Session #359: Kathleen Shannon on Positive Value Changework

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, Session number 359. Kathleen Shannon on positive value change work. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett, your professional resource for hypnosis training. And outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Linett. Now, before I jump into the details of this week’s episode, I will let you know this one falls into one of my favorite categories, which is the wonders of social media.

There’s a lot of people that we know. That we’re friends with online, but we’ve never actually had a real conversation. So Kathleen Shannon, out of North Carolina definitely fit into that category. As we’d comment on each other’s posts, we’d get involved in some of the same conversations, which is where I just reached out one day to say, Hey, here’s the link.

Come on the podcast and what you’re about to listen to is genuinely our first real one to one conversation, and I honestly couldn’t be more happy with how it went from a background in counseling and then looking at the abilities to kind of fill in the gaps. As to how she can better serve her clients.

It’s where she then went off on the journey of learning hypnosis, learning nlp, and you’re gonna hear a very creative approach about how she combines the two how from a conversational method than going into hypnotic change patterns, as well as just. Beautiful insights about a more organic sense of parts.

Work for all sorts of issues, though specifically we talk about it in the context of helping clients with sleep issues. So this is one of my favorite styles of conversation where you’re about to listen to like two or three hours of stuff. In maybe 46 minutes of conversation. So there’s a lot to unpack here.

There’s a lot of really cool real world examples, as well as some thought shifting ideas and even historical anecdotes as to where some popular techniques actually came from and how it is that we can then work with our clients in such a way that we’re delivering what they’re looking. But at the same time, serving them in the best way possible.

This is of course, episode number 359. I’ve mentioned that, Not that you’re gonna remember that number, but because the show notes, we always make this easy for you. Work smart hypnosis.com/ 3 5 9. Plug in those numbers. That’s how you find this one. That’s where you can find the links to connect with Kathleen.

That’s where you can find links to some of the resources that she references along the way. And while you’re there too, check out work smart hypnosis live.com. The theme of the beginning of our conversation is the sort of basis as most of the conversations. I have with people around hypnosis and even communities that are related, that you’re reaching that place where you feel as if maybe you have some knowledge, you might have even gone through a training, and yet you’re not quite getting the results that you want.

You’ve been given this sort of negative perception, which is a big part of this conversation. You’ll hear exactly what we mean by that by listening to this re rest of this episode. But there’s almost cynical perspective on change. And like any good sales process, there’s gotta be a better way, which is a phrase, I think even Kathleen drops at one point in this conversation, which is part of why when we do this training event, yes, it’s a certification event, which is why about half of the audience who shows up to work smart hypnosis live, half of them are brand new and this is the very first training that they’re.

Meanwhile, the other half are people who, let’s say it this way, politely on paper, may appear to be significantly trained, but again, they’re not yet getting the results that they want. Perhaps they’re stuck inside of rigid protocols or scripted techniques, and they’re looking at how do we work interactively with our clients to exercise what I feel are the three most important approaches to hypnosis, confidence, creativity, and flex.

Uh, we just actually started the January class at the time of this podcast episode. However, if you go to work smart hypnosis live.com, the next one is already filling in seats, and that one kicks off in March of 2020, though if you’re listening after the fact, we’ve always got another one right around the corner.

Check out the details, watch the video at the top of the page of Work Smart Hypnosis. Dot com. And with that, let’s jump directly into this week’s action packed conversation. The first time ever mentioning the phrase bunny poop. Crazy. Stick around for that. Here we go. Session number 359, Kathleen Shannon, on positive value change work.

So I got into this because I realized what I had learned in graduate school really wasn’t as effective as it could. I went to graduate school way back in the late nineties, and I graduated in 2000. And hypnosis was never even mentioned. Never even mentioned. And when I brought up a subject, the subject of NLP to a colleague who was actually a real licensed person in the field, they talked about it like, oh, I don’t know what that is.

And so the only thing I had available to me was, was Tony Robbins at the time. Mm-hmm. . And I said like Tony Robbins. Oh, he’s very cognitive. Like, All right, . And I was like, I’ll just carry on. And I mean, she meant well, God love her. So that’s really kind of what got me into actually looking at this. At the same time, finished grad school, went and did my internship, and got all that got licensed and I just didn’t have enough good effective tools.

Back then. They were just starting to talk about emd. And it still, that even felt clunky to me. And then when I read the origin story of mdr, then I was like, Oh, so then I figured I probably should go to this source. And then I started studying NLP and the Andreas’s work and other things, and started actually just using it more on myself.

Yeah. Because I was like, Okay, I need to know what the client could possibly experience, so I think I need to go experience it. There’s a bit of a nugget you just dropped there that um, I’d say a couple of hundred people just went, Wait, what? And I’d love to have you elaborate that when you said the origins of emdr.

Can you chat about that a bit? Well, it is my understanding, and again, it depends upon who you ask. Mm-hmm. and everything you’re about to say already has been my understanding and research as well. But keep going. , Christine Shapiro, Evidently. Under the, the Wings of Bandler and Grinder, she came up with her own story about the puppy dog and walking in the park and moving her eye, noticing her eyes moving back and forth and all of this other stuff.

That’s the whole story I was fed at the time. And of course it kept being repeated numerous times, numerous times. And of course if you repeat something long enough, you tend to believe it. Yeah. So when I started to really look into. And noticed what I’d been reading in nlp. I noticed a lot of similarities and I was like, Okay, wait a minute.

This sounds a little too weird. And I didn’t know any connection at the time. I just was under the presupposition that she was off doing great research in great and exciting places in Washington state with puppy dogs and wagging eyes. So that’s all I. But when I started reading this and going into this more and more, I was noticing the eye movement integration and I E M T was sounding a lot like emdr, and at that point I was like, Okay, wait a minute.

This sounds like this came a whole lot before and it sounds painfully similar and nobody is giving credit where credit is due. And I have a personal issue with people. Stealing somebody else’s work and not giving the person credit. So I cannot ethically, in my mind, say what I do is emdr. So then is it now something that you make use of?

I do make use of it. So then how do you introduce it? Or do you even. People walk in asking for emdr. I actually looked for formal EMDR training, paid a ridiculous amount of money for it so I could have somebody put a stamp on my head saying, Been approved by em Byr. So I did it just because I drank the Kool-Aid that somebody says, Oh, it’s a family.

We’re all gonna be together and it’s all gonna be wonderful. And I’m just thinking, Oh yes, I’ll do. . Well then when I have clients asking for it by name, I now know what doctors feel like when these people start walking in asking for various prescription drugs when they don’t know anything about it.

Mm-hmm. . So I give them what they ask for and then I say, I kind of gotta tell you something and look at me. And I go, You know, I’m sure EMDR has been. Probably very highly promoted for treating trauma. It’s not something that I necessarily want to say that I do only because, and I tell them the background story.

I say, You know, it really started somewhere else and I don’t feel comfortable promoting somebody else stealing somebody else’s. Well, what I’d kind of call out too is that, you know, we, we find ourselves in a category. There’s, um, we have a Facebook ad that’s running for one of my businesses with all sorts of dialogue that’s going on underneath it, all of which is positive, and it’s people having a conversation with each other, uh, which is great as a side note because it’s boosting engagement and showing it to more people.

So you all keep having this wonderful conversation. Uh, but what it comes around to, just to draw a bit of a correlation, Is No, no, no. That’s a cognitive technique to even use the same word versus No, no, no. That’s a hypnosis technique. No, that’s an NLP technique. And at the end of the day, a lot of these things often would sort of repeat from one segment to the other.

Sometimes there are questions about the origin of something. It’s where I was curious where you went with that. Cuz I look at a technique like EF. And I will use it with a client at times, yet I do so with my favorite frame of, uh, from Lance Baker out of Australia. Hey, do you mind if things get appropriately weird for a moment as long as it helps you?

I love that. Okay. Good. Tap here. And I’m not giving them the lecture as to this is what this is and this is what this does. It just ends with the, And as you focus on that old feeling, how do you feel now? Mm-hmm. . So I was curious to hear that, because I’d imagine you’re probably not going into that conversation if you’re using those techniques and they’re not asking for it by name.

But I do, you know, kind of applaud you of, if they’re asking for, it’s like, well, let’s chat about this for a moment. Yet, I’m sure you’re doing it in a way that’s not taking away the power of the method and the results that they can create. Right? Exactly. Exactly. At the end of the day, if they get the result and they think they got it from EMDR and they want to go say, Go see Kathleen for emdr, that’s fine.

Mm-hmm. the issue is more so, is the client better when they come there you go asking for something by name. I think I have a responsibility to educate them on it. If they choose to remember that, that’s, that’s on them. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And it’s where from a bigger picture perspective and understand, I got my wrist slapped for this commentary, so let’s have some fun here for a moment.

Um, , any bit of influential communication is always about shifting someone’s criteria upon which they make a. We are in a profession which doesn’t have an international celebrity who calls themself a hypnotist, who calls themself an NLP practitioner. Yes, there’s people that you and I would know in this audience would know, but we are in inside of a small pond of practitioners in this field.

But for the general public, we don’t have. Celebrity. And the only reason why, and I’ll keep a general here so it doesn’t go off the deep end of well, what about this one? What about that one? Uh, the only reason why someone’s looking for a practitioner certified by that organization is that they’ve been sold on that being an important criteria to make a decision on.

Yes. The only reason why someone’s shopping for, as you mentioned, a specific technique. You know, I get the question sometimes in a general sense, what do you do if the client calls up and says they wanna do regression for an. And it’s because that’s the criteria that has been presented to them, and that’s what they now believe to be the thing that’s gonna help them out, to which there’s a decision to make as to, is this.

The right technique at the right time. Are they giving me a gift of an incredible hypnotic contract that they’re already going into the session with the conviction that that’s gonna help them out? And it’s up to then the practitioner or the client relationship to make that decision. But again, I do appreciate that, you know, well here’s the update the same as Google it.

There’s, uh, interesting history with Christian science and hypnosis, to which then I’ve had Christian science clients as clients. As a hyp assist. It’s like really? It’s like, well, we know where it came from and I still like to quit smoking. It’s like, all right, let’s do this . So, So back to the story though.

So coming from, uh, a counseling, you know, background, what would you say that the hypnosis and the NLP helped to kind of fill in the stuff? Would you say? I always was gravely disappointed. In pathologizing the client. Hmm. It just seemed so disrespectful. It just seemed so condescending. It just was really icky and I didn’t like it.

My first job that I had as a licensed person was working in community mental health, and they said, Thou shall use solution focused brief therapy. I think I had two lectures on it in graduate school, and everybody just said, Well, you just can’t think it better, blah, blah, blah, and this can’t be this and this can’t be that.

And they just blew it off. Aside from the fact that my professor at the time, I mean he had a serious professional crush on somebody who was a great leader in S F B T at the time, and he just, Oh my God. It was, it was insane. But um, I said, Okay. So I went back to my two lecture notes on that and started reading it, and I said, Okay, at least this is a bit more positive.

I can do that. Well, then I started finding out, okay, so I, I went back into the family tree of S F B T finding then. Ericsonian works and, and the tree of Ericsonian therapy where you’ve got NLP and you’ve got hypnosis and you’ve got SF B t and you’ve got generative change from Steve Gilligan and you’ve got all this stuff.

And it would just opened up a whole new, just a whole new glen of gorgeous trees with beautiful fruit that I could really. Basically showed the client, I said, Hey, listen, this is another way that we can actually view this, that maybe this is actually trying to support another value that you have that you may not even realize yet that you have.

Yeah, and then we are able to then explore the notion of, Okay, so this behavior is keeping that value alive, but it’s not working as well as it needs to because it’s conflicting with this other value that you really value. I mean really at its courts, that conversation as to this move away from, that’s a self sabotaging behavior.

You’re doing that to hurt yourself versus a paraphrase of what you just said as the classic premise. It’s giving you something. We just need to find a better way to satisfy that. Exactly, and to be able to. Reflect the clients, what seems to be their evident values back to them when they start to talk about the problem and the things that they do.

And this says, you know, like, I just had a client leave but a minute ago, well not a minute ago, half hour ago, and she’s doing all these things. And I go, You really do value the family connection. Forget the fact that her family’s bunny pooped crazy. You know, she values a family connection and she goes, You get that?

And I’m sitting there thinking to myself, Do you have to be completely ded to not get that, Say that thought it, um, We really started talking about, well, what’s your idea of family and tell me about this and how did you get that notion of what family can be considering where you had come from? And then of course she goes on, you know, a TDS at that point and she starts going, looking around.

She starts talking about, I remember Monday nights on NBC when I was a little girl, I would totally wait all week long for a little house on the. Mm. and things like that. So here she is coming up with her own notions of how she was able determine what family meant. And especially from her definitions of it, her perceptions of it as opposed to what the idea that it should be.

Right. And I didn’t wanna necessarily say your family is bunny poop crazy, although they are.

That’s just basically gonna make her defend her behavior even more, or hate her family. And I’m not gonna go do that because I’ve seen too many ruptured families of estrangement from a therapist who allegedly meant well and basically broke up. Yeah, that’s, that’s where, and you know, there’s a training that there’s a well known demo video of that says, this is how this work is done.

And like the epiphany of the session is the hypnotist saying to the client, Your mother never loved you. And it’s the moment where I’m like, What the hell is this ? Um, no, I wanna go hit them. Uh, yeah, I wasn’t in the room and uh, I couldn’t, uh, but it was just this place of going, That’s not the hypnotist role to quote, diagnose that opinion.

And my perceptions of change would be that, well, whether that was true or not doesn’t have to be a reason why they still have this issue. So let’s work with what the person has coming. You, you kind of responded positively when I gave the frame around. Away from self sabotage and instead towards satisfying values.

I’m curious, is there a story that comes to mind of someone who maybe can men with that expectation of, I’m doing this to punish myself, I’m doing this to hurt myself, and by way of the change process. Got that. Let’s go back to the word that cognitive. As well as the behavioral shift. It wasn’t so much of a them beating themselves up.

Um, I had to do, uh, some repair. Um, a client had come to me, she was an older woman and a very, very, very Christian woman, and that’s the only way I can say it. She’s very religious and her son had come. As gay and she just was not having any of it. She’s quoting scripture left and right, upside downside.

This is, he’s going to hell, he’s gonna burn in hell and he starts whipping out Leviticus and all this other stuff. And I’m just sitting there and I’m listening, and I’m listening and I’m listening. You really love your son. And she goes, Of course I do. I can tell you really do love your son. And she’s sitting there and she just looked at me and her eyes filled with tears and I said, What’s wrong?

She says, You’re the first person to say that. And I go, What do you? And I just was flabbergasted by that. I go, What do you mean? Evidently she had seen somebody else in town who basically read her the riot act for not being LGBTQ sensit. And she never got better and she never got over the whole thing, which is why she came to see me.

Cuz I do advertise myself as a Christian counselor, only because I speak Christian. Mm-hmm. . And I’m very familiar with Christian culture, especially having a background, having gone through Bible college that didn’t go as well as I had anticipated. Um, but it was a great learning experience and is able to gimme a great frame around it.

So when we started really exploring it, I just wanted to explore what. Her love meant. Mm-hmm. and what her values were and her deep concern was beautiful. And as I continued to support her deep concern and her deep love of family, it was she that softened around the notion of her son. Yeah, that’s beautiful.

On her own. I didn’t have to do anything. We started talking about the notion of her aging. And her son would probably be the one in the nursing home singing beautiful worship songs to her. Mm-hmm. , that’s amazing. And especially when we see that, you know, this is if we had to draw a line between coaching and consulting, If it’s someone reaching out to me for consulting, they might be going, I wanna launch an online program.

And it might just be, Oh, use this software. Um, what’s your camera? Okay, that one’s good enough. Your sound. Use this microphone. If it’s coaching, it’s about helping someone to make those discoveries on their own and. It’s the brain puts up this sort of wall against advice and when it’s us projecting our belief systems versus as, as you did there, helping the client reach the place where she can make those shifts for herself and own them as opposed to, Well, I went to this counselor and they told me I should think this way.

So I’ll try that on for a week. , right? There’s nothing like being on the end of somebody else’s agenda. . Yeah. Yeah. Which, which can be a bit of a balance. And you know, there’s often times where I think you’ve responded to me at times on a, um, threat on Facebook where I go, Well here’s the easiest scope of practice statement.

When in doubt don’t, um, and, you know, point to a resource that may be able to help. If you can. So if the conversations we’re having here are something that may not be within your wheelhouse, hey, uh, stick around cuz then towards the end of this conversation I’ll go and Kathleen, where can people find you?

And you’ll see exactly, uh, where to go. So, so kind of walk me through, let’s say what I’d kind of nickname the user experience, which should be someone’s. How is it most of your clients are nowadays finding you? Well, I’m on Psychology Today and, uh, I’m listed in there, although most, we were not gonna go into the whole history of why I shouldn’t be in psychology today, because I actually wanna stay in private practice, so I can’t really get involved in the whole politics of that.

They also can find me, oddly enough, because I do take insurance. I’m involved with a system called quarte. So let’s just say they’re in North Carolina and they’re going to Quartet Health because they have Blue Cross Blue Shield and they go, Okay, I need somebody who does anxiety. Oh, she does insomnia too.

Yes. Let’s see what we got. And I pop up and they can either self refer or physicians offices often refer to me as well. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So then from that route, now they’re reaching out to you. What are some of the issues you tend. To work the most with tons of anxiety, tons of sleep issues I specialize in in treating sleep.

What would you say is kind of like the overview of that approach to sleep? Like what’s your perception, what’s your kind of model that you’re bringing to that? I definitely use a parts model because there’s a parts model that’s either waking them up, keeping ’em awake, or a part that is driving him to sleep for 16 hours a.

That right there is huge that you know it, We’ve gotta get specific, the equivalent of like, I do a lot of work with public speaking and it’s gotta begin with the question of is it the anxiety leading up to the presentation? Is it the feeling during the presentation? Or let me oddly call myself out that I used to be the one calm, cool, and collected before, during massive spike of anxiety afterwards.

Yes, , and just to ask these questions. You know, where people go, How do you work with sleep issues? It’s like, well first of all, where’s the issue? Uh, do you find that it’s more one than the other that’s reaching out to you, or what’s kind of the balance there? Well, usually there are the people who are, I can’t get to sleep because I can’t turn off the brain.

Yeah. I have a lot of those Now, I have had a more, uh, recent run of people who are perfectly fine going to sleep, but then they wake up in the middle of the night again, I have to do a screening because they. People of a certain age, much like me, about health issues, You know, do you have any, you know, health issues that are going on, particularly if you’re female.

Menopause will be an unpleasant experience for most of us causing sleep issues because you’re drowning and other such things. So I have to really go in and address that as well. But, uh, primarily when they go in, they say, Oh, you work with sleep. Fantastic. I can’t get to sleep. Okay. I can’t stay. Or I don’t get a good sleep, or I sleep too much, you know, I start off with where it is.

Right? Yeah. And then we really, and I work on a more somatic basis. Now when you say that, what do you mean specifically? Like I say, Okay, so really go, Okay, so I, the client I just had a few minutes ago, half hour ago, I can’t get to sleep. You can’t get to sleep. Tell me about that. And so we’re going into the story and, and, and she’s kind of getting lost in her own story, hypnotizing herself, which is useful.

And she if would catch that. That’s like one of the biggest takeaways of this conversation so far. She’s telling her story. Hypnotizing herself into it. Yeah. Sorry, you were saying . . Those girls.

So she’s hypnotizing herself, which is wonderfully useful. And I go, Okay, so, so this feeling, where does it start? And she’s telling me, and I just kind of go with her and I touch it, touch, make sure that the feeling knows that you’re there, put your hand where it is. And she’s putting her hand on her gut.

And then we’re talking and I just basically have her talk to the part. Yeah, and just from a somatic point of view, talk to the part as though it is another being another entity. If it’s too uncomfortable, maybe what would happen if you were to take that part out of your body to make it more comfortable to engage in a dialogue with that part?

There’s one element inside of that that I know often pops. Let’s say in an intro training, uh, which would be how do you get your client actually communicating in that moment though, I imagine this is already happening in a, happening in a bit more Correct me conversational approach as opposed to close your eyes.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or how, how is that moment coming to pass Straight up conversational. Yeah. Which then hypnotic elements are emerging from that conversation. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I utilize a lot of the andreas’s work with core transformation and wholeness work and uh, the transforming yourself model.

Yeah. So then working with that, in terms of talking to that specific part mm-hmm. , what are some of those insights that we would you say often pop up there? Safety is a big one, obviously. Sort of there was, there was a theme of safety for a long time, and then there was a theme of respect, like, I’m not getting respected and you really want respect.

That part really wants respect. And we just talk about that. And the more I started to really explore this more, I’m believing that any good relationship is going to have safety and respect as it’s. You mentioned that it shifted, uh, and that’s something that I’ve noticed over time too, that there’s almost like this cultural impact on a session.

I’d give a quick example here of from like 2007 until like 2013, nearly all of my stop smoking clients where the story of it costs so much money and yes, health always popped up yet the impulse as to at the question as to why’d you call me? It was the expense of it 2013, up until 2017, the conversation kind of shifted around to the health being more predominant.

Uh, but the interesting thing is, even in the midst of a global respiratory pandemic 2017, up until now, everyone I talk to is, you know what? It’s just kind of overstate. It’s welcome. I’m not even really enjoying it anymore. Which right, there is a statement that tells you, Don’t bother with a version cuz they’re already doing that to themselves.

It’s just here, it’s become this chore. What used to be the one cigarette is now an extra 15 minutes of taking the break, washing my hands, getting clean. Just enough is enough. You mentioned this transition, whether it was safety, to, uh, what was the other one? Respect. Yeah. Any, any thoughts on how that kind of came to pass?

Well, sometimes when they started talking, And we started figuring out the part, then we realized we had more than one part. Mm-hmm. one part wanted safety and another part wanted respect or to be recognized or to be seen. And so we really examined that together. So for a while I had a run of clients that just needed safety, and then after a while, the whole part that wanted respect showed up.

Yeah. So they usually come together. Would you say it’s an internal respect or respect from others? It starts off with respect from others. Yeah. No, I love that kind of thing. That again, when we’re helping the client and you know, based on this conversation so far, it’s clear that you’re not going and find that part of you that wants respect.

No. For you. My field is nauseatingly just drives. Funny poop. Crazy . Let me make sure, Lemme hang on. I need to write this down for the show notes. It’s bunny Bunny poop Crazy. Poop crazy. Hashtag new sentence. Ok. Sorry. You were

hand out these horrible lists and the values card sorts and all of these things and I’m. There’s a reason why I hate this, and let me tell you why. If you have to give somebody a word, it’s not their word. Yeah. It’s not organically generated. It’s not from their soul. Well, there there’s a, there’s a balance to that.

I’d say just to give. This is a yes. And there’s a balance to that, which is that sometimes, let’s say it’s that auditory digital pattern. Uh, what does that feel like? What’s important to you? Well, it feels like, and they’re in story again, and it feels like, and they’re in story again. Mm-hmm. . And then sometimes we can make use of our good little friend the listing pattern, which I may, we talked about this last night in a training we were doing.

And I go, Well, there’s the listing pattern, but I also have pioneered the Dr. Seuss pattern. Because sometimes it’s the, maybe it’s the X or the Y or the Z, or even something I don’t yet know to note even something that even I don’t yet know to say, um, in a house with a mouse, in a box, with a fox or something else.

So sometimes there is that place I feel to maybe give a menu if necessary. But let’s not make that the go to. And I hear what you’re saying about, you know, there’s some approaches to go, here’s what values are, which one’s yours? It’s the same as I really want fajitas. Well, we’re at this Greek restaurant.

What do you want, ? Thank you. Well, Greek fajitas. Think about it though. A euro is a fajita. Sorry, you were saying preach it. Yes, . Interesting. That is a true, true statement. These are the problems we solve here on the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast. There you go. So the only way to go , but you know, giving them the list is useful.

Sometimes I’ve actually gone into, The whole notion of metaphor, asking what it’s like. Yeah, that’s often very useful. In fact, I’ve even noticed even more recently in my trauma work that asking that question, I don’t even have to ask it 90% of the time because I’ve noticed that metaphor is the language of trauma.

Can you expand on that? When they talk about their trauma, usually it’s more of, it’s like this, it’s like that. It’s like they don’t even give a rundown of the story so much that they start speaking more poetically. Yeah. I mean, these, these are the things that this song lyrics come from. Oh, that’s, yeah.

It’s beautiful. It’s, I mean, it’s just, I sit there and I’m just so, I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s gorgeous. And then we start exploring the metaphor. And what they need to them. So inside of this, there’s a balance at times between the counseling world, there’s a balance inside of the hypnotic profession. I’d kind of, you know, drop the reference that, you know, it’s often a bit more from, And let me give the disclaimer that, yes.

One of the things I do is in the shape of the Big Promise, one session, there is an offer to come back if there’s need for additional assistance. Yet I’d be the first to say, Well, it’s offered as a one session, but. Who’s a hypnotist looking at it from the outside, sees the amount of content the person is getting, sees the amount of education that’s happening now, would really argue.

It appears like it’s one session, but it’s, it’s far from it. So aside from that, there’s often a little bit more of an egotistical thing behind the, that only takes this many sessions, yet there is a value at times of, you mentioned generative change of the ongoing work. I have a number of clients. Came in for an initial change.

Yes, we got the result. And as they saw that there was an option to continue working on other things, they jumped at it. And I’m always the one to point out, Look, I’ve taught you these techniques, you can do this on your own. And I had won a few weeks back who says, I know. But this is the same reason I keep going to the personal trainer.

I get a be, I get a better response when I got someone to. Nice. And it’s, it’s easy for me to keep connecting with you and it’s still benefiting me. It’s like, all right, and just, we have this agreement that specific day, the first of the month, that’s his at that time, and just, you know, we check in and most often he books it and I don’t bill him if he doesn’t use it.

What’s kind of what I’m getting at as the question as to what’s kind of the length of time that you’d say you’re often working with? It depends. I hate to say that that sounds such a wooy answer and it’s true. So here’s, here’s the thing. I’ve got a client coming in and he or she, you know, they bring in an issue.

And first off, I, I have to just make sure that we’re in rapport and never assume that I have rapport ever, ever, ever, ever. I don’t care if I’ve been seeing the person for six. Just, you can’t do that. Oh, I love that. . Wait a minute. Okay. Metaphor for a moment. , uh, I went to, it was a brief, uh, visit to, um, Oh, what do they called?

Skin doctor, I’m blanking on the word. Dermatologist. Dermatologist, yes. I had a quick outpatient thing. Dermatologist, nothing to be worried about, but there’s a big sign in one of the treatment rooms. Please do not bring children under 14 into this. And just everything of knowledge of communication. I just look at the doctor and go, What happened?

Right? ? So I have to go off of that for a moment. Never assume you still have rapport. Kathleen, what happened?

True story. So I fortunately was trained on, um, In Scott Miller’s, uh, Outcome Rating Scale and Session Rating Scale, which let me tell you it is worth its weight and gold. You can go to scott d miller.com and find out anything you want to know about this. It is, if there are two, two questionnaires, you start the Quest, You start the session with what’s called the Outcome Rating Scale.

This says, How has your week been in four different domain? And then there is the other questions. The, the one that you end the session with was, how did I do as a person, as a, as a clinician, were you able to connect with me? Am I a decent person to be with, you know, did I say something wrong? Because, you know, I am in Asheville and there are people who.

Just kind of like to be offended because it’s a badge of morality or something. I don’t know. Anyway, so I just Well, you find that everywhere, but yes. Well, yeah. So I go ahead and she’s, you know, we have our session. It’s all great and wonderful, and I give her the, the, the session rating scale. And usually if things are usually like a eight, nine, and above, you’re fine.

Well, mine were, but then there was a one that. Um, the, the, the question is like, I’m, I felt respected by my, by my therapist. It was basically what it boils down to. And she marked me lower on that one. Hmm. And I’m like, Hmm, okay. And I said, um, so Sandy, or whatever her name was, I can’t even remember now. You marked me lower on this.

What, what, what I do, What happened? She goes, No, no, no. Let me change it. I said, No, no, no. You’ve already told me. Now I gotta know. I have to be

so horrible. And she goes, Really? Look. And I go, Oh. And I’m like making faces at her and she’s making faces at me laughing or trying not to laugh because I’m trying to figure out what face I could have given her that would’ve been this really judgemental look. And I couldn’t really figure it out. I said, Well, okay, now I’ll just take that into consideration.

And then I just, evidently I would, I now have turned invoked, the left eyebrow. And is that a. She goes that, that thing on your face, that thing with your eyebrow. The thing with my eyebrow. What thing? Your left eyebrow just went up and that was the only thing that went up. And she goes and I , I try to do it on command and it’s not really working well.

Yeah. Goes So I’m holding my face so I can actually remember what it feels like cause. See, and she goes up and gets co all this stuff. So I go in the bathroom, wash my hands and I go do it in the mirror. And I’m like, Holy, that’s horrible. . Dear God, that is horrible. I can’t believe I did that. Oh my, I need professional talk.

So go home that night and I’m washing up dishes, getting dinner ready, and I hear the car pull in. I’m going This when I was. And I go, Oh, I wonder. And so I go to the back door from meet my husband, put the face on the eyebrow, all of it opens, the door goes.

I mean, I to when you’re in a training and something goes awkward, you know? Um, but. Simple example in a, In a classic Dave development, induction, there may be the moment of putting your hand in front of the eyes and one time in a training. The person came in late that day and this is clearly pre covid. Um, and rather than put the hand in front of the eyes, she put her hand on the guy’s face, and he backs off and like doesn’t hit, but you know, kind of swats the hand away cuz it was fricking weird.

And the, you know, the, the way to kind of swoop in and keep the peace and the event was to go well, the benefit was because that happened here. You’ll never do that with a real person wi will you. Nice, brave. Good job. Yeah. And she goes, Oh good. And he goes, Oh, me neither. I’m like, Thank you. We’ve, you know, and didn’t become the moment, like some trainings where you have to go.

Let’s never put those two people together again. They both laughed at it. We all moved on. Um, Sometimes it’s says littlest of things. I have to ask, is there something you’ve done to address that professional Botox is expensive. Okay. No, I haven’t done that. I don’t do professional Botox. No, I, I’m flashing to again, another moment of, uh, we almost for like six months, there was a period of time.

Where it would’ve made sense for our daughter when she was like, um, nine months old to maybe go into a daycare like three days a week, and we went to this one that the front of our neighborhood couldn’t have been more convenient, and the place had to have been wonderful. The people there must have been.

Outstanding. The reviews were through the roof as everyone loved it, but as we walked in, there was this like eight month old little baby. She’s sitting up, right with the biggest frown on her face and the people who work there go, No, no, no. That’s just her face, . And this has become a theme in our relationship ever since it.

Is this going? That’s just her face. Um, no, but keeping this going then about, you know, I love that nuance and I, I looked at that, uh, website you mentioned Scott d miller.com. I’m really curious to see that because it’s, I don’t feel we get enough feedback. Yes, we often want to get the positive review. Yes, we want to get the feedback, but sometimes the littlest of things that we can improve upon can be massive.

Yes. And inform us what we can change moving on. Uh, but that’s a huge point that rapport is a process. It’s not a thing that once we’ve achieved it, it’s always there. Not a one and done, not a one. And. And it’s even a different quality of rapport on if it’s a matter of different issues. Uh, so somehow, what was it, 18 minutes ago, we were talking about, uh, length of process.

Are there people that you’ll see on that shorter span or the majority more of an ongoing? What’s, how does someone graduate with you? How does someone graduate? Well, they usually come in, they go, You know what? I’m actually feeling better. This is actually, I’m, I’m in a better spot now. And I can tell they walk in and they just really are.

Seemingly more at peace and they just seem like they’re gonna be okay. I used to be back in, before I got into the whole, uh, hypnosis, NLP business and, and other more positive approaches. I was a stickler on, uh, homework. They had to do homework and they had to turn it in and, you know, grading and all this other stuff.

Well, how do you know they’re invested in the process and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that thing. Mm-hmm. , I don’t give homework anymore. They don’t wanna do. I’m like, You know what? Your only homework is to just notice how you would have responded before. Nice. That’s your only homework is notice the changes and notice how you would have responded before and how you’re not doing it now.

Yeah, and the reason I do that is because I want to block a sort of a, a pattern that people have of, I still have that problem. I still have that problem where they’re gonna still naturally look for the problem where I direct them. Or suggest rather, I guess. I don’t know. Um, the, the only quote unquote homework that I would really think that needs to happen here is just notice how you, how you, just, how you had responded before and, and how things are different now.

I really like that that’s, you know, got a beautiful embedded command that’s inside of it. Or just, you know, sort of an indirect suggestion really, as to. You know, notice that how you would’ve responded before, which is implying that they’re gonna be responding differently. I had to cheat off my own website back on episode number 320.

It was an episode called Follow Up Success with Stop Smoking Hypnosis, which that’s gonna be applied to everything. Just to kind of piggyback off the same strategy, I, I will have the ability, the same way that you see me go off in the tangent randomly on a live stream on Facebook and talk about how Space Falls is a better movie than Star Wars, cuz he pulled it off in one movie and not, not, uh,

I will be prone to those kind of tangents with a client, but by intentionally talking about other people’s success, who we’ve worked with. And the whole intention is, you know what? I want you to notice those littlest of things that are different, you know, and, and the more quirky, the better. The fact that as the person was losing the weight, they could feel their fingertips around their leg as they’re washing their leg, and they’ve never had that experience as an adult.

Um, the moment where the woman noticed her bird wasn’t coughing anymore and they were convinced the bird was sick, but no, the bird was just mimicking her cough. was great. Um, I see a lot of stop smoking people, and the beautiful thing about them is they are painfully, uh, direct with their communications sometimes.

So the fact that the morning bowel movement is going better, I’ve heard it all. You can’t embarrass. So, you know, Yes, it’s great to hear. I haven’t smoked, but when I’m hearing the feedback that I was at the top of the stairs and I wasn’t out of breath, that’s the stuff that I just get off on constantly.

So just, you know, share the quirky little things. That’s what keeps me excited, which is embedding exactly as you did. Well, and I even say, and you know, it doesn’t have to be big things. Mm-hmm. with the little things too. Yeah. In fact, I even want to know the little things because the little things, you get enough of those, they’re big.

Well, it’s where I think you and I also have a through line in terms of ongoing fitness, ongoing exercise. Do I have that correct? That is a sad truth. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s where the longevity of that comes from. Tell me if this lines up or if I’m just speaking of my own premise here, which is the fact that there’s not necessarily an end goal.

No. As opposed to it’s these slightly better each and every time, and sometimes it is that click, Let’s say it’s this weightlifting. And suddenly it’s the, Oh wait, I just modified my grip ever so slightly, and now I feel better throughout the rest of the day. I don’t have these callouses on my hand anymore.

At least not those. And I was able to lift more. And it’s those tiniest of things that for anyone from the outside, they’re like, Wait, that’s it, , hopefully. Exactly. It’s those little nuances that keep someone getting better at something and growing stronger physically, and you know, metaphorically as well.

Well, it was that, even with my front squat this past week, I was noticing, well, wait a minute, if I’m just resting this thing on my clavicle anyway, why am I putting my thumb around the. Yeah, so let me just go ahead and put everything on my palms for the lack of a better term, and then I didn’t jack my.

Who knew. And, and nine people right now are nodding and going, I know, right?

Nine outta a thousand listening at this moment. Pretty much. Yeah. That’s, that’s again, that’s the style here and that’s what we enjoy. Yeah. I have, I said this before we hopped on, that we’ve been, uh, as I always say to everybody, best friends on Facebook, uh, for quite some time now, and being able to capture our first real conversation, this has been a delight in terms of looking.

How can we approach the work from a more positive outlook? How can we approach this as to the classic premise of what resources, what values, what abilities do they already have, and how do we harness that and put that to you so the client can own their own success? How can people best get in contact with you?

How can they track you down? Um, you can reach me via my, uh, I have a handful of websites. Uh, the better ones are kb shannon.com. And I’ve just started nlp carolinas.com, where at the first of the year, I am planning on doing core transformation in person retreats here in Western North Carolina. Beautiful and the wonders of producing a podcast only a couple of times a year for it to come out, uh, the entire year for those keeping track.

We’re recording this on December 3rd, and this actually launches January 13th, which is fun because as Kathleen just said, we’re working on it. It’s gonna be done by the 13th of January, isn’t it now, of course. See how we did that. I like that. outstanding, which will put all those in the show notes. This is episode number 359, so if you go to work smart hypnosis.com/ 3 59, that’s where you can find all those resources that Kathleen referenced.

Before we wrap this up, any final thoughts for the listeners out there? You know, there’s a great gift in assuming positive intent of. And the greatest gift is, it’s actually gonna make you look better in the long run. Jason Leded here once again, and as always, thank you so much for leaving reviews of this program online, sharing it along with other professionals and other people interested in hypnosis as well as interacting with our guests.

You can head over again to the show [email protected]. 3 5 9 to see exactly how to connect with Kathleen Shannon, her websites, and the references that she mentioned throughout this episode. And again, to sharpen your skills to get more consistent, powerful results with your clients. Check out Work Smart hypnosis live.com.

I’d encourage you to watch the entire video at the top of that page. It gives you a full tour of exactly how we do this event and a hybrid approach, both live and online. So check that. Work Smart hypnosis live.com. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.