A Bigger Picture

By Daniel Burow

Discover the story of how a licensed psychologist discovered another way to help himself and his clients to change. Excerpt; Dear reader, I'm Daniel Burow. I'm a highly educated psychologist who had already been in practice for 15 years when I first made contact with Master Hypnotist Society founder Scott McFall back in 2005.That experien

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638371083

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Social Graces, Awkwardness, and Being Wrong

This story starts in the parking lot of a Fuddruckers restaurant—which, if you think about it, is where all good stories start. I sat in my car, watching people walk in and out of the door and thought, Why not? I got out, walked past the front door of the burger joint, went inside, up the stairs, and through the front door of Dakota Hypnosis. I was immediately greeted by a man who introduced himself as Scott McFall. He was very gracious and welcoming, but I noticed almost immediately that something was different about him.

To start with, he never took his eyes off me. And I don’t mean that in a generic or clichéd sense…the man never took his eyes off me. He was intensely focused on my face, with periodic detours to the rest of me. His gaze was constant, and it seemed like I could feel the physical weight of it. It was extremely uncomfortable to be looked at like he was looking at me. I had the immediate sense that he could read my thoughts and that he knew what I was going to say. Within a few moments, I started to become uncomfortable, and then a little worried. It took less than sixty seconds before I began to wonder whether I’d made the right decision to stop and meet him.

The discomfort didn’t stop him from looking at me. I couldn’t escape his gaze, and I couldn’t escape his attention either. He attended completely to every move I made and every word I said. Not a single nuance seemed to escape him. Even when I wasn’t looking at him, I knew he was looking at me. I could feel it. It was as if, somehow, everything I did was important in some way.

Strange conversation ensued, in which he listened to every word I said…but all the while, he seemed much more interested in what I did, how I moved, or where I stood. My little bit of worry started to feel more like frustration and even anger. What the hell was this guy doing, and why couldn’t I just talk with him? It was as if he didn’t know the rules of normal conversation.

So, there I was, moving back and forth between worry and frustration. I was three minutes into a conversation, and I started to notice that he was telling me what I was thinking…and I was agreeing with him. My inner dialogue started to include phrases like This must be what a Jedi mind trick feels like.

I started to have the undeniable sense that he was moving our conversation in the direction he wanted it to go. I couldn’t stay on my own agenda, and soon I was standing there, agreeing with him about what I thought, felt, and wanted. This was happening to me before I had time to process what just came out of my mouth. To say I was confused is an understatement. I wasn’t in control of the conversation—hell, I wasn’t even in control of me anymore.

The agenda at the start of my visit was to talk about hypnosis, exchange ideas, and get to know the man who had opened a hypnosis clinic in my town. Very quickly, I realized that he had some kind of access to my thoughts and feelings that seemed to be half intuition, half knowledge, and half shot in the dark. I don’t know a better way to express it—it was like being made of glass, and he moved me around until he could look into any part of me that he was interested in. If he couldn’t see what he wanted, he simply persuaded me to tell him about it. It was similar to the feeling you get when you just bought something you didn’t really want…you know something just happened to you, but you’re not quite sure what happened or how.

My simple meet and greet turned into something much stranger and more interesting very quickly. I could give you a short list of psychological theories or other sleights of mind to explain what happened, but it's much easier to say that he understood more about why I was there than I did. Scott looked at me, listened to what I said, and then went on to tell me what I was feeling and what I probably wanted. What he told me was very different than what I came to talk about, and it was very different than what I thought I wanted. But here we are, some fifteen years later…and—ok, fine…he was right.

Conversations with Scott aren’t easy. He is relentlessly focused on you and what you’re saying, feeling, and doing. He watches you with an intensity that, when you first meet him, can only be called uncomfortable. He doesn’t miss anything. Your slightest movement, facial expression, or word usage is taken in. His attention is simply inescapable.

Imagine for a moment, that you stopped to meet someone for the first time. This individual denies you any opportunity at small talk. He denies you any opportunity to engage in the little evasions and dishonesties that we use on each other every day.

Then he goes on to tell you what you’re actually thinking and feeling, without you ever having said anything about it—and you know inside that he's right. Then he has the audacity to ask you if he's right…and all you can do is look at your shoes and say, Yes. If you’re reading this and thinking, Wow, that would be difficult, you’re correct. If you’re reading this and thinking, That sounds like a bunch of crap, I can’t wait to talk with you after you meet him.

Right after he told me what I was worried about and what I probably wanted, he told me he was happy to help me achieve it. By this point, the entire experience had become intolerable. I was confused, vulnerable, and I really had no idea what had just happened to me or why the hell I had gone along with it. I immediately made my excuses, thanked him for his time, and left.

As I walked out to my car, I was kind of lost for a bit. I was thrown far outside what was normal interaction for me, and I couldn’t immediately self-correct. I couldn’t understand what had happened to me or why I went along with it. I was both worried and fascinated. But make no mistake—I was crystal clear about my conversation with him and what it meant.

I walked out of Dakota Hypnosis very aware of what I really wanted to do with my life. The rest of the day, I walked around in this strange sense of vulnerability and openness. It took me a while to understand what I was feeling, but I was finally able to name the sensation: wonder.

As the days passed, I began to talk myself through, and then out of, what had happened with Scott. He really didn’t know what he was talking about and was probably just guessing when he said all those things. At any rate, it didn’t matter. That whole event was just some sort of weird coincidence. I remember explaining to a friend about the strange man I’d met, and I said that meeting him felt like meeting an amazing used-car salesman. Then I went on to explain, and belittle, the sense of wonder he’d produced in me.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had a real problem, and Scott was right about it. The genie was out of the bottle, and Scott had not only let him out but gotten me to agree to let him move into my house and sublet the top room. Something that I never said aloud, and never took responsibility for, was laid right out in front of me…and I consented to the whole thing.

Scott had taken the thoughts and feelings I couldn’t own, and he’d said them to me with certainty and then gotten me to agree with him. This problem, this vision of my future, never left my attention again. For almost fifteen years, I traveled and worked and tried to solve my problem on my own. Spoiler alert…I didn’t.

First Meeting with Dan

SM | Dan came into the office and immediately had what I would call an intellectual but boyish demeanor and posture. It was clear to me that he was interested in proving his competency to himself. It was also clear that he was systems oriented and rules were important to him in a way that I would call naive. Keep in mind this was many years ago, and Dan is not in this mode today.

He began to tell me many of the NLP and hypnosis greats that he had trained with before (this happens a lot when doing my job). I started to pattern interrupt his pride in the past trainings. This choice was made based on the sweeping assumption that, if those trainings had worked, he would look less eager to prove himself, as that would all have been past tense. He also had a sensitive look, as though approval was more important to him than it should have been.

Instead of rapport and validation, I read Dan's demeanor. Then I put the hidden needs and agendas that might be within him on the table. This process included where he was feeling real or thinking he was faking it. I also talked about his need to prove competency and how it was robbing him of being in the moment. I pointed out the way he was over computing and guessed at the reason why he was doing so. Then I asked Dan questions to clarify what he was looking for…while making it clear I was not in need of anything back. Dan felt that this position was incongruent, which helped to make an impression on him.

The approach to the conversation was to use pattern interruption and ego-down strategies to loosen Dan's current model of the world and his assumptions. Because of his good manners and duty orientation, this approach had its desired outcome. He looked confused, backtracked, and began to explain again. I then openly read Dan's look of needing approval and told him it seemed he was missing something from authority figures in the past. I took a management position and was extremely direct and congruent.

The conversation was chunking up on my end and backing into a more expanded look at what he was going through. I had the sense that this is what he needed and that it was working. It did work, yet our next conversation would be fourteen years or so in the future. Often, the gratitude and acknowledgment of this type of deep conversation spans more time than one would think.

DB | If you want to learn something or change something, you have to surrender into a few things. First, you have to acknowledge that you can’t do it. You have to level with yourself and with whoever you’re interacting with that you can’t do X, whatever it is. Second, you have to acknowledge that you need help. You need to level with yourself and with the person you’re interacting with that you need their help to learn. Finally, you have to surrender into the idea that, if you want to learn X, you don’t get to be in charge. You don’t get to ask for help and then decide what you want to do and don’t want to do, or what's correct or not correct.

To learn/change requires that you level about what you feel and then surrender what you think you need so that you can actually take in something new. If you try to learn/change and maintain your ability to judge what you believe and what you need, you won’t learn anything. All you’ll do is take in information. Acquiring information isn’t learning or change.

Another point to notice here is that Scott is focused on seeing me. Seeing what I do, how I appear, and what my body and face are showing. He's taking in the information, making assumptions, and using indictive reasoning to better understand not only where I’ve been but where I’m going. He's starting to focus on my outcome, right from the start. What's the outcome I’m looking for, and what do I need to get there. Because he works from the big picture, this can be hard to see at times. From the very start, he's working to ensure that he understands what I want and how he can work with me in a way that will get me there. This focus on the person and what they need is how he meets everyone.

I should tell you that I’m a psychologist. I went to school for the better part of a decade learning to help people change what they think, feel, and do. I’m a licensed expert in the practice of human change with multiple specialties. I’m primarily a psychotherapist. I use theory, research, and technique to help people cope with the difficulties of life.

My problem was that psychology, and its stepchild psychotherapy, didn’t seem nearly as effective as I thought they should be. When I was in school, psychology was very sure of itself. I studied its classics, read its research and applied the techniques I was taught. I went to class, I went to workshops, and I became certified in different approaches to psychotherapy. I practiced for years and saw thousands of patients. Yet, I didn’t have the sense that I was really helping most of the people that came to see me.

I could listen and empathize. And yes, this seemed to help many people. But if they needed to actually change something—beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviors—and they needed it desperately, that was a whole other story. I could empathize, but I couldn’t effectively and reliably help people change when they needed it. Very often I went to bed at night, and I felt like a fraud.

The next morning, I would get up, go to work, and do it all again. I honestly didn’t have a sense that I was really helping most of the people I worked with. Don’t get me wrong—almost every human being feels better when they sit down with another person, talk about their thoughts and feelings, and get feedback that's supportive and empathetic. This was great, but I had a clear sense that there had to be more than this. I took money from people with the expectation that I was supposed to help them change, not just have them go home feeling like I understood their suffering. I owed them more than support, empathy, and my personal insight. You can get support, empathy, and insight from your neighbor.

I guess it would be better to say that I felt inauthentic, like I was pretending to be something, when in fact, I wasn’t that thing—or at least, wasn’t a very good version of it. The sense of being a fraud, the sense of saying you can do something that you’re not really sure you can do, is made much more complicated when you ask for money at the end of the session. I didn’t feel like what I was doing was making the kind of difference I should have been making. I didn’t feel like I was effective at helping others change in a way that they could actually feel…and keep. This was my problem.

The fact that I felt inauthentic bothered me endlessly. I was trying to find a solution to this, and I was looking under every rock and behind every bush. Every time I looked around, someone had invented a new perspective on the task of psychotherapy. Somebody, somewhere, had reinvented the wheel. I went down a great many of these alleyways trying to find an answer to my problem.

Every time I thought I’d found the answer or thought I’d found the approach that would change everything, I still felt like a fraud at the end of that too. I only needed to go down this alley ten or fifteen times before it struck me—there may be nothing to find in these alleyways. Then I had to go back to an idea I’d considered before: Maybe it's psychology that has the problem.

I looked around at others. I was certain that other clinicians in my field had to be experiencing the same sense of being a fraud or feeling inauthentic that I did. Amazingly, this didn’t seem to be the case. Everywhere I went people talked about how meaningful their work was. They talked about their skills and how they were just certified in this form of therapy or how they worked with some group or diagnosis.

Psychology and psychotherapy seemed to be acknowledging its effectiveness all around me. I was standing in the middle of all this and was not able to understand why I didn’t feel competent. It seemed at times as if I was the only one struggling with the feeling that I wasn’t actually helping people.

For quite a while, I thought this was about myself. I thought maybe I had missed something, or somehow, I had a character flaw that kept me from being as effective as the clinicians around me seemed to be. I focused on maintaining a professional practice. Fully informing my patients about what was happening. Allowing them to make conscious decisions about what they did and didn’t want to do. I reinforced their ability to control their own lives and their relationship with me.

I believed in them and believed that they were giving me the absolute best of themselves every time I interacted with them. I believed that people wanted to change and that all I had to do was form a therapeutic relationship with them and that this relationship would be the foundation for that person's growth, development, and change. I believed all this and more. I was open to new ideas and new techniques. Ideas about mindfulness, focusing more on the body, or focusing more on cognition. All this work, and I would still go to bed at night and feel like I wasn’t able to help many of my patients achieve a real and lasting change. It must be me…right?

Maybe I was the only one in the field of psychology/psychotherapy who was struggling with this. Maybe I was the only one that went to school, continued to learn, worked hard, and didn’t feel effective. I suppose that's possible. It's possible that everyone around me was simply better than I was at helping others change. But when I looked closely at what other clinicians were doing, it didn’t seem to be anything different from what I was doing.

I started to suspect then—and now, I’m almost positive—that I wasn’t alone. I believe that the field of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy is filled with good people, trying their hardest to help those who come and see them. And every day they go home and wonder if they did anyone any good or helped anyone at all. And like me, they felt like a fraud.

Fourteen years. I spent fourteen years searching for an answer to this. I spent fourteen years feeling like a fraud to some degree. Honestly, I did get better during those fourteen years. My ability to help people change improved in many ways, and my sense of being a fraud diminished some. But it never went away. The more serious the problems my patient presented, and the more severe their emotional pain, the more I struggled to feel like I was able to help them.

Put simply, that last sentence translates to The more a patient needed me, the less I felt like I was probably helping them.

This makes sense when you think about it. It's the toughest problems that are the most difficult to help someone cope with. I understand that. But after fourteen years of work, I started to consider again, strongly consider, that my problem may not be mine alone. I started to believe that, to some significant degree, the problem may lie with psychology and psychotherapy itself.

During my fourteen years, I never gave up the search. I read, went to trainings, obtained certifications, and worked to become better as a psychologist or psychotherapist. But the more I