I had a really interesting case yesterday. She says that she wants to lose weight. I have a technique of testing for emotional barriers where I ask directly what would happen if the person actually had what they wanted. I asked 'what comes to mind when I say "you are going to be 70 kilos and look attractive"?'. The answer was "Ouch, fear, I don't want it".

She is currently 95 kilos can go to 85 but as soon as people say that she is looking good, something switches in her head and she binges until she has put all the weight back on again.

She will eat relentlessly for days even though part of her is saying stop it, another part is forcing her to continue.

She said she had some sexual fear when she was four when a man exposed himself to her and her sister. The main problem seems to be that  her mother was very houseproud, very distant, would throw the girls out to stop them dirtying up the house. Never gave them any affection. Both sisters are now huge.

Her thinking is that she must not look good or something bad will happen. She feels lonely a lot of the time and thinks that she eats for comfort. She hates herself being fat. She went to another hypnotist because she could not bear to be alone at night, but she felt she was not hypnotised and was worried that she could not be hypnotised.

THERAPY

Got her to think about the feeling she gets when people say she is looking good. Feeling like panic. Got her to focus and she came up with "don't want to be noticed". Then got a scary feeling and she was clearly was agitated. "Something could happen if someone fancied me. A dangerous thing". I persevered to get an image or a memory or a feeling in her body. She got a feeling of something dark and sharp. I tried to develop that. Got Black, scary dark.  I could not get her to develop that feeling any further she was clearly trying to avoid going to some memory. I then used a technique of getting her to visualize a potter moulding clay. This indirect technique often encourages the person to think of change spontaneously.  Then she offered "like I am under a black coat. I feel safe in there". Then I got her to lift a corner of the coat and see the people outside. Got her to let a little of what they were offering in. I asked what colour safety was. She said "yellow, sunshine". She said that when the feeling was gone she would be free.

I realised that she was a little girl under the coat so I got the girl to pull in some yellow colour like pulling in yarn. Then I got her to wrap the little girl in the yellow light. Then she agreed the little girl was lonely and scared. I moved to INNER CHILD work to release the little girl. The client was weeping gently so I knew it was working and she was in touch with her own inner feelings. I encouraged her very gently to allow that little girl to trust her and lead the little girl out of there to a place outside filled with sunshine.

She said afterwards that she wanted to laugh in the process and that every time she thought of the little girl now she was surrounded by sunshine.

She said that when she got the coat, she felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness, a howling wilderness of aching, longing for something and she wanted to run away from it.

I think that the loneliness she suffered as a little girl, feeling rejected and unloved by her mother was at the root of her eating problems. It remains to be seen if she has now resolved the issue.

I think what was interesting in this case is that a metaphor approach led to a regression without every finding any initial sensitizing event.