It was early on a weekday morning, and I was preparing for a full day with clients when the phone rang.
On the other end of the line I heard a scratchy, desperate voice, “Please help me, I can’t stop drinking,” she said. From there, through muffled coughs she shared with me how her life had taken a sharp downward spiral for the last 3 years with increased drinking and unhappiness in her life.
I agreed to see her right away. In the end, she got her life back.
5-PATH® is beautifully designed to help people with alcohol problems - it’s a too-much behavior. Here are a few of the modifications I’ve learned to incorporate into my practice to achieve the best result with this common issue:
The empty bottle before the storm of change
As a rule, I always get clients with alcohol problems into my office as quickly as possible.
These clients often call us the morning after drinking too much. If you can get them into your office or on the phone within a day for the free consultation, you can help them.
If they have to wait a week or more to see you, they may cycle through the process of feeling better, then drinking again and decide against seeking help.
Schedule your client twice the first week for this issue ideally with one day between. The reason is to get them to that first week without alcohol, and scheduling sessions closer together makes that easier for them.
Remember that direct suggestion hypnosis has a tendency to wear off, so we want to get them the insight and relief of AR before that happens.
This is something I wish I would have known when I started my practice: don’t agree to help your clients drink moderately.
It’s so much harder for them - and ultimately also for you.
I’m sure it’s possible for someone to go from drinking too much to drinking an acceptable amount. But remember it has gotten bad enough for your client that they’re coming to you for help.
Alcohol keeps clients in the feel-bad-distract cycle
It’s the nature of alcohol, with all the great promises and expectations before that first drink – and your client WILL believe they only want that one drink, but after that first drink they will almost always want more.
Now your client is not happy – not at all. They want more, but know they shouldn’t. This creates unhappiness and resistance in your client, which just facilitates the feel-bad-distract cycle as outlined in The Secret Language of Feelings book, and leads to more drinking.
This is how I do it now. I tell them, “I’ll help you stop drinking. I won’t help you to drink moderately because in my experience it does not work.”
In that moment of agreeing to help them stop drinking, I’ve just helped my client tremendously. They know the expectation, and the results are so much better.
If you want to be really good at what you do, you will have to disappoint people. Clients come to us for help - so help them with what really works, not what they want to hear.
It’s never too late to change direction
The process with this client went as expected, in the first session she left hopeful. The hypnosis helped remind her of how her life could be on the High Road (The Universal Patter Script). This gave her hope, and joy that she hadn’t felt in years.
The second session we move to AR, and she released painful and erroneous emotions related to her childhood and an abusive father and older brother. She let go of the idea that she was a bad person, which she was taught growing up in the Catholic church. She felt lovable and good again.
The third session, she looked like a different person! She arrived early for her session and she could walk easily into my office and articulate all the good things going on in her life. We went through Forgiveness of Others, Phase III. She forgave her brother, her father, and the Church. She left with peace, and gratitude.
The fourth session, she forgave herself and left the session empowered to live her best life with her husband and family.
The fifth session, she came and wrote a beautiful testimonial, including “I am saved from myself! I am a good person again! I can be thoughtful and giving again! I can throw my head back and laugh out loud!”
This woman got her life back.
We change lives with hypnosis and 5-PATH® - even when things feel desperate and hopeless for our clients. With these three simple modifications for alcohol cessation, I think you’ll help your clients find relief even faster.
Alcohol Cessation, and coming off of alcohol can be dangerous for clients. For this reason, I will only work with clients AFTER they have detoxed with their primary care physician. I am not trained to determine how my client should taper, and if it’s safe for them to do so on their own. For this reason I tell my clients they are required to detox on their own, with the help of their doctor. Encourage your client to take these steps - there are medications that can make stopping drinking easier that may be helpful. However unless you’re a doctor with medical licensing in this issue - you can not advise or prescribe anything for our clients in this regard! What we can say, is that they must take care of detoxing on their own. This may seem strange to require a client to detox from alcohol first, however feel free to look up Delirium Tremens to seek more information on why this is so important for our clients. Don’t get put in the middle here of helping your client “figure out” if they need to detox or not! That’s not our role as hypnotists. Our role is to guide our clients to the best outcomes, and certainly for alcohol it is to allow them to detox first, then you get to help them stay that way. Many clients are able to detox on their own at home, and that’s great - and wonderful if the advice comes from their doctor who has more skill in helping with that type of physical withdrawal. If you have specific questions about this, email me at erika@cascadehypnosiscenter.com I’d be happy to provide more insight.