Models, Suggestions, Hypnosis (Article) by sleepingirl

Models, Suggestions, Hypnosis (Article) by sleepingirl

Unfortunately, in order to teach something, you have to define it.

Hypnosis operates very heavily based on HOW you define it. By that I mean it’s partially placebo effect -- if you tell your subject that it works via some mechanism, that’s suggestive in and of itself and will affect the trance. But more importantly, the lens through which you view “hypnosis” directly informs how you will “hypnotize” someone.

This is why I’ve been very focused on talking about models lately -- I think as a community, it would help us a lot if we collectively understood that we are always describing hypnosis as being inside an arbitrary, imagined box. Sometimes the box says that hypnosis is about dissociation; sometimes the box says that hypnosis involves relaxation; sometimes the box says that hypnosis is about speaking to the unconscious mind.

When we know we are inside a box, it makes it easier for us to see the box itself, other boxes, or try to see outside. (We can’t actually fully leave all boxes -- I think people get very tempted to do that and then are ultimately blind to the box they end up in. https://xkcd.com/927/)

Models are really, really important for teaching hypnosis, but most of us who have been doing hypnosis for a long time are aware that “hypnosis” is most accurately defined on a VERY broad model. The placebo effect, meditation, magic and ritual, spirituality, political speeches, clever writing and poetry -- these things don’t just overlap with hypnosis; on a broad enough definition, they ARE hypnosis. There aren’t hard and fast boundaries that we can describe.

This definition is something like: “Hypnosis is acknowledging and/or making communications that cause someone to have a psychological response.” That’s maddeningly broad, but it’s accurate, and just about fully(?) encompasses all the things we might do in a hypnotic interaction. Everything is hypnosis, and also nothing is hypnosis. (Monsters and Magical Sticks by Stephen Heller is one of my favorite books about this.)

But even though it’s accurate, how useful is it? Usually, a definition that’s this broad is much less useful and can even be frustrating. We can’t really get anywhere in discussions about consent and negotiation if we fully drink the Kool-Aid of “everything is a suggestion.” This is also a very challenging concept to explain to new hypnotists in a way that helps them learn how to actually do hypnosis.

However, this model IS useful for people who are moving past beginner/novice status -- people who have learned a narrow definition and set of techniques and need the “aha!” moment that hypnosis is more than a few standard inductions, more than “suggestions” given after someone is “in trance.”

But once you have that galaxy-brain moment -- a “moment” that will likely take a given person years to fully process and understand -- you have to acknowledge that there are times where limitations, boxes, models will help you improve.

Suggestions

Suggestions are critical to the process of hypnosis -- they are what our “communications” are. These communications can be verbal, nonverbal, kinesthetic, visual; any way that we might communicate with someone is a time when they will process it and have a psychological response.

We can acknowledge that everything is suggestive, and that helps our process a lot. But what makes a GOOD suggestion? I believe that it’s not verbiage; it’s not magic combinations of words, nor a set of rules about direct versus indirect language. All of those things are sexy for us as hypnokinksters and useful to a degree -- but ultimately, they are red herrings.

Something I’ve been thinking about is this idea: The most important part of a suggestion is the process that it makes a person go through. That process has to be useful to the trance.

You can often tell, for example, when hypnosis is “bad” versus “good.” “Bad” hypnosis tends to be boring and follow a structure that doesn’t actually assist someone in engaging in trance. It might usually involve relaxation, but the relaxation does nothing to help someone feel or be hypnotized. A PMR that strictly, boringly relaxes the body and then jumps into disconnected follow-up suggestions, expecting someone to magically respond, is not very effective.

Personally, I’m moving towards thinking that one definition for a “suggestion” (or a “good suggestion”) is actually just “a building block in a multi-step process.” And critically, I think that there are some processes that you can lead people through which are inherently more hypnotic, or effective, than others.

An example of a process like this could be: Relaxing someone’s body and then teaching them how to body scan -- how to “look through” their body and notice how that makes those sensations change and intensify. Then, directing that scan internally such that “what am I experiencing inside?” leads to that relaxation/change/intensity they learned through the body scans going through their mind. Then, leading that scan to go from the deepest part of the person up to the surface, causing them to perceive trance in places they can’t always easily access.

(There are other things beyond this process that make for “effective” hypnosis -- such as encouraging an ethos of curiosity rather than pass/fail, an acknowledgement and incorporation of stray thoughts, pacing other aspects of a person’s experience, mind reading, comfort/trust/rapport building, etc.)

We see hints of this even in beginner hypnosis -- someone using relaxation to move into catalepsy, for example. This process makes sense and builds achievably. In my foundations guide, I spend a lot of time talking about a model for suggestions/phenomena that is about something progressive, logically getting from point A to point B. But I’m particularly interested in sussing out more of what these inherently hypnotic processes might be.

“Hypnotic?”

Why does that example process just “feel” innately effective? I’ve used processes like that one with great success with my partner and to some degree in things like my hypnotic games. But WHY is that more effective at producing an experience that feels like trance?

I don’t have any easy answers, and this is still something I’m thinking a lot about. But I believe what I’m interested in is processes that are well-suited to creating a “hypnotic environment.” We could say “trance,” but I think trance is a very restrictive box. A hypnotic environment is perhaps more a time where someone is “more suggestible” (a challenging concept that we know is disconnected from trance), deeply engaged/in rapport, and capable of having more intense experiences.

Erickson-readers may perhaps see that I am just rebuilding what he built with his concept of “hypnotic realities.” And it’s true that my love for Erickson’s model comes partially because he cares about directly inducing “suggestibility” (as opposed to/in addition to trance and other hypnotic qualia) and does so through a frame of processes rather than suggestions. But my desire is to push further -- that was 50 years ago, and we do and know more now in our community.

The most challenging thing about all of this -- to identify what a hypnotic process is -- is that we need to circle back around and define hypnosis (again, and again). How do we create a hypnotic process without knowing what is “hypnotic?” And we need to do this in a concrete way; we need concrete identification of qualities.

This is a deconstructive project. Eschewing words and the ideas behind them of “trance,” “rapport,” “suggestibility,” and starting from scratch with what simply makes an intense hypnosis scene. What is happening, what are the communications being made, what are the processes, what does it feel like internally. One of my favorite articles I’ve done recently is on depth and suggestibility and that’s been a big jumping off point for me in thoughts about how we can model hypnosis in more useful ways. A lot of these thoughts are in the draft for my next book, and I’m sure I’ll be sharing more thoughts here as I suss them out.

Hypnotizing someone is always about teaching them how to be hypnotized. Even expert subjects benefit from a non-authoritative, non-judgmental approach that is about guiding them through new experiences; an experience where they don’t have to jump through hoops or work for it themselves. A hypnotic process, in my view, is one that provides this.

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(I really enjoyed this -- this is the kind of thing I’ll be able to write more of as I wait for my life to turn right-side-up again and I hope y’all like it! Even as things return to normalcy, I’d love to do more of these kinds of articles in the future.)