Dr Kate Beaven Marks

Welcome to the National Council For Hypnotherapy Podcast, where we dive into the fascinating world of hypnosis, lifting the lid on hypnotherapy, sharing insights and tips for change as we chat. So sit back, relax, and enjoy all the wonderful possibilities of hypnotherapy. My name is Tracey Grist, and I will be your host today. So I'm here with doctor Kate Bevan Marks, hypnotherapist and acclaimed author, well known trainer, and founder of Hypnotc. Hi, Kate.

Hello, Tracy.

So, this is a talk about the interventions of hypnotherapy, and how we work as practitioners and trainers. And do you wanna say a little bit about what led you to hypnotherapy?

It wasn't planned, actually. It was not a deliberate career choice. I was quite happy in my my previous role. I was working in high risk, well, health and safety and risk management in high risk industries, And I became fascinated by how we influence behavior and how we influence thought, and how we can persuade people rather than necessarily telling people. And now in a hypnotherapy session, you would actually turn off your phone.

So I'm actually gonna do that right now. So this is the thing

that hypnotherapists really know how to do, but I didn't. So there we are. Right. NCH, shows that we're real people, doesn't it? So where was I with this story?

So a high risk, high risk search. High risk?

High risk. And sometimes telling people, as you probably know yourself as you're listening or watching this, sometimes as adults we don't like being told what to do and we sort of get that, don't you tell me what to do, I'll do what I want, and you'll get a rebound effect. And I wanted to find out if there were ways of helping people make the safer decision without being as authoritarian as direct. Sometimes you need to be because if people fell into machines they could die. So sometimes you need to be. But generally, if you can persuade people to make safer choices, overall it becomes a safer and more comfortable working environment. So I started looking into different strategies, whether it's stuff that we see, whether that we hear. And that got me eventually into hypnotic language and conversational hypnosis.

And I went to to see a hypnotherapist and he was very Ericksonian. NCH Ericksonian is is very flowing. In fact, it can be often quite a gentle approach And had a few sessions with him just to experience what it would be like and to learn. He was really good at teaching me as we went through. And he sort of said, have a color hypnotizing me. Really? Like, don't about this. But I did, and that was it. I was hooked.

I seemed to have an affinity for my hypnosis. It's something that came, I wouldn't say easily because I had to to work for it. I really wanted to be the best that I could be. And I'm still learning now. We always will be. But it was something that I just found I could intuitively connect to where I wanted to go to. And, yeah, I haven't stopped learning. I haven't stopped finding out more about the profession.

But it's something that I really like doing. So, long, very long story short, and it's already a long story. So long story short, eventually, I had 2 careers running at the same time, which was a bit much, as well as horses and relationships and everything else. So when I had an opportunity to, I was able to go full time only in hypnotherapy. Although, with the training, the book writing, and everything else now, those hours have expanded back equivalent to a 2 to job life anyway, but I love it. Does that answer your question?

It does. It does. And so so the days of risk, well, the days of industrial risk far behind you and in the world of HIPAA?

In a way. I I still maintain my competency, and that means then that I get to speak at some of the risk management conferences, especially the international ones, which is really good because then I can let people know how amazing hypnotherapy is as a communication strategy, so hypnotic language, but also for occupational health. Mental health is often a very complex issue in many working environments, and giving occupational health and mental health professionals some alternate strategies to counselling and other talking therapies is really useful.

So so do you have a particular type of hypnotherapy that you practice? Do you have a a style?

When I first started out, I was very Ericssonian, very permissive, quite conversational. Then I got corrupted. I went along to a friend's stage hypnosis training weekend and I learned a very quick and rapid style of hypnosis. Wow. But I still like my conversational side. Okay. So I developed both. And then I started to explore many different models and theories about hypnosis.

And it said there's about 200 different forms of psychotherapy that can be integrated within hypnosis to form hypnotherapy. So I think I've become somewhat of an integrative hypnotherapist because my preference is to do whatever's best for the client.

So just in a sort of form of myth busting, like so we've got the conversational hypnosis. What so people would think about hypnosis and think that you would go into a trance, and maybe you would forget the world and eventually you would shoot the president as the winner time play you know?

It doesn't work that way.

The basics, like, do you have to go into a trance for every session? How does it work?

Some, sometimes with my clients, I say to them, it will seem as though we're just sitting there having a chat. You don't need, really, to close your eyes to be in formal hypnosis. One of the reasons that we often say to clients, please close your eyes, is that what you see is such a cognitive load that you're so busy processing all of that, that you're less able to focus on your inner world and the change that you want to achieve. So generally, getting you to close your eyes means that you're better able to focus on the work for the session. If you're working with children, good luck getting them to close their eyes for 20 minutes while you do some hypnotherapy. So eyes closed isn't necessary, But it can sometimes be helpful. A client I was working with only a couple of days ago was finding that she was very distracted by what she could see, what she could hear, she would then look at. So having her eyes closed enabled her to focus more effectively.

Okay. So so a session wouldn't necessarily involve trance, like closed eye traditional trance?

It wouldn't. Although, I will often say to my my new clients, how do you expect to go into hypnosis? If they expect formal, eyes closed, a style of hypnosis, then I will do my best to deliver that. Because I find it's far better to work with the client's perceptions than to go, well, actually, you're wrong, and give them a science lecture.

So what, so so when you had your first hypnosis exposure, so was that with the Ericssonian trainer or with the stage? What what do you No.

No. That was way before that, but it it was also really more Ericssonian, I would say, which is interesting because I'm not the most patient to people. And sometimes a really long metaphor. Now I know what it is. Sometimes a really long metaphor, whilst effective, totally will say it was effective. But can you not just just get to the point? We've got stuff to do today. Can we just get to the point? So I'm a different therapist to what I am as a client.

Okay. Okay. And what what's your favorite type of hypnosis as a client? What do you like?

I love rapid inductions. I really do. I'm not the most, as I said, I'm not the most patient of people. So generally with a progressive induction, something like a progressive relaxation or an eye fixation, you sort of start here and you gently go into, let's say, a state of hypnosis, whatever that is for that person. With a rapid induction, you get a quicker route there. And I like that. I like how it feels for me. I like the fact that it saves time so we can get on with with other work.

And it works really well for me. A long sort of 20 minute progressive relaxation, like, oh, Corey, just get to the point? Please, can we get to the point? But then one of my best friends hates rapids and he's just like, I want to relax. I want something soothing and relaxing. And that's what I would use with him just because it's his preference.

So what would a rapid induction look like? What would be an example of a rapid induction?

A rapid induction might be something like an eye roll, where you get somebody to look up at their eyebrows and then look up as though they're looking through the top of their head. And then while they're doing that, while they're still looking up, they'll close their eyes very slowly, take a breath, and just allow their eyes to relax down. So it's a bit like a tension and release. Very effective. And from what I gather, it's one of the popular inductions that is used in hospitals in the States. Okay. Okay.

I suppose it's quicker, isn't it, just to calm the autonomic nervous system?

And it's remembering though that well, using my concept, that that creates that state of hypnosis. And then you would use a deepener, which is something that you would do to intensify the state and help somebody become more settled into their state of hypnosis, how they do hypnosis.

So in theory, there's 3 stages, the induction, the deepener, and then the hypnosis.

Either way, yeah.

And a 4th stage coming up.

Oh, there is always the it there there is NCH, in hypnosis, there is no level playing field. Yeah. And what people will commonly find is that sometimes they'll be more aware and sometimes they'll be less aware where they might have gone deeper or it's more intense or more profound. Often for people, if you're doing something very active, like when I'm working with athletes, and it's very active focused, they don't necessarily feel relaxed. They feel super alert or super focused. If I'm doing something for a corporate, then, again, that might be focused. Somebody who's very stressed or tense though, and we might slow things down a bit so that they start to feel more relaxed. So it's all about how you manage that time in Hypnotherapy whether that's conversational with the eyes open, and that's something you can manage, perhaps with your choice of words, and with the pace of your words, the intonation as well.

Or whether it's something you manage in the hypnosis session, and you use different approaches and different strategies to best meet the client's needs.

Okay. So when you had your did you have a first hypnosis session? Were you a client and had hypnotherapy? What's been your, sort of, first experience of hypnotherapy?

Most of my experience as a client really has been through my training. And going on all of the different courses that I did for my training even before my doctorate. I I was a qualified hypnotherapist before I did my doctoral research. So I haven't had that many. I didn't have that many sessions. It was really more to find out more about it initially from the language side, and then to see whether it's something that I really wanted to invest the time, effort, and energy into study.

So with your doctoral research, what what what did you specialize in?

I focused my research, much to the horror of the program leader, I think. Bless him. He thought I was gonna do something on moral dilemmas. Nope. Hypnosis. And hypnosis and hypnotherapy, teaching and learning from a professionalism perspective. So I wanted to know how people are taught hypnotherapy and how they learn hypnotherapy because there's sometimes a difference between the methods that we use to teach it and the methods that and the strategies that people use to learn it. And I really wanted to find out about those and what makes that person then a professional as opposed to say a trades person, but a professional.

And that it was it was fascinating research. I wouldn't say I was greedy, but I did max out my allowed research time apparently to the day. And then I maxed out my my writing up time only because I had my my oral assessment, and they liked a model that I created so much. They wanted me to write a whole extra chapter on it. So so that took a while. But it it was it was fascinating, absolutely fascinating going on all of those courses. And I stopped adding up how much it cost when I went into 6 figures. So I had no idea how much it cost.

But the learning from it was incredible. I went on some amazing courses, some terrifying courses. Some courses that really I was thinking, NCH my gosh. Please just go and read a book and learn from the book. It it was it was really interesting. I also started to see some familiar faces on courses and that was really interesting. What stops them transitioning from being a student

Mhmm.

To being a practitioner?

Okay.

And that's something that certainly informed my teaching practice now.

Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine there's a there's a big difference between learning and applying, particularly when I think there are so many aspects to being in private practice, including the business side, as well as working with people. So, in all of your experience, in all of your exposures, what would be top tips? Say I've got anxiety or I want to be more confident, or what would be Kate doctor Kate Bevan Marks' top tips? My top tip would be, first

of all, to have a chat with a hypnotherapist to find out if how hypnotherapy works meets your expectations. This is really, really important because if you're expecting to turn up a couple of times a week for a few years, with some forms of psychoanalysis, that's what you would do, and to go all the way back to your birth and all the way through, That isn't really how hypnotherapy works. It's generally a brief strategic therapy. If you want to just go and have a chat and offload, then some forms of counselling, not all, but some forms of counselling might be better for that. You'll get more of what you're expecting. If you're expecting therapy to be done to you with no effort on your part, hypnotherapy isn't for you. So having a chat with a hypnotherapist enables them to really do something that we would commonly call a pre talk one, psycho education. Where they'll explain how their model of hypnotherapy works.

Now I say their model because hypnotherapists have different routes to becoming a hypnotherapist and different training afterwards. So they may be more of a certain type, they may be more into analytical, minding out a cause, they might be more behavioral, working on habits. So it's good to chat to 1, maybe several hypnotherapists to find out if their style works with you and if you resonate with them. And that's the starting point, getting the right person right at the beginning. And then it's about working out not just what the problem is, but having a think about what you would like instead of the problem. So if you're anxious, what would you like to be instead of anxious? Now sometimes you might not know. Sometimes people may not know. They just know that they don't like what they've got, and that's fine.

But if you can work out, well, I'd like to be maybe more calm or more confident. You're going into a session better prepared. If you can't think of that, it's a good idea to think about examples of when you're anxious and examples of when you're not. The more prepared you are for your 1st hypnotherapy session, the more you'll often get out of it because you're giving the hypnotherapist useful information. And it's really important to remember that hypnotherapy, for most models of hypnotherapy, is a collaborative process. So the hypnotherapist has got their job, and the client also has their job. And it's when those 2 come together that you get really good outcomes. And that also includes being prepared to sometimes do a little bit of homework, or as it might be more politely called, developmental activities.

So that prepares you for that. It isn't, there isn't a magic wand. It isn't something, I mean, if we could buy magic wands on Ebay, we would go out and buy them. Absolutely. You know, you can just go, ding, ding, ding, problem solved. It will be amazing. But it isn't like that. You can get really, really effective change, but you clients need to do their part of it.

I think that's that's the difficulty, isn't it, with the, the Colombo esque? You know, the clock will chime and we will take we'll go and do a murder, that there's no responsibility. And I think that's probably one of the, sort of, founding myth myths of hypnosis, that you don't have to take any responsibility. But, actually, like, anything good, you've got to work at it.

Totally. It's there's I say to my clients, there's a 168 hours in a week. If you see me 1 hour a week, I normally see my clients once a fortnight because I give them homework, You know, that's a tiny proportion. But if you do some self care every day, that's suddenly a massive great percentage of your week. And the thing that happens with that, though, I commonly find is that clients start taking ownership of their change. That means that they get stronger, longer lasting change, but it also means then they don't come into you as, oh, you're a wonderful therapist. You made me better. So you need to have a secure ego as a hypnotherapist to know that actually you're giving them the resources to to own their change.

But it's it's it's one of the things that I love to see. I was seeing a client only today who's made massive changes in disordered eating. And it's because she's put the work in and she owns the work. She owns the achievements that she's made, and she actually owns where she's sort of slipped off her path of a bit, and the achievement of coming back onto it as well.

And I think I think it's that the repetition aspect as well in terms of neural networks and repaving that path, what the practice brings, you know, just that repetition of a positive behavior or a positive mental attitude. It's just so important that it isn't just to 1 hour a week. And although we can plant the seeds, they need to be nourished to grow, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. So so in regards to Doctor Kate Bevan Marks, you've written some amazing books, which are really impressive. Have you got a new book in the making, a new book in the, on the horizon?

I have one that I've written that I need to go back and edit it, and I hate editing. It's my least favorite part of the whole process. So I might do that over Christmas. And I have one at the moment that I am in the middle of writing. So it's, it's all about how people learn hypnotherapy. So that's gonna be quite an interesting one as well.

So following on from all your research. And so, you, one of the books that I think that you've written was How to Communicate Effectively. I think that's brilliant. Have there any little tips from that that you'd like to tell us about? Yes. I've thrown in the curve ball just because I think it's a great book.

It's it's fine. When I wrote how to communicate more effectively, I wish somebody had told me to stop writing because it ended up with 200 and something pages. And actually, it should have been 2 or 3 books, really. So it's it's a little bit bigger than possibly I anticipated. There was a lot of lot that went into it, like 25 years with the use of language. I think one of the things that really sticks out, and it's something that I talk widely on at safety conferences and risk management conferences, is to pay attention to the language that you speak. And often, you know, often we go through life and we're not actually taught how to use language. We might be taught English in school to pass an exam, but not how to communicate with that English.

And one of the key areas is talking about what you want instead of what you don't want. And a lot of people will say, I don't wanna be anxious anymore. NCH. I don't wanna be stressed or don't worry. But they don't say what they want or what they want you to do. So if you don't wanna be anxious, what do you want? And if you don't want to be stressed, how do you want to feel? If you don't want somebody to worry, what do you want them to experience? Even in schools, in schools they say, don't run. How much better would it be if you said to somebody, please walk?

I'd like to watch you skip.

There you go. Couple of cartwheels.

NCH. Yeah, it's very true. Just that silent. I was listening to a podcast the other day where, I can't remember who it was, but they were talking about emotions as being verbs rather than nouns because there's no definition for what an emotion is, therefore it is a verb. And just even something like that, thinking, well, if it's a doing word, then do we have power over it as opposed to a name? Which I quite like as, you know, I've never really thought about emotions as being verbs rather than nouns. Good. Yeah. Yeah.

So what would you like to see your future looking like? What what's on the horizon for you apart from the new book? But

At the moment, I think something that has become even more of a priority than I recall in my early years as hypnotherapist is the expansion in the need to be stronger in marketing and all of the non hypnosis skills. Yeah. And no matter how good a product you've got, whether it's an amazing training course, whether it's a book, whether it's a hypnotherapy service, if people don't know about it, no one's gonna experience it.

This is the I think this is the difficulty across all disciplines, isn't it? That there are people who are good at social media, doesn't necessarily mean that they're good at hypnotherapy or any therapy or anything. They're just good at social media. And unfortunately, they get more playtime because other therapists are there doing the work and not feeding the social media, which is just sad, I think.

It is. It's it's tough. Generally, I find, a lot of my time that I could be doing, use it for relaxation, perhaps, is spent on marketing and SEO and website building and business building and all of that side of things. And I think it's something I know I teach it to my students, but it isn't taught to many hypnotherapists from what I gather, and it's something that is so important these days. In the modern marketplace, you need to have your business head on. Yeah. Hypnotherapy head. It's great that you want to help people, but if they don't know about you, then you're not gonna get those people to help.

Yeah. And particularly, you know, we're on this sort of cusp of AI that and before we know it, there'll be AI therapists.

There may be. I'm not convinced though

Mhmm.

That they would be able to achieve the finer subtleties that make a good hypnotherapist a good hypnotherapist. Anybody can read a script, so you could use AI to write a script. Excuse me. You could use a text to voice program to read the script out loud. That's technologically possible now. But what you don't get, the subtle changes in inflection, in pace. When you're watching a client's response and you subtly alter what you're doing in response to what they're doing, or you ask them a question and you go off on an angle or a tangent because that's where they've got in their mind. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's almost like, yes, I suspect you could have the generic m p threes created by AI. I'm not convinced, even considering the level of robotics in Japan. And I know that one of the Japanese hotels has apparently got robots on reception NCH, but they haven't got that ability to read the subtleties of the body language, the micromovements of the eyes, you just have you haven't got that. So I think a good hypnotherapist at the moment still has a secure job. Yeah. For now. Well, No.

Give it 50 years, but there will always be put then then we'll be working with the people that are developing all the technology because there'll be that stress because it's ever evolving.

Fair enough. I quite like the idea of having my own personalized you know, like, when you put in chat gbt and you and you say, right, do this conversation in the way that, I don't know, Jeff Goldblum would, and it can do that. And then you can have, like, I'd like Jeff Goldblum as my therapist. And then they get to know you, get to know like, maybe, Tracey, a 4 AM decision isn't the best. Would you like to wait till morning?

Yes, I would. Can you imagine what that would be like? What strategies are you going to put in place to enable you to do that?

Well, do you know what? It's been lovely chatting with you. And well, I wish you all the best for the next book. Thank you for giving us a little bit of your time today. It'd be most appreciated. Thank you, Doctor. Kate Bevanmart.

You are welcome, Tracy. Thank you for meeting up. It's been fun.

Thanks very much.