Therapy is potentially a truly a life changing opportunity, and is what I term a 'watershed therapy', in that a person's life can be changed for the better, permanently, in such a way that they would never ever want to go back to being the person that they were before their therapy.

For something like a century or more therapists have been frustrated by meeting ordinary every day people who clearly, and obviously, have very much to gain from their therapy - yet decline to go ahead with any form of therapy!

The psychoanalysts acknowledge and interpret this behaviour, and label the behaviour, as being one of 'resistance', and form lots of esoteric theories as to what causes 'resistance' and why it is they tend to meet 'resistant' clients from time to time.

However, many said therapists have completely failed to notice that many such clients, who they would normally expect to benefit greatly from their therapy also tend to have a generally negative outlook on life, as a result of their anxiety disorder.

And such negative thinking clients tend to either not see, or believe, or appreciate, just how bad their own personal situation is - for they have lived with their problem(s) for so long that, for them, they feel that they are pretty 'normal'.

And, together with that, they can tend to feel that they are so 'bad' (but 'normal' for them) that they are likely to be completely beyond help. And that no therapy in the world could possibly help them, and the only reason that they ever visited the therapist at all in the first place was to really confirm to themselves that they were beyond help!

Together with the above thinking the 'resistant', (really, 'negative thinking') client is simply incapable of envisaging the degree to which therapy is likely to change them. They cannot imagine themselves in the future following their therapy, they cannot see the potential difference between where they are now and where they could be in the future, as a result of therapy.

For the negative thinking client, they can see therapy only as being a problem - as an activity that needs to be paid for, travelled to, and that demands that time set be aside for therapy sessions, and which might not 'work', and which might be in some way 'scary' for them.

As a result of their negative thinking the 'resistant' client can imagine only the very worst outcomes for themselves should they choose to enter therapy with the therapist.

So, as a result of negative thinking, which is itself a result of having lived with their anxiety disorder for so many years, maybe decades, the client declines any offer of assistance from the therapist, and the classical therapist labels the client as being ' in the grip of 'resistance' !

The thing is that many clients have had to live with symptoms that are related to their underlying 'anxiety disorder' for maybe a number of years, or decades, before they finally seek help for their problems from a therapist.

And over that number of years, or decades, it is not at all unusual for them to have developed a number of secondary symptoms (sometimes termed 'indirect symptoms' or 'coping behaviours'), as a result of having had to live with their anxiety symptoms - of which negative thinking is just one.

Some such secondary thinking style symptom can be (not always, but can be):

• A generally negative outlook on life - they anticipate the worst outcome in almost everything they do.
• Low self-esteem, they can feel that their own needs come second to the demands of others.
• Being, habitually, a 'bit of a worrier'.

So, when considering whether to start therapy, or continue with their therapy, the secondary symptoms that have been created in response to their anxiety disorder can work against the client who is thinking of starting therapy - in so far as they may have thoughts regarding therapy of the following nature:

"I will have to pay the therapist their fee and it's money that I really don't want to pay, and anyway there are other more important things and deserving people in my family, such as my children, who really should come first."

"I'm afraid being 'hypnotised' and having therapy sounds scary - and suppose I get 'stuck' in hypnosis? Or suppose I can't be hypnotised and the therapy doesn't work?"

"It's a lot of money to spend just on poor little (undeserving) me, and it won't work because nothing I've tried in the past has worked, and, really, I'm just not worth it..."

So in some cases this style of thinking and coping has become habitual, and whilst such thoughts may be to some extent 'real' and 'understandable' they have now become a habitual style of thinking, and this negative style of thinking is now really just another symptom of a whole cluster of symptoms that have formed as a part of their anxiety disorder.

So there can be a tragic irony here in that the same anxiety disorder that has created their difficulties/symptom(s), and brought the client to consider or start therapy in the first place (e.g. their insomnia, their fear of flying, their high stress levels, their panic attacks, their fear of heights or whatever..) has also created (because they have had their problems for, in many cases, a number of years) a 'negative thinking' mindset - which now starts to act AGAINST their best interests by starting to manufacture reasons, thoughts and ideas for them NOT to do the very therapy that they have learnt from the therapist that they actually need to do to help them to resolve their problems !

Who said life was never easy? !!!

Additionally, their low self-esteem, as a result of their anxiety disorder, can also mean that 'major' decisions in their life (like whether to do therapy, or not) are habitually deferred to their partner, or spouse - who of course doesn't understand therapy, or how therapy works, or what therapy entails, or how much their partner/spouse client can be completely transformed by a course of therapy into a happy caring partner !

And a similar level of ignorance of the true extent and severity of their partner's anxiety disorder may well also lead the client's (otherwise loving) partner or spouse to being quite dismissive about their partner's situation (e.g. "just pull yourself together, there are better things that we can spend our money on (!)" ) and so instead the client's partner makes the decision to prioritise the use of household income on things other than the personal well being of their partner - the 'resistant' client.

In fact therapy can be an immensely powerful form of psychotherapy because it will (painlessly, harmlessly and effortlessly) reveal to the client the cause(s) of the client's anxiety disorder, and when that has been done in the therapy, the other secondary symptoms and 'coping behaviours' that their symptom(s) have created over the years, such as negative thinking etc. will also start to go - because the reason for having them is no longer there !

The end result of therapy is a happy client who becomes, over the coming days, weeks and months, becomes increasingly free of their direct symptoms, and also increasingly free of their secondary 'indirect' symptoms and 'coping behaviours'.

The secret of the solution to the problem of motivating the resistant client to benefit from their therapy is, in fact, relatively straightforward - show them a collection of testimonials and client feedback comments - so they can see for themselves just how other people have benefited from their therapy and they can see what other people thought of the therapy and their therapist.

This is because it is completely understandable that some prospective clients, who might be considering starting therapy, or find themselves questioning whether to continue with their therapy, may seek reassurance, and 'evidence' that therapy is the right thing for them to undertake.

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This may be because they are a little bit apprehensive, about what might happen in therapy, or what their therapist might be like, or what it feels like to 'be hypnotised', or how much better are they going to feel. And are they going to be 'cured' of their problem etc. Effectively their high level of anxiety now gets focussed on the very thing that can help them

So, if you are either considering therapy for yourself, or for your partner/spouse, and you are curious to know what it is like for a client to receive therapy from either an IAEBP therapist or from myself, please take a look at some of the client feedback that has been volunteered to both myself and to other IAEBP therapists:

Some Client Feedback - from therapists within the IAEBP

Some Client Feedback - from some of my own clients here at The Surrey Hypnotherapy Clinic

And hopefully the above testimonials, from real clients having been treated by real therapists, will help to allay any concerns that you might have otherwise had about the particular, and unique, form of therapy that I provide here at The Surrey Hypnotherapy Clinic.

Sincerely,

Peter