Hypnosis – The First Session
You are about to meet your hypnotherapist for the first time. How will things go? What will he ask you? What will happen during your first session? There are, naturally, no immutable law and every therapist is free to organize his session as he wishes. However, there are certain guidelines and principles used by most therapists.
A session lasts generally between 30 and 60 minutes and is most often shaped according to the work you and your therapist have done together. The first session is frequently different from the other. You and your therapist don’t know each other yet and maybe you don’t have a clue of what hypnosis is, except from what you may have seen in a documentary. You might be a bit nervous about whom you are going to meet and what is going to happen.
The therapist may have as many questions for you as you will have for him. Apart from the standard informations like name, address, phone number, age, etc., there might be more precise questions about your life: Are you married, living in a couple, divorced, single? Do you have children, if yes, how many and how old are they? Do you have brothers or sisters? Are your parents alive? Your place in the family, the one you are coming from as well as the one you have founded, can be very important to some kind of therapies.
Besides that, the therapist will be interested to know if you have any physical illness or weakness. Things like hypertension, heart problems or frequent headache may be of interest. Not because the therapist is going to scare you, so we have to be sure you won’t have a heart-attack, but in fact, because some of these physical problems might be related to your psychological state, and the therapist may include some special relaxing exercises or methods in the treatment. Some physical symptoms might be a clue to some hypnotists about where to find the root of the problems.
Just like any other therapist, the hypnotherapist will most likely ask you if you take medicine regularly and in this case, which one. Some medicine may have an influence on relaxation or treatment. Under the influence of some medicine, the patient may have difficulties to relax or to visualize.
Any physical problem may be of importance. It is very important to know if you, for example, have a hearing impairment. I have sometimes used headphones and a microphone for some patients, or, if the problem was tinnitus, we had to take care of this first or to take it into account in the therapy.
The hypnotherapist will most likely ask you if you have any anxiety or any other problems than the problem you are coming to see him for. For example, are you afraid of heights, of open spaces, closed spaces, etc.? Of course, these problems can be treated too, but they are anyway important to know for the therapist to plan his session. If you are afraid of heights, for example, it won’t be a good idea if, as a relaxation, the therapist makes you visualize yourself flying up and up and up in a hot air balloon. So this kind of details may be really important for the therapy. Of course, it won’t be dangerous if you have forgotten to tell this and if your hypnotherapist makes you visualize a balloon-trip. However, it won’t have the desired effect (relaxing, visualizing) so the treatment will be inefficient.
Then the therapist will very often ask you if you have been in therapy before, or if you are in therapy with another therapist and if you ever have tried hypnosis, meditation, sophrology or any other kind of therapy that could be close to hypnosis. It makes it easier to plan the coming sessions.
You too may have questions to ask your therapist. Don’t hesitate to ask them during your first session. This session is important for the contact between therapist and patient and there are many things to speak about. It will be a big Q and A.
Depending on the questions, on how much there was to talk about, some therapists may have time to make a little hypnosis session, so you at least have tried it. However, don’t be surprised if there is not time. In these cases, I always preferred to make a very good contact with the patient than to make a hypnosis session the first time. That will later on make things move forward much quicker.