FAQS

• Hypnosis is not sleep; it’s a matter of becoming largely unconscious. While in normal sleep both your conscious and subconscious minds are inactive. Hypnosis is a matter of completely relaxing and while your mind remains alert and receptive. In hypnosis you are not tranced out. You are in a state similar of becoming totally engrossed in a book or movie.”

• The phenomenon of hypnosis occurs each and every day. Everything that we have learned is stored in our subconscious. For example, you have learned to drive; therefore, your driving ability is stored in your subconscious. When you get in your car, maneuver out onto the interstate, go into a continuous stream of traffic, and get to a steady speed. At this point your conscious mind is free since the knowledge required for driving exists in your subconscious, your conscious mind floats off, letting your subconscious to become more active. You may become so absorbed in your thoughts that you drive in the direction of your work when your real destination is the store. When your attention is needed to avoid something in the street, to change lanes, or stop at a light, your conscious mind comes into play again. You may even reach your destination and wonder how you got there so fast. Driving is only one automatic activity. Your conscious mind is abstracted from your subconscious whenever you do anything habitually; therefore, you are more apt to go into a hypnotic state.

Can a goal be attained in one step? 

• A goal can be attained in one step if the goal is simple, realistic, and reasonable. Some goals are too big to attain in one step and may not be achievable without transitional steps. Goals are best approached in small steps if the desired outcome is a tremendous change. It is best to work with small steps to build to the next step. Even suggestions and well-described images may be less successful if your unconscious mind knows you are attempting to large of a step.

• When your goals are realistic and have set a precise time objective you will get pleasure from the fulfillment of your transitional accomplishments. Your accomplishments will reinforce you endurance and resolve to thrive at each subsequent stage. The cycles of accomplishment will replace prior cycles of failures and disappointments that might be present with problems of extensive duration.

• Your unconscious mind will notice and distinguish why the action is required and how to implement your wishes when you produce personalized, unambiguous, and inspiring suggestions. Furthermore, your conscious mind can see what the benefits will be from the effort and time you devote to your self-hypnosis program.

Why does hypnotherapy sometimes fail? 

• Why hypnotherapy sometimes fails can be divided into problems during induction and problems during hypnotherapy. Failure in induction is rare in the hands of an experienced hypnotherapist. The egocentric type of individual often fear subordination to the hypnotherapist and can be difficult to hypnotize.

• The most common sources for complexities in hypnotherapy are lack of motivation and inability to face life’s problems. Individuals who have little or no desire to improve their situation are poor subjects for hypnosis. These individuals do not wish to yield their symptoms because they have an enjoyable neurosis. There are other people who are poorly motivated that can be helped by the organization of healthy goals. Highlighting the value of hypnosis as an influential therapeutic adjunct in correlation to the cosmetic and health factors is greatly motivating.

• Client difficulties are usually associated with impractical demands. Unusual wishes that insist on the magical removal of symptoms are always expected. Yet most innocent requests point to an approach to the removal of the cause and not the symptom. When the cause is gone, the symptom of course disappears. A client extremely infatuated with a physical appearance that’s adamant on amnesia for that theoretical disfigurement should not be provide with that amnesia, but instead he needs deep personal problem work. If the client is adamant on working only on that one area of disfigurement then it is best to refund his money back.

• Difficulties as a result of hypnotherapy are first and foremost due to a belief that hypnotherapy is a miracle and can work extremely fast. The termination of treatment because the progress is not as fast as the client had assumed it would be. The client makes some improvement and decides that it is not working. Clients who fail to develop the appropriate state of mind are predestined to fail. Their biases, narrow-mindedness, and other negative attitudes relinquish an opportunity for the positive influence of hypnotherapy.

• A therapist who sets standards that are difficult or impossible for a client to attain creates difficulties. The therapist doesn’t give the client sufficient motivation to seek additional assistance. This will only mobilize antagonism and typically result in discontinuance of the therapy. A change that seems small and trivial to the therapist may be a major breakthrough to the client. Showing consideration of the client’s map of reality must be upheld.

What the difference between Stage hypnotism, clinical hypnosis, and the “Svengali Effect.”

• There is big difference between stage hypnotism and clinical hypnosis. Stage hypnotism is a show purely for entertainment.

• In the beginning of a stage show the hypnotist asks for volunteers from the audience. Several of the volunteers are repeat visitors who are easily hypnotized in which they are almost always selected when recognized by the hypnotist.

• Apparently, those who venture on stage have self-selected themselves to be part of the show and have given unspoken consent to allow their inhibitions stay behind. They have the ideal excuse for what they do because they were hypnotized.

• In a clinical setting a client in deep hypnosis who are asked to do something against their fundamental interest, either the command is disregard or they come out of trance.

• Willpower is not renounced in hypnosis. The client is always in control of their free will.
  The “Svengali Effect” is named after a hypnotist from an old John Barrymore film. The bearded crazy man that hypnotized women for his bidding and criminal commands. The question that is implied, could someone be made to do something against his or her will? Research has made known that people will follow only those suggestions within their fundamental interests.

• Research has indicated that men and women are absolutely equivalent in susceptibility to hypnosis even though popular opinions imply that women are much more susceptible to hypnosis than men.

• An individual’s occupation appears to display a positive connection with their openness to hypnosis. According to Dr. Hilgard, humanities majors are the most susceptible to hypnosis, then social science majors to be the second most hypnotizable. On the other end of the scale, science and engineering students are the least susceptible to hypnosis.

What’s the nature of suggestibility in hypnosis?

• Hypnotic suggestibility varies from one individual to another individual and depends largely on motivation. The author, William S. Kroger, states, “There is some changes of suggestibility in hypnosis with age.

• Children are more hypnotizable than adults, peaking out between ages 9 and 12.” (8) According to Gail Gardener, Ph.D. and Karen Olness, M.D. “research concluded that hypnotizability and suggestibility are quite limited in young children, increase markedly in the middle childhood years from about seven to fourteen, and then decrease somewhat in adolescence…”

• Because of poor comprehension of both verbal induction approaches and vocabulary, children below the age of six or seven years old are troublesome subjects. The hypnotizability and suggestibility increase markedly in the middle childhood years from about seven to sixteen years of age. Sixteen to twenty-one years old is the perfect range of age for the depth of hypnosis and also for velocity of induction.

• Then there’s a considerable decrease at the age of twenty, yet, somewhat stable all through adulthood in susceptibility to hypnosis and then tapering off in the older population. “The general rule is that there are fewer good subjects in the older age groups, but this can vary greatly with the individual.”

• An individual who is forced into therapy by a family member or a friend that is not willing to relinquish his habit may not be hypnotized.

 

The following are misconceptions and facts about hypnosis:

Many misconceptions have been promoted by movies that portray people being transformed into zombie like creatures by some powerful mystic.

MISCONCEPTION:

Only the weak-minded and gullible can be hypnotized.

FACT:

The best hypnotic subjects are individuals with above average intelligence who are capable of concentrating and have an active imagination.

MISCONCEPTION:

The client will “surrender their will” to the hypnotherapist.

FACT:

The client is in full control of himself or herself, completely attentive of the environment and entirely capable of making decisions.

MISCONCEPTION:

Fear of losing control or revealing intimate information.

FACT:

You’re always in full control of everything you do, think or say while in hypnosis. The only power lies in the mind of the client because in hypnosis, you have better responsiveness than when you are wide-awake, and completely keep your powers of selectivity.

MISCONCEPTION:

Fear of not being dehypnotized.

FACT:

The client or the hypnotherapist can terminate hypnosis readily at any time.