So far we have looked at the unconscious mind, the nature of automatic imagination, it’s influence over the sensation of conscious will, and how this is hidden by the mind’s propensity for confabulation.
Understanding these concepts is important to understanding what hypnosis is all about.
You’re hopefully well ahead of me.
But first, it might be easier to start with what hypnosis isn’t.
It isn’t sleep.
It isn’t some zombified state where the mind is wide open to following any command.
It isn’t ‘switching off’ your conscious mind.
It isn’t something that only works on naive, gullible sorts.
It isn’t magic, pseudoscience or woo-woo esoteric mumbo-jumbo.
It doesn’t require intense eyes, a goatee, a swinging watch or a spinning spiral!
It’s unfortunate that hypnosis seems to attract these strange powermongery, egotistical sorts – a lot of that stuff can be useful to build expectation which helps with imagination, but it’s also created a legacy of anxiety. The idea of a hypnotist controlling you like a puppet isn’t a helpful one at all, and those kinds of concerns can be a huge barrier when wanting to experience hypnosis in a more useful way.
The Mind is Open to Automatic Response
Hypnosis in itself isn’t anything magical or special at all – it’s just the process, or ritual of utilising a very, very natural aspect of your mind which forms part of your everyday living.
Since you were born your mind has responded to things automatically – you learn, react, feel, think and believe things based on the ideas that are presented by the outside world.
This all happens because the brain has evolved to respond to certain stimuli automatically.
Adrenalin kicks in at times of fear and nervousness.
You will jump without thinking if a snake or other dangerous animal was suddenly in front of you.
If someone calls your name, you startle and look their way.
These are conditioned responses, some instinctive, others learned through experience.
The brain is basically a pattern recogniser – constantly soaking in associations between one thing and another.
In order to keep you alive, most of those things are linked to automatic responses.
This is why beliefs are so easily formed – and often hard to shake off. Evolution didn’t care if your beliefs were false positives – they had no effect on natural selection. It doesn’t matter if you believe that stepping on cracks will bring bad luck.
It makes sense that the mind soaks in all suggestions, so it can choose whether or not to accept and respond.
Variables influence the likelihood of absorption and response though – like the confidence of the stimuli (e.g. authority, confidence in numbers or repetition), as well as how strong the pre-existing beliefs are.
The conscious ‘checking’ aspect of the mind can be subdued by distraction, relaxation, lack of attention or general tiredness. Suggestion can then easily become powerful enough to get to the level where the subconscious simpy accepts what is being presented – or suggested.
So among the myriad of suggestions that you’re surrounded with every day, many of your responses to those suggestions – even the vast majority – will happen automatically without you giving it any conscious thought whatsoever – they happen subconsciously.
Let’s look at some examples:
- You forget where you put something, and accept the suggestion (offered by the situation) of “I can’t find it”. You look all over the house and then find it right in front of you (or in your hand!) This is a negative hallucination – not seeing something that is there.
- You’re expected to suddenly remember something, and the momentary panic suggests the belief of “I can’t remember”. It’s right there on the tip of your tongue – of course you know – but it’s gone. The slightest distraction, the suggestion fades, and you remember again. This is a form of suggested amnesia.
- You cut or injure yourself without realising. The ongoing accepted belief that you’re fine eradicates the pain impulses. As soon as you see the injury – the pain emerges. This is anaesthesia.
- You see someone you have just been thinking about, and the suggestion that it’s really them leads to actually seeing the person you’re thinking of – until reality catches up and you find they’re someone completely different. This is a positive hallucination – seeing something that isn’t there. Another example is a card trick where you’re sure you saw your chosen card slip back into the deck. You just accepted the magician’s misdirection – a form of suggestion.
- You drive a long way and can’t remember much about it (amnesia, internal attention).
- You’re so engrossed in something on TV (or your phone) that you don’t hear someone talking to you (diverted focusing of attention).
Some would say these are all examples of everyday hypnosis – but that’s not helpful, as then everything becomes hypnosis.
They’re more examples of the exact same dynamics of mind that hypnosis utilises – the mind shifting attention and conjuring various sensations and phenomena all the time, without your conscious input.
Hypnosis then would be the conscious, ritualistic manipulation of those same dynamics and variables, towards an intended outcome.
But there’s a key difference that separates hypnosis from mere suggestion, or teaching – and it’s a difference in your subjective experience – the sensation of your automatic responses.
Because one of those sensations is your feeling of conscious will, normally associated with things you’re consciously doing – the feeling of “I’m thinking this”, or “I’m doing that”.
Sometimes that feeling of conscious will is present – you’re consciously doing something. Other times it feels more like a happening – you’re responding to something automatically, subconsciously.
This is crucial to understanding hypnosis, where your mind is doing something, but you’ve been influenced to experience it as a happening.
Put another way…
…you’re led to imagine something, but to also imagine that you’re not imagining it.
The imagining then becomes ‘real’, to you.
This might surprise you, because it sounds like a bunch of fluffy ‘imagination’, and experiencing something you’re doing as a happening might feel scary – like you’ve lost touch with yourself, someone else inside your mind calling the shots.
But here’s the thing.
That’s exactly the same process that lies behind the various compulsions, and distorted realities that people live in.
And we all live in distorted realities.
Someone who has been influenced to accept the idea “I am stupid” (by a childhood with a nasty, invalidating, discouraging parent or teacher for example), will absolutely believe they are stupid. They will likely self-sabotage, make less effort, more mistakes, and feel as though they just can’t do anything requiring any coordination.
They will be ‘doing’ things as a result of this belief, but they will experience these consequences as happenings – “I just can’t do it”.
Whatever fixed ideas the subconscious mind wraps itself around will become that person’s reality.
Any particular psychological barrier or situation a person finds themselves in can be traced back to a particular belief (or cluster of beliefs) – creating all the subtle manifestations and doings which keep the problem going.
Perhaps this explanation is different to what you were expectating, because of various cultural aspects and blurbs you may have read elsewhere.
What about swinging watches? Those slow, steady voices? That’s all just part of a typical ritual (according to the cultural legacy at least), and those kinds of things can be useful to build responsiveness to suggestion.
If you’re open to a situation like that, the prestige and perceived authority of such a hypnotist offers the suggestion “whatever I suggest will happen”, which if accepted, gets the ball rolling.
Hypnotherapy-style Hypnosis
The kind of ‘hypnosis’ typically used in hypnotherapy is a bit different.
Many hypnotherapists still believe that hypnosis is all about ‘offering suggestions to the subconscious mind’, which they explain as ‘bypassing the conscious mind’.
If you’re spoken to in a slow, soft voice and offered a visualisation exercise to follow (“you’re walking in a meadow…”), you’ll then hopefully accept the suggestions offered (which might be for confidence, to feel full-up sooner, whatever).
Does and can this work?
Probably – you might experience your relaxation as a happening, as well as any random thoughts that occur – the same as if lying down listening to relaxing music.
Will the suggestions work?
Maybe, if you’re open to the experience enough and happen to accept the suggestions, maybe they can have a positive effect, for a time.
But more likely, the power of the effect will be from accepting the suggestion that something good must have happened because it was all a bit novel and you paid for it – good, that’s what the hypnotherapist is hoping for!
But the intrinsic, specific suggestions probably weren’t doing much at all, certainly not ‘programming’ your mind in that simplistic way.
The best kind of hypnotherapy (or any therapy) is about finding and weakening the existing subconscious beliefs as well as installing the new, more positive ones.
Any good therapy model (e.g. EMDR – eye movement desensitisation reprogramming) will approach this.
Any that focus merely on ‘results’ or positivity (e.g. basic NLP) without addressing the underlying issues are likely to be weak and short-lived – you can’t underestimate the engrained power of what’s already there.
How the Rational Mind Hides Hypnotic Effects
You might wonder why it isn’t more obvious that we’re largely governed by all the subconscious beliefs, drives and compulsions we acquire in life.
Why aren’t more of our automatic behaviours felt like mere happenings?
The mind has a beautiful way of hiding these effects, to create a more seamless state of conscious will. For me, it’s one of the most fascinating aspects of hypnosis, and life in general.
If the subconscious has been influenced by hypnotic suggestion to do something, it will also invent reasons to consciously justify its actions, a process of rationalisation.
This is an inbuilt mechanism, or pre-existing belief, that we are always consistent with our actions.
The subconscious can compel us to do things all the time, and we don’t realise because our conscious minds glaze over it with rational reasoning. Even if really, our narratives make no sense at all!
So a suggestion can easily influence our subconscious, to make us feel compelled to do, think or feel a particular thing. But because of the mechanism of consistency, you may consciously justify doing it.
The strange thing, is that despite how irrelevant the suggestion is, you would believe what you were saying whilst justifying it, regardless of how creative or imaginative the reason was. You still won’t know the true source of the belief you’re carrying out.
I appreciate that’s a lot to process, so here’s an example.
As part of a stage hypnosis act a man is told to pick up his chair upon waking. He is not consciously aware that this suggestion has been given. When asked as to why he did this, he may respond ‘I just wanted to see how heavy it was’, or ‘I am looking for something’. He probably absolutely believes, consciously, that this is the real reason. But we know different, that he was compelled to do it because the hypnotic suggestion was firmly planted in his subconscious.
The implications of this for ordinary behaviour are extraordinary. Despite our reasoning, how do we know if something is coming from our conscious, or subconscious minds?
Hypnotic Processes are Everywhere
‘Hypnosis’ is just a ritualistic process, using natural mechanisms of mind to develop a responsiveness to ideas that hides behind the illusory veil of conscious will.
In normal life, the same process of compulsive behaviour patterns occur all the time.
They are developed through subconscious associations and influential suggestions. People consciously explain behaviours as if they are choosing them, when in fact they may be subconscious compulsions. And they are indicated, just as with phobias, by things that clearly don’t make sense.
We all do it.
What’s really interesting is realising how subconsciously determined most of our behaviours really are.
It’s a very difficult thing to grasp, because when you start considering it, a lot of things that are taken for granted or assumed about behaviour begin to unravel.
We’re really carrying out subconscious beliefs, or drives or expectancies, all the time, compulsively. Believing we’re in the driving seat, when we’re really just sat in the passenger seat with a pretend toy steering wheel. It just feels as though our steering is affecting the direction.
It’s powerful stuff – which is why the media, advertisers, politicians are all using hypnotic techniques to influence and install ideas, all the time.
To summarise, then…
Hypnosis is the process of directing a person’s automatic, unconscious, involuntary responsiveness to achieve a desired result.
Next we’ll look at what hypnosis involves as a process, and how it actually works.
Whats the Process of Hypnosis?
Well, there are a few methods, but the most common is to relax you with very specific suggestions. There’s more to this process than just “you are getting sleepy”, although this can work too with some people.
The process might involve distracting your senses, turning your sensory awareness from outward to inward, and beginning to conjure certain unconscious effects of the imagination.
You then become relaxed to the extent that experiences start to feel more like happenings than doings – you are then much more unconsciously responsive to suggestions.
This is the equivalent of distracting that guard to the building.
Metaphorically we say “hey guard, you want to hear a story?” then focus all his attention on the story, whilst ideas sneak into the building and are absorbed into the unconscious. The old fashioned idea of focusing the attention on a swinging watch, or a candle, or a bright object, also uses this method.
When you’re sufficiently relaxed, your feeling of conscious volition isn’t doing its thing anymore. You aren’t thinking, comparing, considering, analyzing, worrying or fretting. You’re just aware, and relaxed.
It can feel immensely relaxing.
Gil Boyne (a great hypnotist I trained with) always made a big deal about how profoundly enjoyable the ‘trance state’ was. When you aren’t thinking in that analytical way about everything, you just don’t care about anything.
The same is true of meditation, or practicing mindfulness.
Hypnosis is no special ‘state’ though – it’s just an in-the-moment responsiveness to ideas.
If asked how they feel whilst hypnotized, people often report that they feel great, they’re fully aware, but they just don’t care about anything. Sometimes, this can be an incredibly useful experience, because our analytical minds can get us into all sorts of anxious pickles. Imagining things, assuming things, believing things, expecting things – our conscious minds are like little mischievous trolls messing up reality for us.
Now, a few more questions will naturally spring from this explanation, so I’ll try to anticipate them.
What about the rapid hypnotic inductions – they look to be completely out of it?
You might have seen on TV shows or stage hypnosis, someone going into an instant trance because of the hypnotist shouting a “sleep” command or something similar – maybe placing their hand to the person’s head and instantly putting them “under”. Such things usually result in gasps from onlookers, and the effect is very impressive.
But what’s really happening here? It’s a situation called “dual reality” – it looks different from the outside than it does from the inside (being the subject). Situations like this create an unfair perception of hypnosis as something that it’s not, which doesn’t help in understanding it.
From the outside, it looks like the subject is literally put to sleep – we imagine they are somehow not conscious, not aware, won’t remember anything – almost as if they are a robot that has been switched off.
But the perception from the person being ‘hypnotized’ is very different. What’s happened is that they have just responded to the suggestion – it’s expected that they would droop their head, go floppy, close their eyes and go into a relaxed state. This expectation is received as a suggestion – not a verbal one, but a non-verbal one – which the unconscious mind then responds to automatically.
Because they have already responded, they are likely to respond to other suggestions – such as “now your arms just lie relaxed by your side” (the hypnotist may lift and drop them, which further cements the suggestion and is usually responded to well). All the suggestions given and accepted over the next minute or so put the person into an ever-increasing state of responsiveness – the initial sleep command was just the first step of many. They will still be aware of everything that is being said – but as they relax more and their attention focuses inward with more responsiveness to suggestions, they simply won’t care about everything else because their critical faculty won’t be concerned with it any more.
And remember, not caring about anything else doesn’t mean not being aware of anything else.
Rapid inductions in stage hypnosis can also be misleading, because a person can be hypnotically primed to respond to a suggestion to return into trance with a command.
For example, a person might take twenty minutes or so to enter into a sufficiently relaxed state for suggestions to be responded to automatically.
The hypnotist might then give a suggestion for the person to ‘return into this wonderful relaxed state again’ when they hear a certain word – e.g. “sleep”. Then, once they are “woken up” and returned to normal awareness, the command is given and the person returns into a responsive state. This second experience is usually more responsive – that is, they are more automatically and unconsciously responsive to suggestions. They enter the relaxed state a lot faster, without the need for more suggestions to build the responsiveness. Again, the speed of these “re-inductions” can look like mind-control and having power over someone, but that’s not the case. The person is practiced at becoming responsive (having already experienced it).
One other thing to add here is that some people are more responsive than others. Some are really responsive – they respond very quickly, which can look very impressive to an onlooker. In stage hypnosis situations, the hypnotist will often target these people, having identified them with a few little suggestion tests with everyone beforehand.
There’s nothing wrong with being highly responsive – it doesn’t mean a person is weak or gullible. It just means they’re more responsive. Research hasn’t been able to correlate responsiveness with any other factors, so it’s difficult to know how people will respond until they try.
Making sense so far?
I hope so. Thanks for staying with me.
Leave a Reply