Hypnotherapy for performance enhancement

Performance in any areas of life whether that be leisure, relationships, or work, forms a substantial part of a hypnotherapists’ workload, even for those therapists who do not actively advertise their services in this market. For example, students look to deal with stress, and clients often call who are nervous about an impending driving test. Golfers are well-aware of the benefits of hypnosis as it features in magazines and some high-profile golfers have used hypnosis. Notice we use the word 'hypnosis' here. Although hypnosis is really the process of trance, many people who do not have troubled lives do not want to call it hypnotherapy (even though sessions often follow the same structure and deal with similar issues). Here are some of the major areas of performance work. 

Concentration  

This can be spoiled in many ways. Here are some of them: 

Worrying about other people e.g. other competitors, how other students are performing, or what your audience, coach, manager or driving examiner is thinking. Strategies here will be particular to the context. 

Intrusive thoughts e.g. every time the ice hockey player gets the puck they doubt themselves. While focusing on these doubts, this fast-paced game moves on. These thoughts can be dealt with in trance and their significance and repercussions examined with the client. Some sort of resolution is sought so that the client can move on. 

Memories of previous failures - allied to intrusive thoughts, e.g. a goalkeeper has repetitive flashbacks to a memory of an appalling mistake, or the examinee remembers a previous failure. The solution is often to deal with emotional aspects of the memory and to forgive themselves where appropriate. 

Dwelling on mistakes - this is very common in sport and life more generally. A sportsperson will make a mistake and then spend time 'beating themselves up' about it or analysing what they could have done better. Although it is important to reflect on mistakes and what could be done better next time as part of the learning process, the time for doing this is after the game, event or competition and during practice. Hypnotherapy provides some great ways to coach the client to move on from mistakes. 

Internal stimuli - distracting stimuli might include the physiological aspects of anxiety e.g. butterflies, needing the lavatory or nausea, and the psychological aspects such as worrying, negative thinking and confusion. 

External stimuli - e.g. the weather and public announcements. This could be tackled by having the client imagine performing well despite the stimuli.

Breathing

Some people become anxious or stressed when under pressure to perform, whether it be sport, exams, tests, sex, or working as a chef in a busy kitchen. Breathing often becomes shallow and rapid. Once the client is very relaxed in trance, we would ask them to 'notice, without changing it, their deep, abdominal breathing' and use techniques to memorise these feelings to facilitate further change work. 

Some people hold their breath while completing complex or fine detail tasks. This, like shallow, rapid breathing, is not helpful at a time when their body and mind need more oxygen and they need to vent waste gases. In trance, ask the client to run through the task in their headcam (mind's eye) while noticing, without changing it, the smooth and continuous flow of their breathing.

Perfectionism

The actual performance is not a time for concerns about perfection. An actor who has spent weeks rehearsing lines and trying to say them in particular ways need to run the scripts more automatically when the curtains rise. The performance is too late for rehearsing the fine detail of dialect, emphases, tone, expression, body language, and so on. Visualisation is useful, helping the client see themselves just getting on with it. Likewise, musicians will have done all the practicing and perfecting in the practice room. The stage isn't a place for reflection. They will lose concentration. Most sports, exams, music, comedy and theatre have no space for personal reflection - it is live and relentless and the client needs to be live and relentless. 

Also, perfect ideals are rarely met, which would leave the client feeling unhappy. It may be that work needs to be done on earlier events in life that are driving the client to attain perfection, such as overly critical parents, or a teacher who was overly critical of a good effort. Or it could be self-esteem issues that drive someone to try too hard because of what failure might 'say about them'.

Barrier removal

Most of the barriers that we put in front of ourselves are cognitive ones e.g. "I'm not good enough", "I can't win this competition", "I'm not ready for this", or "It's all going to go wrong". Cognitive work is useful here e.g. challenges to automatic thoughts and irrational beliefs, encouraging rehearsal of positive affirmations, thought stopping, and avoiding negative words such as 'can't', 'won't', and 'shouldn't'. Cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapy is helpful here.

Emotional control

Feeling anger or sadness at doing badly, particularly during a task, is not helpful. It is a sign that the person is fixating on problems rather than solutions. Hypnotic suggestions might involve moving on quickly from failure, or assuming failure doesn't exist (just relatively better or worse outcomes). The emotions might have a historical source, such as a father who, wanting the best for their child, pushed them too hard and got emotional when they didn't perform well. They internalised the emotions and experienced them for themselves. They felt that this must be an appropriate response. Hypnotherapy might include using age regression techniques here to deal with the source and heal old wounds.

Ecology

Various aspects of life outside of the task the person is presenting with will affect their concentration, performance, commitment, confidence and so on. Hypnotherapists work in a holistic manner. A salesperson may be not hitting their performance targets because they do not have faith in the product, or they are anxious about being away from home for extended periods. The impending birth of a child and financial worries could be affecting a table tennis player. 

It may be appropriate to talk about pragmatic things that can be done. Therapists sometimes neglect more obvious practical solutions in their search for deep and meaningful psychological aspects. For example, if someone is finding exam revision difficult due to worries about a relative who needs care, you could explore practical help. If the client was performing brilliantly until a dispute began with their neighbours over the neighbour's passion for thrash metal at midnight or inattention to their Leylandii conifers, could assertiveness training or neighbour mediation be as useful as suggestions for relaxation?

Injury and recovery

Working with clients who have sports or other injuries that get in the way of performance might include pain management, positive imagery to fight infection, motivation to rehabilitate, and self-belief that they can return to their former level of ability. These are just some of the areas hypnotherapy may target.

Further reading

Edgette, J. and Rowan, T. (2003) Winning the Mind Game: Using Hypnosis in Sport Psychology. Carmarthen: Crown House Publishing