Is your client ready for change?

The ideal hypnotherapy client is someone who has clear goals and knows that they are participating in the process of change.

It would be nice if all our clients fell into this category but they don't.

Solution focused therapy makes use of three different categories so that you can make the best use of your time with your client.

The three types are; visitor, complainant and customer.

Visitor: "In this relationship the worker(hypnotherapist) and client are not able to jointly identify a complaint or goal on which to work. (Berg & Miller), 1992

Complainant: "This relationship develops between practioner and client when they are able to jointly identify a complain or a problem but are not able to identify a role for the client in building a solution....the client does not perceive that he or she is part of the solution"( DeJong & Berg)

Customer relationship: "In this relationship, the client and practioner jointly identify a problem and or a s olution picture to work toward. In addition, the client indicates that h sees himself as part of the solution and is willing to do something about the problem (Berg & Miller, 1992, p. 22)

As I mentioned before, while we would prefer to have only customer relationships and in my opinion, these are the clients most suitable for hypnosis an hypnotherapy.

In another post I will talk more about dealing with these other kinds of less then ideal client relationships.