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125. Obsessions worsened by therapies

PERSON: boy.
DESCRIPTION: "I have panic attacks and I'm taking several drugs, I've always been afraid to die, but then, for about 10 years, I started to reason endlessly with chained thoughts, and I have been told that I have an obsessive-compulsive fear of getting dirty, and that if I continue in this way I will become crazy, because my cleaning ritual is almost delirious.. see, I always must stay so [voluntary and persistent maintenance of a very unusual defensive posture - details omitted for privacy]"; psychotherapy absolutely useless, psychiatry and drugs "as if there were not used, it's a complete waste of money"; increased pessimism in recent times "because of a new psychotherapy for almost seven years .. I believed in it, but it has been a total failure as all the rest .. they tell me to be patient, but I feel like a zero, lower even than an earthworm, hopeless .. every therapy that I do worsens everything because without my ritual I would not know what to do.. so I want to do hypnosis in order to use also my healthy part, as you call it on your website .. I too must have something healthy to use, haven't I?".
APPROACH: repetitive confirmation from my part of the fact that hypnosis is just a self-help, and insistence on the fact that those who say that hypnosis is a cure are incompetent or crooks; during his endless and almost-impossible-to-stop speeches, casual observation of a slip of the client ("did you notice that you have said 'taken obsession' instead of 'lost obsession'?" - NOTE: in Italian 'taken' and 'lost' are, respectively, 'presa' and 'persa') and immediate production of obsessive thoughts by the client on the possible causes of this tongue slip, with my insertion of the following words: "as I repeat, to talk with me about your problem is only a further waste of time.. you have said that after so many years of sessions you already know everything about the problem, but this knowledge has proven to be totally useless, or, even worse, it has produced only new frustrations.. are you not yet tired of this never-ending thinking? Would not you like a trance where you can finally think of nothing at least for a while? A trance just to rest a moment, maybe short, but so intense and profound that there is no room for any purposeful idea, because it is so useless.. indeed, hypnosis is so spontaneous that you don't even need to know what is hypnosis.. who cares? No meaning.. look here .. see? Look carefully, I'm doing it again!" [demonstration, by means of a simple game of optical illusion with my fingers, to show that reality is very different from what we believe]; immediate and significant deepening of the trance and fulfilling sense of freedom within the client [..].
RESULT: multiple abreactions, sudden and complete hypnotic unlock of his obsessive posture, and total release with disbelief and wonder ("I do not understand .. why I can control the muscles of the ritual now but not before?"); single session (nearly three hours) because of the great distance from my office.
UPDATE (4 weeks): several phone calls from the client ("will it last? What if it will end?"); despite doubts, continual and total freedom from the ritual for about two weeks, with great joy of the client, then occasional reappearance of the ritual for about a week, and then relapse into ritual exactly as before, with the final phone call of the client ("the ritual is back, but I have no longer all that fear, and my mental mill is more bearable, and it seems that now it is set in that way.. during my reasoning, my mind got the idea that it is like your finger trick.. I don't understand it.. without the ritual I would not know what to do, but the healthy part now is in control and acts as a shield").

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