Thanks again to angel love for her editing, she has helped my writing a great deal. Feel free to leave comments good or bad but only constructive criticism. If you just want to bash me or the story, save it for someone else.
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Jim and I had been good friends in high school but after graduating we slowly lost touch with each other. At our twentieth class reunion I saw him for the first time in many years. We were fairly able to pick right back up where we left off. Now we were both married and had kids so we had lots of catching up to do.
At the reunion Jim was telling me about the business he was in; hypnosis to lose weight or stop smoking. We talked some about it at the table during the reunion and it sounded interesting. My wife was asking him if he ever used hypnosis for anything else. I knew where she was going with her questions because she had always said she would never allow herself to be hypnotized because she was afraid of what someone might do when she was out or what suggestions they might leave in her mind. Jim quickly answered that he had never used hypnosis for anything but what he advertised. His wife admitted to having Jim hypnotize her to help her both stop smoking and to lose weight. From looking at her, it obviously worked very well.
As the evening went on, we got caught up on all other aspects of each others lives, traded phone numbers and email addresses and promised to keep in touch. As we were driving home, I was telling my wife that I thought I would talk to Jim about helping me lose some weight. She just looked at me and laughed.
"Like you need to lose weight," she said.
Going to the extreme of hypnosis to lose the ten or fifteen pounds I needed to lose was probably overkill but we always look for the easy answer, the one that requires no exercise and allows us to eat whatever we want. There was also an ulterior motive for me suggesting I try hypnosis to lose weight. I was hoping my wife would want to try it as well. While I could stand to lose ten or fifteen pounds my wife could stand to lose twenty or twenty-five.
Several months after the high school reunion I was surprised how many of my friends and co-workers had said something about wanting to lose weight or to stop smoking. Each time the subject came up I referred them to Jim. Jim called one day to thank me for all the business I had sent his way. He told me I had a free session coming anytime I wanted. He had seen my wife at the reunion and it was clear he was offering to help her lose weight without coming out right and saying it. I told him thanks and I'd let him know when I was ready to take him up on it.
That night at dinner I told my wife about Jim calling and thanking me for all the business. I also told her about how happy those people I had sent to Jim were with the results. Carefully avoiding the pit falls of talking to my wife about her weight I suggested she could use the free session Jim had offered since she was getting disappointed with the latest diet she was on. She quickly restated her objections to the whole hypnosis thing, basically her fear of not being in control. Reminding her that Jim was a friend and therefore not just some stranger and offering to be there with her while she was hypnotized seemed to have little effect on her resistance.
As the holidays approached my wife became extremely frustrated with her continuing failures to lose weight. One afternoon she blurted out maybe Jim's hypnosis was the only way she was going to lose weight before Christmas when all of our family was going to be in town. Trying not to seem too anxious, I told her if she was really ready to try it I'd give Jim a call but that she needed to think about it to make sure it was what she wanted to do.
That evening when we were in bed Teri said she had thought about it and decided she wanted to try hypnosis, but only if I was in the room with her when Jim hypnotized her. I told her I would want to be anyway and that I would give Jim a call the next day to make the appointment. Just thinking about how she was going to look after losing weight gave me a hard on. Teri and I had sex for the first time in a couple of weeks that night.
The next day I called Jim to set up an appointment for Teri. I left a message for him and he called back when he was done with a client. We made an appointment for Teri and me to see him in a couple of days and suggested he and I meet for lunch before then so he could answer any questions I had. We decided on the time and place to meet the next day for lunch.
At lunch Jim went over how the process works and he had no problem with me wanting to be in the room. I asked about what kind of behavioral modification could be accomplished with hypnotism and he told me how it can help people that are afraid of public speaking, flying and can even help with some sexual inhibitions.
When Jim said sexual inhibitions, my mind started working right away and I said, "Oh really?" with a grin.
"Really," he said smiling back. "Are there some things about Teri you'd like to change? Sexually, that is. With all the business you've sent my way I'd be willing to give you more than just the standard session, if you know what I mean."
I wasn't sure I did know what Jim meant but I wanted to find out more. "Just what kind of things could you do?" I asked.
"Well it depends on what you want. What kind of problem are you wanting to fix?" he questioned.
I told him about how Teri had changed as we had gotten older and how I sometimes missed her wild side. Things like wearing sexy clothes, occasionally flashing me in public or letting me play with some light bondage. Jim smiled and said he thought he could get those things back if it's what I really wanted. He was very quick to say he did not do this with any of his other patients but that he had done some experimenting with his wife and it had worked out very well.
"I think I'd like to do what we're talking about but let me sleep on it. Can I let you know for sure tomorrow when we get to your office?" I asked.
"Sure," he said, "just give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down once I have Teri hypnotized.
Jim insisted on paying for lunch and we parted both saying we'd see the other tomorrow. All afternoon I could hardly work as I thought about the possibilities of both the benefits and downsides to taking Jim up on his offer. The majority of my thoughts were about the benefits. All I could think of was my wife back at the weight she was when we met and back to being willing to do the things she once had. This had the potential to make our sex life everything I wanted it to be. There were undoubtedly risks but those thoughts were fleeting and not very well formed.
I took the day off so I could be with Teri during her session as well as the rest of the day. Our appointment with Jim was at 9:30 a.m. He welcomed us into his office and had us sit down. Teri was obviously nervous as he started telling her some of what he told me the day before at lunch. Of course he left out the parts about anything but the process and how it would help her lose weight. Jim's voice was very calm and soothing and I could see it was easing the tension and nervousness Teri had. Jim pulled out a small wheel with a spiral on it and showed it to Teri. He started to twirl it and continued to talk to her in a calm voice. Soon Jim was telling Teri to relax deeper and deeper until she could no longer hold her eyes open.
Once Teri's eyes closed Jim stopped twirling the wheel and he started talking to Teri about her eating habits. He suggested foods she would no longer find to her liking and at the same time how she would feel full after only a small portion. He also told her how she was going to need to eat healthy, well-balanced meals as she wasn't going to be eating as much as she had before.
Jim asked Teri if she understood what he was saying and she acknowledged she did. Then Jim told her that to look the way she wanted to she was also going to have to exercise. He suggested she would want to go to the gym at least four days a week and that she would feel energized after her workouts.
At this point Jim looked at me with a questioning look and I gave him a thumbs up. He continued to talk to Teri and told her that as she began to lose weight and gain muscle tone with her workouts that she would start to feel good about the way she looked, as much as she ever had when she was younger. She would be proud of her body and would enjoy flaunting it some. Then Jim told her something that surprised me.
He said "Teri, once you are fully awake you will not remember anything about this conversation other than what we discussed in the way of diet and exercise. The thoughts you have about your body and how you feel about it will be as they were completely your own. Also, once you are fully awake, your husband Jeff will be able to suggest things to you that will also be as if they were completely your own thoughts. Your own sense of right and wrong will determine whether you follow these thoughts. Jeff will give these thoughts to you with the phrase 'If I were you, this is what I'd do' and followed by 'but it's up to you.' When you hear Jeff say, 'If I were you, this is what I'd do,' everything he suggests until he says, 'but it's up to you' will be as it was your own thought. Do you understand?" Teri said she did.
I couldn't believe the gift Jim had just given me. In effect I was going to be able to hypnotize my wife by some simple words, give her a hypnotic suggestion and then bring her out of hypnosis with a few more simple words. If this worked, it was going to be fantastic. Jim once again told Teri she would only remember the discussion about diet and exercise and that all suggestions and her own thoughts would continue to be governed by her own sense of right and wrong. He also restated that only when I used the words 'If I were you, this is what I'd do' would she take those suggestions as her own thoughts. Anytime anyone else said those words they would not have any more weight than any other time.
Jim began to have Teri slowly come back from her hyper relaxed state. He told her she would feel rested and refreshed when she was fully awake. He counted backwards from five to one and Teri was back awake. Teri smiled and asked if that's all there was to it. Jim assured her it was and asked if she remembered what they had talked about. She was surprised but she remembered the whole conversation. At least she thought she did. She retold the part about smaller portions and not eating certain foods and also about going to the gym four days a week.