Hypnosis, Coldreading, Mindreading & ESP

The topic for this blog may be rather controversial. It relates to my own personal experiences in one-to-one therapy work, experiences that go back at least five years. I first noticed something odd happening several years ago in the closing minutes of a therapy session, after the client had been returned from hypnosis to an alert state.

I use these few minutes to give suggestions to client about how to use self-hypnosis or talk about the client's situation. Often as I do this I'll imagine and verbalize a situation for the client where, for example, they might use their new found self-confidence. Sometimes a name will come to mind at others a situation.

Perhaps at this point it would be useful to add that I take a pragmatic view of hypnosis and other change techniques; crystals, candles and the like do not have a place in my therapy room. My approach reflects that of my first career. I trained as an Electronics Engineer and I generally expect things to be measurable and repeatable without the need for esoteric methods to make personal change possible.

Perhaps I can best explain things with a recent example; I worked with a young man who lacked self confidence. For the first half of our meeting I took his history to gain a clearer understanding of his situation and then we went into a hypnosis session using positive suggestions and re-use of inner resources to bring about change.

At the end of the session I said to him “I don't know if you'll use this new self confidence to think about asking Mary out or do some other thing.”

Why did I use the name Mary? I don't know; but there was an immediate look of recognition in the client's eyes. “How did you know that?” he asked, quite shocked. “I have had an online conversation with Mary on a dating web site” he said.

As a one off event I would dismiss this as a fluke (Mary was not the actual name, it was a little more unusual). However, this for me, is not that unusual; I think it happens in some form for between 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 clients.

So what the heck is happening?

In the beginning, I dismissed these odd coincidences as flukes, pure chance, but as they seemed to occur regularly I started to look for other explanations. Could I have looked at the situations in which these 'flukes' happened and drawn something from the client history. For situations I imagined that seemed possible, but not for names significant to the client.

I wondered whether I was inadvertently doing some form of 'Coldreading' the kind of technique often used by stage show psychics or mediums. Again this is possible, but unlike stage show mediums, I was working with only one client, not a full audience and so the chance for positive 'hits' would seem to be much diminished.

So I am left with a mystery. As I tune into the client's situation, am I doing some unconscious form of Coldreading or am I tapping into some latent mind reading or ESP skill?

I would love to hear from any other therapists who have had similar experiences; for me it remains a mystery. Write a comment below.