The Power of Suggestion

Why Everything’s a Suggestion

Next time you’re in a busy High Street with a friend, look up and point to a cloud.

Quickly look around and count the amount of people now looking up to the sky.

How effective is that? You have the power to stop and influence a bunch of people in their tracks with the simplest non-verbal action.

Don’t imagine a shark though, swimming through the ocean.

I said don’t!

Please don’t think about it!

There’s a first principle of suggestion – the brain automatically responds to positive concepts before things like negation. It’s better to tell someone to “be on time” rather than “don’t be late” – the suggestion is right there within – “don’t be late”.

But have you ever thought about how elegant the word Silk is? Just imagining a sheet of pure white silk, flowing like liquid. Silk.

Now, what do cows drink?

(scroll down)

Water of course!

So here’s the point – everything you perceive has an automatic response somewhere in the brain.

You don’t need to think about the meanings of each of these words as you read them – the brain is doing that for you automatically (which is quite a feat, when you consider the millions of concepts and meanings it has to trawl through to effortlessly follow a sentence in real-time).

Psychologists Loftus and Palmer carried out a classic study of ‘leading questions’ in the 70s, where participants were asked to watch a short clip of a car accident.

When asked “About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed / collided / bumped / hit / contacted) each other?” people gave significantly faster estimates on average with “smashed” (41mph) than they did for “contacted” (32mph).

The visual suggestion of the word ‘smashed’ is quite powerful! Enough to influence a memory.

If single words can trigger automatic associations, memories, meanings, expectations, then consider what facial expressions can trigger, or environments, or uniforms, or the sounds of smashing glass, or a distant siren, or the behaviour of people around you.

An area of psychology I enjoy reading about is unconscious learning (or implicit learning, or priming). John Bargh for example did a series of fascinating studies where participants were influenced by mere exposure to single words.

Asked to do a quick random-word memory test in a waiting room, some participants were exposed to words like “elderly”, “slow”, while others were exposed to neutral words. They were then asked to walk up a corridor to another room. Those exposed to the ‘slow’ words took significantly longer on average to reach their destination.

For my own psychology dissertation, I exposed participants to random four number arrays. The experimental group all had the number “5” in their arrays, while the control group didn’t. They were then given two more random arrays, and forced to choose the one they believe they’d seen before. Actually both arrays were now new, but one of them contained a 5.

The control group chose completely randomly. The group exposed to 5s previously were significantly more likely to choose the array containing a 5.

What’s fascinating though is that during the debriefings, no one was aware of the hidden pattern – they all reported making a random choice as they had no idea.

What this suggests, is that they had learned the secret pattern of the prior numbers containing 5s, without being consciously aware of it.

So what happens if you’re doom-scrolling threads a lot on Facebook, being continuously exposed to all that typical hostility and negativity?

You’re of course going to be absorbing those views, attitudes and vibes.

Yes you’ll be consciously aware of what you’re seeing and thinking about.

But regardless, you simply can’t be fully conscious of quite how far reaching those exposures go, influencing associations, beliefs and perspectives on a deeper, more automatic level.

Why Suggestion & Automatic Response Exist

This will all tie in to hypnosis very soon, I promise.

It’s just useful to understand the ‘why’ first.

Your brain has evolved as an automatic absorption machine, an automatic pattern recogniser, and an automatic responder.

Even before humans had neocortical structures and refined sensations of conscious will and volition, we were surviving with those three abilities.

They’re still the main ‘engine’ behind your conscious thoughts and ideas.

As an infant, you relied entirely on these mechanisms. You hadn’t learned enough to know what’s what – so you absorbed everything. You didn’t have the experience or knowledge to be able to reject or consider ideas as easily.

The ability a toddler has to learn all those little squiggly shapes as letters, to string them into words and sentences, to learn a language – all before the age of six – is astonishing when you think about it.

Unfortunately for many, absorbed ideas about yourself and the world aren’t always positive.

Parental or teacher ‘suggestions’ like “you’ll never amount to much” “you should be seen and not heard” “this is all your fault” or just “bad!” over and over can also easily be absorbed.

You can respond to these ideas, automatically, for years. Even a whole lifetime. The way a person sees themselves is a very powerful, deep rooted thing, that is largely developed during these impressionable years and isn’t always easy to recognise or change. For the vast majority, it sadly sticks around forever.

Now, that resistant bit of your mind might be leaping up and shouting “but I had a bad childhood, and my life is great – because I had the mind to turn it around! I’m in control! Life is what you make of it!”

To an extent that’s true – but it’s not the events themselves that shape us – the bad parents, the traumas, the situations.

It’s the meanings we give them – the suggested narratives.

If those meanings are handed to us (“this is all your fault”) then we’re likely to accept them. Even if they aren’t, it’s easy to apply our own meanings and accept them instead (“dad ignores me, therefore I’m not worthy of attention”).

People who make good of bad childhood situations, tend to have also absorbed positive meanings that counteract the bad ones (at some point in life – perhaps that one, loving, supporting grandparent, or a good teacher who recognised potential and validated it).

It’s because of this accidental use of a powerful system that many people end up with serious issues and anxieties. The negative consequences of one generation of lives becomes a forceful power of suggestion to indoctinate the next.

The point of this is to just explain that the mind can respond to stimuli without your conscious analytical process stepping in to check on it.

So how about later, in adult life?

Well absolutely. You’re always unconsciously absorbing ideas, even if you think you’re all “in control” and have a choice.

But even as an adult, you’re no way near as in control of your brain as most people would like to believe.

A Metaphor For Absorption of Suggestions

We’re getting closer to this all making sense, please bear with me!

Think of your adult, selective, calculating conscious mind (sometimes called the ‘critical faculty’ or ‘executive function’) as being like a guard to a building (the building being your precious unconscious mind – with all the automatic values, beliefs, ideas, attitudes, perspectives and expectations that form your individual subjective reality).

You’re a conscientious, sensible kind of person with a healthy bullshit detector, so your guard stops all who want to enter.

The guard checks them out, and lets only the right people (i.e. the right ideas or suggestions) through. Great, good job, you can rest assured that you’re in full control of yourself.

Sometimes though – the guard can be gotten round.

Sometimes, the guard gets distracted by something happening nearby – and an idea just sifts through. This is like sponsorship advertising – you’re distracted by the main event, and don’t notice some brand just slip on by into your unconscious to be associated forever more.

Sometimes, an idea cycles up to the guard every day. Sits there for a while next to them, cycles off again. Every day. Until about three weeks later, the guard has become completely oblivious to this person. So then, the person (a suggestion) just cycles on into the building, unnoticed. This is when the repetition of an idea finally gets accepted – which is why advertising (especially branding) relies on repetition.

Sometimes, an idea is so forceful, intimidating and powerful, that the guard turns a blind eye knowingly and just lets it in. This is like the power of emotions. When our emotions are running high, we tend to become more suggestible to ideas. This is why you’re more likely to spend more on drinks when you’re having a good time, when you might normally talk yourself out of spending so much. Or why conspiracy theories propogate far easier during times of national (or international) uncertainty and anxiety (e.g. the pandemic).

A few people might approach the guard and start acting randomly, shouting nonsensical things. The guard gets confused, and doesn’t notice someone walk by. This is like those situations where you’re so overstimulated and/or confused by something that you start responding automatically as a way to handle it (when you look back on the event, it feels like you were truly on autopilot).

Perhaps many people approach the building at once, and the guard gets so bamboozled that a few people (again, suggestions) manage to slip through. This is like choice overload in advertising, where you get so bogged down in a series of small, innocuous seeming choices that you lose sight of the bigger picture of what’s actually happening. A few days later a bunch of crap from Temu shows up. Or you answer that first, simple, innocent question from a phone or street surveyor, which then paves the way for the next question (the influence of consistency), until you’re being asked to sign up to something.

Something else that might happen is that someone who outranks the guard walks on in without question. This is the power of authority – which can be incredibly automatic and influential. Teachers, the police, media, governments can all utilise (and unfortunately abuse) this influence.

In one study, when a stranger wearing an anonymous uniform asked another stranger to pick up litter from the street, a significantly higher proportion did, than if the person was in plain clothes. The uniform was generic! There was no real legal power at work, but just the suggestion of authority is enough to make people respond automatically.

In Stanley Milgram’s famous study, a scientist in a white coat asked participants to give increasing electric shocks to someone. They didn’t know the shocks weren’t real (the receiver just screamed behind a closed door) – yet two thirds of people went all the way up to “XXX – DEATH” because a scientist in a white coat told them to.

Shocking, right?

By the way – cults (which still exist) or MLM schemes typically abuse most (or all) of these forms of influence, able to transform a person’s entire identity and personality. A calculated assault on the mind like this can reasonably be called brainwashing – and it unfortunately happens again and again to the most intelligent, decent people.

It’s scary stuff.

The Misunderstood Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is a powerful example of suggestion – a doctor telling someone what effect a pill will have can be automatically responded to by the unconscious mind, to the extent that they lose a headache, become happier, have a skin disease clear up, go hot, cold, or have any other number of effects.

The placebo effect is probably the best example there is of suggestion, because it’s been supported by so many (in fact, almost all) medical trials. The double blind procedure of randomized trials against a placebo equivalent was developed because the placebo effect is so reliably powerful.

People dismiss it as fluff, “oh, it’s just the power of belief! It’s all in the mind! It’s nothing real” but think about what an understatement that is!

Just the power of belief. That’s exactly what we’re talking about here.

And it is powerful.

That power of belief collectively has more variance than all the drugs that have been tested against it. The mind is incredibly powerful, there’s no question about it. If you’re in any doubt about the placebo effect, Google it and do some research, you’ll be amazed.

Hopefully by now you’re in agreement that the unconscious mind can respond to suggestions automatically.

And not just because I told you so, but because I’ve given you enough information to really understand how it works for yourself.

Suggestive response doesn’t have to be instant. It might take a while for absorbed ideas to settle and associate enough to lead to automatic response. The important thing is that the unconscious mind accepts ideas. Once an idea is accepted, the unconscious mind will move towards it – because this is what the unconscious mind does. It follows programs.

Really, that’s all your brain does.

The whole thing is automatic.

It steers you towards the ideas, the drives, the motives, the goals, that it has stored within.

When someone says your name in a crowded room, it makes you shift your focus to look and see, because it knows that it’s relevant to you. If an opportunity presents that could help you towards your goals, your unconscious will spot it. If some of your goals are self-destructive (e.g. you absorbed the idea that you aren’t good enough, or don’t deserve to be happy), then your unconscious will spot opportunities for procrastination or self-sabotage.

It doesn’t care whether the goals, the expectations, the ideas are positive or negative – it just steers you towards them.

That’s what it does.

Now let’s get back on track – hypnosis.

Hypnotic Suggestion

Hypnosis could be loosely defined as the process of directing a person’s automatic unconscious responsiveness to achieve a desired result.

As a process, hypnosis utilises the brain’s natural ability for automatic response, building and compounding that response until all suggestions are able to trigger the responsive power of automatic imagination.

When a person becomes highly responsive to hypnotic suggestion (i.e. ‘the guard’ is now asleep), suggestions are fully absorbed and can then achieve all kinds of amazing effects:

To forget their name.

To not see a particular object.

To see an object that isn’t really there.

To feel a sensation, like hot or cold.

To not feel pain, even during surgery or dental extraction.

To hear something that isn’t there, or not hear something that is.

To remember something from their past that wasn’t available to conscious recall.

To access states of feeling, to experience certain emotions.

To associate a feeling or compulsive action with a stimulus, whether a word, sound or visual cue.

Now some of those might seem extraordinary, and they are – that is how resourceful and powerful the mind really is.

But all of those effects can also be experienced in different ways, in every day life – hypnosis isn’t magic, it’s just skilled utilisation.

Because the mental technology that creates those effects, in the brain, isn’t exclusive to the hypnotic process. They’re just accessed more readily, when the mind becomes unconsciously responsive to suggestions.

Anything that the mind is capable of doing, is achievable as a response to suggestion, when a person is responsive to hypnotic suggestion.

Most of these effects are pointless, and fascinating only as an illustration that might be used in stage hypnosis for example.

But some, such as creative visualization, exploring emotions and memories, are extremely powerful and valuable in change-work, like therapy. People can be taken back to significant memories where meanings or beliefs were absorbed that aren’t useful. The unconscious mind is then ready to absorb new, positive meanings and reframes of events which can have life-changing results for a person.

We all have events or situations in our lives where we “absorbed” negative beliefs about ourselves, the world or other people. How limiting are those beliefs to our every day lives?

For some, it’s unbearable – and leads to great anxiety and self-doubt. How pointless, to have a life limited by some false idea that happened to be absorbed probably many, many years ago. How different things could have been if there was a greater access to the unconscious mind to change such things for the better.

Hypnosis is also useful in self-directed performance, such as accessing enhanced creativity or problem solving abilities. Some medics trained in hypnosis have used it to help people with pain in situations where anaesthetic isn’t readily available. Dentists have extracted teeth, and many women have given birth, using hypnosis as a natural psychological analgesic.

But let’s return to where we started, before turning to some more fun stuff.

Everything’s a suggestion.

When someone becomes highly responsive to hypnotic suggestion, they’re responsive to all suggestions – even if implied. An arm could become cataleptic, just by lifting the hand in an ambiguous way as if to suggest it.

Whether a person remembers the suggestions or not is typically influenced by the hypnotists wording (e.g. “…and feel wide awake as if everything is normal” carries the subtle implication of amnesia).

Accessing repressed memories can be especially tricky if the hypnotist isn’t skilled (or even aware) enough of how everything they say carries a suggestion – saying something from a poorly concluded hunch like “return to that time when you might have been abused” could easily ‘suggest’ an imagined experience which looks and sounds like a real memory even if it isn’t. (This would be exceptionally bad practice by the way, any skilled therapist would hopefully prevent such leading presuppositions).

This is why hypnotic recall has become inadmissable in court, as it’s far too unreliable and fragile (being highly responsive to the hypnotists wording) to be taken as ‘truth’.

Use The Power of Suggestion Yourself

Hopefully by now you’re aware of how important it is to be aware of the suggestions that surround you.

Become aware of the suggestive implications of people around you and what they say (or don’t say).

Be mindful of the suggestions in your environment and whether their conducive to your goals or not.

Find ways to remind yourself of your strengths and values, to reinforce them and not get too bogged down in negativity or self-doubt.

To Suggest Confidence for an Anxious Occasion:

Imagine telling yourself about a time when you have displayed confidence. See, hear, feel, smell, experience the memory in all its detail, focussing on how confident you felt (or determined, focussed, happy, powerful etc).

Then think about a future event that might make you feel anxious.

Visualise yourself as you would like to be, in every detail. Make it big, bright, colourful, and try to feel it as best you can.

Rewind it in your mind’s eye, and replay it but stepping inside the body of yourself, and experiencing those details from the inside.

Do this a few times for different situations that could occur.

Imagine the end result, being back in your safe-place, visualising yourself and knowing how it feels to have achieved the task in every detail.

A Fun Suggestion

You know that strange feeling when sometimes something you know is there, like a colour, and it’s interesting how it can just gradually fade from the mind, just gone, grey, like colours falling through a sieve and hard to keep hold of.

It’s like when you stare at the dot below for a few moments and think about the colour grey…

Any self-respecting page about suggestion wouldn’t be complete without a good old-fashioned hypnotic spiral, am I right?

So repeat in your mind any positive suggestions you want to make for yourself while staring into the center, remember to keep them current (“I am…” rather than “I will…”) and in the positive rather than negative.

Just a bit of fun.

I hope that this has shown you some ways in which the power of suggestion can work.

Just remember – what the unconscious mind accepts, it acts on.

That is really all it does.

So make sure your suggestions, words, intonation and beliefs are positive, and accept them. If you find this difficult, you may have opposing beliefs or previously accepted ideas conflicting.

The Power of Suggestion and your unconscious imagination are always embraced in an ever-changing flow.

So let’s move on to learn about the beautiful complexity of automatic imagination.

Just a suggestion.