to study and take tests. You know, it got me in a position in my mind to really put myself out there and do what I needed to do to make it really work.
And so I graduated, you know, with honors and I was still working two 30 hour week jobs. Okay. not busy at all. Yeah, not busy at all. Of course. I didn’t have a personal life at that time. You know, My friends would call me, Hey, you wanna go out? And I say, Call me in two years. And they go after about the fifth call.
I never heard from ’em again, but that’s okay too. So I knew what the possibilities were, so I was fired up about it. That’s why it was my hobby for those 10 years. But you also had the results personally, so to be able to translate that into the process for the client too, I’m sure was very helpful. Oh, extremely helpful.
And whenever I do, teaching’s very important for. Students to have personal evolution because they can see how it works, not only sort of in the academic realm, but also have personal experiences with it. So that makes a huge difference in helping people, you know, it isn’t something that’s just been told to you is something you’ve experienced, right?
But we also get those experiences as we start to work with our clients. I mean, I can reference this client of mine that was coming in specifically for anxiety issues. Here’s this guy that had not driven more than a couple of miles from his home in several years, and his measure of success was he wanted to make this two hour drive to go back to this church that he had used to be a member of and visit all of his old friends there.
To get that feedback, to get that example of he was able to break through that feeling, that dialogue that was there before and get back on that track. And I’m sure the stories that you’ve had over the years working with people of just, It’s one of those categories that when you really let it go, when it all just dumps away, it’s suddenly this, wait, this burden that’s just no longer.
Well, that’s why I have also developed the process that I developed over the years is because I’m not interested in any of my work actually helping people manage stuff, Right. I wanna help ’em get over it. Let’s highlight that for a second cuz that’s something that, it’s a phone call that I think the office here will get maybe once or twice a month that it’s that phrase of I need to find better.
The last one I heard, I need to find better ways to deal with my fear of flying and. Exactly, and, and the first step of that conversation is we’ve gotta change that dialogue. It’s, it’s not as common as an issue, but it’s something that I feel we as a profession run into that. Wouldn’t it be better just to let go of that thing, which is helpful cuz there’s so many trends now in hypnosis about, let me teach you methods to relax.
And at many cases, they’re coming to us as the hypnotist to help them solve this. Oh yeah. Relaxation is important part, piece of it. Yes. But it’s only a piece of it because it doesn’t get down to those root causes. It’s like, you know, I grew up that positive mental attitude thing, , but I still was anxious, you know, underneath all that stuff.
And that’s what I find is that almost, at least the people would come to me. A lot of people come because of their anxiety, but a lot of people, when I ask them to fill out the the list, What issues they’re struggling with. You know, they may check off five things, they may check off 20 things. Mm-hmm. , and out of all those things, most of the things on that list, if they do have anxiety, which they typically do, are actually symptoms of the deeper issue of having anxiety or depression or whatever.
Yes. So if you don’t take care of the deeper issues, it’s just gonna rear its ugly head in another way. That’s the way I’ve seen. Yeah. So kind of just a thumbnail sketch, how would you describe your approach working with someone coming in with these reporting issues? Or more specifically, uh, what’s the experience on their side that they’re gonna leave your process?
Okay, so I drill into them that it’s a process you need to participate. I record the hypnosis sessions, at least most of it, which I’ll explain it in a second, but I start out with a really good interview and it helps them understand themselves. See, I’m big on taking the mystery out of hypnosis and big on empowering my clients.
Okay. So I start out with a really good interview so that they can not only see where they learned these issues, or sometimes in this day and age, people actually know where they learned it, but it didn’t make it go away, right? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So that’s why they’re in your office. So Karen, my office isn’t, So I start out with a very extensive interview process.
I then go over the science. I’m very science based about what is hypnosis, how it works, the fact that they’re already hypnotized , and we all are. And it’s about retraining the brain and the body to have a different experience. And it’s a focused training. And so at the end of the first visit, which is by the way, usually about three and a half hours long, at the end of the first visit, I do hypnosis with them.
And the purpose of the first hypnosis is to just begin to introduce them to it, to help them calm down, begin to relax. Because when we are relaxed, we’re less reactionary. And to help them begin to. Stuff so we can begin to input new stuff. Because if we can, we were hanging onto the old stuff, the new stuff just isn’t gonna stick, right?
And so that’s the first visit. The second visit is closer to four hours and it’s no hypnosis, but it’s a very important element of the overall process of transforming my. And that is that I teach them about their conscious and their subconscious mind and how that affects their body. And I teach them how we create and change habits and patterns.
Now, the reason I do this, again, it’s no hypnosis at the second visit, and I have them take very specific notes. Because I ask them this, who’s the most influential person with you? And they think for a minute. And some people say their wife or their mother or whoever, And I say, How about you? Do I need to get the mirror out?
And they go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m the one. And so I said, You’re coming to me to have me influence you. And at the same time, you and I know that you’re the most influential with yourself. So by teaching you. Not only am I going to be influencing you, but I’m gonna teach you how to influence your own self more effectively and more appropriately.
And not only is this going to be focusing on what you’re here for, but you’ll see how this translates into all the rest of your life because the mind is the common denominator. So I’m really big in people getting a lot of value at each visit. I want them when they come in, to have moved on that scale further over to.
Right? Yes. And so I ask them to take the paper home. I make a photocopy for their file, and I just have ’em take it home and ask ’em to read it every day for three weeks. I mean, people are smart. They know what it says, but again, it’s repetition is the mother of learning, right? In the meantime, they’re still listening to the first recording, which is just straight hypnosis, to help ’em calm down, to get into the mood, to experience regression therapy, because that’s what we’re gonna do starting after the education.
And then once we get into the third visit, we get down to the root causes and correct it, release it, modify it so we can begin to input the new stuff. Does that make sense? Nice. Yeah. And that’s what we do. Subsequent to, you know, starting at the third visit, the hypnotherapy portions, we’re doing a combination really of coaching and hypnotherapy.
To get down to the root causes to correct it. And then once we get that done, then we can start working on some of the symptoms that haven’t fall away because fallen away because a lot of the symptoms just simply fall away. Yeah, because there’s nothing supporting them anymore. But once in a while, there’s something that needs to be addressed, and that’s fine too.
So that’s the process. Does that make Yeah, and I like the highlight there of the issues beginning to fall away. There’s a client who came to the office one time and her goal was to quit biting her nails. And her phrase was, Well, I only do this when I’m anxious. I could just deal with that. I wouldn’t have to bite my nail.
To which it kind of was met with a bit of a smile to go. That sounds like a fun challenge, doesn’t it? And we did our sessions. We never once talked about our hands, and the fingernail biting went away on its own. There’s a previous session here of the podcast where Larry Elman and I talk about, can you address more than one issue in a hypnosis session?
And it’s really of the mindset that there’s that behavior, but there’s also the feeling triggering it too. Oh, it’s all tied up together. It’s all tied in together. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s why I go into depth on that educational piece about how it relates to the body and have them, and I actually have them experience it and so forth.
So I throw a little quantum physics in there, , so that they get the connection between not only what’s going on in their own mind, but how the world around them is affecting them and what they can do about it. Because I teach them that as well. So then tell me a little bit more about sharing this process with other hypnotists.
I know that you have a book out there, right? I do. It’s called Getting Rid of Anxiety for Good, and it’s on Amazon and it is in, in itself a training, an independent study course for certified clinical hypnotherapist. I want people studying it who are more advanced. Yes, because otherwise, A newbie just isn’t prepared to deal with, you know, what might come up.
And the book is very instructive, and yet, you know, the live training is, I’m there. I can tweak anything, right? Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been doing this now. I don’t know how this is possible when I’m only 27, but I’ve been to this year for 40 years, you know, involved in hypnosis since 1975. The line, I, I think he’s a magician by the name of Mark Salem that the line at the end of his performance is, Everything I’ve done tonight could be done by a five year old.
After 50 years, professional experience, makes sense. . So learning this in this way, because by the way, I have a 95% success rate, which is outrageously great. Nice. But you do need their participation. I drive that in ahead of time. If you’re not willing to participate, go somewhere else. You know, Don’t come here.
You talk about, you know, fear of flying, kind of being unusual. When I was in Hawaii for those 16 years, it was extremely common because people would get over there and then they’d be afraid to go home. , you know, because it’s a long flight and maybe they had some issues anyway and there’s no on that one, I gotta say, right,
And they always, there’s this air stream that goes by there and it’s always a bumpy ride going. Out, mm-hmm. . So whether they had it before or not, they often have it when they get there. But you know, this also can translate to dental, to public speaking, to driving, as you said. In fact, on the back of my book, there’s um, testimonial from a client who works for the CDC Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta.
And she was afraid to drive. She would not get on the freeway. She, I was all back streets and she was, you know, very accomplished person and they had charged her to go to Washington, DC and to train all these various people in Baltimore and DC and other cities. All government people in her field to help them in case there was an emergency, national emergency, except that she couldn’t drive
Yeah, that’s a very common thing. I get around here where someone, I’m in, I’m in the DC area and someone is working a local job. They get the promotion. Now they’ve got a commute 45 minutes, right? Yeah. Anyway, we had her up and going and you know, by the time she went, she. Shocked, Delighted, surprised, and extremely happy that she went.
Like she never had the problem. You know? And of course there was a correlation in our interview. We learned that her mother had been, was originally from Europe and had been fearful of driving the whole time she was raising her. . So you know, that was a plant, big, big seed planted there. Right? Yeah. Let’s rewind for a brief moment, and this is something that I’m sure could be, its entire training, its entire session, but the, the language that you perhaps would use, the, if there’s any metaphors, if there’s any analogies to working with that client at that first session and phrasing that participation on their side, how you, how you get that point.
Well, I’ve gotten that point across, in my case, at the very first free consult Yes. That I’ve done. So that’s already happened before they get to the first session. Yeah. But again, I say nobody’s as influential with you as you mm-hmm. . And you’ve gotta do the homework. You’ve gotta listen to those recordings every day.
And then in the case of anxiety, I ask them to listen twice a day because you know, it’s funny. How neuroplasticity is this new word and this new thought? Well, hypnosis has always been neuroplasticity. I mean that’s, we do grow new neural pathways in people’s, Now that we’ve got everybody comfortable with the hypnosis word, we’re adding in some new ones.
Right. Let’s keep that up. Yeah. That’s really what we do for a living is we grow, help people grow new neural pathways, and so I talk about that again, you know, repetition’s, the mother of learning, and if you don’t choose it, you don’t support. Then, you know, I can’t magically go in, open up a little spot, put a new chip in and everything’s fine.
So it’s not like that stuff you see on the movie and tv. And that’s why I bring a lot of the science into it. Yes. Because you know, people really are living in the dark ages often Yeah. On the subject of hypnosis. So I just go into the science of it and I explain the brainwave patterns and I teach them that.
And when they understand that, Then they realize that it’s necessary for them to participate, but then they also get the value that they can use it all over the place in their life, you know? Yeah. In wonderful ways. Yeah, absolutely. And, and the show notes, we’ll put a link to the book over on Amazon as well as your websites.
Uh, but where can people find you online? Hypnosis institute.net. Good one. I like it . And for this particular subject, there is a, across the top in the um, subject section, need CEU . So with this particular training, they can get 24 CEUs. Excellent. Excellent. Then we’ll put details for upcoming trainings over in the show notes as well then.
Thank you. Oh, great. Awesome. Having you on. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to be here and to share this because you know, really most of society worries and if they worry enough, they get anxious. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette here with one last question.
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Head over to hypnotize with conviction.com. Over there, you’re gonna see a program that I offer that’s all about how to add even better hypnotic phenomenon to your process. Check it out.
