Hypnosis with a Child

A Client-Mom’s Perspective

The following reflection was shared with permission from the client’s mother.

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Hi, Wally – and all your readers.

I wanted to write a reflection from my perspective after our hypnosis session with my eight-year-old son two weeks ago. As a parent but also a client myself of Wally’s, I was hopeful Wally could help our child.

When I talked to Wally about my son as a hypnosis client, I was able to confirm two things that Wally felt might make for a successful hypnosis session with my son:

• My son is able to sit still and take direction.
• My son has an internal imagination: he routinely lays back at night and listens to his dad reading to him, and can imagine and follow the story.

We came to the hypnosis session hoping that Wally could help him overcome his avoidance and anxiety around a certain food. Fresh fruit!

It seems like such a small thing, but this particular sensory issue in my son has impacted even his social behavior. He will avoid getting school lunches since fruit is often placed on the tray lunch, and he will avoid sitting near anyone (including friends! And family!) who has fruit on their plate or in their hands.

When we came into the office, Wally made sure my son was comfortable in his new setting, introducing himself and some of the unusual objects in the room. He encouraged my son to get comfortable on the couch next to me, and asked him about some of his favorite things: superheroes, TV shows, hobbies, and more.

Wally was taking mental notes, because some of those favorite things came into play later in the session. It also got my son comfortable interacting with Wally as a person as well as a practitioner.

To start addressing the reason for our visit, Wally first introduced my son to the idea of overcoming fear and anxiety with a brief warmup activity using some illustrated playing cards. These cards had different kinds of scenes depicted on each card. Some were benign, like a child riding a bike or a person tending a garden, and some were scary, like a shadowy figure in an alley or an older person wearing a hood and scowling. He asked my son to pick out some of the cards that made him feel anxious or fearful.

My son nodded and picked up the deck, choosing about four cards and setting them aside.

He asked my son to imagine something that made him calm and happy, and my son instantly responded, “Camping with my grandpa.”

Then Wally taught him a technique called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Tapping, in which you imagine the scary/anxious thing, and use your hand to start tapping in three places: first the forehead, then the outside corner of the eye, then under the eye, then on the collar bone. To finish, you hold your other hand and exhale deeply. All this while picturing the happy/calm image and that feeling it brings (camping with grandpa) and saying, “It’s safe to let it go, it’s safe to let it go” and on the final motion saying, “Let it go.”

He had my son practice this using the top card’s image that seemed scary…holding that spooky card, and practicing both the tapping and the affirmations about letting go of the bad feeling. The first time he tried, it wasn’t too successful, so he tried again, focusing harder. By the end of the cards, my son was smiling.

Wally assigned us the homework to try this at home around any anxiety-inducing trigger, from fruit to any other scenario.

Then Wally invited my son to get comfy in a deep recliner chair for a visualization exercise, working on getting him to relax into a light hypnotic state. This was a little harder for my son, since it involved staying still, focused, and calm, but he relaxed back and listened to Wally telling a story where my son was invited to imagine winning a prize from his favorite YouTube star, and going on the show to receive it, and being fed food there at the lunch break that he was unfamiliar with. He was asked to imagine himself feeling like a strong winner, and like a Transformer (his hero, Optimus Prime) as he went ahead and ate the food, and feeling okay with it.

Then once that reflection exercise was over, we worked again on the tapping technique, this time imagining a ball as an orange in his hand, both touching it (which my son gradually got calmer about) and peeling it (which my son was less accepting of). I knew our homework sessions would be even harder, but I could see the potential for success already!

Finally, since my son had expressed an interest in music and instruments, and still displayed some negative feelings about the imaginary fruit, Wally invited him to engage in some chakra-cleansing work using the musical tuning forks and colored glasses to raise the focus on any trapped emotions in his body at the sites associated with each chakra-based area. For my curious kiddo who likes sound science and music, the tuning fork part was especially fun, and this activity helped him relax.

Now, two weeks out from our session and having practiced the EFT tapping technique at dinner, I can report a few good things:

• My son can sit next to his little brother when the little brother is eating fruit slices.
• My son reports that at school, he remembers to use tapping (sometimes ‘inside’ in his mind) so that he can sit by his friends who get fruit on their trays for lunch.
• He’s been able to tolerate some pureed, apple-sauce like fruit on his own.

It’s been just baby steps, but we are grateful for the changes and hope they continue. Thanks, Wally!

To learn more about hypnosis in children and see if your child might benefit from a consultation, contact Wally Post at the Anderson Hypnosis Center at (765) 442-3210 or via our contact form here.