Engagement during therapy (and therefore hypnotherapy) is an important factor in its success. In this blog article, we take a closer look at fostering engagement with the client and with the hypnotherapist.
What is involvement?
Engagement is about the commitment you have to achieve therapeutic goals, for example. For example, if you are given homework, you are involved enough in the treatment to actually do this homework .
Research also shows that if someone is upfront about being involved with cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, this is good for therapy outcomes, especially if they actually think cognitive behavioral training doesn't work.
What was interesting was that in therapy that focuses entirely on the person (person-centered experimental therapy), pre-specified involvement had no effect on the outcome[1]. So it may even be the case that in hypnotherapy, which is fully person-centered and has no standardized treatment format, the client's prior involvement need not have much of an impact on a positive outcome.
On top of that, cognitive behavioral therapy combined with hypnosis often works faster and better than if cognitive behavioral therapy is given alone.
Indicators of engagement
An indication of commitment is that when someone asks you to do something, you do it.
You also often find that if 1 exercise gives a particular good feeling to the client, it increases the commitment for the next exercise. Is an exercise disappointing? Then this in turn can adversely affect engagement for the next exercise (source 1).
Therefore, it is also important to adjust expectations and make it clear up front what people can expect from hypnotherapy.
Factors that contribute to client involvement in treatment
There are also other factors that contribute to client engagement, namely:
- How ready they are to change.
- Social support.
- In what way they are dealing with the problem now (and whether it is working) (source 1).
- Have more internal resources to perform therapy[2].
- The therapeutic relationship(report) between the therapist and client.
- A therapy focused on the client's strengths.
- Therapist's interpersonal skills (source 2).
- Empathy from the therapist during the first session[3].
Types of engagement
Several types of engagement can be distinguished from each other; for example, if someone does what you ask, this is called behavioral engagement. You also have cognitive involvement and emotional involvement[4].
Behavioral engagement is thus, someone physically performs tasks you ask for. For example, before you bring someone into hypnosis, you ask them to stand or sit somewhere. Put his hands down somewhere. If someone then does that, on the one hand this says something about docility, but it also says something about engagement with the treatment.
Cognitive engagement is also about thinking along. In hypnotherapy, this is also very important because most of the work happens in the client's mind . The client can also indicate in the preliminary conversation where he thinks a problem has come from, for example, instead of you having to figure it out from scratch as a hypnotherapist.
Empathic engagement, or emotional engagement, in emotional engagement, a person feels safe, trusting and even motivated to keep that relationship good. This is why building rapport is important during hypnotherapy.
Therapeutic involvement
In therapeutic engagement, for example, it is important for the therapist to regularly check how the client is doing. This is good for therapy outcomes. In psychotherapy, for example, this means allowing the client to fill out questionnaires regularly about how he is doing.
If the therapist then checks them out, he can adjust therapy accordingly[5].
During hypnotherapy, you also check briefly after each technique how a person feels in relation to the problem they came for. Because if you don't check this, how do you know if it helped?
As a hypnotherapist , though, you can often tell by the body posture. Tension suddenly disappears from the body and a smile often appears, or someone starts crying with relief.
Even then, it is still important to double-check, but usually you will have reached your goal.
Before you enter this "double-checking" phase, however, it is also important to signal to the client that you are involved with his or her problem and especially with finding a solution.
The preliminary interview is important to make the client feel that you are the therapist who can help them solve the problem[6]. For this, it is important to make the client:
- Empathic Reception.
- Giving something that works (e.g., the hypnotic experience).
- Demonstrate special knowledge (such as knowledge about hypnosis and NLP).
Empathy is also important to show commitment. That doesn't mean getting involved when someone puts themselves in the victim role, but rather helping someone use their internal resources to put themselves back in their power.
Improve engagement at work
People may come to you because they are having problems at work. This may also be because they actually no longer feel engaged with the work they are doing. This can have a variety of causes, such as burnout or bore-out.
To improve people's engagement at work, there are a number of internal resources you can encourage, namely:
- Optimism.
- Focus on what they can do.
- Strengthening self-confidence[7].
Many people who don't feel involved in their work (anymore) have dropped it because their focus was mainly showing what is not good and not fun about the company.
They have become pessimistic. By shifting the focus to what is going well at work, people can become more optimistic and thus re-engaged.
This can be done, for example, by reframing what they have seen at work that they do not like.
Autonomy is also very important, and with it a focus on what they can do. By encouraging people to look more closely at their circle of influence, you help people to experience more control over their work again and thus also create more engagement.
Strengthening self-confidence is also an important step for enhancing engagement. After all, if someone thinks they are worthless or can't do anything, why should they try their best to add anything. After all, it is then worthless anyway.
By showing that someone does have the very qualities needed to help a business move to the next level, you thereby also improve engagement for that person.
Improving self-confidence helps in all facets of life, including at work. In this, hypnotherapy can be given individually or for a group to improve self-confidence[8].
Improve engagement at home
Being involved at home is also important. Involved with your partner and certainly involved with your children. I was not very good at this myself before, but I have committed myself to having at least 15 minutes of focus on my children daily.
As a result, I am more intentional about fatherhood. It may not be much, but it's better than nothing.
This is another way a hypnotherapist can help people.
For example, when children get angry, it can feel easy to just punish them. But then you're not really engaging with your child. It's more helpful to start the conversation with your child about where the angry mood is coming from and use that engagement to reach a solution.
Otherwise, you're just teaching your child to bottle up angry feelings.
Research shows that hypnosis for behavioral problems in children often requires parental involvement as well[9]. Sometimes changing the very behavior of the parents is important to changing the child's behavioral problems. That is where hypnosis can then play a role.
Learning hypnosis for commitment
So engagement is important in the process of hypnotherapy, and hypnotherapy can be used to improve engagement at work and privately.
Would you like to learn hypnosis to help people become more engaged with their lives and fellow human beings? Then come to a free master class for a free introduction.
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