Posts Tagged ‘phd’
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.
Mar 11
Oral Gratification
Juanita was a 31-year-old Marriage and Family Intern who had twice failed the oral examination for her license. She wanted hypnosis to reveal sabotaging herself so she could pass her orals. We would only have time for one session.
Juanita had no prior experience with hypnosis. I asked to get in touch with the body sensations she experiences when she was in the oral exam. She was able to do this easily. I then had her focus all of her attention on this feeling. I had her imagine that she was inside her body, inside that feeling and then I asked her to turn the feeling or sensation into a room so that when she was inside that room, she was inside the feeling. I then asked her to imagine a doorway at the end of the room, a doorway to an elevator. I had her get in the elevator and imagine it going down as she went back in time, back to a time in the past when she had the same feeling. When she got there the elevator door would open and she would share with me the contents of what she became aware of.
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