How Hypnotherapy Helped Four-year-old Jessica

Four-and-a-half-year- old Jessica came to us with a big problem. In just a few months time, she was due to start school but her absolute refusal to use the toilet was creating major problems for both her and her mum.

Jessica was a bright, happy, confident child and there seemed no obvious reason why she had developed such an intense aversion to using the toilet and still insisted on wearing nappies. Jessica’s mum had tried everything and was at her wits end. She turned to hypnotherapy as a last resort.

The first task was to try to unravel the underlying motives behind Jessica’s behaviour. Why was she acting this way and what was she getting out of it?

Discovering motives is much more difficult with such a small child who is simply not able to understand and articulate her feelings, so the more traditional hypnotic techniques need to be adapted.

However, we were able to do this quite quickly through the use of storytelling and play and it soon emerged that Jessica’s issue was in fact connected to a fear of growing-up - the toilet had simply come to represent this.

Baby Behaviour

It turned out that Jessica was also exhibiting other signs of ‘baby behaviour’ like starting to suck her thumb again, asking to be cradled ‘like a baby’ and playing with her old baby toys.

The next couple of sessions concentrated on encouraging Jessica to see growing up as a positive and appealing development in her life. This was achieved once again through gentle play and activities like role-play, drawing, stories, games and use of pictures.

A final session with Jessica’s mum also considered how the rest of the family could play a major part in Jessica’s therapy by re-enforcing the positive messages about growing up and by re-assuring Jessica that she no longer needed the baby behaviour to gain attention and to secure a close bond with her mother.

Delighted

When Jessica’s mum phoned the following week with the news that Jessica had finally used the toilet, we were all delighted.

This case demonstrates just how effective hypnotherapy can be for even very young children. Jessica’s mum particularly appreciated the gentle nature of the approach we used – simply using creative play and stories in a therapeutic context to understand the child’s world and encourage positive changes in behaviour.

See also our article 'Children and Hypnotherapy'.

Comments

[Paul Brown]

Great article - having recently assisted an 8 year old bedwetter the speed of the change was amazing. Especially so as he was by far the youngest client.