CASE STUDY 5. JAMES
Aug 4, 2024

Meet James.
James came to see me for hypnotherapy as he wanted his independence back. He is an erudite young man who thinks and feels deeply. Having had a fall (where he injured his foot), coupled with the covid pandemic, and all that entailed, his confidence had taken a hit. He wanted to move away from where all of this had taken him and get his life back to a place where he was happy again.
James’s independence is something he holds close and protects with great vigour. He has to defend this on a day-to-day basis which, unless you too have a disability, possibly has not ever crossed your mind. The aim of the game was for him to move on in his life and in doing so, to then deal with whatever this would throw up at him. He wanted up and out.
Fairly quickly, James’s sleep improved, it’s not perfect but it’s better. And his resilience continued to build up bit by bit. After the 3rd session he noted that if he had a bad day at work, this would not pull him down into a darker place. And by session 5 he could at last see the light at the end of the tunnel, there was hope to be getting out to where he wanted to be.
Some of the themes in particular that emerged over the first few months of our sessions, was in dealing with the anxiety that kept rearing its ugly head throughout different aspects of James’s life, alongside a lack of happiness, and a poor sleep pattern. In his words, he was just living through the motions of his daily life. This may not sound too great, but actually with hindsight it was a good thing. It gave him the time and space to use his brain's resources really efficiently. It was a systematic process that paved the way for a more solid and incorruptible future by dealing with the issues that arose so thoroughly. This left him the space to rest and be more in the moment. Something a lot of us could do with!
James’s progress was on a far deeper level than I initially imagined it to be. I didn’t really have a plan as such as to where we were going but I knew to trust the process and that whatever progress he made, it would be a deep-rooted progress that would hold him in good stead. This is the beauty of hypnotherapy, the brain will deal with whatever it needs to deal with first, sometimes known, sometimes unexpected, but always in the right order for the best result.
We approached the goals in stages by breaking them down into smaller parts which worked for James’s analytical brain. There were times when he felt he was going up his scale and times when he was sitting on a plateau. This is what I think of as the brain resting between onion layers, preparing for the next layer to be dissolved or bashed down. Different layers need different levels of dissolution! He’d even have the odd downward trajectory but never for long, as his determination and resilience were forever strong.
I liked how James used the recordings in different ways. For example, he would have a recording for specific goals, and a recording he would use to aid sleep. This worked well for him, quite likely due to his analytical brain loving to tick off from the to-do list!
James has worked extremely hard on more than his initial goal. I suspect this is because he has always had to work that much harder, but also, I think it’s part of his many facets of his personality. Whatever it is, I have witnessed the work he has done and how hard he has worked and how much he has achieved. Would he have signed up for this if he had known beforehand? You will have to ask him, but for James, I feel like it is a big, old deal. Hitting a low low, is not always something we can share with others. It can be hard to even say it out loud especially when we are thinking about how it may impact the ones we love. But in addressing the things that knocked James down, and then going through the process of letting them go, literally and figuratively, is something that I watched him do at every turn, and he did it with grace and forethought.
Has James got to where he wanted to get to? Again, you will have to ask James. I believe so. His independence has returned; his confidence has become stronger; he goes to work as he wanted to – on his own, music on. When going through this kind of journey, you do hold a potential of difficult processes, elements of a baptism of fire for some of us, but I think that throughout this time with James, I have learnt so much and loved being a “facilitator” to a more positive future. Well done James!