I've got a buddy, from the start he's always let me hypnotize him, and occasionally he even brings his friends over for me to hypnotize, as well! 

A while ago, he brought over a couple of girls, and all three of them wanted me to hypnotize them.  The girl who is one of the two main characters in this story, she had more than 20 piercings, short-cropped multi-colored hair, tattoos everywhere, told me her mother was a prostitute in Detroit and all kinds of other fun things, she was a recovering heroin addict, and I'm guessing she was only 20 or 21. 

Another thing she mentioned, is that she has Fibro-Myalgia (god knows if that's spelled right).  Occasionally over the course of the 5 or 6 hours they were hanging out, she would get into these shivering fits, like she was cold.  It was disturbing to be around, and instantly her girlfriend would come over and rub her shoulders and generally mother her.  These two were best friends, and it was obvious that there was a routine, or a ritual, in the way these two interacted when the fits came, which tells me this is not a new thing, its been going on for years.  The friend seemed like the mother, and Our Heroine like a sick little girl.

Anyway, so I hypnotize this girl, no changework, just proving to her that she could be, and letting her have all the good feelings, and just explore it.  Its funny, because I hypnotized all three of them in my living room, at any time two of them would be sitting on my couch with me, and the "subject" would be in the recliner that's become my "hypno-chair".  As I was working with the first of them, after a bit I looked over my shoulder to my couch, and BOTH of THEM were completely out, too!  This happened each time I worked with one of them, the other two would drop, too.  And each time, they refused to believe that they had been out!

I was kind of proud of that, actually.  :-)

So, I bring this young lady up with the 5-count, and she wakes up, and we talked for a minute and she starts getting one of these shivering fits.  Again, here comes her friend to comfort and soothe, while my friend and I watched on, uneasily.  As I said, it was a little disturbing, though this was NOT an epileptic fit.  It was just shivering.  So we're talking about the whole thing, all the doctors she's seen, etc.  And, I got this little intuition and asked her "so, I'm curious, what does it feel like when you find the shivering has stopped?"

And instantly the shivering stopped, and I saw her accessing to her right, thinking about my question.  And whatever she was saying, it was very thought out, and she didn't shiver at all.  Then my genius friend says "Dude!  Was that hypnosis?!"

And instantly the shivering started up again.  Instantly, not a beat lost.  I've been turning that moment in my head ever since...

There is a woman that I work with, she's kind of what you might call a "sad-sack".  EVERYTHING in her life is unfair and impossible and messed up and too much for her to handle.  She ALSO has this Fibro Myalgia, and the other day I was thumbing through a book that she has on the subject.  I went to the index, found the hypnotherapy page, and opened it up for her to read.  We talked about it later, and she seemed very interested. 

She said she'd been to a therapist who used hypnosis, who wanted her to face some event that happened in her childhood.  She claims she can recall the entire thing up to the images on the tv screen, but she's completely dissociated from it, and she actually left when the therapist tried to get her to "feel" again.  When I told her I could teach her self-hypnosis to control her pain, she again seemed really interested.

I had JUST gotten back from the Hermosa Beach thing, so I had just met Scott Sandlin and his pain-management stuff, which was what I had in mind for her, because I knew I could work with that, at least.  I even offered to do do it on my personal break time, to "teach her how to do it on her own", as I told her. 

But she didn't bite, and I'm not going to force it on anyone.  I mentioned I was going to be trying to meet some local hypnotists, and she gave me her phone number, telling me to give it to the ones I met.  Wasn't interested in me giving her THEIR phone numbers, though, she didn't want to have to call on her own.

So, she didn't want to learn to do it on her own, didn't want me to hypnotize her or teach her how, and didn't want to call a "professional", but did want them to call her.  Am I wrong in smelling something fishy here?

Because, from the way she tells it, the pain is unbearable, and she's so lonely, and unhappy, and broke, and what ever else you can think of that could be bad, she's got a story that will simply astound you (or bore you), attesting to how bad she has it.

In the personalities of these two women, I sense something similar.  Both seemed very protective of their "stories", and proud of them, in some way.  I also actually used to have a lady cut my hair, she had this Fibro Myalgia too, and had been a HARD partyer in her day, and had the messed-up family life, and addictions, and abusive boyfriends, etc., just like these others.  But who knows if that's a pattern, cause I've only known the three women, and it could just be that I live in Detroit, and its something in the water!!

I guess the point of writing this was to sort out what I've learned.  I met with a local hypnotherapist named Amy Hale the other day (who was VERY nice and informative), and she was saying how over-weight clients are the bane of the hypnotherapist, because they (often) have no motivation, and end up just being kind of a hassle.

I think that's what I just realized with this woman at work.  She's happy being miserable, or at least "comfortable" with the way things are.  In everything in her life, even how she works, her goal seems to be to get attention, but not much else.  And when for instance she's late for work every day, she cries and moans to everyone, but never sets her alarm clock 20 minutes earlier, you know?  So EVERY DAY its the same thing, over and over.

On another note, what I guess I'm hinting at with this Fibro-thing (cause I'm tired of trying to spell it), is a suspicion that a lot of it has to do with attention.  I won't write any more on that, cause I worry that it sounds very judgemental, without much evidence to be making assumptions on.  But whatever, you've got to trust your gut...