A 52 year old divorced woman came in for her first hypnosis session to eliminate chronic anxiety stemming from what she referred to as "empty nest syndrome" after her son had left to join the military.
She said that she was a Wiccan, and asked me what I thought about psychic ability. In the long conversation which followed, l told me her that the research often showed dramatic results; but in order to be accepted by the scientific community, these results had to be repeated by others who carried out the same research under the same conditions. So far, this has not been.found to be the case. Then I added that many physicists now believe that there are eleven different dimensions of reality instead of the.three that we are used to, and perhaps psychic abilities operate in these dimensions. This might explain why we could often obtain such dramatic results without being able to replicate them under controlled conditions in the laboratory
She seemed satisfied with this conclusion, but most of our session time had been used up. So, after the hypnotic induction had been completed, I suggested that she would obtain everything she wanted from today's session, regardless of whether or not it had been included in the suggestions she was given and. regardless of whether or not she was completely aware if it herself at the time
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When she returned for the next appointment, she showed me a picture of her son, who had just begun. his first day of training at Marine boot camp and thanked me profusely. She had been using her newly strengthened beliefs about her psychic abilities to "will" a curtain of protection around him and keep him from harm. Her anxiety attacks and much of her chronic anxiety had completely vanished.
Since that time, I have always included suggestions for "comprehensive coverage" in all my hypnosis sessions, in. order to allow for the possibility that there might be something that either I or the client may have overlooked or not been able to include.
Was she really psychic, or was she merely deluding herself? Since noobody can know what "truth" is in these maters, we should help our clients to put together a world view that helps them to make the best of their lives, regardless of our own beliefs. She had made the choice herself. And, in the unlikely event that she should ever find out that she is wrong, we can deal with that problem when it arises.
