Who I work with: business owners who can't turn their brain off

I work with business owners and people whose career follows them home, a lot of them gay and bisexual men, whose brain will not turn off at night. Clinical hypnotherapy with motivational interviewing and parts work, online from Seattle, $250 a session. Not psychotherapy, not addiction treatment, and I say so when you need those.

Does any of this sound like you?

• You've left the word “husband” out of a business conversation because it was simpler that way.
• You wake up at three or four in the morning already solving a problem that nobody else knows about yet.
• You are respected all day, and by the time you get home there is nothing left for the man you live with.
• He has stopped asking when it's going to calm down.
• A good month makes you feel like a genius and one bad week makes you feel like a fraud, and there is nothing in between.
• You can explain your business strategy in detail, and you can't say what you need.

Why this page exists

I'm a gay man and I have run my own business. When I went looking for help, I could not find one person who understood both at the same time.

There are excellent therapists who have never had to make payroll and don't know what that does to a person. There are excellent business coaches whose whole picture of a life assumes a wife and a church, and they never say that in their marketing, because they don't have to. You find out when they start talking about family and discipline and what a man is supposed to be building.

So you translate. You say “my partner” and watch their face, and you decide it's simpler to keep the personal part vague and just take the business advice. That works until the thing you actually need help with is the personal part, and in my experience it usually is.

Is this a serious thing that serious people do?

The question I hear most is not whether hypnotherapy works. It's whether this is something serious people actually do, or whether it's a bit woo-woo. That's a fair question, so here is what's on the record.

“I think the word hypnotherapy is a bit woo woo, and maybe it is. It's more like a guided meditation.”

I put that quote here because of the first half. Sam Parr is a skeptical, numbers-driven guy who found the name embarrassing and did it anyway, more than once, because it worked for him. That is the most common way people end up in my office.

• CNBC reported in 2019 that Fortune 500 executives and entrepreneurs were increasingly using hypnosis for performance and anxiety, and that practitioners were seeing more business clients. CNBC, October 2019
• More than one in five professionals say they have used hypnosis or hypnotherapy for a work problem, according to a survey by the American Hypnosis Association. That is an industry body reporting on its own field, so take the number as a sign, not as independent proof.
• The research on anxiety is solid. A meta-analysis of 17 controlled trials found that the average person treated with hypnosis for anxiety did better than roughly 84% of people who got no treatment, and the effect held at follow-up.

None of these people know me, and none of this is an endorsement of my practice. I'm just putting it out there: this is a normal thing among people who run companies. They don't post about it, for the same reason you haven't mentioned it to anybody.

Four kinds of business owner I see

“Business owner” covers very different situations, and treating them as one is why most support for founders is so generic. These are the four I see most.

All four are welcome, and I'm not going to pretend they are the same work.

Can this help my business?

I'm not going to promise you'll make more money. Nobody honest can. What I can do is help you with the things underneath how you run it. First, your patterns around money. A lot of business owners run on scarcity, whether they make six figures or millions: undercharging, keeping a client they should have let go, not being able to relax in a slow month even with money in the bank. With hypnosis we look at where those patterns come from, and usually they are a lot older than the business. Second, the stress and the anxiety. When your nervous system calms down and you understand your own money story, you make decisions from a different place, and in my experience the business feels that.

What I work with

• You run a business and you can't turn your brain off. That's this page. Sessions and prices.
• Your neck, your back or your migraines won't let up, and the chiropractor only helps for a few days. painreliefhypnosis.org, my separate site for pain.
• Your husband asked for a divorce and you still have to show up to work. Read that page.
• The man you love drinks or uses, and you've become very good at managing it. Read that page.

What I don't do

I don't do couples counseling. And sober curiosity is not a replacement for addiction treatment. If that is what you need, I'll tell you, and I'll help you find the right person.

P.S. For pain management, I'd love to connect with your doctor, because pain management is team work.

Sessions and prices