It’s quite common for people to say to me “well I’m not sure if I can be hypnotised” Before we get into this a little deeper it’s important that we understand what hypnosis is and what it isn’t.
‘Hypnosis is the bypass of the critical faculty of the mind to establish selective thinking where suggestions are accepted without resistance’
So what does that mean?
Whenever you accept something is true from someone that you trust, ‘without question’ your judgement has been bypassed and that piece of information has gone straight into your inner mind as fact.
An example that most of you can relate to happens when you watch a film. The film bypasses your critical faculty (questioning part of your mind) and you respond emotionally to exciting scenes , happy scenes, scary scenes and sad scenes even though the critical part of you knows they are not real. The characters are played by actors, the stunts done by stunt men and women, nobody died, no one was hard done by but while you watched it you inner mind imagined the scenes were real.
TV adverts are made to appeal to our emotions, bypassing our critical mind so that we believe their products are the best and go out and purchase them. If we fall for it we have been hypnotised by their suggestions.
The best Hypnotic subjects are young children. They live in trances accepting almost anything their parents, teachers and peers say to be true because they are in authority over them. Children don’t have enough life experiences to make big decisions so they look towards adults for help. In fact the biggest Hypnotists in your life were your parents!
Now that we’ve established what hypnosis is and that it happens regularly it would seem that everybody can be hypnotised?
So who can’t be hypnotised?
1. People who don’t want to be. ‘All hypnosis is self hypnosis’. The hypnotist does nothing to you, he shows you how to do it, so if you have fears or misconceptions about hypnosis it won’t happen.
2. People who you can’t communicate with. If you don’t understand the hypnotist they can’t explain the process of hypnosis to you.
3. People who won’t follow instructions. You can’t teach someone how to do something if they ignor your instructions.
Now some people are really good at hypnosis straight off the bat but most have to become accustomed to the process. They get better at it the more they do it, but it doesn’t take long!
So what’s the use of hypnosis?
If you can bypass a persons critical part of their mind you can put in better serving beliefs through suggestion without resistance. You also have accesss to a persons memories and their habits through hypnosis. This is of tremendous value when helping a person overcome anxieties, fears, phobias, negative self beliefs etc. It’s an advantage that Hypnotherapy has over counselling, CBT and psychotherapy and somewhat explains why your mind rejects all the good information they give you.