May 13
Depression or Depletion?
Ericksonian Integrative Medical Institute of Orange County Orange, California
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 36 secondsWe are often presented with a patient who complains of what appears to be mild depression or general fatigue. Both of these terms have significant overlap, and in reality they may be difficult to distinguish. Fatigue may actually lead to depression or visa versa. About 25% of the general population will experience a symptom profile consistent with fatigue and/or depression. The symptoms can be insidious. They gradually build up into what feels like concrete blocks, impeding health, or compromising resilience. After a while these symptoms may become familiar to patients and a level of resignation may appear. “Maybe this is just who I am.”
We as healers use our tools to intervene, be it CBT, hypnosis, or other forms of psychotherapy. But try as we may, for a specific patient we may reach a ceiling (and sometimes not a good foundation) with our treatment. We all have had such a patient for which our typical interventions do not appear adequate. We discuss with the patients their motivations, tap into their environmental and social systems, or refer them for medication consultation. And yet it still feels like an uphill battle. → Read more
May 06
The Lady in Black and I
I am from Argentina, and my first encounter with hypnosis was watching Tusam, a stage hypnotist who swallowed glass and put a dog in trance.
I was the executive director of MRI when we added Ericksonian hypnosis to our international externship program. Dr. Eric Greenleaf became our teacher. Later, after leaving MRI, I consulted with his institute. I translated courses and trances, but I had never been in trance. Hypnosis scared me. → Read more
Apr 29
When Abby Died
Frigid rain peppers hard blackened snow. You continue to season my thoughts.
When I saw her in the waiting room last March I knew the lymphoma had recurred. She’d aged. Her shrunken profile barely stirred the air as she walked into my office. Undaunted, she wanted to write more of her memoir. As a Registered Poetry Therapist, I offer healing trances through spontaneous free writing and bibliotherapy, as well as hypnosis.
I met Abby several years ago in my poetry therapy group. To continue the work she began then, we agreed to meet in my office, unless the chemotherapy was debilitating, in which case we’d met at her home. → Read more
I begin all my treatments with the question: “What would you like to change today — and why?” The client M.T. answered, “I want to quit smoking because it’s bad for me.” (I find this is a staple answer for most people who are asked the same question.) I normally follow my question with a destabilization technique. This is intended to simultaneously create an increase in motivation to the point where the clients are almost demanding to be treated. It also brings about a state of confusion during which, taken aback momentarily, clients will look for coherence anywhere and therefore accept any suggestions they can understand; a little bit like clutching at a straw.
My response to M.T. was spoken quickly so he wouldn’t have a chance to analyze my words. I said, “So what? We’re always doing things that are bad for us! We don’t exercise; we don’t eat enough fiber; we don’t drink enough water; we don’t get enough rest; we load ourselves with stress, and we can change all those things whenever we want to.” → Read more
Erickson speaking to a group of students:
A patient came to me and said, “I weigh 180 pounds. I’ve dieted a hundred times down to 130 pounds. As soon as the scale reads 130, I celebrate by going to the kitchen and stuffing myself and I gain back to 180 pounds in an awful hurry. And I’ve done that hundreds of times. Can you help with hypnosis?”
“I doubt if she did it hundreds of times. She said, ‘I diet down 130 pounds, then I celebrate by gaining it all back again. I told her, ‘Yes, I can help you by hypnosis, but to do so you’ll have to promise me that you’ll do whatever I tell you to do. No matter what it is you promise me, you’ll do it.’ I made her promise me in a waking state. I got the same promise in a trance state. And I explained to her in the trance state and the waking state, “You have gained your weight to 180 and you diet and lose to 130 pounds, and then you gain it back. Now what you’re going to do this time is you’re going to do your weight gain first and have your reduction second. So, you will now gain from 180 to 200 pounds.’ And with every ounce she gained, she wanted me to let her start reducing. I held out for 200 pounds on my scales and then gave her permission to reduce. She reduced in a hurry to 130 pounds and stayed there. I took her pattern and reversed it.” → Read more
Apr 08
Diego’s Dream
It was September 2001. Diego, a young boy, told his mom that he was not hungry because his tummy was full. All of a sudden, he doubled over in pain. Upon medical examination, they discovered Diego had a five-pound tumor beside his stomach. The tumor was a Rabdomiosarcoma, an aggressive, fast-growing form of sarcoma.
Diego’s life changed dramatically. No more school, no friends. Lots of new words to learn: cancer, biopsies, chemotherapy, catheters, radiotherapy, metastasis cells, surgery, etc. Diego was confused, angry, sad, worried, and very scared. → Read more
Apr 01
Pat and the Search for Soul
Milton H. Erickson Institute of Western Australia
In Erickson’s work I learned about treating clients as individuals, listening to their metaphors, and utilizing their resources. I also found permission to be bold, take risks, and venture beyond the restrictions of theory. However, as I have discovered many times over, my clients are my best teachers; Pat was one.
Her physician’s referral letter said she suffered severe insomnia following hospital admission for minor surgery twelve months earlier. Pat, a middle-aged ethnic Chinese, said, “I’ve lost my soul.” Previous therapy failed to bring relief. According to her metaphor, a person’s soul leaves the body when asleep and, if not reunited, can cause both physical and emotional distress, including insomnia. → Read more
Forty years ago, on March 25, 1980, Milton H. Erickson, MD passed away. Erickson is known as the father of modern hypnosis and one of the greatest psychotherapists of the 20th century.
Born in 1901 in a log cabin in Aurum, Nevada, and raised on a farm, Milton Erickson’s modest lifestyle was evident throughout his remarkable life. At 17 he contracted polio, and for decades to come, until his death at 78, he suffered many physical ailments due to what is now known as post-polio syndrome. He had muscle deterioration, double vision, loss of coordination, impaired hearing, and chronic pain. He was also colorblind. But instead of wallowing in his own suffering, he utilized his maladies to benefit others. He lived by example. He was happy to be alive and brought this sense of joy and triumph over his physical limitations to his therapy. Milton Erickson was the quintessential “Wounded Healer.”
These rules were compiled by Milton Erickson’s daughter, Betty Alice Erickson. It should be noted that these are not going to be found elsewhere in the Ericksonian literature. You are getting them here, exclusively, at www.Ericksonian.info. These are ten “Rules of Life” that Milton Erickson lived by and taught his children.
These are not “Presuppositions of Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and Psychology.” These are the rules of life that Milton himself lived by and were, arguably, the backbone of his philosophy. And, because they are rules like “what goes up, must come down,” they are essentially true whether you like them or not.
As Betty Alice put it “Nobody has to follow them, but rules of life, of physics, exist regardless of whether or not you believe in or follow them. People can’t flap their arms and fly. Believe it or not.”
Milton Erickson’s innovative way of working with people is legendary. But like the childhood game of “telephone” where the end result is often far from the original message, some of what he believed and taught is not true to him. Years ago, my mother and I were discussing that. We were both distressed that so much of what he was, what he did, was being so misunderstood, so different than his basic beliefs. Nobody was doing it on purpose; it was just that nowhere was there basic information about his core beliefs. So my mother and I wrote “ten rules.” They seem simple, and they are. But most of life, Most of therapy, is simple–or as I say, when I am teaching Daddy’s work: “Erickson was profoundly simple and simply profound.”
1. Life is hard work.
We all know this—but we don’t know how deep it really is. We are the only creature on earth who looks for hard work. Nothing else climbs a mountain “because it’s there” as George Mallory is famously quoted. No other living thing trains for a marathon—to run 26 miles faster than someone else merely for fun. People are hard-wired for hard work—we complete one task and look for another.”
Mar 18
Lydia’s Dream
This is about a dream and an image. The client, Lydia, is dreaming about her youth in Mexico and when she tries to talk, worms come out of her mouth instead of words. In the dream, Lydia’s father sits and chats with his mother, Lydia’s abuela. Mother and son have sought refuge from the implacable midday Jalisco sun by setting their chairs in the shade, close to the doors that open into the bedroom where Lydia, her brother, and her sister are having their siesta.
The girl’s bedroom doors have been left ajar and the snuffling, groaning sounds of incest leak out, suspended in the parched, salt-laced ocean of summer air. Lydia’s grandmother and her father shift slightly in their elaborately carved, ladder-back chairs. Their conversational hum rises in volume, seeming to absorb sounds produced by Lydia, her younger brother, and her older sister, as each is molested in turn by their uncle.
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