Look Into My Eyes

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I hardly ever get questioned about the applications of NLP and almost never hear people that aren’t trained in it talking about it or offering opinions. As a field of science it is not very well known and therefore there are few people with misapprehensions of what it does and does not involve and what it can and cannot achieve. In some respects that is a bonus because I seldom have to debunk any myths before I use any of the processes, in fact I often don’t even tell coaching clients what I am doing because there is no need.

Hypnotherapy on the other hand is a different thing altogether. It seems everybody has an opinion on what it is and what can be done with it and a story no matter how fanciful to support their claim.

So today I thought I would like to shatter some of the myths that surround hypnosis so that if you ever consider either training in it or visiting a hypnotherapist then you will have a better understanding.

1. I can’t be hypnotized. Everybody can be hypnotized if they want to be. Trance is a normal human state that we all pass in and out of everyday. Remember a time when you had been driving 15 minutes and couldn’t remember passing through the last town? That was trance. Remember playing a video game and losing all track of time? That was trance. Remember as a kid staring out of a classroom window de-focused and for all intents and purposes ‘elsewhere’? That was trance.
2. I have heard stories of people being hypnotized when they didn’t want to be. Nobody can hypnotize somebody that doesn’t want to be hypnotized. It’s impossible so don’t worry about somebody ‘putting you under’
3. I’d make a fool of myself. You cannot be made to do things that you wouldn’t normally do. People that go on stage after 10 beers would probably bark like a chicken anyway if enough people asked them to and they had drunk enough. So if you have a penchant for making a fool of yourself then you’ll probably still do that when in trance.
4. What if I got stuck in trance? You cannot get stuck in trance. If somebody shouts fire when you are in trance you are going to hear it and not lie there whilst the room disappears round you, unless of course you are deaf in which case what are you doing at a hypnotists?
5. It is the cure to all ills. Unfortunately it isn’t. It can help quit smoking, lose weight, reduce anxiety and any number of other things but it probably can’t get your boss to like you or the dog to clean up its own mess.
6. It can help pain management. Yes it can, it is fantastic at achieving that and there have been a number of brilliant hypnotherapists (Milton Erickson being the most famous) that have used it to help manage their own pain control. There have been hundreds of documented cases of operations being conducted under hypnosis and without anesthetic not to mention dental procedures.
7. You can lose track of time. That is true, some people can be in hypnosis for an hour and think it was only 5 minutes but this is seldom an area of concern unless you are due in court and forget to tell your hypnotist you needed to be out the door in 20 minutes.
8. You can get amnesia. Again this can be true for some people, that they do not remember all that they have been told when in trance but as with losing track of time it is rarely if ever a real problem

So there you have it, now you know a little bit more and I would encourage you to read more and maybe get trained because it is a fascinating subject that deserves more respect and definitely more research.