The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners.

By Patrick Singleton

I’ve been working with people’s allergies for a long time, and it’s very rewarding because it’s an area of so much unnecessary suffering for so many people. At this point I think I’ve worked with just about every conceivable allergy, except those which lead to anaphylactic shock. I stay away from those life-threatening allergies because I can’t guarantee the outcome of a session, and I don’t want someone to not take appropriate action if the need arises.

One of my earliest memories of working with allergies was with a client who reported that she was allergic to any kind of perfume or cologne or aftershave. And it turned out that this also included scented shampoos, make-up, and more. Basically, if she could smell anything on a person, including any strong body odor, (even “natural” body odor).

In regression, we discovered that her original reaction had to do with some women whom she was afraid of as a child. A mistake on her part lead to her taking the hand of one of these women, thinking she had grabbed her mother’s hand. When she realized her mistake, the fear which she already felt towards the women was vividly imprinted in her mind – along with the strong smell of perfume these woman always wore! In fact, that strong perfume
smell was part of the original reason why my client had decided that this woman was “scary!”

Once that association was clear, it was a pretty straightforward process of reprogramming her responses to people with strong smells. We only had to do one Session to clear this response, which she had experienced ever since early childhood.

Another Client had an allergy to cats but loved them and desperately wanted one as a pet. In her case, I induced a trance and used the NLP Method known as the “Counter Example Process.” I did this because even though my client was allergic to cats, she had never had any problems with dogs. And, you may be wondering, how does her response to dogs have anything to do with how she responds to cats? Well the fact is, that it doesn’t. However, by using her natural, healthy response to dogs as an example, we essentially taught her Subconscious, and her immune system to respond to cats exactly the same way that she already responded to dogs. This worked so well, that a few months later, she decided that her cat needed a companion, and adopted a second cat. She never had any problems with either one of them.

Another Client was a person I worked with over the phone, and also was allergic to a cat. And the most interesting part of it was that it was his girlfriend’s cat that he was allergic to. However, she had two cats, and he was only allergic to the one that was “always coming between him and her,” by trying to jump into her lap when he was trying to flirt with her or kiss her. He had no problem with the “aloof” cat, only the “lovey-dovey” one who always

wanted physical attention and affection! This demonstrates that this allergy was not purely physiological.

Once again, I used a slightly modified version of the NLP Process. The email I got back after the session was; “CAT-TASTIC!!” He never had another problem with that cat or the other one, even though the more affectionate cat did not change its behavior.

I’ve also worked a lot with food allergies over the years. A few years ago I was presenting at another Hypnotherapy Conference on the other side of the country, and a woman spotted me in the hallway and literally ran up to me and hugged me so hard that she broke the frame of the sunglasses I had hanging from my collar!

It turned out that she had been a student at the Hypnotherapy school in Santa Fe where I taught Hypnotherapy and NLP for 14 years. And while she had been a student, she had gotten a private Session with me for her food allergies. When she got back home after the training, the fact that she no longer had the allergies was the only thing her family accepted as any evidence that her training had been worth doing, instead of something crazy. Obviously her family did not understand the value and benefit of Hypnotherapy or of learning how to do it, the absence of her food allergies was solid evidence to them that something ”real” had happened. So she was very grateful for that, and ended up sending a pair of “indestructible” sunglasses in the mail after that conference.

Patrick has been teaching Hypnotherapy and NLP for 21 years, and has conducted thousands of private sessions. He is a former presenter at the ACHE Conference, a certified Hypnotherapy Instructor withACHE, and a Master Practitioner of NLP. patrickbreathes@gmail.com