Keep Your Language Clean

September 19th, 2011 by Lifestyle Therapy - Susan Leigh

Within the context of hypnotherapy, clean language means not influencing our client unduly. We want them to come to their own understandings and conclusions, to work things out for themselves. Clean therapeutic language means guiding the client. Hearing what they say, perhaps repeating it back to them so that they can reflect on what they have said, come to recognise the significance and maybe gain insights into their thought processes. Then perhaps asking neutral questions like why, what, where, when, which can serve to move the piece of work along.

Demonstrating effective listening is communicated by the use of clean language. When we hear what the other person has said and prove that by echoing their comments we enable them to feel comfortable and respected in their communications. Sometimes using even slightly different words can make the other person feel disrespected or unheard, especially when a topic is very important to them or they are talking about something close to their heart.

False memories have sometimes been ascribed to the use of un-clean language. For example, if a hypnotherapist were to say 'who is there' or 'what did he do' in a hypnotherapy session there is a danger that they are prompting their client to interpret something incorrectly. It is far cleaner to ask 'what happened next'. That question allows the client to find their own true interpretation of a particular scene rather than assume that another person is there with them.

Similarly, using metaphors can keep a session of hypnotherapy clean. By finding that the client feels heavy as lead or dull or cloudy as they talk about an area of their problem it is possible to use those descriptions and find a way of doing valuable therapeutic work. This can occur without the need to delve into too much detail about the distressing story behind the heavy or dull or cloudy. Each of those descriptions can be transformed by the client, with the use of careful questioning, into a resource that can be dealt with, without the need to revivify the original experience. Hence, heavy might become a lead weight that wants to sink to the bottom of the sea. Cloudy may want to float away or allow the sun to shine through. The problem changes into something else, something positive and healthy.

Within hypnotherapy it is important to be pristine in the use of language. Having an awareness of its impact on the listener is a major building block in successful healing work. Even the most innocuous of words may have a particular resonance and significance for a client. Utilising the client's language enables skilful interventions to facilitate important transformations.