[00:00:00] Martin Furber: Okay, here we are, episode two, series seven, and we've got a guest with us, Les Roberts. Denise, welcome our guest to the show.
[00:00:07] Denise Billen-Mejia: Hi Les, how are you up there near Manchester? That's about the only thing I remember about you. So what, why don't you give a little tiny bio to the people who may not have met you on the other formats?
[00:00:19] Les Roberts: Yeah, so I'm between Manchester and Liverpool Manchester born and bred. I'm a Manchester girl but I've lived in St. Helens for about 35 years now, something like that. So for those people who've never heard of me before, I'm a clinical hypnotherapist, but I'm also an NLP practitioner and eye movement therapist.
a EFT practitioner and a child's counsellor. Although I don't really use my counselling skills anymore. I specialise in working with children, even though I still see adults, and when I say I still see adults, I support the parents. I'm very proud of the children that I see, as well as a few, adults who insist on seeing me.
[00:01:05] Denise Billen-Mejia: So you've really made your own specialty? Yes.
[00:01:08] Martin Furber: Your
own niche and you've been way too modest there Les as well. Because I also know that you are currently teaching a cohort of people to be hypnotherapists.
[00:01:17] Les Roberts: I am., I had three students and they qualified beginning of October.
so my next intake is for January. 2025 with a view to those students qualifying in October 2025.
[00:01:30] Martin Furber: Fantastic. So
it's a 10 month course.
[00:01:35] Les Roberts: It is. Yeah.
[00:01:36] Martin Furber: Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. And it's accredited, isn't it?
[00:01:39] Les Roberts: It
is. GHR, General Hypnotherapy Register.
[00:01:43] Martin Furber: Which if you're viewing or listening to this in America is a registry of note in the UK for professional hypnotherapists.
[00:01:51] Les Roberts: It is. It's a very, it's a very good institution to be connected to as well.
[00:01:57] Martin Furber: How have you found it being a hypnotherapy trainer rather than delivering hypnotherapy?
[00:02:03] Les Roberts: I just think it's absolutely fantastic. It's so empowering and all of the skills, if you remember when you're training all of the skills that you tend to forget, they fall at the wayside because you usually use the same.
sort of approaches, don't you? The same methodologies.
[00:02:21] Denise Billen-Mejia: And you tend to attract certain problems, which definitely across the board. Yeah.
[00:02:29] Les Roberts: Yeah. So it's really encouraged me to think out of the box more and think, okay, I've got these skills, but I've also got more skills. So when my course started off, when I first wrote the prospectives it's now probably twice the size.
But that goes for my other course that I run, working with children, it started off, just a few subjects and now that's increasing all the time. It just start to morph into better courses, don't they, the more you do them. But I just find it so empowering.
[00:03:00] Martin Furber: Brilliant. So if somebody were to train with you to be a clinical hypnotherapist, okay, what additional things will they learn?
Have you thrown some NLP techniques in there?
[00:03:09] Les Roberts: Oh
yes, definitely.
[00:03:11] Martin Furber: How did I guess that?
[00:03:14] Les Roberts: I was NLP trained first. NLP comes first. And it's all about having that language and that ability to change that language because if you haven't got that ability to change that thought process, that inner language, then it's you're going to have to work doubly hard at, your hypnotherapy.
So yeah. Oh, NLP through and through. I think if you cut me in half, I'd add NLP,
[00:03:37] Denise Billen-Mejia: Brighton rock. Yeah. So my dear, what aspect of your work do you think has changed most since we last spoke to you, which is a good while back now?
[00:03:50] Les Roberts: It has, it was about two years ago. Yeah. What's changed? My CIC company and my community interest company has it's more and more recognized within my community.
So much so I think in the last. It's two years, especially it's become my name, has become quite well known within certain circles, especially with social services. So if there's any looked after children or any children under social services who needs that extra little bit of help, then they will ask me to see the children.
So I've seen quite a few looked after children and also with the the holidays activity and food classes that I run for the council, there's a lot of looked after children come through, but also I get a lot of neurodiverse children as well now. That's expanding my toolbox, that little bit more.
[00:04:47] Denise Billen-Mejia: Good.
[00:04:48] Martin Furber: Okay. So let's just, let me just Pick you up there on children are neurodiverse. Okay. How are you finding? Any therapeutic techniques with them? Are you finding any particularly more helpful than others? For example, I'm thinking of children who may be
[00:05:03] Denise Billen-Mejia: It does depend on what the diversion is.
[00:05:05] Martin Furber: Yeah, I'm just thinking of
particularly children who may have autism, who may Experience difficulties visualising, for example.
[00:05:13] Les Roberts: Yeah I'm as far as the the communication is concerned, I'm Makaton trained as well, which is a form of signed language that you can use for some children. But not really children who are on the spectrum, but I'm also PECS trained, which is picture exchange communication, where you can use symbols and pictures to communicate.
And what I do, to be perfectly honest, is when any children come to our classes or they come, to do some crafting, I will just treat them how they present. And that label goes out the window, so to speak within a way. And I let them join in at their pace. Now we have a lovely young lady that has been coming to see us for the past, I'd say two, two years.
And she's she suffers with selective mutism. So we've just left her. She knows we're there. We talk to her. We sit with her. We communicate with her. She nods and she gestures.
[00:06:16] Denise Billen-Mejia: She doesn't feel
pressured.
[00:06:17] Les Roberts: Yeah, , because the last thing you want to do is start to push, especially a child, to do things and what we found is In summer, she actually started to talk to my daughter which was just fantastic, absolutely fantastic.
But we've we have a wide variety of children that come in at all ages from five to 16 and we just treat them all exactly the same, but we bear in mind what parameters we've got, what their limitations and, we make sure that if they are struggling, then, we do give them a hand.
[00:06:50] Denise Billen-Mejia: It's not somewhere they feel even more pressure to do something else.
[00:06:54] Les Roberts: Yeah. But I think what we do, and when I say we, my daughter and my son also run these classes. And what we do as a collective is we just make them as comfortable as possible and they join in at their pace. But what we also do is we do crafting, but we do basic, easy crafting.
That they, They're capable of doing of all ages from 5 to 16, but make it interesting. And each craft has a purpose. So if we talk about emotions like the primitive emotion, that very strong emotion called anger, we explain to them that anger, is there for a reason. There's a place and a purpose for
it.
It's not, you don't keep it, you have to
[00:07:41] Denise Billen-Mejia: Not all the time.
[00:07:42] Les Roberts: design it effectively, yeah. Yeah. We make things like volcanoes, and the children
make the volcanoes, and we explain, the volcano
[00:07:50] Denise Billen-Mejia: I don't think there's a mother on the planet who hasn't had to help with that.
build volcanoes in their house.
[00:07:56] Les Roberts: Exactly. So we do things that they can relate to at home as well. So they're not hard crafts. One of the crafts, I'm just looking around and see if I've got something here. One of the crafts that we do is we make hot air balloons and it's just paper and a paper cup with string or wool.
And they put the worries into the hot air balloon and send them on their way. That's a nice little hypnosis technique. Yeah, it is.
[00:08:23] Martin Furber: Yeah. We
do that in hypnosis, don't we? Yeah, I do
[00:08:27] Les Roberts: that. Exactly. Exactly. So it is like a form of waking hypnosis, really. Because, as when a child gets creative, a child will use that side of the brain.
[00:08:36] Martin Furber: Absolutely. Crafting is therapeutic in itself, isn't it? This obviously sounds like you have got extremely busy on that side of your business. It's the last time we spoke because I was aware of the events you were hosting during the school holidays for children. Okay. But you did mention before we came on air.
about how you now engage with social services for cared for children. So I'm assuming you're helping children with, from a therapeutic aspect at all times of the year now.
[00:09:06] Les Roberts: Yes. Yeah, I've had quite a few requests from social services to help with children and I've gone into schools by request, but also, the children have come to see me for different reasons.
And these could be reasons why they're. in foster care. They could be because of their past. I've worked with I was very privileged to work with a young girl who had issues, family issues, and then I ended up with the whole family as a family. And we did some family group therapy and that went really well and I was so happy that I was able to help them to rebuild.
[00:09:44] Denise Billen-Mejia: When you're
working with that kind of community, it's very insular, do you use hypnotic techniques or are these other counselling skills that you bring forward?
[00:09:54] Les Roberts: I don't
know, because I think I'm slipping things in, subliminally.
[00:09:59] Denise Billen-Mejia: It just feels normal that we all do, doesn't it?
[00:10:01] Martin Furber: Yeah,
we do. Like you say, waking hypnosis in a way.
[00:10:03] Les Roberts: Yeah. But I do I do enjoy it. And I don't know whether last time that we spoke, I told you I work for, I did a few weeks courses for the domestic violence rehab team.
[00:10:19] Denise Billen-Mejia: That's a useful thing.
[00:10:20] Les Roberts: So that was when the perpetrator had left. So it's usually the female that's left at home, the wife or the partner that's left at home.
And that was helping the children and the mom. to forge those relationships, to build those bridges and build that trust back. And that was really good.
[00:10:40] Martin Furber: I imagine
Very intense, but very satisfying.
[00:10:44] Les Roberts: Oh,
so much so to watch these families who were divided through no fault of their own.
actually witness them after six weeks, bringing them together. It's just, I'd do it for nothing if I could.
[00:10:56] Denise Billen-Mejia: I think most hypnotists I know would do the work anyway.
[00:10:59] Les Roberts: Yeah.
[00:11:00] Denise Billen-Mejia: But yeah, you do have to keep the lights on at home.
[00:11:02] Les Roberts: You
do. But that, but working, especially with children has just, Elevated me to the, to what I feel is the next step.
So I've actually got a course out as well for working with children, which I've delivered to quite a few times now. The last one was just weekend just gone. And that's like a masterclass diploma.
[00:11:27] Martin Furber: So you're teaching. Therapists, you're adding to their skill sets, teaching, like a hypnotherapy sort of thing, yet you're producing a CPD to help them
work better with children.
[00:11:38] Les Roberts: Yeah, so it's a diploma which I am now going to apply to the GHR to get accreditation for it.
[00:11:46] Martin Furber: Fantastic.
[00:11:47] Les Roberts: Yeah. And it's great. But that started off as just as an idea. And that's just,
[00:11:54] Denise Billen-Mejia: That's where
everything starts.
[00:11:55] Les Roberts: Yeah, it's been a natural progression. And I feel as if, next, the next step is to go into more of the mental health side is in self harm.
The more intense side, which I've already got that almost ready.
[00:12:14] Martin Furber: Oh, yeah,
Denise, Les trained to be a mental health first aider.
[00:12:18] Denise Billen-Mejia: Excellent. But that is crossovers.
[00:12:24] Les Roberts: I'll be perfectly honest, Martin, that course was the course that, Like Denise said, it was a lightbulb moment for me and I thought, wow, with the skills that I've gotten there and then the experience with NLP, eye movement therapy, sleep talk all of the things.
[00:12:40] Denise Billen-Mejia: Oh, you're a sleep talker as well?
[00:12:41] Les Roberts: Yes, I am. Me too. Sleep talk.
[00:12:43] Martin Furber: Tell me about sleep talk. Tell me about sleep talk.
[00:12:46] Les Roberts: Are we called coaches, Denise?
[00:12:49] Denise Billen-Mejia: I don't know. I think it's
consultant.
[00:12:51] Les Roberts: Oh, I'll
take that.
[00:12:54] Denise Billen-Mejia: In the British style, that sounds great. She's Australian, so I don't know.
[00:12:57] Les Roberts: Yes, so Sleep Talk, Martin, is just, if you think about Sleep Talk, it's amazing, but it's what I've been doing for quite a few years, but didn't realize it was Sleep Talk.
[00:13:08] Denise Billen-Mejia: It's because it was developed by a hypnotist who was not allowed legally to practice hypnosis. So she re branded a particular thing, and she had a child who was sleeping. on the spectrum, as they say. I think she was a not completely selective mute. So she worked at it for a long time with her own child before she reached out to the rest of the world.
[00:13:33] Les Roberts: So I used it on my grandson but didn't realize it Sleep Talk was, a brand on its
own.
And like my grandson's 13 this year and he was 2 nearly 3. So I'd say it was 10 years ago and he he was dry during the day and he didn't want to wear his pull up at night and he was, he used to go, Oh no I'm such a big boy.
I don't need it. And we were saying, but you do need it, because, and he came to stay at my house for the weekend and I just sat on the floor next to him when he was asleep and we just spoke to him because he had a habit he'd get into bed and then when you left the room he'd take his pull-up off
[00:14:15] Denise Billen-Mejia: yeah
[00:14:15] Les Roberts: Anyway I just sat there and I whispered to him the same as what you would with hypnosis saying you know how good it would feel when you wake up tomorrow and you're nice and dry you're not mentioning anything about bedwetting and he's been dry ever since so I was
[00:14:32] Denise Billen-Mejia: like,
But
[00:14:33] Les Roberts: I didn't realise until years down the line that it's sleep talk.
[00:14:39] Martin Furber: Okay, so let me ask you then, going back to your teaching hypnotherapy to other people, to become a hypnotherapist, do you want to talk me through your prospectus very quickly?
[00:14:50] Les Roberts: Oh, yes. If I can remember it, so
[00:14:57] Martin Furber: just to prove to our listeners and readers, nothing's pre planned, nothing's scripted.
[00:15:02] Les Roberts: So there's there's 10 modules to to my my classes. And they're based on Our people
[00:15:09] Denise Billen-Mejia: Are
you meeting people in person or are you able to go online?
[00:15:12] Les Roberts: Yes, this is face to face with a view to possibly going online later on when I feel okay about going online. But also the need, I'm quite open to doing it.
Because the other one that I deliver is online anyway, the working with children. So it's I'm trying to think what it what it is, just bear with me. It's split into 10 modules. So basically module one is all about explaining what hypnosis is, the history behind it, mentioning like. Um, all the pioneers of of hypnosis or hypnotherapy. And then it's all about building rapport, like body language developing that hypnotic voice and also just basic inductions.
[00:15:57] Martin Furber: Okay, so you're explaining what mesmerized means then? .
[00:16:00] Les Roberts: Yes.
[00:16:00] Martin Furber: Yes.
[00:16:01] Les Roberts: Yeah. About Is that hands mesmer, wasn't it
[00:16:04] Martin Furber: Franz? .
[00:16:05] Les Roberts: Franz, yes. Sorry. Yeah. Mod Module two is all about, getting in more into inductions and deepness planning your therapy sessions, understanding secondary gains, those the taboo word.
And also listening to the language that your your clients you know giving you, and then we move on to more post hypnotic suggestions, metaphors increasing the tools for your toolbox. Module four is all about anchors, collapsing anchors as well, and reframing. And a wonderful thing that I live and breathe in that submodalities, I absolutely love having to change, especially with children, change
how
people see things.
And then as they progress, because by module four, which is once a month they come for a weekend, they're starting to develop that technique, develop that confidence. So then we go on to like fears and phobias. We touch a little bit on past life regression. And we also talk about timeline, future pacing.
So to help, further down, down the line when you can actually get your client to see, what it's gonna be like when they've become the shape and size that they want to be. Say it was something like weight loss and then we move into on module six depression and panic attacks and we touch a little bit on obstetrics and hypnobirthing.
[00:17:38] Denise Billen-Mejia: You can't call it that unless, you can't call it that unless you're given permission.
[00:17:43] Les Roberts: Burthing, yeah, burthing. Yeah, you can't call it that. It's patented, isn't it?
[00:17:48] Denise Billen-Mejia: Yeah.
[00:17:49] Les Roberts: And then module seven is weight control your hypnotic gastric band. And also discuss parts therapy, which this is another thing that I was never taught.
I was never trained in parts therapy. Really? extra training. It wasn't part of my on my curriculum when I did it. And then module eight is smoking. Which leads on to talk about addictions and also pain management. And then module nine is my favorite, which is working with children.
[00:18:21] Martin Furber: Okay.
[00:18:22] Les Roberts: And the inner child, so the inner child module.
But that is it's more talking about working with children and what you can do with children. And also note keeping, how important that note keeping is, and and setting yourself up in a practice, looking after yourself. Yeah. That's module 10 of course, which also is graduation as well.
Yeah.
[00:18:45] Martin Furber: Okay, and really important that, as you said, that self care for therapists.
[00:18:49] Les Roberts: Oh,
definitely.
[00:18:50] Martin Furber: Every therapist I know, and we, we all do know each other in this profession, don't we? It's a very connected profession. Everybody neglects the self care. They all preach it, but they all neglect it.
Yeah. Myself included. Guilty. Yeah, myself included. In fact, we did an entire episode last series where I was talking about when I had to have a word with myself.
[00:19:12] Denise Billen-Mejia: There might be a good course to run, self care for the small business person, because that's the side of us that's doing it. It's not hypnotists that don't want to take time for themselves.
It's just this other, since we're helping profession. The business side just feels weird to most of us when we start.
[00:19:31] Les Roberts: It does, but also, it's right though, isn't it? Because if we don't look after ourselves, we can't give our clients our best, can we? No, of course not. Because we haven't got, our heads become quite fuzzy and we're not concentrated.
And if we make mistakes, we can't afford to make those mistakes, can we?
[00:19:50] Martin Furber: No, absolutely
not. Now, it's as we say, we need to leave that spare mental capacity.
[00:19:54] Les Roberts: Yeah.
[00:19:54] Martin Furber: And you've just done the MHFA course. They talk about the oxygen mask scenario.
[00:19:59] Denise Billen-Mejia: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Martin Furber: Put your own on before you put anybody else's on.
You've got to help yourself first. Les, before we start to get towards the end and wrap things up, I just want to actually talk about a little subject that you've mentioned there in your prospectus. Denise, see what you think of this as well. You mentioned secondary gains.
[00:20:15] Les Roberts: Yes.
[00:20:16] Martin Furber: Okay. So that's something we've never particularly spoken about on this show, Denise.
So I thought it might be good, as Les has mentioned it,
[00:20:23] Denise Billen-Mejia: let's
[00:20:24] Martin Furber: talk about secondary gains. I'm just thinking about that short term instant gratification versus long term benefits sort of thing, because that's one of the first things children learns.
[00:20:37] Les Roberts: Oh, definitely.
[00:20:38] Martin Furber: Isn't it, whether to have that piece of chocolate now, or to wait and get a proper treat later on?
[00:20:44] Denise Billen-Mejia: It's
very hard.
[00:20:45] Les Roberts: Yeah, it is, yeah. But it's not just about that, it's just, it's about those learnt behaviours where they believe that, something is the right thing to do. I'm very passionate about what I do. And I wanted to run a course for between 15 and 17 year olds. Because where I live it's a, it's an old, sorry?
[00:21:09] Denise Billen-Mejia: A levels, straight up.
[00:21:10] Les Roberts: But it's an old, it's an industrial town where I live and there is a community where there was a mining community and this is where they have generational unemployment and those secondary gains for the children to not bother doing their exams. Yeah. Because then they're not forced to get a job or they can't get a job.
And then their parents can continue to to claim benefits. And that is so scary. So these children are hitting the certain ages at school. They're asked about career development, they're asked about do they want to go to college, do they want to go to uni, whatever they want to do, and these kids are just turning around.
[00:21:54] Denise Billen-Mejia: It would be really hard for those kids to visualize themselves at university.
[00:21:59] Martin Furber: Yeah, because they've been given nothing to aspire to.
[00:22:03] Denise Billen-Mejia: But university is optional. Yeah, school isn't optional.
[00:22:07] Martin Furber: You go back 50 years in those communities, and I'm very familiar with where Les lives. Not only did you have a thriving coal mining community, you have a thriving glassworks industry as well.
And so you could leave school at 16 with no qualifications and get a job that you could support a family with and get a decent job. Whereas now you leave school at 16 with no qualifications. You may just get a job, minimum wage, stacking shelves in a supermarket.
[00:22:31] Les Roberts: And that's if they're looking at me as well, because now.
Now they're asking for the basic qualifications of English and Maths and what really, so that you can add up and you can read really. But my husband was the same. My husband's from St. Helens and he when he finished school, he did his apprenticeship somewhere else. And then his uncle who worked for Pilkington's, which is Pilkington Glass, he got my husband a job there and my husband worked there for 36 years.
Wow. He did progress through it, but he worked there for 36 years.
[00:23:03] Martin Furber: Wow.
[00:23:03] Denise Billen-Mejia: That's back
in the day. We don't have those kind of jobs anymore.
[00:23:06] Martin Furber: Back in the day.
Les, can you believe it? We're at the end of the episode, but I'm going to say now we need to get you back on. Oh, I'd love to come back. Definitely. No, I want to talk, and I know Denise would love to too, about how you can inspire and motivate young people.
I think that's what we should concentrate on next time. Yeah.
[00:23:25] Les Roberts: Yes. By that time I'll have done this video for the school.
[00:23:28] Denise Billen-Mejia: And we'll be able to put that link in too.
[00:23:31] Martin Furber: Fabulous.
Fabulous. Les, thank you for coming on. We'll see you soon.
[00:23:35] Denise Billen-Mejia: Good to see you
[00:23:36] Les Roberts: again.
We will. Take care. Lovely to see you both. Bye.
Take care.
