Chapter 4

The first step of the change process – understanding what is

Investigating your presenting issue and designing your goal

The first step of the change process is to gain a thorough understanding of the problem as it stands. This is often not nearly as straightforward as you think it’s going to be; a person’s presenting issue is so often muddled by all sorts of past and present interconnecting issues. I regularly refer to such situations as being like a ball of tangled threads – from a single glance, who knows where one thread begins and another ends? But, it is possible to begin to make sense of this morass. The following questions are designed to help you gently tease out one thread from another, highlighting the issues that are problematic to you.

So, we now begin the process of uncovering what your sense of discomfort is and how it’s affecting your current life.

What is it about you or your life that you’re uncomfortable/dissatisfied with?

For some, this will be relatively easy to identify and describe; for others, it will feel like explaining quantum physics. At this stage, just do your best. (We’ll explore the discomfort in far more detail in Chapter 5.)

For how long have you been feeling this sense of discomfort?

In order to gauge your progress, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being hardly at all and 10 being very, how much of a problem is this for you?

If we’re experiencing a problem, we can often begin to define ourselves by it. Once such a self-definition has formed, it can become fixed in our minds as a fact.

Do you define yourself as a person who is dissatisfied and ineffective, or as a person who is currently experiencing these problems?

Is this a constant issue for you or are there times when you are more aware of it being a problem than others?

The causes of Mia and Duncan’s discomfort were firmly rooted in their pasts, but if the dissatisfaction you’re currently feeling is relatively new to you:

Are there any current life issues that are causing your discomfort?

There were 4 major issues in Mia’s current life that added to her feeling of discomfort.

Current trigger 1: Despite her ambition to become an English teacher, Mia, aged 20, became a mother and, by the age of 22 was a full-time mother of two children. At the time of seeing me her daughters were aged 10 and 8. Both children attended school and participated in many out-of-school activities, activities that were a car journey away from home. Mia was tired and felt stretched to her limits, focusing her attention and energy on satisfying her children’s needs.

Current trigger 2: Mia was married to Geoff, the father of their two children, whom she had met at University. Geoff was the sole breadwinner. Mia described him as having traditional expectations of a wife concerning sex, economic frugality, provision of childcare, domestic duties, and so on. He had a tendency to sulk and, if things in the house weren’t as he wanted them to be, he became angry and verbally lashed out, his attacks centring on her failure as a person for not meeting his expectations. Despite being quite liberal with what he bought for himself, he kept a tight hold on the purse strings where Mia was concerned. Mia had no financial independence and was expected to ask for money for groceries, etc. She felt guilty spending money on herself. Mia did not confront Geoff but continued to try to fulfil his expectations.

Current trigger 3: Mia’s father would phone every other week or so and would spend the time talking about himself and his (new) wife, asking nothing about Mia’s welfare.

Current trigger 4: Before marrying Geoff and having two children, Mia had been an independent, ambitious young woman. She routinely felt a sense of disappointment and failure.

And Duncan? What’s currently happening in Duncan’s life that’s contributing to his sense of discomfort?

Current trigger 1: Jenny, Duncan’s girlfriend had recently left him. She had retained the communal flat and most of their shared friends, leaving him feeling completely alone. Much against his better judgement, and for want of somewhere to live, Duncan had moved back into his parents’ home.

Current trigger 2: Duncan worked for a large, impersonal organisation as an IT specialist. There was a culture within the organisation to view the IT staff as a species apart from the rest of the workforce. The organisation was lax when it came to staff appraisals, recognition of success and positive feedback.

Current trigger 3: Duncan really disliked his appearance and felt unattractive to others.

If you can, identify the specific current things/events/people/situations (the current triggers) that generate a sense of discomfort and dissatisfaction within you.

Mia’s sense of discomfort had many consequences on her life. Emotionally she felt powerless and worthless, physically she suffered from headaches and shoulder pain, she had digestive problems and felt constantly tired, her thoughts centring on self-doubt and self-criticism. She found herself avoiding making decisions, avoiding confrontation, allowing the children’s poor behaviour to continue unchecked, and setting ridiculously high standards for herself, standards that she daily failed to meet.

Duncan’s sense of discomfort also took its toll on him. He too felt worthless and described himself as ‘a waste of space’; he experienced sleep difficulties, waking up many times during the night, starting each new day exhausted. The sheer effort of pretending to be okay also took its toll on him. He felt fraudulent, he felt angry and stressed, his body tense, his stomach nauseous. His thoughts became vengeful at the injustice of it all; he needed others’ approval and felt dependent on their favourable judgement of him.

Where this sense of dissatisfaction and discomfort is concerned, what emotional symptoms are you experiencing?

What are your physical symptoms?

What thoughts tend to flow through your mind when you’re feeling dissatisfied and uncomfortable?

And, how does the discomfort influence your day-to-day behaviour?

Mia’s inability to confront things not only gave indirect permission to her children to misbehave, it also gave her husband a lot of power. Despite loving them, she found herself resenting her husband and children. Geoff’s respect for Mia seemed to lessen daily. She felt too tired and too guilty to see friends or to partake in leisure activities, and her life became completely focused on her home.

Duncan was very needy where his girlfriend was concerned and his dependency on her to validate his existence led to the ending of their relationship. The tiredness affected Duncan’s ability to work effectively and, rather than receiving the positive feedback that he craved, he was regularly reprimanded by his line manager for underperforming. He spent a fortune on clothes, clothes that he hoped might make him more attractive to others, and he often ended up in debt at the end of the month.

What impact is your discomfort having on the rest of your life, your ability to sleep and eat, your libido, your work, your friendships, your relationships with significant others, your leisure time, your exercise and so on?

As you might remember, Mia turned to drinking wine to reward herself for managing to endure another day, and Duncan chose chocolate to comfort him.

Do you find yourself reliant on anything to help cope with this discomfort? If so, what might be the long-term implications of continuing this way?

Caffeine, alcohol, drugs, smoking, over-work, physical inactivity, lack of sleep are all known to exacerbate feelings of discomfort.

Are you doing anything that could, inadvertently, be making the problem worse? If so, are you willing to change any of these habits? How will you go about making these changes?

Time and time again, laughter has been shown to be of great therapeutic value; it decreases stress hormones and triggers the release of feel-good endorphins. Laughter promotes an overall sense of well-being and can even relieve the sensations of pain.

What makes you laugh? Do you feel you laugh enough? If not, how could you bring more laughter into your life?

You now know how the sense of discomfort is affecting you in the present. This leads us nicely onto:

How would you prefer to feel? What is your goal state?

Bearing in mind that if we don’t know where we’re going, we’ll probably never get there, establishing goals is an essential part of the change process. Goals give our lives direction and our efforts a focus.

As defined by the Oxford English dictionary, a goal is ‘the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result’, a desired result that a person envisions, plans and commits to achieving.

Goal setting involves the development of an action plan designed to motivate and guide us toward our goal. There are several criteria involved in goal setting. Ideally, we benefit from the goal being:

Let’s look at Mia and Duncan’s goals:

Mia was fed up with being a shadow of her former self and wanted to change this. Her goal was to re-find her ambitious, self-directed, self-respecting self, the woman she had been aged 20, just before she became pregnant and dropped out of University. She was motivated by the thought of generating a more equal relationship with Geoff, learning how to confront things within the relationship more successfully, and by the thought of fostering a more loving, more parental role with her daughters in which she felt able to reprimand them when needed. The potential rewards were evident to Mia: She would be able to enjoy life again; to respect herself and earn the respect of her husband and children; to create interest and satisfaction for herself outside the home.

In the longer term, Mia wanted to be able to go back to college to complete her English degree with a view to becoming a teacher, a role she hoped to combine with her current responsibilities.

Based on her goal, I devised a treatment programme for Mia that was to include 11 face-to-face hypnotherapy sessions over a three-month period.

All these rewards were very important to Mia. Rather than attempting to please others, or being impelled to change because she felt she ‘ought to’, she wanted to achieve this goal for herself, and felt entirely motivated to doing so. She understood that there would be many challenges along the way, but felt excited at the prospect of change; it made sense to her, as though things ‘clicked into place’ – it simply felt ‘right’. Mia was completely committed to her goal and embraced the ‘butterflies in her stomach’ – the sense of energy – that came to the fore when she thought about it.

Similar to Mia, Duncan could no longer tolerate the feeling of discomfort and dissatisfaction; he no longer wanted to waste his life and felt a compulsion to change. His goal was to learn how to feel comfortable in his own skin. Placing this goal in the context of his life in general, Duncan felt that he would become more effective both at work and socially by becoming less dependent on others’ approval. He was motivated by his desire to move beyond his sadness over the ending of his relationship with Jenny, to once more move out of his parents’ home and establish his independence, and to forge new and meaningful relationships with others. He felt the rewards would be many. He would no longer need to turn to chocolate as a crutch and so be able to better control his weight, he would no longer need to buy clothes to enhance his attractiveness, he would be able to sleep more soundly through the night and so perform more efficiently at work, and would be able to really start living.

With his goal in mind, I devised a treatment programme for Duncan that was to include 10 one-to-one hypnotherapy sessions over a four-month period.

Being fully aware of the rewards, Duncan too wanted to achieve his goal. He was doing this for himself. He had a very realistic approach to the change process and recognised that he would face many demanding times ahead, times that would possibly stretch him to his limits. But, because he was completely committed to making his goal his reality, he decided to engage wholeheartedly with the change process. He chose to take full responsibility for what he was going to do from here, to be disciplined in his approach, and to learn from any mistakes made. He described feeling ‘like an adult’ for the first time in his life; he felt ready and willing to take action to make permanent changes. As with Mia, Duncan also felt the energy of excitement as his confidence and belief in himself started to take root through new experience. He was buzzing, and he loved the feeling – he was ‘alive’.

What is your goal/what specifically do you want to achieve? Be as detailed as you can.

Thinking more broadly about your goal state:

What are your motivations for your goal?

What are the likely rewards of achieving this goal?

What actions will you need to take to achieve your goal?

What personal skills will you need to draw upon to make this goal your reality?

What external sources of support will you need? Are these available to you? If not, what can you do about this?

Given your current life and your responsibilities within it, is this goal realistic and attainable? Is now the right time?

How does achieving this goal fit in with the bigger picture of your life?

When you’ve achieved your goal, how will your life differ from how it is now?

How committed do you feel toward making this goal your reality? If not 100%, what is stopping your from committing fully?

How will you measure your progress? (Perhaps the answer to this question could be, ‘I will monitor my success at the end of each chapter.’)

How long do you anticipate it will take to achieve this goal? (A reasonable time-frame for your goal achievement could be the period of time it takes you to complete this book. Decide how much time per day/week you will devote to this process and stick to your decision.)

How will you know when you have achieved your goal?

To further cement your goal and explore any obstacles that might hinder your success, cue Audio 2 – Visualising my goal.

Having listened to the recording, now summarise your goal as a mission statement (a short, simple statement that outlines your intention).

So, you know how the sense of discomfort is affecting you in the present and you have a firm goal regarding how you’d like to be and feel instead. Now it’s time to investigate that old feeling of discomfort in more detail with a view to beginning the process of changing it.