Ericksonian and neo-Ericksonian hypnosis

1. Introduction

Version followed: neo-Ericksonian clinical hypnosis as currently taught in Milton H. Erickson Foundation and ASCH training. The spine is Dan Short's six core competencies (2019 edition) and Lankton and Lankton's clinical framework with the multiple embedded metaphor (The Answer Within, 1983; Crown House reissue 2008). Zeig's elicitation approach (absorb, ratify, elicit) and the generic ASCH session structure and suggestion types (Wells, after Yapko and Hammond) fill in the gaps. Erickson's own texts (e.g. Erickson, Rossi and Rossi, Hypnotic Realities, 1976) were access-restricted. They appear here only as later trainers report them [uncertain].

Scope: this tab covers the hypnotic procedures only. Ericksonian psychotherapy more broadly, including utilisation outside trance, strategic tasks, ordeals and paradox, is in guide 003. Read that first; overlap here is kept to a minimum.

Ericksonian hypnosis is a permissive, individually tailored style of clinical hypnosis. Trance is elicited from the client's own experience rather than induced by a standard script. Zeig frames hypnosis as helping a client move from a problem state to an adaptive state, using evocative rather than merely informative communication [source: Simpkins and Simpkins review of Zeig]. The change model:

Change happens through experiential learning, not insight or instruction. Clients re-experience and reframe past limitations and get "the experiences they need in the contexts in which they live" [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview].
Resources already lie in the client's history.
Temporarily loosening habitual frames of reference (destabilisation) opens room for new responses.
Whatever the client brings, symptoms and resistance included, is used rather than opposed [source: Short 2019].

Neo-Ericksonian schools differ in emphasis but share these competencies. The main ones are Lankton's metaphor-based framework, Zeig's elicitation model, Short's core competencies and "choice architecture", and solution-oriented hypnosis (O'Hanlon) [source: Short 2019; Short 2026 ASCH slides; PsychMaven course outline]. Gilligan's self-relations and Rossi's mind–body work are other neo-Ericksonian lines. They are not described here [uncertain].

Practitioner scope. This guide is for licensed health professionals using hypnosis within their existing clinical competence. Lankton and Lankton liken mastery to a martial art and say a weekend workshop is not enough [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview]. Stage hypnosis, covert induction and any technique meant to bypass consent are not clinical methods and are not taught here. Surprise inductions reported in the Erickson literature are deliberately left out [synthesis].

2. Framework

The sources give no fixed session protocol; Ericksonian authors reject scripts in favour of tailoring [source: Short 2019; Wells ASCH slides; Simpkins review of Zeig]. The phases below combine the ASCH generic session structure (Wells), Brooks's three stages, Lankton's planning and multiple-embedded-metaphor sequence, and Zeig's ARE model.

Phase A: Assessment, screening and consent (session 1, before any trance)

Goals:
- Identify the client's goal and the order in which problems should be addressed.
- Identify the resources the client already has and the ones still needed.
- Identify risk factors.
- Separate the content (what) of the problem from its process (how) [source: Wells ASCH slides].
Lankton and Lankton add a systems view. Map the client's social network, how the symptom functions in it, and the client's "experiential map" [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview, table of contents].
Then screen and get informed consent; see 4.1.
Move on when there is an agreed, client-owned goal, no unmanaged contraindication, and consent to hypnosis [synthesis].

Phase B: Orientation and priming (end of session 1 or start of session 2)

Explain hypnosis in the client's terms.
Build rapport by matching posture, breathing and tone.
Seed later suggestions with brief stories about everyday trance and about conscious and unconscious learning [source: Brooks; Wells].
Move on when the client understands what will happen, expects to keep control, and is curious rather than fearful [synthesis].

Phase C: Elicitation (induction), absorption and ratification (within each hypnotic session)

Absorb attention in a naturally occurring experience.
Build a response set.
Ratify that a change of state is happening.
This follows Zeig's ARE sequence: absorb, ratify, elicit [source: Simpkins review of Zeig; the review names the stages but does not define them, so the definitions here are my reading [uncertain]]. It also matches Wells's "induction, then response set" [source: Wells].
Brooks lets the client's unconscious set the depth and usually works in light trance [source: Brooks].
Move to therapeutic work when you see observable absorption: slowed breathing, stillness, a changed facial tone, delayed responses, or an ideomotor "yes" [source: Brooks; Wells (ratification signs)].

Phase D: Therapeutic work (the core of each hypnotic session)

Deliver one or more themes through suggestion, metaphor, resource retrieval or trance phenomena.
After each theme, check what meaning the client is taking from it [source: Wells].
In Lankton's multiple embedded metaphor the order is:
1. Open a matching metaphor.
2. Retrieve resources.
3. Work directly on the core issue.
4. Link the resources to the client's social network.
5. Close the matching metaphor.
6. Reorient [source: Lankton and Lankton, ch. 7 headings].

Phase E: Contextualisation, closure and re-alerting

Give post-hypnotic suggestions that tie the new response to real future situations.
Close the theme, suggest disengagement, and reorient fully [source: Wells; Lankton ch. 7].
Brooks invites the client to come out when their unconscious is ready [source: Brooks].

Phase F: Debrief, practice and termination

Discuss the experience and ratify the change.
Agree on between-session practice, which may include self-hypnosis [source: PsychMaven course outline lists self-hypnosis; the procedure is [synthesis]].
Plan the ending. Lankton's final chapter treats closure as part of the method [source: Lankton ch. 9 heading; its content is [uncertain]].

Session count and format.

No standard count is given. Ericksonian work is generally brief and individual [uncertain].
Practical default [synthesis]:
- Sessions of 50–90 minutes.
- Phase A, plus Phase B if possible, in session 1.
- A first trance experience by session 2.
- Review the goal after every session and formally at about session 4–6.
- Expect roughly 3–10 sessions for a focused goal.
- Longer work when hypnosis is one part of broader therapy.
Brooks's single case used one session [source: Brooks].

3. Guiding principles

Short's six core competencies [source: Short 2019]:

Utilisation. Engage the client's habits, beliefs, perceptions, symptoms, resistance and situation in service of the goal, including trance itself. In practice, ask "how can what this person is already doing become part of the work?"
Tailoring (individualising). Fit both technique and relationship style to this client. In practice, build each induction and suggestion from the client's own words, interests and pace, not from a script.
Strategic. Organise problem-solving around the client's own values and agenda; the client is the main problem-solver, not the problem. In practice, every suggestion should serve a goal the client named.
Destabilisation (depotentiation, confusion). Briefly disrupt habitual frames so conditioned responses cannot run as usual. In practice, use gentle surprise, reframing or confusion to loosen a fixed pattern, always within consented hypnosis and never with fragile clients; see 4.13.
Experiential. Learning comes from direct experience, not explanation. In practice, give the client something to feel or do in trance rather than a lecture.
Naturalistic. Expect change to happen naturally and automatically, and evoke natural healing and learning processes. In practice, use "can" and "will notice" language and draw on everyday experiences such as daydreaming.

Lankton and Lankton's attitudinal framework. Each practical meaning below is a reading of the chapter headings [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview, ch. 2 headings; meanings [synthesis]]:

People operate from internal maps. Work inside the client's map; do not argue with it.
People make the best choice available to them. Treat a symptom as the best option the person has so far, and add options rather than condemning it.
Theories are not the client. Drop the model when it does not fit this person.
Respect all messages. Treat hesitations, shifts and "resistance" as information.
Teach choice. Expand options; never take a choice away.
Resources lie within. Search the client's history for the needed skill before teaching anything new.
Meet clients at their model of the world. Pace their language and pace before you lead.
Flexibility. If one approach is not working, change your own behaviour first.
You can't not communicate. Your tone, breathing and posture are suggestions too.
Reduce outcomes to component bits. Break the goal into small experiential steps.
Outcomes at the psychological level. Aim at experiential shifts in feeling, perception and behaviour, not only content insight.

Further principles from the other sources:

Tolerate not-knowing while staying in contact. Let the client's unique outcome emerge; do not force a predetermined one [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview].
Complementary or matching stance. Erickson sometimes took a stance complementary to the client's and sometimes matched their worldview, and he accepted and even asked for more of the client's behaviour. In practice, pick the relational position that lowers resistance for this client [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview].
Elicit rather than induce. Trance and change are drawn out of the client's existing capacities through evocative, multilevel communication [source: Simpkins review of Zeig].
Permissiveness and autonomy. Offer possibilities, not commands; the client chooses. Short places Ericksonian influence on a continuum from coercion through persuasion and nudge to autonomy, and it belongs at the nudge and autonomy end. In practice, if a suggestion would only work by overriding the client's choice, do not use it [source: Short 2026 ASCH slides; Wells].
Status levelling and endowment. Replace the idea of "resistance" with negotiation and goal alignment, and credit progress to the client's own skills [source: Short 2026 ASCH slides].
Positive expectancy, authoritative but not authoritarian. Convey calm confidence that something useful will happen [source: Wells].
Parsimony. Use the simplest strategy that works; plain wording beats an elaborate metaphor when both would do [source: Wells, after Hammond].
Law of reversed effect. Effort works against involuntary change, so invite allowing instead of trying [source: Wells, after Hammond].
Successive approximation. Build change in small steps and use permissive timelines [source: Wells].
Trance is not passivity. Clients can move, talk and signal in trance, and deep trance is often unnecessary [source: Brooks].
Consent and transparency [synthesis]. Indirection is a style of communication inside a hypnosis session the client agreed to; it is never a way to hypnotise or influence someone without their knowledge.

4. Intervention inventory

All example wording below is my own illustrative paraphrase, not Erickson's or any trainer's script. The classic list of indirect-suggestion forms is in Erickson, Rossi and Rossi (1976). Only the forms named in the sources are given here. Other forms (e.g. "not knowing/not doing", "covering all possibilities") exist in the literature but were not verified [uncertain].

A. Preparation and safety

4.1 Screening, contraindications and informed consent

Purpose: Make hypnosis safe and consented before any trance work.
Steps:
1. Take a full clinical history: psychiatric history (psychotic, schizoaffective and dissociative disorders), neurological history (seizures), trauma history, current medication and medical conditions.
2. Screen-in requirements:
  - Psychotic, schizoaffective and dissociative conditions need specialist judgement; hypnosis there only by licensed, trained professionals.
  - Seizure disorders need medical consultation first [source: Faerman/Reveri safety page].
  - Gruzelier's review reports rare serious effects, including first-episode psychosis, seizure, stupor, spontaneous dissociative episodes and trauma memories resurfacing during age regression. It calls for screening vulnerable people [source: Gruzelier review abstract].
3. Added contraindications and cautions [synthesis]:
  - Active psychosis or mania.
  - Severe or unassessed dissociation.
  - Unstabilised PTSD: no regression or trauma-memory work until stabilised (see the Domain VI trauma guides).
  - Acute suicidality: stabilise first.
  - Intoxication.
  - Paranoid traits, where indirection may be felt as manipulation.
  - Forensic or legal cases where testimony could later be at issue: avoid memory work entirely.
  - Medical symptoms that have not been medically assessed.
4. Explain in plain words what hypnosis is and is not. The client stays aware and able to stop. Trance is focused attention, not sleep or loss of control. Ericksonian work uses indirect, story-based language, and you will explain anything they want explained afterwards.
5. Get explicit consent to the style itself: "I sometimes speak in stories or suggestions that are not obvious; we will always review them together" (illustrative).
6. Agree a stop signal. Agree that no memory recovery will be attempted.
7. For medical uses (pain, surgery, IBS and similar), confirm the medical assessment and the treating doctor's care first. Hypnosis is an adjunct and never replaces medical treatment [synthesis].
8. Document the consent.
Example language (illustrative): "You'll be able to hear me, speak, move, open your eyes and stop at any time. Nothing will happen that you don't want. Afterwards we'll talk through anything I said that seemed puzzling."
Watch for:
- Fear of losing control, and stage-hypnosis expectations; correct these before starting.
- A history the client minimises.
- It is working when the client can restate the safeguards and agrees freely.

4.2 Goal, resource and system assessment

Purpose: Build the treatment plan that tailoring and utilisation depend on.
Steps [source: Wells; Lankton and Lankton ch. 3 headings; Short 2019]:
1. Elicit a goal phrased as a positive experience the client wants.
2. Order the problems.
3. List existing resources: times the problem did not occur, ways the client already copes, skills from hobbies, work and early learning [source: Brooks].
4. List the resources still needed. Lankton frames this as which experiences the client lacks in which contexts [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview].
5. Note content versus process: what happens, and how it happens (sequence, sensory pattern, timing).
6. Map who in the client's social network is affected and how the symptom fits in it [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 3 headings].
7. Record the client's key words, metaphors, interests and values for later use in suggestions.
Example language (illustrative): "When this goes even slightly better, what's different?"; "Tell me about something you learned to do so well you no longer think about it."
Watch for:
- Goals that belong to someone else, such as a referrer or partner; renegotiate them.
- It is working when you have a client-owned goal, at least two resource experiences, and a vocabulary of the client's own images.

4.3 Priming and seeding

Purpose: Introduce ideas early so later suggestions land as familiar, and orient the client to unconscious learning.
Steps:
1. In conversation before trance, tell brief stories or analogies about everyday automatic learning (walking, reading) and about conscious and unconscious processes [source: Brooks].
2. Mention, in passing, ideas that will matter later, such as "letting a change happen at its own pace" [source: Wells (seeding); Short 2026 (priming)].
3. Use humour and match posture, breathing and tone while you do this [source: Brooks].
Example language (illustrative): "Learning to ride a bike, you didn't think about balance; one day you just had it."
Watch for:
- Nods, smiles and spontaneous stillness show the client is engaged.
- Stories that miss their interests mean you need to switch topic.

B. Elicitation (induction)

An Ericksonian induction is assembled from the elements below in whatever order fits the client. A solution-oriented course outline lists them as: permission and inclusion, evoking previous trance experiences, presupposition, splitting, linking, interspersal, description, truisms, rhythm and matching [source: PsychMaven course outline; content locked, so the steps below are [synthesis] built on the other sources].

4.4 Pacing and matching (then leading)

Purpose: Build rapport and a response set by first reflecting the client's observable experience, then gently leading.
Steps:
1. Match tempo to the client's breathing: speak on the out-breath.
2. Describe what is verifiably true right now, such as sounds, the chair or breathing ("description").
3. Gradually slow your own pace and breathing; the client often follows.
4. In Brooks's case the therapist slowed his breathing and went into light trance himself while talking about daydreaming, and the client deepened with him [source: Brooks].
5. Shift from describing to suggesting once the client follows your rhythm.
Example language (illustrative): "As you sit there… hearing the sounds outside… and breathing out… you might start to notice how your hands are resting."
Watch for:
- Breathing slowing in step with you, reduced blinking, stillness.
- If the client speeds up or fidgets, go back to pacing.

4.5 Naturalistic induction: evoking previous trance experiences

Purpose: Elicit trance from experiences the client already knows, such as daydreaming, absorption in music or highway driving, so no "special state" has to be produced [source: Short 2019 (naturalistic); Brooks; PsychMaven outline].
Steps:
1. Ask about times the client becomes absorbed.
2. Invite them to recall one in sensory detail: where, what they saw and heard, how time passed.
3. Describe that state back slowly, in present tense.
4. Suggest that the same kind of absorption can develop now, at its own pace.
Example language (illustrative): "You mentioned losing track of time when you're painting… and you can remember how that begins… the way the room fades a little… and that can start to happen here, in its own way."
Watch for:
- Facial flattening, slowed breathing and delayed answers suggest absorption.
- If the chosen experience carries negative associations, pick another.

4.6 Utilisation induction (using the client's ongoing behaviour)

Purpose: Make whatever the client is doing, including restlessness, scepticism or talking, part of the induction rather than an obstacle [source: Short 2019; Brooks; Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview]. General utilisation is covered in guide 003.
Steps:
1. Notice the client's current behaviour.
2. Accept it aloud as fitting.
3. Link it to the next small step.
4. Continue to accept whatever happens next.
5. Short's example: a teen who refused to talk was offered that the therapist would do all the talking and the teen need not even listen [source: Short 2026 ASCH slides].
Example language (illustrative): "You can keep checking whether this works, and that kind of careful attention is exactly what lets people notice small changes."
Watch for:
- Do not use acceptance as a trick to override a genuine "no". A client who does not want hypnosis today is respected, and the work continues without trance [synthesis].

4.7 Truisms and the yes-set

Purpose: Build acceptance momentum with statements the client will agree with.
Steps:
1. Make 3–4 undeniable statements about common human experience or the present moment [source: Wells, after Yapko].
2. Follow them with a permissive suggestion.
Example language (illustrative): "Everyone has drifted off in thought at some point… people have more skills than they realise… and a body knows how to settle when it's given time… so you can let yours find its own way of settling."
Watch for:
- Truisms that are not true for this client (e.g. relaxing has never felt good to them) break rapport; tailor them.

4.8 Permissive and inclusive suggestions

Purpose: Avoid power struggles. Any response counts as success.
Steps:
1. Phrase outcomes with "can", "may" or "might" [source: Wells; HypnoTC].
2. Include the alternatives: eyes open or closed, deeper or lighter [source: Wells (permissive examples); PsychMaven outline (permission and inclusion)].
3. Give time for the response.
Example language (illustrative): "You can close your eyes now or later, or leave them open and simply let your gaze rest; either way works."
Watch for:
- Some clients feel unsure with too much permissiveness and want structure. Wells notes that authoritative suggestions suit people who like clear direction. Switch styles if needed [source: Wells].

4.9 Presupposition and the double bind (illusion of alternatives)

Purpose: Make the desired response assumed, so the client chooses how or when rather than whether. Brooks says such questions start an unconscious inner search [source: Brooks; PsychMaven outline; HypnoTC].
Steps:
1. Choose a response the client has already consented to.
2. Phrase it so that every option leads there, e.g. which hand, recent or distant memory, now or in a moment.
3. Wait silently for the response.
Example language (illustrative): "I wonder whether a comfortable memory will come from the last year or from much longer ago."
Watch for:
- Use binds only for goals the client agreed to, and be ready to explain them afterwards.
- Never use a bind to push past an objection [synthesis].
- With trauma histories, keep binds to pleasant or neutral material only.

4.10 Linking (contingent suggestion)

Purpose: Attach a suggestion to something that is already happening or certain to happen [source: PsychMaven outline; HypnoTC].
Steps:
1. Name an ongoing event such as breathing, sounds or time passing.
2. Join it to the suggestion with "and", "as", "while" or "because".
3. Chain several links.
Example language (illustrative): "With each breath out, your shoulders can let go a little more; and as they do, your attention can turn inward."
Watch for:
- If the event stops, e.g. the client stops hearing the traffic, re-anchor to breathing.

4.11 Splitting: conscious–unconscious dissociation

Purpose: Let the analysing mind do one thing while involuntary processes do another, which reduces effortful trying [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 5 headings; PsychMaven outline (splitting)].
Steps:
1. Contrast two parallel processes: conscious and unconscious, thinking and noticing, one hand and the other.
2. Give the conscious part something to occupy it (listening, wondering).
3. Give the unconscious part the therapeutic task (learning, finding a resource).
Example language (illustrative): "Your conscious mind can listen to my words or wander off, while a deeper part of you quietly sorts out what's useful."
Watch for:
- Contraindicated or used very cautiously with clients who have dissociative disorders or depersonalisation. Splitting language can deepen unwanted dissociation [synthesis].

4.12 Interspersal and embedded suggestions

Purpose: Repeat key suggestions in different forms inside stories and description so they register without argument [source: Wells (interspersing and embedding); PsychMaven outline (interspersal)].
Steps:
1. Pick 1–2 key ideas, e.g. comfort or curiosity.
2. Weave them into a story or description several times.
3. Mark them gently with a slight pause or a change of tone.
4. Repeat them in varied direct and indirect forms (law of concentrated attention) [source: Wells].
Example language (illustrative): "My neighbour grows tomatoes, and every summer he says the trick is to let them ripen comfortably, in their own time…"
Watch for:
- These must stay inside consented hypnosis.
- Explain the device afterwards if the client asks.
- "Embedded command" methods taught in NLP or sales to influence people without their knowledge are not clinical methods [synthesis].

4.13 Confusion and destabilisation

Purpose: Briefly overload habitual conscious tracking so the client grabs the first clear meaning offered. This interrupts rigid patterns and can elicit trance [source: Short 2019 (destabilisation); Simpkins review of Zeig].
Erickson's account: Erickson described talking deliberately mixed, irrelevant material to volunteers who had asked to experience hypnosis. He embedded a puzzle whose answer led to the trance cue, and they entered trance when they solved it. He stressed giving plenty of material and letting subjects pick the meaning [source: Erickson Foundation, Collected Works account]. The Collected Works editors note that Erickson gave no clear protocol for it [source: Collected Works vol. 4 blurb].
Steps (clinical adaptation [synthesis]):
1. Use only with a consenting client who wants hypnosis, is highly analytical or habitually over-controls, and has no psychosis, dissociative disorder, cognitive impairment or high anxiety.
2. Gently mix tenses, left and right, or before and after for a minute or two.
3. Then offer one simple, clear, calming suggestion as "something to hold on to".
4. Stop at once if the client looks distressed rather than amused or absorbed.
Example language (illustrative): "What you knew before you came, and what you'll know after you leave, may not be what you know right now, which is simply that you can rest."
Watch for:
- Good signs: a puzzled smile, then visible release.
- Bad signs: frowning, anxiety, or the client asking "what?". Switch to clear, simple pacing at once and debrief.
- Never use confusion on a client who did not consent to hypnosis [synthesis].

4.14 Choosing the form of suggestion

Purpose: Pick the right point on each of Yapko's continua [source: Wells, after Yapko]:
- positive or negative
- direct or indirect
- content or process
- authoritative or permissive
Steps:
1. Default to positive, permissive process suggestions, which supply little detail so the client fills in their own content.
2. Use content suggestions, which spell out specific feelings or memories, only with good rapport and good knowledge of the client.
3. Use direct suggestions when the client wants clarity. Wells notes they rely on conscious willingness and can provoke resistance.
4. Use negative suggestion ("don't notice yet…") rarely and with caution, to get around resistance.
5. Phrase all suggestions positively, e.g. "comfortably full" rather than "not hungry".
6. Use present tense and the client's own words, and allow time for each response [source: Wells].
Example language (illustrative): process: "a time you felt quietly proud"; content (only when well informed): "that afternoon at your daughter's graduation, the sun on your face".
Watch for:
- If the client reports "nothing happened", move toward more process and permissive forms, or toward more direct forms if they want explicit guidance.

C. Deepening, ratification and communication in trance

4.15 Ratification

Purpose: Confirm to the client that a real change of state is happening, which builds belief in their own unconscious capacities. Ratification is the R of Zeig's ARE [source: Wells (trance ratification); Simpkins review of Zeig; Brooks stage 3].
Steps:
1. Observe the involuntary changes: breathing, stillness, swallowing, eyelid flutter, slowed responses.
2. Name them back neutrally and as the client's own achievement.
3. Optionally elicit a small trance phenomenon to make the experience tangible (4.17).
4. After trance, ratify again by asking what the client noticed, such as time distortion or heaviness [source: Wells; Brooks].
Example language (illustrative): "Your breathing has changed on its own… your hands have become very still… that's your body showing it knows how to do this."
Watch for:
- Only ratify what is actually observable; inaccurate ratification breaks trust.

4.16 Ideomotor signalling

Purpose: Communicate with the client during trance through small involuntary movements without fully alerting them. Use it to check readiness, agreement and progress [source: Brooks; Wells].
Steps:
1. Before or early in trance, agree on signals, e.g. one finger for "yes" and another for "no". Head nods can also serve [source: Brooks].
2. Ask simple yes/no questions and wait.
3. Accept any answer, including "no" or no signal.
4. Brooks asks whether the unconscious will allow work on the problem before proceeding [source: Brooks].
5. Also allow verbal answers. Clients can talk in trance [source: Brooks].
Example language (illustrative): "When some part of you is ready to work on this, one of those fingers may lift by itself; and if it isn't ready yet, that's useful to know too."
Watch for:
- Treat signals as the client's communication, not as access to hidden truth.
- Never use ideomotor questioning to establish whether past events happened (e.g. abuse). Doing so risks creating false beliefs [synthesis].

4.17 Strategic use of trance phenomena

Purpose: Evoke hypnotic phenomena as therapeutic resources in their own right, or to ratify trance [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 6 headings; Wells; PsychMaven outline].
Phenomena and their uses:
- Arm or hand levitation: involuntary lifting; ratification and engagement.
- Catalepsy: a limb resting effortlessly still; stillness and comfort.
- Limb heaviness.
- Glove anaesthesia: numbness in a hand that can be transferred; pain-control adjunct.
- Time distortion: time seems shorter or longer; boredom, pain and waiting.
- Amnesia: for the session.
- Recall of minor forgotten memories: e.g. childhood learning; resource access.
Steps:
1. Choose the phenomenon that matches the goal.
2. Seed it.
3. Suggest it permissively and in small increments (e.g. "a lightness… a finger moving… the hand lifting").
4. Ratify it.
5. Link it to the goal.
6. Remove or normalise it before re-alerting.
Example language (illustrative): "I don't know which finger will feel the lightness first… it may be the index finger or the thumb… and you can be curious as the hand begins to drift."
Watch for:
- Remove anaesthesia, heaviness or catalepsy fully before the client leaves.
- Use pain anaesthesia only for medically assessed pain, so that a warning symptom is never masked [synthesis].

D. Therapeutic work in trance

4.18 Resource retrieval

Purpose: Re-access the skills, feelings or states the client needs from their own history. In Lankton's framework this is "retrieving resources" [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 7 headings; Brooks; Wells (resource-building examples)].
Steps:
1. From the assessment, pick the needed resource, e.g. calm confidence or playful curiosity.
2. Invite a process recall of any time it was present; childhood learning is often used.
3. Amplify its sensory and bodily features.
4. Ratify it.
5. Associate it with the problem context (4.24).
Example language (illustrative): "Somewhere in your life there was a time you felt steady and capable… you don't need to know which yet… and as it comes, notice where in your body that steadiness lives."
Watch for:
- Use only positive or neutral memories.
- If a distressing memory surfaces instead, acknowledge it briefly, ground the client and redirect; see section 5.
- Any age-regression element is resource-oriented, never memory recovery [synthesis].

4.19 Therapeutic metaphor and storytelling

Purpose: Convey a new frame, perception, behaviour or feeling indirectly so the client draws their own meaning [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 4 headings (frame, perceptual, behavioural and affect change; drama in metaphor); Wells; Brooks].
Steps:
1. Identify the change wanted: a frame, a perception, a behaviour or an affect.
2. Build a story whose protagonist faces a structurally similar situation, drawn from the client's interests. Brooks used a mathematics-loving client's own arithmetic to shift her belief about the cause of her asthma.
3. Give the story a dramatic arc in which a resource is discovered.
4. Deliver it slowly, with the key ideas interspersed.
5. Afterwards ask what the client made of it, or use ideomotor feedback [source: Lankton ch. 4 headings (ideomotor response and client feedback); Wells].
Example language (illustrative): "A friend of mine once took up sailing; at first she fought every gust, until she learned to let the sail turn with the wind…"
Watch for:
- Wells's law of parsimony applies: if a plain suggestion will do, use it.
- Concrete thinkers, some autistic clients and young children may need explicit links. Ask, or state the point plainly afterwards [synthesis].

4.20 Multiple embedded metaphor (Lankton and Lankton)

Purpose: Organise a whole session as nested stories that retrieve resources and apply them to the core issue and the client's relationships [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 7 headings]. The detailed construction rules were not in the preview; the steps follow the published sequence, and their content is [synthesis].
Steps:
1. Induction.
2. Begin story 1, the matching metaphor: a story that parallels the client's problem situation. Stop it before it resolves.
3. Begin story 2: it retrieves a needed resource. Fully evoke the resource. Several resource stories may be nested.
4. Direct work on the core issue: at the centre, use more direct suggestions or imagery that apply the resources to the client's actual problem.
5. Close story 2 and the resource stories, linking the resources to people and situations in the client's social network.
6. End the matching metaphor: return to story 1 and resolve it using the resources.
7. Reorient to the waking state.
Example language (illustrative): opening the frame: "A young carpenter I once heard about was asked to build a staircase he'd never built before…"; nested resource story: "…which reminds me of how children learn to read, letter by letter, without knowing they're learning…"
Watch for:
- Some amnesia for the middle sections is expected and is not a problem.
- Signs it is working: the client spontaneously reports new perspectives, or behaviour changes in later sessions.
- Keep total length tolerable, for example 20–40 minutes [synthesis].

4.21 Self-image thinking (Lankton and Lankton)

Purpose: Help the client rehearse a desired self-image in future situations, after Erickson's emphasis on self-image [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 8 headings].
Steps: Not drawn on in detail [uncertain]. The general form below is [synthesis]:
1. Have the client see a version of themselves who already has the resource.
2. Watch that self handle upcoming situations.
3. Step into that self's experience.
4. Carry the feeling into a near-future scene.
Example language (illustrative): "Picture a you who has already learned this… watch how that person walks into Monday's meeting… and when you're ready, step into that experience and notice how it feels from inside."
Watch for:
- Depressed clients may be unable to picture a positive self. Start with a small, near-future slice.

4.22 Dissociated viewing of a distressing event

Purpose: Let the client review a distressing situation from a distance, e.g. as if on a screen or through a train window [source: Wells (content-suggestion examples)].
Steps [synthesis]:
1. Use only after the stabilisation and readiness checks in the Domain VI trauma guides.
2. Establish a safe-place or resource state and a stop signal first.
3. Keep the image at a distance, e.g. small or black-and-white, and let the client control it.
4. Return to the resource state before re-alerting.
5. Debrief.
Example language (illustrative): "You can watch that afternoon on a small screen across the room, and you have the remote; you can pause it, shrink it, or switch it off whenever you choose."
Watch for:
- Rising distress, or the client losing contact with the room: stop and ground.
- Treat whatever emerges as the client's present experience, not as verified history.
- Do not use this to uncover new memories [synthesis].

4.23 Framing, priming and redirection (choice architecture)

Purpose: Short's "Ericksonian choice architecture" shapes the context of a decision so that the adaptive option becomes the easiest to choose, in or out of trance. It is a nudge, not coercion [source: Short 2026 ASCH slides]. More strategic uses are in guide 003.
Steps:
1. Framing: present information deliberately. Short's example acknowledges that some part of the problem may remain.
2. Priming: mention another person's helpful response.
3. Redirection: turn a self-focused provocative statement toward a relevant past experience.
4. Ownership: frame solutions as the client's own insight.
5. Endowment: credit progress to the client's skills [source: Short 2026 ASCH slides].
Example language (illustrative): "Some of the old worry may hang around for a while, and people often find that's fine." / "You worked that out yourself just now."
Watch for:
- The options must reflect the client's own values. Short calls this "choice agnosticism": the choice belongs to the client.

E. Ending the trance and between-session work

4.24 Post-hypnotic suggestion (contextualisation)

Purpose: Carry the trance learning into the situations where it is needed [source: Wells (step 6); Lankton ch. 7 (linking resources to the social network); Brooks (follow-up suggestions)].
Steps:
1. Name a specific future cue: a place, a person, a time or a bodily signal.
2. Link the resource to the cue.
3. Keep it permissive and achievable.
4. Repeat it once in a different form.
Example language (illustrative): "And the next time you reach for the door handle at work, that steadiness can be right there in your hand."
Watch for:
- Avoid suggestions that could act in unsafe contexts, e.g. deep relaxation "whenever you hear music" while driving [synthesis].
- Remove any temporary suggestion that is not meant to last.

4.25 Closure and re-alerting

Purpose: Return the client fully alert and oriented, with any temporary phenomena removed [source: Wells (closure, disengagement); Lankton ch. 7 (reorienting); Brooks].
Steps:
1. Signal the ending ahead of time (anticipation signal) [source: Wells].
2. Close any open stories.
3. Remove temporary phenomena: numbness, heaviness, time distortion.
4. Invite the client to return at their own pace. Brooks lets the unconscious choose the moment [source: Brooks]. Give a count or a sensory reorientation to the room if the client prefers.
5. After eyes open, check orientation: name, time, how they feel. Allow a few minutes before they drive [synthesis].
Example language (illustrative): "In a moment you can begin to come back, bringing with you what's useful, leaving any heaviness behind… noticing the chair, the sounds of the room… and opening your eyes when you're ready."
Watch for:
- Grogginess, headache or lingering heaviness; see section 5.
- A client who does not re-alert: "clients who don't come out of trance" is a named training topic [source: PsychMaven outline]. Management is in section 5 [synthesis].

4.26 Debrief

Purpose: Consolidate learning, ratify the experience, explain indirect devices, and catch adverse reactions.
Steps:
1. Ask what the client noticed and what stood out.
2. Ratify the changes they noticed [source: Wells; Brooks].
3. Ask whether anything was uncomfortable.
4. Explain any story or bind they ask about.
5. Do not over-analyse the metaphors; let the meaning stay theirs [synthesis].
Example language (illustrative): "What was that like for you? … Anything that felt odd or that you'd like me to explain?"
Watch for:
- Headache, emotional upset, intrusive memories or disorientation. Gruzelier lists such reactions; most are mild and short-lived [source: Gruzelier abstract].

4.27 Self-hypnosis practice

Purpose: Give the client independent access to the resource state between sessions [source: PsychMaven outline lists self-hypnosis as a module; procedure [synthesis]].
Steps [synthesis]:
1. In session, do a short trance that the client leads aloud, using their own cue: a chosen image, a breath, or a word they pick.
2. Agree a brief daily practice, such as 5–15 minutes in a safe place and never while driving.
3. The structure is: cue, absorb, the resource or goal image, one self-suggestion, then a re-alerting count.
4. Optionally record a personalised session for the client, with their consent.
5. Review the practice next session.
Example language (illustrative): "You can sit somewhere safe, take three slow breaths, let your word come to mind, and let yourself drift to that steady place for a few minutes, then count yourself back up from one to five."
Watch for:
- Practice that becomes avoidance or rumination.
- Recordings used in unsafe settings.
- Clients at risk of dissociation should practise only brief, eyes-open, grounding-focused versions [synthesis].

4.28 Medical-adjunct and specific applications

Purpose: Neo-Ericksonian training covers pain, anxiety and panic, insomnia, surgical procedures, weight management, confidence and group inductions [source: PsychMaven outline].
Steps [synthesis]:
1. Confirm medical assessment and current treatment.
2. Agree the role of hypnosis with the medical team.
3. Tailor phenomena to the use: glove anaesthesia or time distortion for procedural pain, absorption for anxiety before surgery, permissive sleep imagery for insomnia.
4. Never imply that hypnosis treats the disease itself or that medical care can be reduced.
5. For weight goals, work on eating behaviour, cues and self-image, without weight or calorie targets.
6. For sexual-abuse resolution (an outline topic), follow trauma readiness rules, and refer to the trauma guides.
Example language (illustrative): "This can help you feel more comfortable during the procedure, alongside everything your medical team is doing."
Watch for:
- New or changing physical symptoms always go back to the doctor.

4.29 Closure of therapy

Purpose: Lankton and Lankton treat ending therapy as a deliberate intervention ("the force of closure") [source: Lankton and Lankton ch. 9 headings; content [uncertain]].
Steps [synthesis]:
1. Review the goal against the client's own criteria [source: Wells (progress judged by client's goals)].
2. Credit the change to the client (endowment).
3. Give a future-oriented post-hypnotic suggestion for maintaining gains.
4. Keep self-hypnosis as a tool.
5. Agree how to return if needed.
Example language (illustrative): "You've built this yourself; it goes with you, and you know how to find it again."
Watch for:
- Dependence on the therapist's voice. Shift to self-hypnosis well before ending.

5. Handling problems

The sources say little about problem management beyond utilisation, status levelling and adverse-effect screening. Most of what follows is my own synthesis and is marked as such.

"Nothing happened" / no apparent trance

Treat this as information, not failure [source: Lankton (respect all messages)].
Ratify whatever did change, such as breathing or stillness [source: Wells].
Move to a lighter, more conversational, eyes-open approach. Ericksonian work does not need deep trance [source: Brooks].
Use more process and permissive suggestions, or more direct ones if the client wants explicit guidance [source: Wells].
Ask what absorbs them in daily life and use that (4.5) [synthesis].

Over-trying and performance anxiety

Apply the law of reversed effect: suggest allowing and curiosity rather than effort [source: Wells].
Give the conscious mind a task, as in splitting (4.11) [synthesis].
Normalise light trance [synthesis].

"Resistance"

Reframe it as a negotiation over goals [source: Short 2026 (status levelling)].
Accept and utilise the behaviour, offering it as part of the process [source: Short 2019; Short 2026 (teen example); Lankton (complementary stance)].
Check whether the goal is really the client's own [source: Short 2019 (strategic)].
If the client does not want hypnosis, stop and work without it. Utilisation is never a way around a refusal [synthesis].

The client feels manipulated or suspicious of indirect language

Be transparent: explain the device, offer more direct wording and repair the alliance [synthesis].
With paranoid or trauma-related mistrust, use only direct, permissive, fully explained suggestions [synthesis].

Overwhelm or abreaction in trance (e.g. a distressing memory surfaces during resource retrieval) [synthesis]:

Stop the current suggestion.
Speak in a clear, normal voice.
Orient the client to the present: name, place, date, feet on the floor, the sounds of the room.
Invite eyes open if they wish.
Validate what came up without interpreting it as historical fact.
Return to a resource state or re-alert fully.
Debrief and check safety before the client leaves.
Stay on stabilisation in later sessions. Gruzelier documents trauma memories resurfacing, mainly with age regression [source: Gruzelier abstract].

Dissociation, depersonalisation or loss of contact [synthesis]:

Switch to eyes-open, active grounding: name objects, press the feet down, hold something cold.
Use the client's name and short sentences.
Avoid splitting and conscious–unconscious language from then on.
Re-screen for dissociative disorder and refer for specialist assessment where needed.

Difficulty re-alerting / the client "doesn't come out" (a named training topic [source: PsychMaven outline]; responses [synthesis]):

Stay calm.
Repeat a clear invitation to return with a reason to return, such as an upcoming appointment.
Count up with gradually firmer, louder cues, and use the client's name.
Ask, verbally or by ideomotor signal, whether something needs to happen first, and allow a few minutes.
Most clients simply enjoy the state and return on their own.
If disorientation persists, keep the client in the room until fully oriented and do not let them drive.
Rule out a medical cause if the presentation is unusual.

After-effects: headache, drowsiness, lingering heaviness or numbness

Reported as mostly mild and short-lived [source: Gruzelier; Faerman/Reveri].
Re-enter trance briefly and explicitly remove the suggestion, then re-alert again [synthesis].
In future sessions, give anticipation signals and phenomenon removal before re-alerting [source: Wells (anticipation signals)].

Emergence of psychotic or manic symptoms

Gruzelier describes rare first-episode psychosis after hypnotherapy [source: Gruzelier abstract].
Stop hypnosis, assess risk and refer urgently for psychiatric assessment [synthesis].

Confusion technique backfires (anxiety, irritation) [synthesis]:

Drop it at once.
Return to simple pacing.
Explain what you were doing and apologise.
Do not reuse it with this client.

Non-adherence to self-hypnosis [synthesis]:

Shorten the practice (one minute counts).
Tie it to an existing routine.
Explore its meaning, e.g. whether it feels like "homework" or whether quiet time is unsafe.
Use utilisation: let the client design when and how.
Ratify any practice they did do.

Rupture [synthesis]:

Name it and take responsibility for your part, e.g. a story that missed or a suggestion that felt pushy.
Ask what they need.
Adjust your stance: more direct or more permissive, more or less explanation.
This follows Lankton's flexibility principle: change your own behaviour first [source: Lankton (flexibility) as framing].

Requests for memory recovery, past-life or forensic use

Decline memory recovery. Explain that hypnosis can increase confidence without increasing accuracy, and that memories emerging in trance cannot be taken as fact [synthesis].
Offer stabilisation and present-focused work instead [synthesis].

Client expects stage-style control or "being made to" change [synthesis]:

Re-educate them: the client remains in charge, and change is something they do.
Use endowment language [source: Short 2026].

Therapist over-reliance on scripts or cleverness

Scripts limit tailoring [source: Wells].
Return to the client's words and goals.
Apply parsimony [source: Wells].
Get supervision. Lankton stresses systematic, long-term training [source: Lankton and Lankton 2008 preview].

Children, concrete thinkers, cognitive impairment, language or cultural differences [synthesis]:

Use simpler and more direct language, explicit metaphors, eyes-open play-based absorption for children, and culturally familiar imagery.
Check understanding afterwards.

Medical symptoms during adjunct work [synthesis]:

Any new, worse or changed physical symptom goes back to the treating doctor.
Never use anaesthesia suggestions to mask unassessed pain.

Sources

Sources: