Hypnosis Fears & Misconceptions

Hypnosis Fears & Misconceptions
People seem to always have at least a few fears and misconceptions regarding hypnosis. First of all, the hypnotist cannot control you, cannot make you do anything you wouldn’t normally do or take advantage of you. If you are given a suggestion that is at all uncomfortable to you, you will reject it. The stage hypnotist comes to mind on this one doesn’t it? We’ll discuss that shortly.

You are not asleep while in hypnosis. The state of sleep and the state of hypnosis are two different states of mind (Delta brain wave activity and Alpha brain wave activity respectively). If you ever use a self-hypnosis CD and fall asleep while listening to it the suggestions become ineffective once you enter the sleep state. There are actually CDs out there that will relax you into hypnosis, then into sleep, and then will give you suggestions after you are sleeping. This is incorrect and will not work. In order for those suggestions to work you must be in a waking state such as hypnosis, not sleep.

You will remember everything that was said while in hypnosis. This is true although I give the suggestion that my client will remember everything their conscious mind feels they’re able to handle. I do this just in case we run across an event that has been repressed by the conscious mind. If someone had been raped and they don’t remember it consciously, is it really a good idea to allow that memory to surface in the conscious mind? That’s why I leave it up to their mind to determine this. Repressing a memory is exactly like smelly garbage. If the garbage is stinking up the kitchen you move it into the garage. If you can still smell it once it’s placed out in the garage you move it outside. If there is a negative memory in there some of us like to move it as far away as possible. This same thing holds true for negative emotions. Our subconscious mind generates emotions and they need to be dealt with, they need a place to go. As children most of us learn to hide our emotions, to bottle them up. The subconscious mind then may displace them into you resulting in emotional or physical illness. Another technique that can be of use (if you highly respect the hypnotist and if this person is of an “Authority” figure to you) is the acceptance of the suggestion of amnesia. Even if you did accept that suggestion during the session usually you will remember what was said within seventy two hours afterwards anyway.

Some people have the fear that they will get stuck in hypnosis. This couldn’t be further from the truth. No one has ever become stuck in hypnosis or unable to emerge from the state. If the hypnotist were to leave the room and not return you would know it. After a while you would wonder if he or she is coming back and if they didn’t return you would then simply emerge all by yourself wondering where the heck they went.

And yet another concern for some people is that they will give up some deep dark secret while under hypnosis. This also is untrue. If the hypnotist wanted to get you to divulge something it would be much easier while you weren’t hypnotized. Remember, your conscious mind is dull compared to your subconscious mind. They used to try and get criminals to confess using hypnosis but quickly found out that the criminal made up such a great story under hypnosis that they would let him go, only to find out later that he actually was the one who committed the crime.body>