As I run training courses both in therapy and business communication skills all around the UK and Europe, I meet a lot of new people. And that’s a lot of curious people from a complete range of different backgrounds.

One aspect of my work that I really wanted to get across on my Website was the question I’m most frequently asked.

‘What happens in a Cognitive Hypnotherapy session?’

I’m not sure I’ve ever managed to explain it sufficently no matter how many years and edits the website can go through.

Sure, I could outline the basic format. We start with a conversation about what you’d like to change or improve in your life. Then, we’ll work through a therapeutic exercise together and the session will usually finish with some relaxation work.

This seems so vague though – and that’s the challenge. As the sessions are bespoke for the individual who comes to see me, no two sessions are the same.

There’s often overlaps – there’s certainly patterns and behaviours that some people repeat where i’ve seen many similar before. Yet, no matter how many clients I see and work with – there is always something new. And that’s what makes us so wonderful as human beings.
We don’t fit into a manual or a textbook. There isn’t a magic formula – it’s only through a process of engagement that is two ways that your life can really change.

I frequently get phone calls/emails ‘My friend came to see you and you did X and Y, will we do the same thing?’ And the most honest, congruent answer I can give is ‘I don’t know.’

It’s not until we’re in the therapy office, having a conversation in which you outline what you’d like to change and how you’d like it to be different – that I’ll be able to determine the best course of action that will help.

There’s not one magic formula for working with people with confidence issues or low self esteem, every phobia is different. Our anxiety or depressions are unique to us and we all cope with stress in different ways.

Cognitive Hypnotherapy takes the best elements of different therapies such as CBT, NLP, Pyschotherapy, Jungian Theory, Gestalt work and I find the right combination to get the most effective results at the fastest rate possible for you.

I believe strongly in a dialogue during our time together – to find out how you’re finding the experience both in and out of the therapy/coaching room during our work together.

So I’m still not there in explaining it quite as succinctly as I’d like – but I think we know why. It’s very much something that talking about can be limiting, but actually for the benefits – it’s there to be experienced.

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and NLP Trainer working at 1 Harley Street, London. He works with a variety of issues ranging from building confidence to low self esteem.Dea ling with stress and anxiety, phobic reactions and performance improvement.
To find out more about his unique mix of formal therapy, a conversational style and hypnosis – please call on 07738088632 or email at info@zackpolanski.com

The Master and his Emissary by Ian Mcgilhurst.

To any therapist – I would suggest this book will vastly enhance the way that you work. I frequently get emails asking for suggestions, and for the forseeable future, I shall point people in this direction.

I do have a caveat here – that the book is heavy. It’s certainly not light reading and will require absolute engagement. When the lightbulbs do start to flicker though and jigsaw pieces fall into place, to mix metaphors, it really is a wonderful moment.

The basic premise of the book is about the hemispheric differences in our brain and how these are represented in society. Simplistically, in this blog, the left hemisphere representing logic, reason, specificity and more recently – our business/commerical brain.

The right hemisphere representing creativity, wholeness and an entry point into the wider world. The artistic brain.

Traditionally, there was a balance between the two hemispheres – with information entering through the right, being assessed by the left and returning to the right for consideration. This, the book argues, is the healthiest way in which our mind/brain can work and is conducive to a balanced existence.

Over the past hundred years, mainly since the industrial revolution, the left side of the brain has gradually crept up and placed it’s influence on our thinking. This has resulted in short sightnedness, unfettered individualism and a rise in selfish greed. The book goes on to wax lyrical about political philosophy and tracks the differences in our ‘culture’ through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation – tying in with neuroscience and the different implications this can have in how we percieve our world.

For the therapist, frequently when we work with issues whether it be phobias, lack of confidence or self esteem, depression or anxiety – more often than not, the underlying problem is that of hemispheric dissonance (or in other terms, a misalignment between the conscious and the unconscious mind) – although the book is not targeted at therapists, it’s clear where the dots can be connected and the future of our industry can be percieved to outline where we would like to go next.

If anyone would like to discuss any areas of the book with me, I’m always more than happy to recieve correspondence – on info@Zackpolanski.com

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist working in Central London at 1 Harley Street. He works both as a therapist and delivers training programmes to companies. Specialising in issues around confidence and self esteem, Zack also works utilising hypnosis and NLP around issues of anxiety and depression. Get in contact on 07738086632.

I make it clear on the site – and always whenever people phone me for an appointment – that Cognitive Hypnotherapy is not a magic bullet. It’s not a miracle cure yet it can do incredibly, effective things and has helped countless amounts of people move on in their lives within that parameter.

Often it can look like magic,and change can more often than not feel effortless and people are amazed at the results – it does require work from the client, though. Or at least their attention and effort in bringing about the changes they want on an unconscious level.

This might make it sound a little less cool or sellable – I have no problem with that, though. It’’s honest; and it doesn’t take anything away from the fact that it’s still an incredible tool for change.

This isn’t unique to Cognitive Hypnotherapy. In other areas I have worked, studied and researched – whether it be more traditional modes like pyschotherapy, counselling or CBT – there’s often this parallel between really great results emerging not from the therapist,but the client. The therapist acts as a guide to reach the areas that the client didn’t even know were accessible previously.

This is particularly prevalent with something like ‘Stop Smoking.’ People phone me up and want a success rate percentage. That’s easy,I say. It’s 100% of the time when the person is committed to the work, and 0% of the time when they’re not. It sounds playful -  I also think it’s fair, honest and ethical.

Cognitive Hypnotherapy is made up of truly effective principles and techniques to ensure that people get the result they want especially when it’s important to them. I don’t just not guarantee because it’s more ethical – I do it because it makes me life easier as well.

How? Well, I generally only want someone in the room with me during treatment who genuinely wants to make a change – and is willing to take responsibility for that change too. This is how truly transformational change happens.

Sometimes someone has the absolute desire to change but doesn’t quite believe it can happen – this is completely different again. If the desire is there, then we can find the how and we can move to engage and work together. The belief is helpful, but not necessary for a positive outcome.

And those positive outcomes when they’re met are often far and beyond what the individual thought could happen in such a relatively brief amount of time – and it’s lovely because they’ve always been met in an ethical way, which emphasised not the skill of the therapist alone, but the autonomy of the client and the inner resources available to them.

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist working at 1 Harley Street. He works with a variety of issues including confidence, self-esteem, phobias, smoking cessation, addictions, public speaking, PTSD and body disorders. Sessions must be booked 7 days in advance. Phone: 07738088632 or E-mail: info@zackpolanski.com

Something that’s really struck me about the work I do with people is their bravery. There are very few universals in the clients that I see- and everyone is very unique and different- but there’s something deeply touching about people’s wants, needs and desires to change. Often when people have come to see me, they’ve given up in the past and that’s how they’ve let their problem(s)/issue(s) get to a level where they really desire to make a change or they’re so keen to improve their lives from the state they feel they’re already in- that they go at it with full force.

I was reflecting on this when I read a passage last night from Irvin Yalom’s “The Gift Of Therapy” and there was a short passage which really struck a chord;

“Heddeger spoke of two modes of existence; the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the everyday mode we are consumed with and distracted by material surroundings- we are filled with wonderment about how things are in the world. In the ontological mode we are focused on being per se- that is , we are filled with wonderment that things are in the world. When we exist in the ontological mode- the realm beyond everyday concerns- we are in a state of particular readiness for personal change.”

The key phrase I believe is the latter. Clients don’t usually get through my door until they’re already ready to begin to make that personal change- and being ready to make a difference in any aspect of your life often requires bravery.

The Catch 22 is that i’m not wholly sure if it’s the bravery that creates readiness or vice versa or if actually they’re both just fueling along. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter- the important part is the decision. Are you ready, and indeed brave enough, to make changes in your life?

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist at 1 Harley Street, London. W1G 9QD

The Lewis Clinic is a clinic of hypnotherapists working from the centre of London at Harley St, but also includes many clients from North, South, East and West.

The most startling example is that of Relationships. I’m sure most people know someone, or have been there themselves, where they are in a partnership that doesn’t feel entirely equal. There’s the dangerous ground of playing a symetrical game of assuming that A does something for B, and then B has to reciprocate before A does something else.

This seems so cold and cynical, and rarely does the relationship operate like that in terms of what’s actually said – but frequently, much more telling is the deeper lying structure of how the dynamic organises itself.

I was struck by a small story printed in the Boston Globe on March 20th 1987. It’s about a lady called Susan Butcher. (With thanks to Mary Catherine Bateson for the story came to my attention in her marvellous book, Composing A Life.)

The Iditarod, the 1,157 mile dogsled race across Alaska has been won repeatedly by Susan. This gruelling course was originally set up to be run to save lives at a time when serum was desperately needed in Nome to combat an epidemic.  Now, as a  race, this mode of caring and service has been converted into a straight out compeitition. Yet it is clear that even in this competitive framework, Butcher excells at taking care of her dogs.

At every rest stop in the 1987 race, her rival Rick Swenson left early, while Butcher gave her dogs the full four-hour rest time; she was so busy caring for them that she had only fifteen minutes of rest for herself. By the end of each lap, her dogs were forging ahead of his. They seemed to gain in power the further along they got.

At the last rest stop, the rules of the race determined that you had to give your animals the full rest time. Butcher’s lead became unbeatable. Where he was willing to overtax his dogs, she was willing to overtax herself, organizing her efforts around caring for her dogs. After the race, care for herself: a glass of wine, a hot bath and a sleep. It has been observed that in womens’ athletics, the women will stop playing when a team mate is injured, until she has been attended to, while male athletes will more quickly resume their competitive combat. Slowing down for caretaking is obviously a losing strategy in the short run, but a winning strategy in the long run, whether in a two week race across Alask or the life and survival of the human species on a planet that must be cherished for it can never be replaced.

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist working from 1 Harley Street, London. He also has a clinic available in both North and East London depending on your individual requirements. He works with confidence, self-esteem, depression, anxiety and stress. Alongside this work, he also has experience as  a business coach and a skills trainer.

In both my private client work, various work with businesses and corporations and counselling at drama schools – i’ve noticed a real trend of reflectivity at this time of year. As we reach the half way point of 2011, people thinking about where they’ve come from since January and where they would like to be by December.

I’ve seen a variety of people for confidence issues, people who have previously been suffering from anxiety – and a few unusual phobias too. The common theme though has been that clients this month, even more than usual, have been in a place where they just feel stuck.

It’s interesting that idea of being ’stuck’ and how do we know when we are? It’s almost invariably a feeling. It might be an uncomfortable feeling in our stomach, or the heavy weighing down of our shoulders – something that just lets us know that not all is as it could be.

In many ways though – that feeling is helpful to us. It’s an excellent calibration mechanism between the start of treatment and the conclusion. It’s a good way of checking in with ourselves on how we’re feeling – the absence of the feeling of being stuck, or the replacement with an opposite feeling – just confirms that we’re starting to move on with our lives and find new choices.

It’s a little bit like the weather – we only notice the rain because it’s been so sunny or vice versa. It’s all news of difference.

So here’s the question – if you wanted news of difference in your life, how would you notice? What would it be? What differences would you be making from today?

And the most powerful question – how best can you being to implement those changes so you don’t have to feel stuck any longer?

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist working at 1 Harley Street. His work with NLP, Hypnosis and Pyschology is powerful in working with peoples confidence, anxiety, phobias, depression, self-esteem issues, relationships and coaching. You can call on 07738088632 or info@zackpolanski.com

Harley Street is just by Oxford Circus Tube and is accessible from North, South, East, West and Central London very easily.

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a
pole which she carried across her shoulders. One of the pots had a crack in it
while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.
At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived
only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only
one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its
accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own
imperfection and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been
made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it
spoke to the woman one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself,
because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”
The old woman smiled and said, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path,
but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your supposed flaw,
so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.

“For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate
the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this
beauty to grace the house.”

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist working at 1 Harley Street, Central London. He deals mainly with issues relating to stress, confidence, anxiety, phobia and life coaching. A unique mix of hypnosis, cognitive therapy and NLP – for more information, just call 07738088632 or e-mail info@zackpolanski.com

A Clients’ personal flexibility or how to ride your bike on the Underground.

My poor bike. It’s windy and I’m cycling through North London to Swiss Cottage Library. It’s a Saturday, and I generally take a break from seeing clients and have some self-reflection and study time. I’ve recently had a pattern of cycling to a random location and reading some of the work of Gregory Bateson – who the following musings are largely inspired and indebted to. Bateson was a anthropologist, cyberneticist and philosopher among other things. John Grinder, co-creator of Neuro-Linguistic Programmng often credits him as being an influence upon his thinking.
I’m not really thinking about these things as I’m cycling though, I’m more wondering why I didn’t just get the tube. Camden Town to Swiss Cottage is just a few stops, although I’d still have to deal with the wind when I came out of the underground and walked to the library. Whereas the beauty of cycling is that you can pull up right out the front door.
There’s a much more abstract concept at play here, though. Although such a simple decision isn’t necessarily a collarary into thinking about the nature of one’s own existence – it nevertheless exists inherently within it. It’s a principle that lies at the heart of Bateson’s posthumous work finished by his daughter Angels Fear – An Investigation Into the Nature and Meaning of the Sacred.
On the tube, there is a very definite route which one can go to in a determined groove. It will be fast and it’s pretty certain where exactly (within a small margin of platform difference) your destination will be. It doesn’t allow for flexibility though and the choice of speed or route is very much determined by an other (ie the tubedriver and in turn, the tube controller.)
On the bike, I have a huge range of flexibility (within reason if I’m choosing to stay within the confines of the law) and now within a much larger boundary, but a boundary nonetheless, I can determine my own speed and journey – presumably in relation to the traffic around me. Yet, even with an indicative map in my pocket, I have little idea of the terrain around me or the traffic on this particular day.
It occurs to me as I’m blowing in the wind that the tube seems so attractive today. I wouldn’t have to make the choice out of a couple of options that currently all seem like they all have a slight taint of the unattractive and weather beaten.
Dealing with those conditions, when the tube would have lead me to the same place anyway – but would it have been the journey itself that mattered?
It’s one of a series of questions that has plagued and excited philosophers, the religious, the curious and scientists for generations and I don’t intend to solve it within my brief two wheeled expedition. I’m too busy gripping on for dear life for that and avoiding unyielding black cab drivers who I’m convinced have a sole intention this morning of removing one more cyclist from the hoard!
It’s interesting when we place these questions within the context of the therapeutic work we do. So many different methodologies, practices, subbranches, principles, presuppositions, ideas and models – before we even begin to look at the diversity in the clients themselves. Accepting the idea that at least at an unconscious level, every client has an intention in being in this space with you (otherwise they’d simply be somewhere else doing something else,) what principles or ideas are going to operate at the level of deterministic thinking over free will? Are you going to encourage your client to ride the tube with all it’s rigidity but certainty? Or are you going to encourage your client to ride their bike with all it’s flexibility but overwhelming choice?
I think, only from personal observation, that there’s a left leaning liberal factor to being a therapist. It’s certain inherent in the original presuppositions of NLP and Korzybski’s ‘The map is not the territory.” I think it’s a wonderful premise to work from which is my thinking for a consequence for clarity would be to consider that the territory is not the territory either. I’d imagine, and hope, that most therapists would instinctively presume that they don’t particularly use much ‘tube thinking’ with their clients. Railroading ideas and imposing their own maps, and what they perceive to be their values and beliefs on other people.
Stop and consider, though. How many times, if any, have you suggested to a client that as a result of seeing you they will now notice a change? Even if you haven’t suggested it explicitly, it’s implicit in the the very fact they came to see you with an issue or a problem. How many times, if any, have you said because of the anchor or the suggestive induction, they will now be free of their phobia or temptation to smoke? This is all endemic of Cause and Effect thinking.
A caveat here. Cause and Effect, which you may recognise as being utilised to a large extent by Milton Erickson, is embedded within our language. It’s there every time we ask a ‘Why’ question and it’s because (there I go again!) of this, or rather as a consequence, that it can be difficult to leave behind the shackles of tube line thinking.
There’s an argument to be had here that generally someones issues or problems in life are as a result of cause and effect thinking- so isn’t it better that we use the same thinking patterns to deprogramme them? It can work, and it can work effectively but is it ethical? Are we not merely turning a person from an unhappy robot to a happy robot, rather than encouraging a deeper epistemological change at the unconscious level into not being an obstacle in the space in which the development of a fully functioning human being unshackled from such restraints can flourish?
By way of demonstration, in his most accessible work Mind and Nature; A Necessary Unity – Bateson asks us to consider playing billards. We could take the best mathematicians and geometrists in the world, and they could correctly predict to an amazingly accurate quantification the exact angle and location at which the ball will cease to roll at once hit with the snooker cue.
If you replaced the billard cue with an animal, a cat for example, and chose to kick the cat (I really don’t condone animal violence but the hypothetical serves the example well) – there’s no possible way of ever predicting where the cat will land. The cat has choice. It can run, bite , scratch, hide, or give us a behaviour we could never expect. The cat is it’s own organic system within the wider system of the context of the situation and interacting with the other systems (ie The person kicking it and even the observers of the experiment.)

It’s getting cold and I need to concentrate on the road. To be continued….

UPDATE: I appreciate that the Journal Publication are fairly stringent in that their articles should ONLY be published in the journal. However, this first draft will be so unrecognisably different from the finished product, I don’t anticipate an issue. It is only the themes that shall remain the same and this is merely a playground in which to present them.

Something that’s really struck me about the work I do with people is their bravery. There are very few universals in the clients that I see- and everyone is very unique and different- but there’s something deeply touching about people’s wants, needs and desires to change. Often when people have come to see me, they’ve given up in the past and that’s how they’ve let their problem(s)/issue(s) get to a level where they really desire to make a change or they’re so keen to improve their lives from the state they feel they’re already in- that they go at it with full force.

I was reflecting on this when I read a passage last night from Irvin Yalom’s “The Gift Of Therapy” and there was a short passage which really struck a chord;

“Heddeger spoke of two modes of existence; the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the everyday mode we are consumed with and distracted by material surroundings- we are filled with wonderment about how things are in the world. In the ontological mode we are focused on being per se- that is , we are filled with wonderment that things are in the world. When we exist in the ontological mode- the realm beyond everyday concerns- we are in a state of particular readiness for personal change.”

The key phrase I believe is the latter. Clients don’t usually get through my door until they’re already ready to begin to make that personal change- and being ready to make a difference in any aspect of your life often requires bravery.

The Catch 22 is that i’m not wholly sure if it’s the bravery that creates readiness or vice versa or if actually they’re both just fueling along. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter- the important part is the decision. Are you ready, and indeed brave enough, to make changes in your life?

Zack Polanski is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist at 1 Harley Street, London. W1G 9QD

The Lewis Clinic is a clinic of hypnotherapists working from the centre of London at Harley St, but also includes many clients from North, South, East and West.

I started to consider some of my interests in anthropology and the ecology of situations, people and connections. Particularly interested in The Tipping Point (a la Gladwell) in which the idea of when a species reaches extinction is discussed or when a meme really catches on. How do ideas breed?

I wasn’t sure how these things necessarily linked, and i’m still not entirely sure i just know they’re important and then….

As serendipity would have it, I was in a group myself this weekend that were talking about the idea of intention (and how it can get confused sometimes.) It’s a subject that comes along once in a while with actors – which brought about that adage ‘what’s my motivation?’ We often mock actors for what can be seen as a trite saying – but what if we humour them for a moment? What if we actually thought about what our motivation in life is?

If we were characters in a book or on a film, our pre-script has already been written but knowing we can influence the rest of the story- how would, and will you choose to allow it to go?

We often talk about our motivation as if it’s concrete. As if it’s something we can pick up, put down, take for a walk. It’s almost sometimes as if we’ve lost our house keys.

‘Hold on a minute, i’ve lost my motivation.’

It can be interesting when you consider for a moment how motivation was never an object. It never actually existed. It wasn’t tangible. You can’t actually hold it.

You can BE or ACT  motivated, you can even attempt to be motivatING but you can’t lose ‘your motivation.’

So, where do we go from here with this abstract idea? What’s the practical use?

Well if you’re not feeling motivated- the most likely cause is that you’ve lost your criteria for being. If it’s a job for example, what’s important to you about a job? If you can list your 3 main things, you can pretty much work out what makes you tick.

An example could be cash, challenge and progression. If for that person, the cash wasn’t enough, the challenge wasn’t happening anymore or they felt as if they were stuck- then it’s unlikely they’re going to want to go through the journey of being motivated if they’ve lost the direction.

As soon as one of those is subtracted, it’s interesting how quickly the process of being motivated can become stagnant.

What’s important to you about your life? What do you want? As soon as you’ve got your criteria- you can probably recognise how when those things are there; you feel motivated. If they’re not, then there might be work to do.

Aristotle thousands of years ago had a really simple principle. The pleasure/pain principle. He asked us in our lives to identify every time that we make a movement, an action or a behaviour- are we moving towards pleasure? Or are we moving away from pain?

Regular readers of the blog and indeed the people that I see regularly will be well aware of my basic foundations of believing that we have choice. We can make our own decisions; we can just sometime be unconsciously interrupted into not being congruent with what we really want. This can be termed secondary gain.

An example of secondary gain is the smoker who doesn’t quite want to quit because she’s concerned about how she’ll relieve stress otherwise. We can consider subjectively that if she wasn’t putting toxins into her body, and found other outlets to breathe- the tobacco wouldn’t be necessary. It’s much easier to notice these small tendancies though from a disassociated position.

And this is where we can start to tie things together. The concept of schismogenesis is the connection pattern here.

Schismogenesis is essentially the beginning of a rift or a division of sorts. We can look politically and see examples of it throughout the past 4 years. Gordon Brown taking over the Labour party caused a rift to get larger; The Expenses scandal was an example of a schismogenesis between the public and politicans.

We can also see it from sociological perspectives, functionalism and throughout mainstream religion.

There’s internal schismogenesis though, too. There’s those moments where if we tell ourselves we’ve lost our motivation, without thinking of it as a process, there’s a risk of the rift between what we want to do and the ‘motivation’ to do it (there’s that noun again) – this is when things get difficult.

How do we avoid the schism then? Well once it’s created, it’s done. We can move on. It’s what we do to repair it or even create something new, which is where the real wonders can happen.

As always, I’ve written a lot more about this topic, particularly around the ideas of the unconscious and ideas of anthropology and i’m more than happy to e-mail the drafts to any particulary interested parties – just drop me an e-mail at info@zackpolanski.com

Zack Polanski is a leading Cognitive Hypnotherapist at 1 Harley Street. For a free phone consultation, call The Lewis Clinic on 077380888632.