There are just so many questions we can ask and wonder about when we start to think about hypnosis, but some of those questions just keep coming up, don’t they, and that might mean that it’s time to think about new answers to these old questions. Whether you are just beginning to do hypnosis, or even someone who has only just begun to imagine what it’s like to really start to share these types of experiences, or someone who can remember back to the time when you too were just starting with the new perspective of all your experiences, we all have times when the response that you might expect is not the response you get.
Now, a lot of times this is the question that comes up with those who are only just starting out, and they wonder, as we all can imagine and perhaps remember wondering, what if they don’t go into trance, or what if they just go under and come out, or, perhaps, what happens if they don’t respond to my suggestion to do this and do that instead? It’s only natural to just start wondering how to respond in these situations as you just start to consider that right now. Many people will give you thoughts on this about changing your tactic or doing things a little differently, or tell you that this won’t happen if you are confident, or many other possibilities, and there is truth in many of these options, but there is also another way to see this which we can begin to think about right now.
Of course, when you think about hypnotizing a person, you can begin to think about it as a way of communicating with them, as a conversation between you and another person, and in a conversation it’s really okay for them to say so many different things, isn’t it, not just that one thing that you might expect or want them to say. If you went into every conversation knowing just what you wanted to say and expecting the other person to just respond in exactly this way that would be pretty silly, wouldn’t it, because they are them and will say what they have to say. So, when you do hypnosis, just consider that whatever response you receive tells you something and is useful to you in creating just that response you are looking for, if you frame it that way.
Whatever response you receive, it’s a simple thing to just frame that as a hypnotic response, when you just begin to imagine it that way. Suppose, for example, you invite a person into trance by performing an induction, and they just don’t seem to enter into trance. Now, you might just wonder how you can frame that as a hypnotic response, and that’s a question that is well worth asking, because the answer is something that is worth understanding, isn’t it? When a subject doesn’t go into trance, consider that it is a choice they are making, that not responding can come from many different things, but the reason is simply because the subconscious mind just didn’t open up to that suggestion to enter trance. So, when I have a subject that just won’t enter trance at first, I congratulate them and point out the choice.
“Yes,” I might say, “it’s so good to know that you can choose not to enter trance when you didn’t want to yet, and your subconscious mind can listen and choose to enter trance when it’s ready too, because right now, your conscious mind is ready to enter trance, and it can be okay for you to ask that part of you deeper down to make that choice too, isn’t it. So, right now, as you just consider that you can choose to enter trance just that easily, you might just wonder how you knew then that you didn’t just enter trance, and can wonder really what that feeling is that is this trance you are choosing to enter.”
In this case, it’s just a question of framing that response as a response to a suggestion, because this is a communication, and the choice to not enter trance is a response to that induction, so you can show them that they did respond on a deep level, and that will let them know they still have that choice. And the only way to really know it’s a choice, you can begin to notice, is to enter trance, because if you can’t choose to enter trance, than you didn’t choose not to enter trance either. You can even tell them that too, and you might just see already how this is a powerful way to think about these things. Because when you think of responding in a different way than you expect as still being a hypnotic response, it really does open up so many possibilities for you in what you do and how you think about those things.
Now, a far simpler example which might make even more sense right now is to think about a specific response, and let’s make it simple by using a really simple suggestion, something like an arm levitation. Now, suppose you tell them that they will feel this arm just raising up without even knowing that they are raising it, and it doesn’t move. In response, I might just say something like “yes, your arm can sit just like that, and you can let it sit and wonder if it will move or if it can, or if it is just going to stay stuck like that and you won’t even be able to try to move it, or you can find that it does move, maybe moving up, or to this side or that, or some other movement you can’t even just imagine until you have noticed that it already happened…”
Here you’ve made every choice a possible response, and so they have no choice but to follow the suggestion. This might just seem silly to some of you, but the thing is, and the rest of you might already see this too(because some part of you probably does), but when you define anything as a response, that suggests to the subconscious that it is being responsive whatever it does, and since not responding is often a response that comes because the subject doesn’t want to respond, well, you are making that non-responsiveness impossible. You are creating a double bind, one which will lead them to accept that your suggestions should be responded to, and they will respond so much more easily because they know that they don’t have a choice about that.
Certainly, there are many other elements in the language that I’ve used here in describing how to speak to your subject, and many other applications for this type of thinking which we will explore in future columns. For now, let these ideas sink in, and, let me also add that if you are wondering about anything specific in here, or have a question about hypnosis that you really are interested in seeing addressed in future columns, I’m looking forward to hearing from you, so email me at: will@teenagehypnosis.com.