Four Quadrant Motivation Questionnaire
The reason why anyone wants to change is the most important aspect of designing the right suggestions to give in hypnotherapy. The four quadrant motivation questionnaire is a wonderful way of discovering that "why" and uncovering secondary gains, which keep people from moving ahead.
This four quadrant motivation questionnaire is a simple test for people's motivation. During the first cession of weight reduction or smoking cessation I first talk about what hypnosis is and is not (hypnosis pretalk). I next hypnotize the client a couple of times to get them used to my voice and able to enter a reasonable trance. I give them some self confidence and ego-strengthening suggestions.
Next I give them the appropriate four quadrant motivation questionnaire for the behavior modification we are currently doing. I will demonstrate this four quadrant motivation questionnaire for weigh reduction. Give your client (or yourself) four pieces of 10x8 blank paper. On top of the each paper in turn are written the following:
What will you gain when you reduce your weight?
What will you lose if you do not reduce you weight?
What will you lose when you reduce your weight?
What will you gain if you do not reduce your weight?
The wordings of the sentences are extremely important. They are designed to bring out the person's motivation for doing the thing (in this case weight reduction) as well as secondary gains which stop us from achieving our goals. I explain that I want at least ten reasons on each paper (especially for smoking cessation) before I can continue with the intervention.
Note the presupposition is that of success. So "when" is asked for what you want to achieve, since if you come up with enough reasons you are bound to succeed. The failure side is connected to "if" showing the possibility of failure-- but not the probability.
Next session I make sure there are enough answers, If there are not enough answers, we do further hypnosis work and I give a direct suggestion to work on the questionnaire with the warning that if I do not see enough motivation we will not work together.
If there are nearly enough answers, we work together to come up with a few more answers to the questionnaire and I use these answers as part of the suggestions I'll give during the specific change trance. Thus, if an important motivation for weight reduction may be to "wear that blue Nordstrom dress at my sister's wedding," I will do a future pace and say, "Imagine you are wearing that beautiful blue Nordstrom dress. You are at a large gathering. It is your sister's wedding. As you enter with that beautiful blue dress you bought at Nordstrom all eyes are on you and everyone notices how well it fits you..."