Hypnosis for Adult ADHD?

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Woods on June 15, 2010 at 5:04am

Hi John,

I agree: relaxation is not a common experience for adult adhd clients! Although, eventually I found the idea of relaxing "some" parts of the body was welcome, as long as the client got to select which part that was. Gaining control of this was empowering and furthered the rest of the work.

Since one of the traits of adult adhd is the tendency to hyperfocus on activities of interest, the trick is to teach these clients how to turn that power on and off. They can often lose track of time when immersed in a topic they love, while they ignore other, important responsibilities. Additionally, due to the scattered type of thinking, there is a higher level of accident proneness. Learning how to control awareness and focus can make a huge difference in how they manage their lives. It's easy to show these clients how good they are at turning the "spotlight of attention" where ever they choose...

Interpersonal relationship skills are also a point to address. I teach how to create and use a protective shield to control emotional responses. Working on listening skills (these clients can talk!), enhancing memory and building self esteem are all key components of our work. As you can see, there can be many issues to address and I am careful to keep each session simple, limited to one or maybe another closely related one. At many times, it's much a case of being a life coach, with the lessons being anchored in hypnosis.

I might add that the clients who have presented with adhd have all been women, and I don't know if it's coincidental or not, but came with a lot of other issues such as overweight, addiction and abuse histories. It is surmised that girls are often overlooked in the formative years as having adhd symptomology. I'm not a big fan of labels but I must say that my clients were relieved to find a diagnosis for their terrible life management techniques and our work together did help them immensely.

Best wishes,

Kelley

TIP: Parts Therapy was invaluable in this type of work! My clients had a rich and imaginative group of players that contributed to the issues.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on June 15, 2010 at 8:07pm

Hi John,

I have helped many clients who had been diagnosed with ADHD and who were not helped by medication and/or talk therapy. I helped them improve their concentration skills and abilities, increase their organizational and time management skills and to manage anger, stress and anxiety, etc.

In terms of inductions, I often tell folks with short attention spans that I will be using a technique in which just going through the mental exercises that I guide them through will be very effective because the induction is the process of going through the exercise...

FYI- A helpful exercise for building concentration is to have the client sit quietly and count from one to ten over and over again . . . 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 — over and over again. Tell them to be very gentle with themselves when they notice they’ve gone above 10, i.e., 11, 12, 13, 14,15, etc. The thing is, it takes a great deal of concentration skill to repeat 1 through 10 over and over without losing your concentration and continuing to count to eleven, twelve and beyond. I tell my clients to continue practicing several times a day for 5 minutes at a time until they can repeat 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 for five minutes without over-counting they will be able to concentrate on anything that they want to concentrate on...



Warmest regards,



Michael E.

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Permalink Reply by John Sannicandro on June 16, 2010 at 12:14am

Thank you for your replies all.

Great idea Michael, I like the idea of daily practice to reinforce what goes on in a session.

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Permalink Reply by John Sannicandro on June 18, 2010 at 12:05am

Any other ideas or specifics before this thread fades off into the sunset?

John
www.jslmhc.com

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Permalink Reply by Brandon May on June 18, 2010 at 5:21am

John,

When I have clients who have "ADHD", I usually use a confusion induction. Not necessarily something that will relax their bodies, but something that will confuse their minds so they can go into a deep state of consciousness. We do this with their eyes closed. I usually just make words up on the spot, but it is basically patterns that I have picked up from Richard Bandler.

Then, we move into a part of their mind via visualization, and find that this part is like a huge factory, with so many things happening all at once--crazy things. Giraffes walking around, birds flying, papers flying and scattering everyone, people trying organize, etc. Then, one by one, we put these things into little compartments----the entire session is much longer, and involves more than this, but it does give you a view at my own techniques that I have seen work well with my clients.

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