How to know if hypnosis works on you
Many people assume that they can't be hypnotized. Some take it almost as a point of pride as if un-hypnotizability is akin to, say, not being able to be tricked or conned. And yet hypnosis is central to human experience. To be hypnotized is to demonstrate a capacity which is that of being able to learn on a deep level and utilize an optimum state of mind.
Here are some common questions we've had over the years about the capacity of someone to be hypnotized and some myth busting answers to such questions:
Q: I don’t think I can be hypnotised because I’m too strong willed!
A: Hypnosis isn’t so much something done to you as something you enable to happen by your capacity to focus. All a skilled hypnotist will do is facilitate your capacity to respond.
Being able to focus and concentrate are indicators of powerful willpower.
Hypnosis isn’t a tussle, it’s simply a way of allowing someone else to help you get in touch with a powerful part of your mind that can help you make the changes you want whether that’s in the realm of greater achievement, pain control or simply enhanced wellbeing.
So, having strong willpower helps you become hypnotized; ideas like "I'm too strong-willed to be hypnotized" don't really mean anything.
Q: I don’t believe in hypnosis. Do I have to believe in it for it to work?
A: Interestingly enough, belief or not in hypnosis seems to make little difference to your capacity to actually be hypnotised.
If we take a simple analogy. Someone might not believe in the existence of cars or that they can work and yet still sit in a car and be taken to where they want or need to go.
Their belief or otherwise in the car doesn’t really affect the car’s capacity to help them travel!
Sometimes professing not to believe in hypnosis may even be a protective mechanism because the person perhaps intuits that in fact they may be naturally a very talented hypnotic subject.
More generally, hypnosis is not seen by the scientific community as ‘mumbo jumbo’ as there are reams of studies showing its efficacy from conditions as diverse as healing after surgery to the control of addictions.
Q: I can't be hypnotized; I'm terrified of handing over control to someone else!"
A: Some people presume they will ‘lose control’ during hypnosis or ‘be controlled by someone else.’ But uncommon hypnosis is all about helping people gain more control over behaviors that had been controlling them, such as smoking, fears and phobias, panic attacks, low self esteem, depression, anxiety or insomnia.
Hypnosis is a tool, the medium through which the mind and body learn. Some levels of hypnosis are so light they seem little different from everyday awareness, and some are so deep you feel you've entered another realm or 'went somewhere completely different for a while.'
But hypnosis is natural to all and everyone; the right approach will enable anyone to go into hypnosis and that includes you!
For more help with going into hypnosis, try our Be A Better Hypnotic Subject download.
Q: "I don't think I can be hypnotized! I get distracted!"
A: A skilled hypnotherapist is, above all, someone who can be flexible in their approach to hypnotizing you.
Being easily distracted might appear to hinder the hypnotic experience. However, a skilled uncommon hypnotist knows how to adapt and even use distractions to guide someone into hypnosis.
This approach, called "The Utilization Principle," encourages the therapist to work with whatever the client or hypnotic subject brings to the table—even a "scattered mind"—to assist them effectively.
Q: I failed a standard hypnotizability test. Does that mean I can’t be hypnotised?
A: The problem with standard hypnotizability or ‘susceptibility’ tests is that they are too standardized!
A one size fits all approach to test whether someone is a naturally talented hypnotic subject is restrictive for the very reason that it is not tailored and subtle enough to help anyone and everyone experience hypnosis.
Feeling under pressure to perform may sometimes get in the way of actually responding as you naturally are able to hypnosis.
In fact the skilled and artfully subtle use of hypnosis should really blend into natural conversation so that it doesn’t feel instantly ‘weird’ or like you have to respond or perform in a certain way.
Sure some people are naturally able to experience hypnotic trance more quickly and easily than others but what you find is that hypnotic responsiveness can increase with practice for just about everyone.
So if you didn’t respond to a one size fits all hypnotisability test don’t let that bother you as it may say little to nothing about your actual capacity and potential to enter nature's optimum learning state, that of hypnosis.
Q: I fear that all my ‘dark secrets’ will ‘come out’ under hypnosis. Is this true?
A: This is a question I don’t get as much as I used to and I think that’s because the presumptions behind the question have been somewhat debunked by more recent understandings in psychology.
Thanks to Sigmund Freud and others the myth was that your unconscious mind is like some kind of cesspit full of repressed desires and fears that we struggle to keep at bay.
Freud was right that much of our behaviour is unconsciously motivated, which on the face of it seems a reasonable idea. However, his idea was that in order to resolve emotional ‘complexes’ all unconscious material had to be retrieved and brought into the light by the conscious mind and once examined would lose it]s destructive power over us. This is an impossible task because so much of perception is and has to be, unconscious.
For example every second, our five senses take in an estimated 11 million pieces of information.
We know this because scientists have painstakingly counted the receptor cells on each sense organ and the nerves that connect them to the brain (1). Yet we can only consciously process about 40 bits of information a second. What this means is that large parts of our experience are unavoidably unconscious.
Hypnosis can facilitate changes on the unconscious level more easily and naturally than other therapeutic methods. If we intend to work with the whole person as much as possible, this must necessarily include the vast areas of the human being that are outside of, and in some ways much more than, mere cognition.
Emotional problems are certainly generated and maintained on the level of the unconscious mind - people don't, for example, consciously decide to blush or have a panic attack or get depressed.
Yet using hypnosis, the gateway to the unconscious workings of the mind, we can make changes on the unconscious level without needing to try to drag every part of our unconscious perceptions into conscious awareness.
Now, rather than seeing the unconscious mind as this seething cesspool of hidden, dark and scary ‘secrets’ a more modern understanding of the unconscious mind sees it as potentially highly resourceful. It is a powerful part of you that can be guided hypnotically to serve you in ways that help you meet your needs in life in the best possible way.
1. See this marvellous book: Wilson, T. D. (2004). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconsious. Harvard University Press. See also: Your Brain Sees Even When You Don't
