Fear of post operative pain and inability to sleep after surgery.
Ellie was a telephone client. This was a one-off insomnia session over the phone. She was due for major surgery and very fearful of a repetition of a previous post operative experience of laying in agony through the night unable to sleep. Over the years, she had become dependent on ever higher doses of sleeping pills, which had become increasingly ineffective in the past few years. I phoned her as arranged in the hospital, following surgery, and incorporating the information previously gathered, induced, what she subsequently reported as a beautiful pre-sleep trance state. This increased internal focus and enabled her, on instruction, to put the phone down and immediately fall sleep, (until the nurses woke her half an our later apparently to give her her sleeping pill(!)). Thankfully, she was able to take her pills, maintaining the state she was in, and slept until awakened in the morning.