Charles Trimberger

I first became interested in hypnosis during my family therapy training (1977-79), when I heard a Wisconsin-trained psychiatrist by the name of Milton Erickson. Erickson had already become known as the father of modern hypnosis. Therapists of all stripes were making the pilgrimage to Phoenix, AZ. I asked myself, “What does hypnosis have to do with family therapy?” And, “who is this creative healer, and what does he do?”

Although I never met Erickson, curiosity did get the better of me, and I began my study of hypnosis shortly after graduation from the Family Institute of Chicago. I discovered that hypnosis helped me to be a better family therapist. Also, if an intervention failed, I could use hypnosis to dissect it, and discover why that intervention failed. Best of all, I began to develop a skill called “utilization,” using the patient’s problem to generate a solution. Helping families to heal themselves meant that their prescription was often better than mine. I could benefit from their experience just as they could benefit from mine.

This means that clients have the unconscious ability to heal themselves. What they need is a therapist who could help them to utilize their natural healing potential.

That’s what hypnosis does: it engages the client’s problems as the best way of accessing the natural solutions that will work for that person. Hypnosis doesn’t tell people what to do. It helps people to suggest solutions to themselves. Since these same clients are already working internally, via the hypnotic process, their solutions are easily integrated into their minds.

Since the arena of intervention is the individual client’s mind, this method can work well for all ages, both genders, and a wide variety of mind/body illnesses. Anybody who can daydream can be hypnotized. The hypnotic state, or trance, is the detached state in which the conscious mind is bypassed and the unconscious mind becomes available to therapeutic information.

~ Your Therapist, Charles Trimberger