Free Awakened (Intimate Relations) by Kate Douglas

then rolled it across the hardwood floor until he was in front of them. “With your permission, I’ll record this session, Marc, and the recording will be yours to keep. I find that my clients are more comfortable when they can replay everything they’ve said and know that the words they recall are their own.” When Marc agreed, Dr. Chung flipped on a recording device and spoke into it, giving the date, Marc’s name and Mandy’s as well.
    Mandy sat quietly beside Marc, still holding his hand.
    Then Dr. Chung returned his attention to the two of them. “Call me Alden,” he said. “There’s no need for formality. Are you comfortable with your given name?”
    “I am. Marc works.”
    “Have you had hypnotherapy before?”
    Marc shook his head. “No, sir. This is a first.”
    Alden smiled and clasped his hands in his lap. “Even better,” he said. “Starting with a clean slate. To explain, hypnotherapy is the method used to take advantage of the mind and body connection to accomplish certain goals, or, as in your case, to uncover memories long buried. The therapist—that would be me—helps you achieve an altered state of consciousness, a trance, which you will consciously allow yourself to enter. I’ll be your guide. I’ll help you tap into your mind’s potential to find that state yourself. Once you’re there, my job is to guide you in the hope of finding the answers you’re searching for.”
    “I need specifics,” Marc said. “All I know about hypnosis is what I remember from cartoons—swinging a gold watch in front of someone and then making him do stuff.”
    Alden laughed. “I hate to disappoint you. No gold watch. I’ll speak to you, help you relax your muscles by virtue of the cadence of my voice, the speech patterns I’ve been trained to use. The goal is to relax your conscious mind in order to let your subconscious take over. The conscious mind forgets, the subconscious never. To get there, where you can tap into those memories, I’ll try a few things to see what works best for you. Sometimes it’s as simple as having a client count backwards or imagine a number or picture, something you like looking at.”
    “Mandy.” Marc was smiling when he added, “Stay right there.”
    She laughed.
    Alden nodded. “Exactly. Think of something pleasant, or an image you can focus on. Probably not Mandy, because I have a feeling that might push other parts of your brain to the forefront. And I’m not talking about the one between your ears.”
    Mandy squeezed Marc’s hand. “The man already knows you.”
    “Ya think?” Marc smiled at her but then focused once again on the therapist.
    The hypnotherapist smiled, but then he got very serious. Mandy could easily picture him in front of a class of students when he said, “There’s an important point I want to make—you never can be made to do something in hypnosis that is inconsistent with your beliefs. If at any time you feel uncomfortable, you can bring yourself out of the trance. Now, we’re going to be working with the subconscious mind, so we’ll rely on what we call ideomotor signals where you’ll tap into your subconscious and decide a specific finger to mean yes, another to mean no. We’ll also establish a signal to indicate if you are uncomfortable with my questions or just don’t want to answer, and by using signals, we can determine those things while you remain in hypnosis. I can’t force you to answer something you don’t want to talk about, but if it’s the reason you’re here, we’ll need to set up some parameters. You mentioned you were hoping to retrieve memories. From childhood, or are you thinking of a more recent time?”
    Marc exhaled and glanced at Mandy. “More recent, I think, though I can’t rule anything out. Finding the time frame for the dreams I’m having will help me narrow down what I appear to be recalling.”
    He squeezed Mandy’s hand. She glanced at him and then spoke to the therapist. “Alden? Would