Hypnosis is not a Magic Bullet
DL Scott CtHA / AASD / CDC
337 No. 143rd. St.
Seattle, WA. 98133
One of the things that always amazes me is when a client calls for the first time,
explains how they want to come in and be cured of this issue or that. issue, but they want it done within a space of one session. Recently I had a mental health counselor ask me if I could put him under and take care of an issue he has been dealing with for years, The Fear of Flying. He didnât want to talk with anyone about it, he didnât want to go through therapy about it, he simply wanted to be put into a state of hypnosis and be cured of his Fear. It shows the true lack of understanding not just among lay people but also among so called professionals when it comes to how the brain works.
First off let me say, Hypnosis is not a magic bullet, it is not some dark mysterious power that will put the client to sleep and them cure them all of all their ills by the time they wake up.
With that said, what is hypnosis? Hypnosis is a state of focused concentration, a state of focused awareness. When a trained therapist, such as myself, guides a client into a state of altered consciousness, the actually truth is that we are not creating anything, we are not putting the client into some magical state, we are simply helping the client to shift their awareness from one thing to another.
When we are focused on something, what does that really mean? It means that our brains are filled with images and pictures of what ever is the object of focus. Think about that, when you are experiencing anxiety about something, such as a fear or anxiety of flying, what is your whole focus pf attention on. Your focus is on the Fear of Flying, your attention is on what might happen while flying, and that means that your brain is filled with images and pictures of everything bad that may happen.
The brain does not know the difference between a real or imagined event. When you are thinking about something, when you have an image of an event in your brain, the same neurons and neuron – firing patterns are occurring as though the event is taking place outside of the brain. That is the beauty and the simplicity of hypnosis, by utilizing the images that we have in our brains already, you can change your reactions, your behavior, your patterns of belief, and accomplish seeming miracles.
There are many effects of hypnosis, and altered states of consciousness that are considered fantastic and beyond belief. Take the idea of fire walking, or walking on beds of broken glass while barefoot. In both cases the feet are completely unharmed, neither a burn nor a scratch will appear. This effect comes from control of the body through control of the images in the brain.
The images we focus on can cause us stress, unhappiness, pain, or on the other end of the spectrum, pleasure, joy, and elation.
Try a little experiment. I want you to close your eyes and think of an event that made you feel scared or uncomfortable. The event might be something that made you actually tremble with negative emotion. When you are done with that, I want you to open your eyes. Think about the images of that event, were they clear, bright, sharp, focused, big, in vivid color?
Now I want you to close your eyes again, and think about that event. Only this time I want you to change the image(s). I want you to retain the same image(s) only this time I want you to make the images in black and white, make them small, dull, fuzzy, and even add silly music to them, something like circus music. Now open your eyes again, and I want you to think about how you are feeling about the event this time, as compared to the first time.
You have just used a very simple hypnotic technique in which you recoded the images in your brain, to change the emotional response. You have not gotten rid of the images, nor have you wiped out the memories, but you have recoded the image(s) and changed the fear or anxiety that you once felt about the event.
This type of technique works well, it works fast, and it is very effective, and if that was all there was to it, then my interactions with clients would be so much easier, but as with most things in life, there is more to it then just that.
I once heard a very good analogy of the process put in the following terms. If you were to attempt to explain to alien from another world where you got a cup of water, and you simply tell them, you go over to the Fawcett, hold the cup under the spout, turn the knob, and presto, you get a cup full of water, you would only be explaining a part of the process. You left out the whole piece about the plumbing behind the Fawcett, the thousands of pipes that carry the water from the water treatment plant, and on, and on, and on. The same can be said for how the magic of hypnosis really works.
As a clinician for the last 18 years working in the more traditional fields of Chemical Dependency and Mental Health, I have learned the value of clearing up old energy, letting go of old beliefs, and ideas, while incorporating a new idea or belief. Another good analogy is to think of waxing down your car. You certainly would not want to put a new coat of wax on it without giving the car a good cleaning, taking away the layer of dirt and grime that you have picked up while traveling along the road. The human brain works in much the same way. You have traveled many years in your life, and before you can successfully incorporate a layer of new beliefs, you would do well to start letting go of the old beliefs, release the old energy that have been keeping you stuck going in the same direction. This process does not take an enormous amount of time, unlike conventional therapy, Hypnosis / Personal Energy Mastery can help you release old bits of emotional baggage, inappropriate belief systems, within a matter of just a couple of sessions, once this is accomplished then the new beliefs, the new layer of energy can be successfully incorporated into your life.
We are the creators of our life circumstances. Now when we first hear this we are prone to get defensive and shoot back with, why would I have created the circumstances of my life in this way? Why would I have put myself in this type of relationship, or put myself into this lousy job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The truth is that we have invited in, or in someway created the circumstances of our daily life, through our focus of attention, through the images that we carry in our brains.
Generally we are not aware of this process, and the images we keep in the forefront of our brains are based on fears, old emotional wounds that we are so traumatized by that they become the script that we live by. We constantly focus on these images, even we think that we are trying to remember them so as not to repeat the same events, but we are none the less focused on these images and they doom us to keep creating, recreating, and experiencing the same behaviors over and over again.
When you use the powerful technique of hypnosis to recode old images, and create new images in your brain, these images help to instill a new behavior, or belief into your life. The problem is, that just like the dirt that keeps working its way up through the new coat of wax, the old issues often times will resurface and continue to create havoc in your life.
One of the things that hypnosis does, and does quite well, is to put you into a state of altered consciousness in which the critical brain is lessened, and powerful, positive ideas are more easily instilled into the brain. (It is important to note here that the key word is positive, the subconscious is designed in such a way that it is constantly trying to protect and promote you, it will not accept harmful or negative ideas and beliefs while in the altered state of hypnosis).
As I try to explain to clients, you can be put into the state of hypnosis, you can be given as many suggestions as possible concerning whatever new behavior you would like to incorporate into you life, but if you donât clear out the old inappropriate energy / emotion first, the effect will not last. Just like that new wax job on a car that has not been cleaned, it might look OK for a little while, but the old dirt and grime well eventually just come right back through. These old images, beliefs, and thoughts are often what cause prolonged stress in your life.
When we allow ourselves to remain under the effects of prolonged stress we weaken the immune system and open ourselves up to sickness and disease. What a help it would be if we just took a few minutes each day and practice simple relaxation or self hypnotic exercises to reverse the effect of the stress.
Looking more directly at the body / brain connection, is it any surprise that someone who has feelings of low self worth and esteem seem to experience lower energy, lower immune response, and actual occurrences of specific illness according to constant messages, and corresponding images they are focused on, i.e. âI am so sick of always having to deal with rude and pushy people,â repeated several times over the course of many days the brain will take the message, âI am so sickâ, and translate this into an actual physical sickness in the body.
Eventually the sickness well probably have to be taken care of on a physical level, costing the person time, money, and excessive wear and tear to the body. You see we are in control of the body through our brain, we just donât recognize this and so the incredible power of our brain goes unchecked, undirected.
You may notice that I have been using the term body / brain connection, instead of body / mind connection. What the power of suggestion does is to help you implant suggestions into the physical brain itself, it is then up to the mind, that controlling force behind the mechanical brain, to direct the use of those suggestions. If you were to put in brand new shinny positive suggestions over the top of old, inappropriate, negative, ideas, which do think would last. The negative ideas have been pilling up for years, building in strength and in numbers. The new suggestions, although they may be planted deeply and firmly will have a rough time of growing in strength and numbers if they are overwhelmed, much like a healthy plant being strangled by a garden of weeds, this is what happens when the old ideas that have never properly been gotten rid of subtly strangle the new ideas.
Through out the years I have worked with a wide range of complaints, from phobias and anxieties, such as the fear of flying, and addictions, such as nicotine, alcohol, and Crystal Methamphetamine, to issues of low self worth and esteem, procrastination, weight control, etc. In each case the successful client has been the one who does the necessary work of clearing out the old foundational beliefs, while putting in the new beliefs, and ideas that they want to incorporate into their lives.
A good example would be that of the smoker who claims that they want to quit smoking. I have had people who come in and expect to be put into the hypnotic state of consciousness, be given a few positive suggestions about not smoking anymore and then leaving, never having the desire to smoke again.
I can tell you from experience that it does not work this way. In most cases where a person is told they can be made to quit smoking in one session, the person is usually desiring a smoke by the time their leave the office, or within a few hours. In those rare cases where someone does quit with just one session, they have already resolved that they are no longer going to smoke, the benefits of not smoking have become so important to them that they have already released the idea of whatever benefits they received from the smoking in the first place. When I have someone come to me for not smoking I can usually tell by the second or third session whether this is going to be the time that they quit. If the client is willing to release the old belief patterns of the benefits they get from their addiction, if the client is willing to incorporate new activities into their daily life to replace the old addictive activity, (such things as a few weeks of daily deep breathing exercises, or a few weeks of listening to a reinforcement hypnosis CD), then I am certain that the prep work is being taken seriously, and so the new suggestions will have fertile soil to be planted in.
So is hypnosis some mysterious magic bullet, like mental health counseling at the beginning of this article had hoped or is a way of effectively cleaning up old images and thoughts that create various states of emotions in the body?
The next time someone tells you that they can put you to sleep and then cure you of what ever ails you, I hope you will remember, that there is no magic solution to lifeâs problems, and there is no magic bullet.
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DLScott
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