Laura Marsden provides a delightful account of her visit to see hypnotherapist Steve Williams – Hip Hip No Therapy – with a very nice recounting of his approach to helping her stop smoking.

Hypnotherapy. Does it work? Not if you’re blind drunk, psychotic or have the mental age of a seven year old. That’s according to Steve, my hypnotist. I’m dubious. I’m sober, intelligent and as far as I know, have never killed anyone.  I’m off to see Steve on the agreement that he’s going to help me to stop smoking. He begins by looking at my hands and asking whether I have ezchema. No I reply: it’s a cold Manc evening and my hands are red due to the sudden heat of his consultation room. Would you say you’re a risk taker? Yes. I am. Surely going to see a hypnotherapist is a risk…he may get me to take my clothes off and fellate him, he may convince me to set up a monthly standing order for £5000…he may send me out onto the streets of Old Trafford pecking the ground like an ostrich….  He asks me about my risk-taking past. What sort of emotional baggage am I lugging around up top? We talk. I think I have a fairly average amount of fuck ups for a 27 year old woman – disappointments, bad decisions. Everyone has had their fair share of rubbish – right? According to Steve, I’m a loose cannon of madness. My mind is a jiggling Pandora’s box of ghouls and goblins. He ought not try to stop me smoking. He daren’t. Who knows what might happen in six months’ time he says. He can’t be held responsible.  Instead he suggests I book several sessions with him in order to exorcise my past. My dubiousness returns. Steve and I are trying to out wit each other. He won’t hypnotise me into stopping smoking. I argue that stopping smoking would have such positive effects on my life, how could it unleash the (very much dead and buried) ghouls? Oh it will says Steve ominously. Steve doesn’t have a beard but if he did he’d be twirling it around a spindly finger. (Neither does he have spindly fingers).  Steve reckons the success rate of hynotherapy (for smoking cessation) is about 70%. He contacts clients a few weeks down the line and they’re always still smoke free but, as he points out, clearly, you can’t keep checking up on people.  He claims to be able to cure deep-rooted psychological problems in six sessions. Smoking, he can do in one. But only if (in his opinion) you’re well balanced and free of emotional baggage. Who doesn’t have emotional baggage? Babies? Mars Bars? Pogo sticks?  We compromise. He agrees to give me an abridged version of his usual stop smoking session. This involves hypnosis and aversion therapy. It begins. I shut my eyes and Steve tells me to relax about three thousand times in (bizarrely) a mid-Atlantic accent (relaaaaaaaax). I try really hard. I want to laugh out loud. ‘What’s with the accent Stevo?’ He counts down from 10, each step focusing on a part of my body, which begins to relaaaaaax. I’m feeling really relaaaaaaxed. I have to do this and let myself go. He counts down from 10 again, this time we’re on a staircase, in space, with stars all around. I try harder to relaaax. I’m relaaaaxing. I’m relaaaxed.  Steve makes me imagine my first cigarette, how it spun my head right out and make me hurl black sick into my parents’ toilet. I get a faint feeling of dizziness but nothing else. He asks me what it feels like. Answering is quite hard as I’m so relaaaaxed. I have to clear my throat. ‘Pretty gross.’ I say.  He doesn’t snap his fingers but instead, counts down from 10 again. I open my eyes on zero and he suggests we go out for a ciggie. ‘Do we have to?’ I genuinely don’t want one. We go outside and he kindly holds out a lighter for my last Marlboro Red. I take a drag. It is gross. Smoking is gross. I throw the rest of it away.

Beautiful work.  That was extremely playful.

For those of you in the Manchester area, Steve’s webpages are here.

Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]Certified Hypnotherapist
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com