by Celeste Hackett
Parts of this story have been changed and names and locations left out to ensure privacy for my client and her family.
It had been a very slow October. We had money in our emergency savings fund and my husband had begun a new job. So, the ideas I held in my consciousness, namely, that I didn’t want to work right now and I didn’t have to did their usual invisible work in the ethers. As a result phone calls for my hypnosis business, Family First Hypnosis, all but dried up completely.
I was rather grateful for awhile, and then after cleaning out sock drawers, lining kitchen cabinets with shelf paper, and dusting places that never get dusted, the waves of needing to feel significant again sprang up like little baby garden sprouts. Lack of a feeling of significance grew and entwined itself with boredom which then segued into a familiar sweet stirring to help people with hypnosis. Just when I thought, that feeling would never come back, I thought, there it was again.
At times like this when I am ebbing instead of flowing, I often get a sense of knowing it will one day all end, but am so grateful each time the sweet desire to help others rises up once more. And, so it was on this day with these ever new feelings brewing in me, and then apparently bubbling out and all around the vicinity of Plano, Texas, that I attracted a rather curious call.
The call was from a desperate Mother about her 13 year old daughter who wanted to know if I worked with sleep issues. Cautiously, not knowing what sort of sleeping issue she was talking about, I said that yes I sometimes did. She paused for a moment, seemingly distracted. I could hear loud crying in the back ground. She finally went on to say with quite a bit of emotion in her voice that she hoped I could help her little girl who had an unusual problem. She said that her daughter would sleep for days at a time, only to wake up intermittently crying and thrashing around as if in a lot of emotional pain.
Informing me further about the crying and thrashing stage, which someone certainly sounded like they were in, in the back ground of this call, she said that her little girl would talk in a droning, drugged-like way when asked questions, and then would only answer with yes and no answers. Very interested, I put a finger in one ear so I could hear her better. At both stages, her Mother continued, her eyes remained closed as if in a deep sleep and she did not wake up, or get up when asked to.
When I inquired about the length of time these episodes lasted her Mother said that after days of going back and forth between both stages, she would wake up and behave as if nothing had happened and in fact, would be very cheerful. “She sleeps for days? How many days are we talking here?” I asked.
“She has been sleeping since Sunday.” Her Mother reported, another sob threatening her vocal chords.
Thinking for a moment, I realized it was Tuesday. Could she really have been sleeping for that long? Now I was paying even more attention.
When I asked what other means she had used to get her little girl help, her mother said that she had “tried everything” and had taken her to several medical doctors including a pediatric neurologist who said he had never seen anything like her case. In quite a bit of anguish, she had began doing what so many hypnosis clients do, she began searching the internet for fresh ideas and after doing a bit of looking around, had found my website. She wasn’t, actually, too sure about hypnosis, she admitted, but felt she had no choice but to give it a try. That is, if I thought I could help her.
“Does she wet the bed?” I asked. Her Mother replied no. I found that very interesting, and I wondered why not if she was sleeping so very deeply and was so very unconscious. I had worked with many bed wetters, and many times they were so deeply asleep that they didn’t even feel the urge to urinate only finding after awakening that they had, once again, wet the bed.
Thoughts began to formulate. I wondered if she may be just very bothered by something and sleeping to get away from it. If so, then at those waking times, the “problem” might still be there. That could cause the strong emotions that she would then go back to sleep to get away from. People, after all, can be very creative in coping with emotional problems by doing all sorts of things. And, it isn’t unusual, at all, for them to cope in such ways totally unconsciously.
“Can we bring her in now?” the lady anxiously asked. In deep thought about the whole thing, I managed to fumble out the word possibly. At that she said she really hoped so because the crying and thrashing stage would only last about an hour. Plus, her husband was home to help her.
“Help you?” I asked.
“Yes”, she went on, “It takes two people to carry her because she goes totally limp.”
At this point I became even more curious, so to save them the trouble of having to carry her in, I offered to do something I have never done since opening this business 6 years a go. I offered to do a house call.
On the way over I wondered what I would do with a child who couldn’t talk to me. As I always do when I feel confused or challenged, I prayed to know what to do and allowed myself to feel the feeling of being with my higher power and not alone. I began to formulate ideas and back up plans. I got the thought, that I could try setting up ideomotor signals so the subconscious could talk to me through the movement of fingers.
Thinking further, I thought, if I could only get her to be responsive enough then I could work with her, but how would I do that? I had no idea what I’d be walking into. I also thought, about the possibility that I would be able to do nothing for her and began to figure out what I would say, a sort of escape plan if that were the case.
What ideas would you have thought of to do once there? What would you have said and done? In my next article find out more about this sleeping beauty once I arrive at this client’s home.
Are you a 5PATHer®? If you were, you’d only have to go on our exclusive on-line mentoring support group for the rest of this amazing story. Not a 5PATHer®? Well, sign up for my March class, or at any of the state licensed hypnosis schools that teach 5PATH® and learn amazing hypnosis techniques you can use to help change the world. You will love it! I know I do.
