“My feet often feel as cold as ice,” said the man. “That’s why I catch so many colds. I used to have Kneipp treatments and that really helped, but I can’t do that everywhere.” “Let me tell you a secret,” said the other man. “An imaginary Kneipp treatment will work just as well if you imagine it hard enough.”
“I used to get terrible stage fright every time I had to speak in public,” said the man. “My blood pressure shot up, I got palpitations and my breathing became rapid and shallow. But then my wife gave me these tablets to lower my blood pressure, and I’ve not had any problems since then.” “Can I tell you a secret?” replied the other man. “Every time you take a tablet, your body knows that it needs to reduce its blood pressure – it knows what it has to do in response to the tablet. It knows it so well that it will do what it needs to do by itself, even if you just carry the blood pressure tablet with you.”
The case study “Placebo I” illustrates how blood pressure can be regulated by imagining blood pressure tablets. The story could also end; “Your body knows it so well that it will do what it needs to do even if you simply draw a white circle on every page of your presentation to remind you of the blood pressure tablets.” Further interventions on stage fright and exam nerves can be found in Hammel 2017, 103.
While the paramedic hurried over and the ambulance crew shouted instructions to each other, I imagined a large manta ray gliding through the warm water, with strong calm flaps of his majestic fins, noiseless and beautiful, the embodiment of calm, the embodiment of calm, the embodiment of calm… a truly wonderful creature!
The story “Manta Ray” outlines an intervention for impending heart attacks and asthma attacks, and was inspired by a patient who had suffered a heart attack but who amused the ambulance crew, paramedic and himself with jokes and anecdotes to relax both them and himself and to keep his blood vessels open, based on the principle that anxiety narrows the blood vessels, whereas relaxing images and thoughts widen them and thus increase the chances of survival in a threatened or acute heart attack. Similarly, anxiety during an asthma attack makes it harder to breathe and results in exactly what the patient fears. The metaphor incorporates suggestions for relaxation of the emotions and muscles, regulation of the frequency and intensity of the heart rate and breath and widening of the vessels (warm water), since the simulation of these autonomic states by the imagination stimulates a matching state in the body. Prior mental training is necessary to ensure that these images are called to mind automatically during a heart attack or asthma attack. If necessary, the manta ray should start flapping his fins with “fast and irregular beats” which then gradually become slower. When the story was told to a patient suffering from palpitations (sinus tachycardia), a reduction in pulse rate and a significant improvement in the accompanying symptoms were observed afterwards. The story can be modified to feature an electric ray which generates electrical pulses while he moves, in the same rhythm as his heart beat. As ever, it is important to use these methods to complement traditional medical treatments rather than as an alternative to them. Further stroies that can be used on heart diseases are found in Hammel, 2011, 67, 162. Stories and narrative interventions for asthma patients are found in Hammel, 2011, 70ff., 171 and in Hammel, 2017,120.
They met by chance on a grassy field. The old man was exercising his dog, and the young man was simply going for a walk. They recognised each other because they belonged to the same chess club, and so they started chatting. Suddenly the old man hesitated. He took out a packet of tissues, pulled out a few and held them in front of his face. His nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. “Can I show you how to stop the bleeding?” said the younger man. “Look around you. Can you see anything red?” “That tree over there has red berries,” said the older man. “That’s right. Berries as red as blood. Can you imagine a valve on a water pipe in the same red colour?” “I can.” “Does it look more like the red handle on a tap, or a large red stopcock of the sort you sometimes use to turn off the water supply to a house?” “A stopcock.” As they stood next to each other and talked, the younger man stretched out his arm in front of him and kept turning his hand to the right as though he was closing a big valve. “You can put your tissues away again now,” he said.
The story “Nosebleed” is a basic intervention which can be varied in many different ways, and which serves as an example of the effectiveness of hypnotic suggestions in everyday life outside an explicitly therapeutic context. I have used the technique described below on five people, four of whom were children. In four cases the bleeding stopped within one to three minutes, and in one case there was no significant improvement. The valve should be turned to the right or left depending on the symptoms (to the left in order to increase blood flow). The suggestions are unambiguous, despite being phrased in an indirect and non-directive manner.
Karen Olness and Daniel Kohen write about a 10-year-old boy brought to a doctor with a severe nosebleed; “Lower nasal plugs on both sides failed to improve the situation. The doctor decided to try hypnotherapy in addition to rear nasal plugs. He suggested to the patient that he could stop the bleeding himself and that he should tip his head right back and relax. Within a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and the young boy could breathe easily again. […] The next morning the parents reported that there had been no further bleeding.” The authors believe it is a good idea to use similar suggestions with any person suffering from life-threatening bleeding from any part of the body. (Olness & Kohen, 2001, 277f.)
The story can be used not only for somatic complaints, but also for patients suffering from erythrophobia (fear of blushing or compulsive blushing), as well as for patients with “bad” habits and other (chronic) psychosocial symptoms in order to highlight the power of the mind to eliminate a certain symptom without further ado. In such situations it is recommended that further episodes of the story be told, explaining how individuals simply “turned off” a problem or symptom (e.g. a red-hot oven ring, a garden hose or an annoying radio). Since most symptoms are involuntary and are defended by clients as occurring “not on purpose”, I would advise against discussing the content of the story on a cognitive level. Nevertheless, when eliminating symptoms it is always necessary first to ask oneself and the client, “What purpose does this symptom serve?”
An unemotional technician and a romantically inclined office worker came for relationship counselling with the hope that I could help them understand each other better. I explained that people – and in particular men and women – are never able to understand each other. “I understand,” said the technician. “We need a converter which transforms my language into my wife’s language.” “That’s a very clear way of putting it,” I replied, and then asked, “What’s a converter?”
“The Converter” demonstrates how everyone speaks his or her own language and must learn to speak in the language of his or her counterpart, using the examples of men and women and different professions.
A group of women from the Farmers’ Wives Club of Little Middlington were going on a trip to the theatre when the coach in which they were travelling broke down, and the play was in full swing by the time they arrived. As the group entered the theatre, one of the actors on stage was declaiming, “Who are you? Why do you come so late?” One of the women answered, “We’re from Little Middlington and our coach conked out!”
The story “Theatre Trip” demonstrates how other people’s words can often be misinterpreted as a result of a guilty conscience or critical inner voices.
I am happy to present another story in Romanian, taken from the Romanian translation of my “Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling”
Ea a întrebat‑o pe mama ei: — Mamă, mamă, mamă, ce este real, real, cu adevărat real? — Ce vrei să spui prin real, real, cu adevărat real?
— Ar fi ceva fără acest ecou, ecou, adevărat ecou. — Care ecou, ecou, adevărat ecou? Acesta este real, real, cu adevărat real. — Aha, aha, cu adevărat aha. Acum ea a aflat, a aflat, cu adevărat a aflat.
There was once a priest who lived in a small village far out in the countryside in Bavaria. He was a young and good-looking priest who lived alone, which made him a figure of enormous interest for the other villagers. One morning he got up, opened his window, hung out two sets of bedlinen to air – as was the custom in that land – and drank his coffee in peace. Good morning everyone! Now he had plenty of material for his next sermon…
The story “Good Morning Everyone!” can be used to encourage the listener to adopt a creative approach to gossip. It demonstrates how a victim of gossip can take proactive steps against the “rumour mill” by spreading counterrumours.
While I was driving home I approached a zebra crossing. A pedestrian was walking along the pavement, still a little way before the crossing. I stopped. It is possible to tell whether someone is going to cross the road several metres before they stop or look around, because they make a small turning motion with their body or head which foreshadows the planned movement.
There are situations in which it can be useful to observe these minimal movements which anticipate actual movements. When the person leading a committee meeting or seminar asks for a volunteer, for example, a long pause often sets in while everyone waits to see if someone else is enthusiastic enough to volunteer first. And yet the individual who finally volunteers after lots of encouragement is always the one who moved immediately after the request was made – by leaning forwards slightly, by opening his or her mouth briefly, by uncrossing his or her legs, by sighing or by any other movement which might serve as a non-verbal introduction to a spoken contribution. If I want to circumvent this tedious process, I address a direct question to the person who moved first after I asked for a volunteer, enquiring whether he or she would like to take on the task. Experience shows that the answer is always yes.
The story “Without Words” offers examples of how body language can be interpreted. It can be used as therapeutic homework to provide young people with autism with a new way of interpreting other people’s behaviour, and to occupy highly gifted young people with observation tasks as a distraction from provocative or depressive behaviour.
Yesterday I went to buy something at a shop in town. The shop assistant was on her own, and she had run out of change. Although we had chatted for a few minutes before I paid, we did not know each other. And yet she placed a 50-euro note in my hand and said, “Could you please change this for me in the electrical shop next door?” I asked myself whether the woman was irresponsible, careless and naïve for sending a man whom she had never met before out of her shop with 50 euros from her till, or whether she was a good judge of character and trusting, or whether she was warm-hearted and unconventional. I could have left the shop with the money and never returned. Instead, I gave the shop assistant my wallet and said, “Hold onto this until I return.” My wallet contained 200 euros, my identity card, my driving licence and my credit card.
What does that make me? One hundred different people reading this study will think that it proves that I am one hundred different people with one hundred or more different characteristics, and yet their judgments have nothing whatsoever to do with me.
The story “What Does That Make Me?” encourages listeners to think about the non-absolute nature of the characteristics an individual is assumed to have. It can also be used to illustrate the extent to which purported characteristics depend on how the surrounding context is interpreted. It is impossible to draw any conclusions about a person’s real nature from his or her behaviour, even if this behaviour is repeated, firstly because this would preclude the possibility of the person acting differently on a regular basis (otherwise he or she would have different characteristics, i.e. be a completely different person, as soon as his or her behaviour changed), and secondly because the characteristics which are ascribed – frugality or stinginess, a scheming mind or an enterprising spirit, heroism or stupidity, stubbornness or strong-mindedness – depend on the observer’s own values and criteria.
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