Just say “I was hypnotized and…”

Then tell them what happened, good or bad.

“But why would I do that?” you might ask… Well, here’s 3 reasons why.

1. It’s an opportunity to reflect

Hypnosis leads us to a greater understanding of ourselves. It allows us to think in uncommon ways; to ask ourselves questions we hadn’t thought to ask.  In discussing it with someone, you might even reflect on your experiences with hypnosis, and how it has helped you. It might even bring up other questions regarding your own motivations and desires.

2. It’s an easy way to engage people

Most of the stuff we’re going to talk about today is the same stuff we talked about yesterday. Talking about hypnosis is uncommon and interesting. I have this conversation everyday and it always leads to something fun and interesting. If it pushes you out of your comfort zone a bit, so much the better.

3. You’ll get a strong reaction

Good or bad, saying you were hypnotized evokes a response. Some don’t believe in it, some love it, some are confused by it, but few don’t have an opinion one way or the other. Watching their response can be a lot of fun.

So as a small experiment, go find someone to talk with about hypnosis, then please share your experience with me on Facebook.

“Assumptions.”

“In what way?”

“You assume things are going to go well, and they don’t – that you call bad luck. You assume things are going to go badly, and they don’t – that you call good luck. You assume that certain things are going to happen or not happen – and you so lack intuition that you don’t know what is going to happen. You assume that the future is unknown.

When you are caught out- you call that fate.”

(Thanks to Idries Shah for providing this story)

I ask him if he really wants to quit. He says yes, but everything else he says says no.

I explain what hypnosis is, that it’s not mind control, and that can’t make him do anything that he doesn’t want to do. I explain that our real goal is to help him uncover the unconscious reasons for why he can’t quit smoking, and that it’s a process which can take 2 or 3 sessions, or even more. He’s not interested. He just wants me to make him quit.

So we start into the hypnosis. We do some basic suggestibility tests, book and balloon, magnetic fingers, magnetic hands. Each time I ask him to do something, he does it as poorly as possible. Even when I ask him to close his eyes he keeps popping them open.

The induction takes a long time. I invite his wife to play along, but she declines, and just keeps shifting in her chair and making noise. He allows himself to be distracted.

At one level, this kind of poor session is my fault. I could have been more flexible, found something to engage him (and her) on. But at another level, there’s not a lot that can be done when the client expects the hypnotist to fail.

He didn’t come back for the second session. I always find it curious when people expect others to be more invested in their success than they are.

We can’t even recall what it feels like to be calm, peaceful and expansive.

So let’s try a very quick test:

Relax your shoulders. Just let them go.

Now relax them again. Just a bit more. There’s always more to let go of.

Then take another big breath, and relax them one more time.

Do you feel better? More relaxed?

If the answer is no, you’re under too much stress. There’s no reason to live like that.

If you can’t remember how to relax, call me right now. We’ll fix it.

But when you think about it, why would an otherwise rational adult be afraid of a person in giant shoes and face paint?

Chances are they had a bad experience when they were young. They were scared by a clown, before they could fully form a rational decision about it. So that feeling of fear, and that image of the clown got bound up together, and carried into adulthood.

If it’s that way about clowns, what other silly stuff do we learn early in life that we keep carrying around?

Maybe you were sword fighting with an invisible dragon. Or having tea with a queen. Or thinking that there was a monster in the closet. Or imagining that your dog could talk.

You were free to imagine things that weren’t right in front of you.

But somewhere along the line that went away.

For most of us, we spend all our time thinking in categories.

We forget our dreams.

I wish we could get them back.

I just want to take a moment to disagree with this position. If you feel like crying, shouldn’t you just go ahead and do it? That’s what you did when you were a kid right? You just cried until you didn’t feel like crying any more, and then you felt better.You expressed your emotional states, at least until someone taught you not to.

Somewhere along the way, you started thinking that expressing any negative emotion, or any too positive emotion was something bad. Something weak. So you started trying to press it down or ignore it and hope that it would go away. But when you do that, you don’t deal with it.

Politically, I think we all know that when we try and repress stuff like free speech, or civil rights, that the issue doesn’t go away. In fact it kind of makes it stronger, and those movements just keep gaining steam until they get what they want, annoying and even crippling the evil regime they’re fighting in the process.

Emotions are the same way. Repressing it, distracting from it doesn’t solve it. In many cases it makes it worse. We turn to a cigarette or a donut  or something even worse. But if we’re not supposed to feel things, then it’s not surprising that we do whatever we can to avoid it, right?

As a kid, my mom always encouraged me to cry it out. Sure, I was the wimpy kid, but I’m much better off now. I can watch my “tough” friends literally exploding internally, and it’s just because all they know is that they’re “not supposed to feel that stuff.”

I’m not advocating that you have to go out and be overly emotional in public. Far from it. But I would see if you can’t give yourself permission to start allowing yourself to feel all the things that are happening inside. You may not think they are there, but I bet they are, good and bad.

So, whether you’re in my office or not, I’m inviting you to cry. But only if you feel like it.

When I know, I stop being curious about what else I could know.
So I’m fostering not-knowing.
Wondering what I would know if I let myself not know all the things that I’ve been knowing for years.

And noticing, that already, once I’m allowed to not know how things will go, that I’m suddenly allowed to respond to people differently. Because I don’t know what they’ll do. Even if I thought I did.

There’s something really important about not knowing where you’re going when you walk out the door. It creates opportunities, and allows us to learn.

But I’ve forgotten how.
So I’m redoubling my efforts to get lost. End up in places that I didn’t expect.
When was the last time you went out the door just to have a good wander?