Help clients respond constructively to Backstabbing with the Dealing with the Backstabber Hypnosis Script

Backstabbing is a painful experience. For many people, the resulting hurt, anger, frustration, and mistrust can feel almost impossible to overcome.

The Dealing with the Backstabber Hypnosis Script from The Script Collection was put together to help clients overcome these feelings and find a constructive path forward.

The pre-talk sympathizes with the pain of being stabbed in the back by a trusted friend or colleague. It offers practical suggestions for dealing with backstabbing, as well as ideas as to why people may resort to this kind of behaviour. It ends on a positive note with the assurance that the session will help ease the stress of the event and help the client deal with the situation calmly and effectively.

The induction begins by guiding the client to breathe deeply, before asking them to remember the situation with the backstabber and lean into the associated feelings and physical sensations. They are reassured that their tension around the situation is a perfectly normal response.

Now they are asked to drift outside themselves and gain a sense of distance so that they can recognize the pattern of the backstabber's behavior as something that has existed within that person over time, and also in many people throughout history. In this way they can begin to see and understand the backstabbing behaviour in a calmer, more objective way.

Expanding on this perspective, the folk tale of the scorpion stinging the frog in the middle of the river demonstrates how backstabbing behavior can be an inherent part of a person's nature even when it is not self-serving, while the example of seeding discord in an enemy dictatorship shows how "every skill has its place," even backstabbing behavior.

Now with a broader understanding of backstabbing behavior, the client is invited to step back into themselves to find that "something within [them]" begins to relax. The client is not pressured to feel completely comfortable just yet, but rather to just notice how a relaxation of even ten or fifteen percent can begin to create a sense of space between how they felt before and how they feel now.

The focus now turns to deepening the client's relaxation. They are guided to relax the facial muscles and the shoulders, and then to feel the "knot of tension" inside unravelling. This process is tied to the breath, such that every exhalation engenders deeper release. A countdown extending into the negative pulls the client even deeper into trance.

In a state of deep trance, the client now experiences a "glowing light" of "soothing kindness and compassion" flowing into the body. This is followed by gentle embedded commands reassuring them that they are okay, they will get through this, and they will be able to calmly, confidently "change things for the better."

Again the client is asked to drift outside themselves, this time to a distant mountaintop where they can gain complete clarity on what is and isn't useful about the way they had been tackling the situation "until now." As the unhelpful thoughts are unpacked and new, more constructive ways of responding suggested, the phrase "that you over there" maintains a sense of distance and objectivity.

Wider context is developed as the situation is presented as no more than a blip on the timeline of the client's whole life. Now with a sense of temporal as well as spatial distance from the painful situation, possible approaches and strategies are explored and the client is encouraged to "experience new choices… and new perspectives… coming to mind."

Now the client is asked to watch that distant version of themselves relaxing even further and to notice the associated physical and mental changes that allow them to deal with the situation calmly and confidently. Finally the client is given permission to merge with that self and experience the relief of having already dealt with the situation.

Add the Dealing with the Backstabber Hypnosis Script to your script library today!

Dealing with the Backstabber is also available as an MP3 download.