What You Should Know About Self Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a state in which people are more focused and open to suggestions. While under hypnosis, you may be given suggestions for how to improve yourself that you can act on. Hypnosis can be done by a hypnotist, or a person can do it on their own (self -hypnosis).
In both cases, the person being hypnotized is the one who decides whether or not to do what is being suggested. So, all hypnosis is really just self-hypnosis. You can only go into a hypnotic state when you are ready to do so. It may take one or more tries to get it right. Some people say they want to be hypnotized, but unconsciously they don’t want to be.
You might find that even though you want to do self-hypnosis, you can’t get there. What would cause that? Most of the time, people go into a hypnotic state without even realizing it. That may come as a surprise, but we will talk about it in more detail later.
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People who can’t be hypnotized aren’t common. Only about 1% of the population will be in that group. Who among us doesn’t listen to what other people say? As we’ve seen, we’re all influenced by what we see and hear in advertising and pop culture. We all tend to believe what we hear on the radio, watch on TV, or read on the internet, don’t we? Don’t we all agree that a product with a brand name is usually better than one without?
Suggestion is a very important part of our everyday lives. It starts with giving the baby a good name and ends with finding a good place to be buried. I’d like to tell you about an interesting book that talks about why we do many of the things we do without realizing it. This old book will keep you interested on every page.
It is called The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard.
We can all be persuaded to do things, so being hypnotized or doing it ourselves is just a matter of making us even more persuadable. Doesn’t the hypnotist start by telling the person to relax? Doesn’t he usually start by asking the person to look at something specific? Next, he tells the person he is talking to that his eyes are getting tired and heavy. He says that the subject will be in a deep hypnotic state as soon as he closes his eyes. I’m sure that you already know how to do this. With each step, the hypnotist leads the subject in a certain direction so that he will accept the next suggestion without question. When the subject gets to the end of this process, he is said to be hypnotized. Then, he takes suggestions without a second thought.
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Let’s keep going with this same idea. Suppose I say to you, “I’m going to use this pin to poke you. It won’t be bad.” Would you let me put the pin in you? No, of course not. Let’s say you are under hypnosis and I tell you the same thing again. What comes next? You quickly agree that the suggestion is true. If I go ahead and stick you with the pin, you won’t even move. In fact, you don’t feel any pain at all. Does this sound crazy to you? Isn’t this the same thing that the dentist does when he puts a patient to sleep so that he can do work on him without pain?
So, getting into hypnosis is just a matter of putting the suggestibility we all have into the channels that lead to the hypnotic state in the end. In many cases, it can be much harder to explain than this, but let’s use this as a starting point.
A trance can happen to anyone. Getting into hypnosis will take different amounts of time for different people. We’ll talk about some of the reasons why in the next chapter. For now, though, we just need to understand this point. I’ve met a lot of people who were very upset that hypnosis didn’t work right away or after a few tries. “What had gone wrong?” they asked. Even when they were told there was nothing wrong, these people were not happy. “I did go to a hypnotist to be hypnotized, didn’t I?” they said. Some people said that maybe the hypnotist wasn’t very good.
Let me explain that most subjects need to be conditioned for hypnosis, and this conditioning is helped when the subject practices certain conditioning exercises that I shall discuss in detail in chapter six, titled “How To Attain Self-Hypnosis.”
About one in ten of the people I teach responds to the first time I try to hypnotize them. No one can say for sure how long it takes to learn self-hypnosis, but in my experience, it takes about a month. I’ve had people learn how to self-hypnotize in about 30 minutes, but I also have to say that I’ve worked with people for a year before they got it.
Most of the time, the rules for learning self-hypnosis are the same as for learning anything else. It can be a fairly easy process, or it can be very hard to understand. The answer isn’t so much in the hypnotist as it is in the person being hypnotized.
One question that comes up is, “How can I give myself suggestions when I’m under hypnosis?” It’s important to remember that the person being hypnotized is always aware of what’s going on. He pays attention to what is said, does what is told, and ends the state when told to. In a self-hypnotic state, the person is in charge of everything. So, he can think, reason, act, criticize, make suggestions, or do anything else he wants to. He can tell himself things out loud, or he can tell himself things in his mind. In either case, he doesn’t come out of the hypnotic state until he tells himself to do so. Many people think that if they tell themselves things out loud, they will “wake up.” During hypnoanalysis, the person being studied answers questions while they are in a trance. The state does not end when the subject talks. You can hypnotize the person who talks a lot for as long as you want. Also, the person being hypnotized can be sitting up straight with his eyes open and still be under it. Taking this even further, the person being hypnotized might not even be aware that he is being hypnotized. He can be told not to remember, and when the therapist makes a certain move or says a certain word, he will go back into the hypnotic state but still keep his eyes open. Only a skilled hypnotist would be able to notice the change.
Another question that comes up often is, “How do I get out of the self-hypnotic state?” You just tell yourself that when you count to five, you’ll be able to open your eyes and feel fine. Often, the person giving himself posthypnotic suggestions falls asleep. This isn’t a bad thing, because the suggestions will get into his subconscious mind as he goes from being awake to sleeping.
People often think that when someone is hypnotized, he or she gives up control of his or her will to the hypnotist. Also, many people think that once a person is hypnotized, the hypnotist has full control over the person and the person can’t say no to suggestions. Both beliefs are erroneous. I think the first mistake comes from seeing hypnosis techniques in which the hypnotist asks the person to look into his eyes. The hypnotist tells the person being hypnotized that if he keeps looking into his eyes, he will become very hypnotized. Then, it comes down to who can look at the other person longer. The subject usually starts to blink his eyes, and the hypnotist quickly tells the subject that his eyes are getting watery and heavy, and that as soon as he closes his eyes, he will fall into a deep hypnotic sleep. The way this is done makes it look like the person being hypnotized “wants” to go under. It seems that as soon as the hypnotist focuses or wills hard enough, the subject gives in. In this method, the hypnotist does not look into the eyes of the person being hypnotized. He looks at the bridge of the nose of the person he is talking to.
The idea that the subject is a mindless robot comes from weird movies where the “mad scientist” makes people act like zombies after hypnotizing them. Usually, there’s a pretty girl in the movie, and she’s usually been hypnotized, too. Even though the audience is smart enough to know that this science-fiction drama is just for fun, the theme keeps coming up enough in books, comics, and TV to leave an indelible mark on the mind. It means telling the “big lie” so many times that people start to believe it. This process has an effect on all of us. There is a great book that talks about this exact idea. It is by William Sargent and is called Battle For The Mind. It tells in detail how evangelists, psychiatrists, politicians, and people who work in advertising can change your thoughts and actions.
Using the idea that the subconscious mind can be changed, you can see how something could go wrong even if the person wants to be hypnotized consciously. Unintentionally, you may have a bad relationship with the hypnotist, which can make it hard to get hypnotized. When this happens, the subject won’t answer until he feels comfortable with the hypnotist. Even the most well-thought-out plans will fail until there is a positive transference relationship. I’m sure you’ve said, “I don’t know why, but I don’t like that person.” Usually, you’ll say, “I can’t explain it, but I just have a feeling about him” when asked why. In fact, your subconscious reactions are affecting how you think and how you “feel.” In business transactions, the same thing happens. You either like or dislike the idea that has been put in front of you. You might say, “This deal makes me feel a certain way.” Even if you don’t know why, your subconscious has reacted automatically because it has done so before in a similar situation.
In giving you some insight into the hypnotic procedure, I am trying to point out certain problems in regard to acquiring self-hypnosis. For the most part, it is not a simple procedure that is accomplished immediately. You can’t just will it. It requires working toward a specific goal and following definite procedures which eventually lead to success.
The hypnotist is usually endowed by the subject with an omniscience and infallibility which logically is unjustified. The subject is naturally extremely disappointed if he doesn’t respond immediately. If he loses confidence in the hypnotist, he may never achieve hypnosis with this particular hypnotist. I have hypnotized subjects who have been to several other hypnotists without success, and I have had some of my unsuccessful subjects hypnotized by other hypnotists. How and why does it happen? I believe that some of the reasons are so intangible that it would be impossible to explain all of them with any degree of exactitude.
I once saw an individual about 12 times who wanted to learn self-hypnosis and had been unsuccessful in every approach. I asked him if he would volunteer as a subject for a class in techniques of hypnosis that I was teaching for nurses. He readily volunteered and showed up at the designated time. Much to my amazement as well as his own, he responded within a relatively short time as one of the nurses hypnotized him before the group. She had used a standard eye closure technique, requesting him to look at a spinning hypnodisc that I had previously used with him every time he was in the office. Her manner was extremely affable, she had used the identical technique I had used unsuccessfully, and the subject responded excellently to cap the climax. He was the first subject the nurse had ever hypnotized, since this was only her third lesson.
How would you account for it? Here was one of my students with two weeks’ experience hypnotizing a subject where I had failed while using every procedure that I felt would work. Was it because she was a better hypnotist? Perhaps! However, I’d like to recall at this time our discussion about subconscious responses. I’m inclined to feel that being hypnotized by a middle-aged female nurse created certain favorable unconscious responses which accounted for his going under hypnosis at that time. It created the initial break-through which was needed. I was able to hypnotize him easily at his next appointment, and he acquired self-hypnosis readily from that time on.
I have tried the same approach with other subjects who did not respond favorably and have failed to attain the success that I did in the above case. Why the impasse? It is one of the difficulties that we encounter in hypnosis, and as yet it has not been resolved.
We know that the easiest way to achieve self-hypnosis is to be hypnotized and given a posthypnotic suggestion that you will respond to hypnosis by a key word, phrase or gesture. I have tried to point out some problems that can arise. Needless to say, these problems do not always arise, and the attainment of self-hypnosis can be a relatively simple procedure. There is usually some way of reaching a subject who does not respond in a reasonable length of time.
Now we come to the point where the subject wishes to hypnotize himself. What happens in this situation? It would appear that the subject would go under hypnosis immediately. After all, isn’t he controlling the hypnotic session? Of course, this does happen time and time again, and the results seem miraculous. I receive mail constantly from readers of several of my other books on hypnosis telling me how they were able to achieve certain goals that they never dreamed possible. They write that they have achieved self-confidence and complete self-mastery and have been able to overcome problems that have plagued them for many years. These problems not only include strictly psychological troubles but many psychosomatic symptoms as well. Many have remarked at the ease in which they were able to achieve self-hypnosis and the results they wanted. For them it was as simple as following a do-it-yourself book.
Others write about the difficulty they encounter and ask what to do about it. It is my hope that this book will shed some light for those who have experienced difficulty in learning self-hypnosis. We shall discuss many phases of hypnosis with the emphasis on self-hypnosis. We’ll discuss its many ramifications and try not to leave out anything helpful in our discussion.
If you follow the instructions and exercises that discussed here persistently, you should be able to achieve a depth of self-hypnosis suitable for solving many of your personal problems.