Milton H. Erickson

Ericksonian Hypnosis is a method of indirect hypnosis named after Dr. Milton Erickson. A prominent American psychiatrist and psychologist, Erickson is widely regarded as the “father of hypnotherapy”. His discoveries have influenced a wide spectrum of therapy from strategic family therapy to neuro-linguistic programming.

Dr. Erickson found that indirect suggestion could result in therapeutic behavioral change. He preferred to converse with clients using metaphors, contradictions, symbols, and antidotes to influence their behavior rather than direct orders.

As a patient himself who suffered extreme pain after contracting polio at an early age, he thought it critical to “put yourself in the patient’s shoes” and truly understand the client’s present situation.

Unlike Freud – who encouraged self exploration – Erickson adopted a form of brief therapy where a patient’s past history is not the focal point of change.

Recalling one conversation with a patient with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who showered a dozen times a day, he asked the patient about the present rather than their past. Specifically he would ask about the process: “Do you wash from the neck down, or do you start with your feet and wash up? Or do you start with your head and wash down?” He made it a point to show the patient that he was really interested. The patient, who had undergone 5 years of traditional psychoanalysis prior was quickly cured with Ericksonian hypnosis.

Hypnotism History & Etymology

The word “Hypnotism” was coined by a Scottish medical surgeon named James Braid. In a letter to The Lancet dated 1845 Braid says:

“I adopted the term “hypnotism” to prevent my being confounded with those who entertain those extreme notions, as well as to get rid of the erroneous theory about a magnetic fluid, or exoteric influence of any description being the cause of the sleep. I distinctly avowed that hypnotism laid no claim to produce any phenomena which were not “quite reconcilable with well-established physiological and psychological principle”

Dr. Braid was referring to a French fringe magnetist group that had been using the terms “hypnotique, hypnotisme, and hypnotiste” from 1820 onward.

The Unconscious Mind

Braid defined hypnotism as a state of extreme focus. However, Erickson knew from experience that patients in physical or mental pain are unlikely to be able to focus at all. Thus, rapid hypnotic inductions are likely to be met with resistance and ultimately fail.

Erickson believed that trances happen every day to varying degrees – for example the mind wanders during a commute to work, during meetings, and day dreaming in general. Athletes even enter a trance sometimes referred to as “flow” or “runner’s high”.

Even if the subject is not in a deep trance, Erickson thought the unconscious mind could still be listening. He could make an indirect suggestion that, whether the patient realized it or not, would result in therapeutic change in the patient.

A frequent jokester, Erickson was able to use humor in his conversations with patients as well. In fact his books are scattered with puns and subtle jokes. But this was not just to lighten the situation of patient affected by serious addiction and mental condition– it was deeply strategic.

By catching them off guard he was able to open the unconscious mind for change. This ties into his confusion technique.

Stephen Brooks live Streaming Interactive Online Diploma in Compassionate Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. Accredited Practitioner Diploma Training for students wishing to qualify as hypnotherapists and be registered to offer hypnotherapy to clients / patients. ENROLING NOW

Indirect vs Direct Hypnosis

Indirect hypnosis is a subtle, respectful method utilizing body language, stories, metaphors, and other hypnotic techniques to improve patient outcomes. Erickson championed indirect hypnosis as a more ethical and effective alternative for clinical settings than direct hypnosis.

Direct hypnosis would explicitly order a subject to enter a trance or change their behavior. Though direct hypnosis can be a powerful tool, it is commonly met with resistance and is better known as a method for self-hypnosis.

Traditional Hypnosis	Erickson’s Approach
Authoritative	Permissive
Direct	Indirect
Resistance	Accommodating
“You will lose weight”	“You might wish to discuss the alternatives to eating, if you are ready to do so”

For example with direct hypnosis one might say, “You will fall asleep now”. On the other hand, with indirect hypnosis a therapist could say, “You might like to close your eyes, if you wish to relax.”

The former, is embarrassing for both the therapist and the client, as it is often met with resistance and failure. The client knows the hypnotist is trying to put them into a trance, and with that comes natural fear, skepticism, and resistance. With the indirect method it is up to the patient to decide which suggestions they choose to follow.

Until Erickson, the prevailing thought was that direct hypnosis was the best way to get a subject to enter a trance. He believed that one cannot force the unconscious mind to change, but metaphors, contradictions, symbols can create openings.

Direct hypnosis is ethically questionable because this authoritative approach takes power away from the client, whereas indirect hypnosis empowers them. And from a therapeutic standpoint, the effect will be more powerful if it is the client that decides to change themselves from within with the help of indirect suggestion.

Milton Model

Richard Bander and John Grinder set out to discover what made some psychotherapists more successful than others. They assembled their findings into a methodology called “neuro-linguistic programming”. Erickson was one of several therapists and communicators examined and they created a model of his methodologies which they called the ‘Milton Model’. This model is often taught as an adjunct to NLP courses by organisations who mainly teach NLP. Likewise NLP skills and techniques are often taught as an adjunct to hypnotherapy courses by organisations who mainly teach hypnotherapy.

NLP organisations tend to teach the NLP Milton Model of hypnosis (if they teach hypnosis), and Ericksonian Hypnosis organisations prefer to teach the work of Ericksonian hypnotherapists such as Ernest Rossi, Jay Haley, Bill O’Hanlon, Stephen Gilligan, BHRTI founder Stephen Brooks and others. This approach to teaching Erickson is generally more comprehensive than the Milton Model, which is primarily a model based on language patterns.

The Ericksonian Foundation run by Erickson’s family have avoided associating itself with NLP but the BHRTI believes that NLP has a lot to offer, but however, has always insisted that to be truly effective, the NLP skills and techniques modeled from Erickson should always be taught and applied within the context of hypnosis, as this is how Erickson originally intended, and not taught as separate NLP techniques without hypnotic trance.

The Milton Model focuses on three aspects:

1. Rapport – Building an empathetic connection with the client. In addition to verbal communication this may include “mirroring” the subjects body language while avoiding “mimicry” which could have opposite effect.
2. Overloading conscious attention – By distracting the conscious mind with vagueness and ambiguity, one is able to open the unconscious to change. See also, confusion technique and handshake induction.
3. Indirect communication – Clients can only meet a direct orders in two ways: with acceptance or dismissal (most likely the latter). Indirect suggestion is a more subtle and successful way to invoke change. See also, indirect hypnosis.

About Milton Erickson

Milton H. Erickson grew up on his parents’ farm in Wisconsin. The influence of this environment on him is clear, as he often used the farm in stories and metaphors.

At the early age of 17 Erickson was paralyzed with polio. Little did he know this difficult event would shape the rest of his life.

While bedridden, the boy could do little more than move his eyes and hear. Speaking was difficult and moving was out of the question.

From this experience he learned to read the body language and indirect behavior of his family members and nurses. He listened intently as well.

For example, if his parents confronted a sibling about completing their homework, he could see his sister’s body language say “no” when they spoke the word “yes.”

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a MA in psychology as well as an MD, Erickson continued his medical training at various hospitals in New England and Michigan.

He went on to become the Clinical Director at the University of Arizona 1948. He left one year later to start a private practice, partially due to paralysis which had confined him to a wheelchair. He served as a consultant to the US Olympic Rifle Team and the US Government in World War Two.

During this time was well known in clinical circles. However, it was not until 1973 – when former student Jay Haley published Uncommon Therapy – that Erickson became famous to the rest of the world. He began offering seminars to teach the principles of his work, until he died in 1980.

Self Hypnosis

Bedridden and given until the morning to live at the age of 17, Erickson requested a mirror be set up in his room. He was determined to see another sunset, as reflected through the mirror. The next morning he was still alive, and asked his father why the fence and trees had been removed outside. Supposedly, he had been concentrating on the mirror so long that he had not realized his unconscious mind was able block out all of the objects between himself and the sunset!

Polio left Erickson paralyzed and he faced extreme bouts of pain throughout his life. He adopted a self-hypnosis routine to effectively manage the pain whereby he would sit in a chair pushing his spine into the back for an hour each morning.

Erickson would sometimes hypnotize himself during client sessions to increase his awareness and better listen to clients. Self-hypnosis by a therapist during a session was and still is highly controversial.

Ericksonian Hypnotherapy Techniques

Encouraging Resistance

Again in a departure from classic psychotherapy, Erickson discouraged the authoritative use of “tell me about…” Instead he would encourage the patient to withhold information and only discuss what they wished to. This passive method helped clients ultimately share more information with him. The client was empowered rather than the therapist. They felt that they needed to save this special ability to withhold information for something important later. By the end of the conversation they had told him everything.

A famous example of using resistance and a “double bind” occurred when Erickson was a boy. One day Erickson was helping his father coax a stubborn calf into the family barn. Try as they might to pull the calf into the barn, it didn’t budge. He realized that the calf wished to resist, accepted it, and pulled the opposite end on it’s tail – away from the barn. The new input of the boy pulling on the tail negated the father pulling on the head and the calf went into the barn.

He used this as a classic psychological example of a double bind – where the subject becomes overwhelmed and is emotionally “pulled” in two conflicting directions. Thus, the confused individual successfully accepts one form of resistance and fails to respond to the other.

In the context of family therapy, if a family member is resisting engaging in conversation he might ignore that member until they finally respond out of frustration.

Seeding Ideas

Using indirect hypnosis Erickson would “seed ideas” into the unconscious mind via metaphors and stories. A less subtle example would be, “have you ever been in a trance before?” Now, the idea of a trance is in the mind even though the subject is not in one yet.

Handshake Induction

One of the most famous hypnosis techniques is the handshake induction. As the first interaction with a client, and a common everyday occurrence Erickson proved it was a subtle way to change the mind’s accepted behavior. When someone performs a handshake their mind is virtually on autopilot – you may have never realized it’s a trance. It is the most widespread social norm in the world to shake hands at the beginning of a meeting; we don’t even think about it. By interrupting this subconscious process, Erickson was able to open the mind for suggestion. This is a classic example of “pattern interruption.”

Erickson’s handshake technique is well documented in his books and by those that have met him. He began with a strong, normal shake to begin the induction. Then he would interrupt the process by loosening the strength of the grip and brushing specific fingers against the subject’s hand. It’s quite complicated to learn, but a powerful induction.

Emphasizing The Positive

Erickson always found the good side of a patient’s disability. After all he was color blind, dyslexic, tone deaf, and partially paralyzed. Yet these seemingly negative disabilities were the very things that allow him to become an expert at reading body language.

But, this does not only apply to disabilities. A more common example would be a child that refuses to go to bed. Here a parent might combine two Ericksonian therapy techniques – emphasizing the positive and encouraging resistance. First they might compliment the child on their energy and then encourage them to stay up later. This would end resistance in the child as they no longer need to prove that they can stay up late. If they do accept the suggestion and stay up later, they will be even more tired the next day and go to bed early.

Confusion Technique

By distracting the conscious mind, Erickson was able to open the unconscious mind to hypnotic language. According to Erickson, nearly every one of his techniques employs confusion in some form. For example he would intentionally use vague language patterns, complex topics, confusing words, metaphors, and jokes to distract his patient’s conscious train of thought.

Shock Therapy

In some cases, Erickson would use psychological shock therapy to help a client face their fear directly. For example, he once shocked a man with a fear of riding the elevator by convincing an elevator attendant to attempt to kiss the man in a stopped elevator (he was married). The man denied the kiss, and asked her to turn on the elevator and bring him to the lobby! He had overcome his fear of moving elevators.

In one instance, he actually stepped on a woman’s foot who refused to leave her home because she thought she had small feet! The shock caused her to open her mind to the induction which followed. He exclaimed, “How’s a man supposed to marry a woman with such big feet?” Thereafter she was cured.

His use of shock therapy was frowned upon by therapists and controversial – it’s his only technique that we do not teach at BHRTI.

Erickson’s Books

Over 120 scholarly papers and 5 books were published throughout his career. And that’s just what was written by him. There are dozens of books published by colleagues and students documenting his techniques.

His books include:

• Hypnotic Realities

• Hypnotherapy – An Exploratory Casebook

• Experiencing Hypnosis

• The Practical Application of Medical and Dental Hypnosis

• Time Distortion in Hypnosis

Applications

Hypnosis can help people with mental dependencies, disorders, and psychological problems.

Some common uses include but are not limited to:

• Weight loss
• Addiction
• Relationships
• OCD
• Phobias
• Anxiety
• Pain Management
• Habit Control

Professional Use

There are a wide variety of professionals who use aspects of hypnosis in their work such as:

• Psychologists
• Psychiatrists
• Counselors
• Family Therapists
• Nurses

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Other Types of Hypnosis

Clinical Hypnosis – Although Erickson’s techniques are often successfully used in a clinical setting by psychoanalysts, they are not strictly confined to it. Nurses, business leaders, politicians, and even yoga instructors have benefited from incorporating hypnosis into their work.

Self-Hypnosis – Meditation and even leisure activities are forms of self-hypnosis.

Stage and Street Hypnosis – This type is purely for entertainment purposes. A common depiction of stage hypnosis is shown as a Hypnotist wearing a silly hat, waving a pocketwatch, barking orders, and snapping their fingers for the subject to fall asleep. Often the audience member is a confederate or assistant to the hypnotist, and the entire thing is fake. Hollywood has exaggerated how it really works, perpetuated misconceptions, and caused some to overlook the true therapeutic benefits.

Traditional Hypnosis – Another term for direct hypnosis. This is the in all senses the opposite of what Erickson advocates.

Hypnotic Inductions

The first step of hypnosis, a hypnotic induction is the process that a hypnotist uses to put the client into a state where they are more open to suggestion (known as trance). There are many types of inductions.

1. Relaxation technique

Why do therapists ask to “make yourself comfortable” and provide a cushy leather couch to lay down on? It’s more than a common courtesy. Relaxation is a common method used by therapists and a beginner hypnosis technique. If the client is relaxed, they may fall into trance and the mind is open to suggestion. They are more likely to talk to you and be open to indirect suggestions. Here are some common methods of relaxation:

• Make yourself comfortable
• Lay down
• Count down in your head
• Controlled breathing
• Relax & tense muscles
• Speak in a soft tone

2. Handshake technique

Milton Erickson – the father of hypnotherapy – is famous for using the handshake technique as a way to induce hypnotic trance. Handshakes are the most common form of greetings in our society. The handshake technique shocks the subconscious by disrupting this common social norm. Instead of shaking the hand normally, the hypnotist would interrupt the pattern that our mind has established by grabbing the wrist or pulling the subject forward and off balance. With the pattern interrupted, the subconscious mind is suddenly open to suggestion.

3. Eye Cues

There are two spheres of the brain – the right manages the more “creative” and conscious side and the left the “practical” and subconscious. In any conversation we look for feedback from the listener to see how they react to our statements. Watch the subject’s eyes. Are they looking to the right, accessing the conscious or the left to the subconscious? Are they fixated on one object in the room? If they are accessing the subconscious, you can make a suggestion that they are not consciously aware of.

Advanced Tip: Insertive Eye Contact

Reading the eye movements of a listener is a common use case. But did you know that as the speaker, you can also perform a hypnotic induction on the the listener with your eye movements? This new technique was developed and tested by Stephen Brooks.

Watch this video on insertive eye contact to learn how.

4. Visualization

Visualization can be used both to induce trance and to make suggestions. For example, ask your subject to recall a room they are very familiar with. Imagine every detail in that room: the floor, the shape of the windows, the painting on the wall, the smell, the light. Then, move onto a room they are less familiar with. As they struggle to recall the exact details they open the mind to suggestion.

Advanced Tip: Use visualization to recall positive memories and associate them with a rewarding behavior, or to change one’s perception of a negative image.

• Positive images and experiences (wedding, kid, birthday, graduation)
• Discard bad images (maybe throw them in the trash)

5. Arm “Levitation” Technique

With this classic Ericksonian technique, the client begins by closing their eyes. They are asked to notice the difference in feeling between their arms. The hypnotherapist makes suggestions as to the sensations in each arm. For example they might say the arm feels heavy or light, hot or cold. The client enters a trance and may physically lift their arm or they make simply believe in their mind that they have lifted the arm. Either way, the induction was successful.

Advanced Tip: How To Hypnotize A Client With Arm Levitation

6. Sudden Shock/Falling backwards

Proceed with caution! Similar to the handshake technique, a subject finding themselves shocked can enter into a trance. I would never advocate causing any physical pain to a subject, but Erickson once demonstrated this by stepping on a woman’s foot and following it with a suggestion. A milder version would be the “trust falls” that you may have heard of or participated in at a team building event. The sensation of falling backwards shocks the system and opens the mind to suggestion, however, one must be certain they will not drop the subject.

7. Eye Fixation

Have you ever found yourself “zoning out” and staring at an interesting item in the room while someone is talking? Did you completely miss what they’ve said? You may have been in a trance.

Any object of focus can be used to induce trance. The most famous examples are the “power pendulum” or a “swinging pocket watch” – although these two objects are now associated with hokey stage hypnosis. You’re more likely to fail and encounter resistance using these objects, due to their reputation.

Nonetheless, there are two secrets behind eye fixation. First, the object keeps the conscious mind occupied, opening the subconscious to suggestion. Secondly, your eyes get physically tired when they fixate or move back and forth.

Example: Try looking up at ceiling for a few minutes (without bending your neck). The eyes naturally tire and begin to close.

8. Bodyscan

A popular method for self-hypnosis. Starting at the top of the body with your eyes closed, scan down slowly from the head to the feet. Notice every sensation – your breath expanding the ribcage, chair on your back, the pain in your elbow, each finger extended, the feet on the ground. Repeat the process from bottom to top. Continue scanning up and down until you enter trance.

Advanced Tip: The body scan can be stacked with other hypnosis induction techniques such as countdown breathing and relaxation to increase effectiveness.

9. Countdown Breathing

You may have heard of controlled breathing for meditation, but it can also an easy form of self-hypnosis. Here’s how it works:

• Close your eyes and sit upright in a chair, arms on your lap.
• Breathe deep through the nose and out through the mouth.
• Using slow controlled breaths, countdown from 100.
• Each exhale counts as one interval.
• At the end you may be in a trance. If not continue the exercise counting down from a higher number.

Hypnotic Suggestions

A suggestion is the desired behavior to be performed by the client. Post-hypnotic suggestions are delivered after a hypnotized person enters trance – a state in which they are more open to influence. There are two schools of thought for suggestions.

10. Indirect Suggestion

Erickson was a champion of indirect suggestion. It is a favorite of certified hypnotherapists because this method puts the control in the subject’s hands rather than those of authoritarian – respecting the patient’s boundaries and clinical ethics. Further it has proven more effective for subjects that are resistant or skeptical of trance. Rather than “order” a subject to relax (direct suggestion), one could say:

“You might wish to close your eyes, when you are comfortable.”

Learn more about Ericksonian Hypnosis

11. Direct Suggestion

In conversational hypnosis, a direct suggestion is an explicit command to perform a certain action. Though powerful, it is sometimes viewed as unethical because as the authority (a doctor or hypnotist) you hold power over the client. The client does not control the decision to change behavior with this method. The Stanford Prison Experiment was an infamous example of using authority, obedience, and direct suggestions to manipulate subjects.

Here are some classic direct suggestions:

• “You will go to sleep”
• “You will stop smoking”
• “You will lose weight”

12. Voice Tone

The tone of your voice is particularly useful when making suggestions. This can double up with other techniques (like relaxation).

“You might wish to become relaxed”

In the above example, the word “relaxed” is spoken softly and elongated. On the contrary, you can make a direct suggestion loudly.

“You will STOP smoking!”

Another perfect pair for voice tone is the confusion technique. The therapist could vary the tone of voice from whispering to shouting, speak with a different accent, or use a lisp, to confuse the subject.

13. Hypnotic trigger

There are many forms of hypnotic triggers. A trigger reminds the subconscious of a desired action or feeling which was suggested under hypnosis. Here are a few examples:

• Opening eyes
• Sound of a bell
• Snap of fingers
• Clap of hands
• Standing up or sitting down
• Opening a door

Here is how a hypnotic trigger could apply to agoraphobia:

“When you open a door, you might see your loving family on the other side.”

Reading Body Language

14. Nonverbal Communication

Hypnotists are experts at nonverbal communication – from reading a client’s body language to conveying your own non-verbal suggestions. While a client could be saying one thing consciously, the subconscious mind could tell a completely different story. Here are a few examples of how the subconscious might affect body language:

• Facial expressions
• Body posture
• Voice tone
• Pacing
• Eye movements
• Arms crossed
• Head nods
• Covering face

Advanced Tip: How To Become An Expert In Non-Verbal Communication (with case example)

15. Cold reading

You might have seen psychics, mediums, stage hypnotists, or mentalists perform a “cold reading” on TV for entertainment purposes. Though it’s generally too direct to use with a client, you might use cold reading at a party or a networking event. Here’s how cold reading works. For example, if the subject is not smiling, the hypnotist might ask:

H: “Are you sad?” – Start by asking a general or vague question from observation.

S: “Yes” – If they reply no, reset and ask another vague question.

H: “Has someone left you?” – Drill down and ask a more specific question. This could be a relationship or a pet or a family member.

S: “Yes! How did you know my cat fluffy died?”

16. Warm reading

With a warm reading, you make a statement that could apply to anyone:

“You feel happy when you are surrounded by friends.”

17. Hot reading

The most difficult type, because you need to have some prior knowledge about the person. Let’s say their family member contacted you and told you that the person was involved in a traumatic event. When you meet them, you might focus on using the “regression to a cause” technique because you have prior knowledge about the past event.

Triggers & Advanced Hypnotherapy Techniques

18. The Swish Pattern

Submodalities can be used in “the swish pattern” – a neuro-linguistic programming technique used to associate or dissociate the client with certain behaviors. The five senses are considered modalities (taste, smell, sight, touch, hearing). A submodality is a subset of these senses. Here are some examples of submodalities:

• Bright or dim?
• Large or small?
• Color or black and white?
• Loud or soft sounds?

The Swish Pattern begins with a visualization. Once the client is in a trance the hypnotist identifies one or two submodalities (brightness, size, etc). The undesirable action is large, focused, and bright in the foreground, while the desired action is visualized as small and dim in the background. In the time it takes you to say “Swish” (the method’s namesake) the desired image rapidly becomes bright and large in the client’s mind.

19. Misdirection

We see misdirection used in the real world, sometimes on a daily basis – from politics to entertainment. The prefix “mis” means wrong and “direction” is attached to it, meaning the audience is being lead in the wrong direction. There are two types of misdirection – one is literal and the other is of the mind.

A familiar demonstration of the first would be a magician distracting people by waving a wand in his left hand and then performing a sleight of hand with his right. While the audience is misdirected, the magician sneaks a card up his sleeve giving the illusion that it has “disappeared”.

Misdirection can also be a visualization:

“As you become anxious, imagine you are relaxing on a beach”

Here, a subject dealing with anxiety is misdirected to the visualization of themselves on a beach. The hypnotist has directed them from an unpleasant image towards a pleasant one.

20. Reframing

Usually done as a metaphor, reframing allows you to change the perception of an experience in the client’s mind. For example, imagine you have a client that wants to lose weight. They stay inside and play video games all day. You could ask them to describe the process to “level up” their character in the video game – what they do, how long it takes, how strong the character is at the beginning. And then, “reframe” the process of losing weight in their mind by comparing it to the video game.

“Losing weight is like leveling up your character in a video game. You start slow and train every day. You don’t see much difference at the beginning, but over time your ‘character’ becomes stronger and stronger.”

21. Regression to cause

First the client enters a deep trance where they can experience events as if they were actually there (also known as somnambulism). The therapist uses visualization to create an “affect bridge” where the client experiences an event for the first time again. Once the cause is identified the hypnotherapist can make suggestions and reframe the situation.

22. Future Pacing

The opposite of regression, when a subject is asked to visualize themselves taking the proper actions and behaviors in the future. Rather than look back into the past for an underlying negative event, you look forward to an event with positive emotions.

“Imagine you are done with your speech and the crowd is cheering. You feel accomplished and relieved.”

23. Anchoring

When we record a memory, all of the senses and emotions are associated. These are “anchors” in your memory. Perhaps the client has anchored the behavior of cigarette smoking with a break, meal, sex, chatting with friends and other pleasurable feelings. The hypnotist can suggest new anchors for more positive behavior.

24. Betty Erickson’s 3-2-1 Technique

Betty Erickson was Milton Erickson’s wife. She developed her own method for self-hypnosis known as the 3-2-1 technique. The procedure starts with your eyes open. You take note of 3 things in the room that you can see, hear, and feel. For example: you might see a painting on the wall, a table, and a clock. You might hear birds outside the window, the hum of a refrigerator, and the clock ticking. You might feel the pressure of the chair on your back, your feet on the floor, and the warmth of the sunlight through the window. The process repeats focusing on 2 items from each sensation, and then 1 item (hence the name 3-2-1). Then, you close your eyes and start over by visualizing 3 objects from each sense in your head. Again you count down. Once you’ve reached the last item, you will be in a trance.

25. Incrementalism

Making a tiny change is the stepping stone to a much large one. For example, if a client is trying to lose weight, daily cardio may be too big of a leap. Instead, you could suggest they start with a small increment: take the stairs for one floor and then hop in the elevator as they typically would. The next week, two flights of stairs. Eventually, they will have worked up to the larger goal and overall better behavior.

Another example: Go to the gym once a week for 5 minutes. The commitment is so small it’s impossible to fail. You will likely end up staying for more than 5 minutes, incrementing the duration and amount of days over the course of a month.

26. Parts Therapy

In theory, all behavior is positive in some way. The subconscious may justify one negative behavior with a positive one. An agoraphobic may not leave the house because the subconscious aims to protect the body from the dangers of the outside world. A smoker may harm their body physically in order to seek pleasurable conversation with other smokers outside.

The mind is made up of multiple parts. With parts therapy, the hypnotherapist communicates with the behavior part to better understand why an action is being taken. Then they would communicate with the creative part of the mind to come up with another solution. In the example of the smoker, perhaps there is another way they can satisfy the need for social interaction – a book club, a bowling group. The therapist then uses future pacing to reinforce the positive behavior.

27. Metaphor

Metaphors are therapeutic and memorable. Erickson loved to use metaphors in his books and teachings. Here are some classic metaphors:

• Your body is a car. Give it the right fuel and it will perform well. If you neglect the maintenance and fill it with poor fuel, and it will break down.
• Your mind is like a river that is ebbing and flowing. You can stand on the bank of the river and watch it go by or you can try to swim against the current.
• You are a mountain – strong, impenetrable, and tall.

28. Hypnotic Bind

The hypnotic bind is a favorite amongst parents and presents the “illusion” of choice with an either/or question. Here’s one example:

“Would you like to brush your teeth or take a bath?”

Advanced Tip: Use the double bind to present two options for the same desirable behavior:

“Would you like to go to bed in 10 minutes or 20 minutes?”

Either way, the child is performing the desired action of going to bed.

29. Hypnotic logic

Under trance, a client interprets statements very literally. If you ask the client “Can you sit up” they will respond “Yes”. We call this hypnotic logic.

You can use hypnotic logic along with suggestions like so:

“You can lose weight because you are successful”

Although being successful doesn’t necessarily mean you’re able to lose weight, the statement is taken literally.

30. Affirmations & Positive Thinking

An affirmation confirms a positive thought. For a client with body dysmorphia, you may have them repeat back under trance “I am beautiful” several times.

31. Reconnections

Memories fade over time. While that might be good for someone with a negative experience, positive experiences can also fade.

Abilities, just like memories, can be forgotten as well. An agoraphobic may forget that there was once a time they had the ability to go outdoors.

As a hypnotherapist you can help bring these positive memories and abilities back using rehearsal and visualization with the client.

Bonus: Want even more hypnotherapy techniques, with step-by-step videos? Check out our online hypnosis courses.

Stephen Brooks live Streaming Interactiv/course/online-hypnotherapy-course/e Online Diploma in Compassionate Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. Accredited Practitioner Diploma Training for students wishing to qualify as hypnotherapists and be registered to offer hypnotherapy to clients / patients. ENROLING NOW

COMPASSIONATE ERICKSONIAN HYPNOTHERAPY utilises naturally occurring trance states to help client’s overcome problems in a caring and compassionate way. Thanks to recent discoveries in neuroscience, we now understand more about how and why hypnosis works and what happens within the brain when people practice mindfulness. As a training organisation running courses in hospitals and universities we have always looked to science for explanations about hypnosis, meditation and the mechanism behind its effectiveness. Where we originally only had our assumptions and observed experience, scientific evidence is now proving that hypnosis, mindfulness and therapy based on love and compassion can affect the brain and thought process. Science is now underpinning the training we have been offering for the past 40 years.

To understand how hypnosis works we need to look at how the brain processes information about the world around us. Our awareness of what is happening in the world at any given time occurs within our senses, and our sensory experience is based on past memories, future expectations and what we believe to be our present experience. These sensory experiences are evolving and changing all the time through synaptic connectivity (LeDoux 2002, Synaptic Self and Doidge 2007, The Brain That Changes Itself). In effect, the brain continually updates and changes what we think and believe.

Memories and future expectations are thoughts and not based on actual present experiences. This means that it is possible to use the therapeutic intervention of hypnosis to change those thoughts and expectations. We have all had the experience of believing that a memory was accurate when in fact it has become distorted over time and is no longer an accurate representation of a past event. Likewise when we imagine the future, we can see it in many different ways. So we can easily understand how, with hypnotic suggestion given in a caring and compassionate way, we can change our memories and expectations of the future (Hull 2002 – Hypnosis and Suggestibility, An Experimental Approach).

Our experience of the present moment is actually not an experience of the present moment at all. Buddhist psychology has taught this fundamental principle for 2600 years, but modern day western psychology has taken a long time to accept this, but now does so. What we feel to be our present experience is actually a representation of something that occurred a fraction of a second before. Basic physics tells us that sound and light waves travel at different speeds. As a result light waves reach our eyes faster than sound waves reach our ears. Over time we have got used to this difference and so pay no attention to this discrepancy. But then there is another delay, because once the information reaches our eyes and ears it then has to travel to our brain before we can experience it with our senses. Of course, this happens very quickly, so quickly in fact that we have come to believe that what we are experiencing right now is occurring in the present, but we are continually living in the very recent past; a fraction of a second behind the present. Using this understanding of how we experience reality, Compassionate Ericksonian Hypnosis can change our perception of our present experience, and help us overcome problems effectively and quickly – by utilising these Buddhist principles now confirmed by neuroscience.

Compassionate Ericksonian Hypnosis doesn’t actually change the present – it can’t, as the present moment has already passed. Instead, it changes our perception of what we believe is the present. We then act upon the suggestions given to us in the therapy session and so behave differently. As we act upon the suggestions, given in hypnotic states, we believe that our new behaviour too is happening in the present. In fact, we are also observing our new behaviour a fraction of a second after it has happened.

This brings us to the next question, how can we decide to do anything if we are always living in the past, and what about the question of free will, are we actually in control of our destiny? Recent scientific research from the field of neuroscience now suggests that all of our everyday decisions are made unconsciously and that the belief that we are consciously making logical calculated decisions is an illusion (Wegner 2002 – The Illusion of Conscious Will and Hood 2012 – The Self Illusion). This supports Stephen Brooks’ theory of why and how Compassionate Ericksonian Hypnosis works, in that it confirms that suggestions given in sessions appeals directly to the unconscious mind and bypasses conscious critical thinking. In other words, Compassionate Hypnosis helps us communicate directly with the part of the brain that controls all of our behaviour. To do this effectively it needs to bypass our conscious critical thinking, and this is why the practical skills and techniques of Compassionate Hypnotherapy are built on a solid foundation of Ericksonian Hypnosis, as Ericksonian techniques are much more effective than traditional hypnosis techniques. This allows us to create hypnotic suggestions and therapeutic interventions using the language of the unconscious mind delivered with compassion and love.

Through research we now know so much more about hypnosis, mindfulness and the power of compassion to heal. We now know how to induce hypnosis in a loving and empowering way, instead of the dominating approach of stage hypnotists or old fashioned authoritarian hypnotherapists. Over the years the advances have been significant and as a result, our graduates qualify with a much deeper understanding of how to help their patients and clients, and as Compassionate Ericksonian Hypnosis is highly conversational and indirect, practitioners can easily offer therapy as an adjunct other forms of therapy.

Our next Practitioner Diploma in Compassionate Ericksonian Hypnotherapy is available for enrolment now.

Every therapist faces the problem of having clients with low motivation. Yet, therapists are rarely taught how to specifically motivate clients to achieve outcomes. Most training is based on using therapy techniques to overcome problems, however, if the client is unmotivated to get better then therapy techniques are not as effective. One approach to motivating clients comes from the work of Milton Erickson. His Ericksonian hypnosis approach to motivation is based on the concept of tasking clients. Tasking involves giving homework or behavioural challenges and tasks for the client to carry out between therapy sessions. These tasks are often given while the client is in hypnosis as the trance state acts as a kind of glue or adhesive to make the suggestions given by the therapist more likely to be taken on at the unconscious level. So here we see hypnosis being used to motivate clients to carry out tasks which then, in themselves, increase motivation to succeed at therapy. Tasks work by creating a change in the Patient’s routine which bring about a change in the Patient’s behaviour and therefore a change in the way the problem functions.

Tasks are given to interrupt habitual patterns of behaviour or thinking.

Sometimes a task may be given to directly intervene in a pattern of behaviour that normally maintains the problem. At other times tasks may be given that seem to be unrelated to the problem. Despite seeming unrelated, carrying out the task usually brings about a new understanding and the new understanding or realisation may then allow the Patient to look at his or her problem in a new light.

Tasks usually require that the Patient do something different.

For a task to be compelling and interesting is should be quite novel. It should involve a new behaviour or an alteration of an existing behaviour that is appealing in some way. Patients should be intrigued by the nature of a task and so be motivated to carry it out. Some tasks may be quite simple and some quite bizarre and so must be presented to the Patient in a way that makes it acceptable or of benefit.

Tasks are often metaphorical in nature.

Many tasks have the same function as metaphors. For example, if a Patient has difficulty in making decisions, sorting priorities or organising himself he could be given the task of clearing out his attic. This kind of task is metaphorical. While cleaning out the attic he also is developing the strategy for cleaning out his own internal unconscious attic. This kind of task can often work surprisingly well. When the task is metaphorical in nature the Patient should never be told directly what the outcome of the task is meant to be.

Tasks can have simultaneous overt and covert outcomes.

Often the Patient will ask for a rational explanation for carrying out a task. Usually we do not explain the reasoning behind a task in case the Patient disagrees and tries to sabotage it, so if the Therapist gives an explanation it should be based on an overt outcome that makes sense and is reasonable to the patient while the real or covert outcome remains secret. If the Patient knows the real outcome of the task he or she may sabotage the task or even decide that it’s not worth carrying out. High quality tasks may have many different outcomes. Tasks may be metaphorical in nature, or involve new therapeutic behaviour; they may have overt or covert outcomes or have specific intentional outcomes as well as being diagnostic.

Patients often reject tasks given to them by their Therapists.

Quite often when people are given advice they choose to ignore it. Because tasks are often a little bizarre, some Patients, when first hearing suggested tasks, reject them. The only way to avoid this is either to offer tasks which are more realistic or set up a process whereby the Patient feels compelled to accept the task.

Make a reward contingent upon the completion of the task.

One way of making your task more compelling is to make sure the Patient has some kind of reward. Sometimes this reward can actually be given as an excuse for doing the task, that is, the real reason for doing the task is kept secret. Maybe it is kept secret because the Therapist knows full well that if the Patient understands the particular outcome wanted by the Therapist then the Patient will not complete the task. So the Therapist offers some reward or some valid excuse or reason for the Patient doing the task thereby making it more compelling.

Offer alternative but unreasonable tasks with the same therapeutic outcome.

Another way of making a task more compelling is to first offer alternative deliberately unreasonable tasks that the Therapist knows will be rejected by the Patient. Usually this is done in threes. The Therapist first offers an unreasonable that, if accepted, will accomplish the therapeutic outcome. The Therapist makes sure that the task is sufficiently bizarre or unrealistic so that the patient feels inclined to reject it. Having rejected this first task the Patient feels less like rejecting a second time.

The Therapist then offers a second task which could also achieve the same therapeutic outcome is accepted. This second task is not so bizarre as the first one and could well be completed by the Patient but is still likely to be rejected. The Patient rejects this task too, although in some cases the Patient may accept it.

The third step is for the Therapist to offer the task that he wants the Patient to carry out. By now the Patient has rejected two suggestions by the Therapist and is ready to accept a third. This occurs partly because he feels sorry for the Therapist and partly because he feels guilty. When the Therapist presents this task it is entirely reasonable and the Patient feels more compelled to accept this task Because the Therapist projects this as the third choice the Patient feels more compelled to carry it out, especially as this task is presented as the last possible alternative. Before the Therapist presents this last task he makes sure that the Patient realises how successful this task has been for other Patients in the past. This makes it even more compelling for the Patient to carry it out.

Overcome objections by using the experimental frame.

In the event of a Patient rejecting the third task which might happen from time to time, the Therapist should propose that the Patient carry out the task as a form of experiment. Usually if a Patient rejects the task or shows some hesitancy there may be an unconscious awareness on the part of the Patient that a) the task may not be appropriate, b) the task may not be powerful enough, c) the Patient genuinely doesn’t want to do the task. In the first two examples, by offering the task in an experimental frame, the Therapist is suggesting that if the task is not appropriate or not powerful enough then it will not work. However if the Therapist does this he should not put too much emphasis on this point, he should appear confident.

Example of how to deliver a task.

Problem: The Patient wants beautiful hair but has unconscious hair-pulling habits.

The therapeutic outcome:To make the behaviour conscious so the Patient has a choice about whether to pull the hair or not. (At the moment the Patient pulls her hair but is unaware that she’s doing it).

Alternative tasks to offer:

1. Cut hair short (most likely to be rejected).
2. Tie the hair back at all times (next most likely to be rejected but possibly accepted).
3. To deliberately gently pull the hair at set times of the day (least likely to be rejected and probably the most therapeutic).

If the Patient chooses to cut her hair short it certainly will stop her pulling it however it’s not really appropriate and is very likely to be rejected. Tying the hair back is more appropriate, however because the Patient is very proud of her hair and wants beautiful hair it’s unlikely that she’ll want to tie it back. By asking the Patient to deliberately pull her hair at set times we are actually prescribing the symptom. The girl is pulling her hair anyway so to get her to pull it in the same way but at set times we are actually making the behaviour conscious instead of unconscious. The outcome is for her to become consciously aware of when she has the problem. By becoming consciously aware of when she’s doing the behaviour she then has the choice of saying no. We could offer the girl the contingent reward, this is the reward that she thinks she’s getting by doing the task and this could even be given as the excuse for giving the task. For example if the Patient is told that she should carry out the task so that she could learn about the texture, the length, quality and thickness of her hair and that she has to do this at specific set times of the day we are in fact indirectly making the symptom an asset. We tell her to pull her hair gently, we tell her to pull it hard, we are in fact telling her to continue having the symptom.

Now she is then no longer pulling it in a random way unconsciously. She is now pulling it deliberately to identify the texture, the thickness, the length, the beauty of her hair. Because her outcome is to have beautiful hair she will feel more motivated to carry out the task. The excuse has to be given in a very convincing way. If she rejects the task then we offer the task again in an experimental frame. We tell her that we would like her to carry it out as an experiment, we would like her to become aware of the quality of her hair before we start doing therapy. It’s unlikely that she will be reluctant to carry out the task under these terms. If the Patient rejects this task then alternative approaches to therapy or alternative tasks should be created.

Ambiguous Task Assignments

Usually a task has a specific outcome. The Therapist knows the change that he wants for the Patient and designs a task to achieve that specific outcome. Sometimes however, the Therapist may feel that he and the Patient lack information or resources to achieve that outcome. In these cases the Therapist can prescribe an ambiguous task assignment, which although ambiguous, has the specific outcome of getting the Patient to give his own interpretation of why the task was given and an account of any insights gained while performing it. So although there is a specific outcome, the information and insights gained from that outcome is not known until the task has been performed. The task is a diagnostic tool and this class of task is called the Diagnostic Task. It helps the Therapist gather further information for the next step in therapy. Sometimes an ambiguous task can actually bring about psychological change within the Patient and might even solve the Patient’s problem this is called a Therapeutic Task.

Sometimes we may be faced with not knowing what to do to help a Patient.

There can be any number of reasons for this. Usually it is because we do not have enough good quality information about the patterns that have either caused or are maintaining the problem. If the Patient does not communicate enough information we can usually apply our questioning skills to evoke enough good quality unconscious information to get us started. The problem seems to be at its most severe when the Patient gives us too much information and we end up getting confused. Sometimes Patients want to give us as much help as possible and so throw everything they can at us. All of their pet theories, old wives tales and interpretations from a multitude of sources are thrown into the melting pot. What the Patient is actually doing is creating the same kind of confusion in the Therapist that they experience themselves. The last thing we want is to be as confused as the Patient.

One way of stopping the Patient from contaminating unconscious information is to give him a task that cannot be understood rationally by the conscious mind. By tying up the cognitive processes of the conscious mind with some task and requesting that the Patient wait for some kind of explanation to surface at an unconscious level the Therapist is teaching the Patient to trust his unconscious thought processes and creativity for problem solving. An Ambiguous Task Assignment is such a task. The Therapist asks the Patient to do something that may seem irrational or out of context but although the Patient may perceive the task to be irrational or unrelated to the problem he must be told that the Therapist has a very good reason for prescribing the task. The Therapist suggests that the task is directly related to the cause or maintenance of the Patient’s problem and that it will therefore lead to new insights about the problem. The Patient is instructed to go off and perform the task and then to consider why the Therapist gave him the task and to be aware of any insights. Usually, the Patient will perform the task and then spend time, often while the task is being performed, wondering what it all means.

This process sets up an inner search through all of the unconscious data concerning the Patient’s problem and then, hopefully, pops one or two insights into conscious awareness. There is a parallel between this kind of tasking and that of Zen Buddhist Masters who give their novice monks unusual tasks or riddles to solve in the expectation that realisation or enlightenment will occur.

There are three different classes of ambiguous task assignments:

• The Diagnostic Task – an ambiguous task assignment that brings about insights and unconscious information.
• The Therapeutic Task – an ambiguous task assignment that can actually resolve a Patient’s problem.
• The Diagnostic Therapeutic Task – an ambiguous task assignment that can immediately resolve a Patient’s problem because of insights and unconscious information.

The classification of the task is determined by the outcome achieved by the task. If the Patient gains insights but retains their problem, the task is a diagnostic task, if the Patient’s problem disappears because of performing the task the task is a therapeutic task. When a problem disappears immediately because of insights the task is a combined diagnostic and therapeutic task.

Creating Ambiguous Task Assignments

Both classes of task are created by the Therapist spontaneously, without any conscious effort to link the tasks to the structure of the problem in any way. For example, for a Patient with erectile dysfunction the Therapist might say “Go and catch six fish and throw one away”. The task is not consciously related to the problem in any way. Another equally valid but spontaneously created task for the same problem might be “find a cloud, will it to vanish, and don’t look away until you have made it disappear.” I have just made up these tasks while writing this, there is no conscious connection to any Patient with erectile dysfunction that I know of and the tasks were chosen because they were the first thoughts that came to me when I decided to create them. The fish task is probably related to what I ate last night and the cloud task is related to something I have taught myself to do.

Unconscious / Unconscious Ambiguous Task Assignments.

When the trainee therapist first learns to create spontaneous ambiguous task assignments the tasks are usually consciously and unconsciously unrelated to the Patient’s problem. Over time and with experience, the Therapist will develop the ability to communicate more effectively at an unconscious level directly with the Patient’s unconscious mind and to create appropriate tasks that only appear ambiguous. Initially the tasks will continue to appear ambiguous to both the Patient and Therapist but eventually they will only appear ambiguous to the Patient. The Therapist will still create them spontaneously, even to the point of not knowing what the task is as he is explaining it, but will know immediately consciously why his unconscious has chosen that particular ambiguous task once the task has been prescribed.

One of the benefits of prescribing ambiguous task assignment is that both the Therapist and Patients’ unconscious minds learn to communicate with each other independently without the conscious involvement of either person and with limited conscious awareness on the part of the Patient.

People ask me where I get my ideas for tasking clients. Well they mostly come from everyday life. As and when interesting things happen to me or people I know, I make a mental note of them for use later.

So I catalogue many different experiences and events that occur to me personally, or that I hear about, see or read about. Then, when I am in a session with a client, my unconscious will just present me with a relevant task for the current client. So the choice is not random and not conscious, it is chosen by a part of me that knows, or senses, what is exactly right at that moment.

Sometimes I might change the task a little to fit the client and their circumstances, but often it is presented very much as it surfaces from my unconscious. The same process occurs when I create a metaphor. Metaphor and task creation are very similar. The unconscious taps into the huge database of life experiences that I have logged previously (this now happens on a day to day basis as an unconscious process) and presents one task or metaphor (or several) to the client.

Often I am as surprised as the client with what I say. That is always a delight, and I have learned to trust that my unconscious knows best within the specific context of therapy. It is a kind of intuition. But intuition cannot happen all by itself, there needs to be massive prior exposure to the area that one wishes to be intuitive about. Then it functions by itself. It’s the same as learning any skill – through repetition we learn to let go of the conscious effort involved in trying, and allow our unconscious mind to take over the responsibility. It’s no big deal, everyone can do it, it just requires commitment to practice.

Sometime the unconscious can’t seem to come up with a relevant task, or at least one that makes sense to the conscious mind. In these instances I give the client an ambiguous task. It’s these tasks that interest me more than others, because they often work, despite their almost ‘magical’ appearance.

Here’s one that could have come straight out of one of my therapy sessions, but it is a cure for headaches from the middle ages: “When you enter a city, collect pebbles that lie on the road in front of the gate, as many as you want, while saying to yourself that you take them as a remedy for your headache. Attach one of them to your head and throw the others behind you without looking back.” Pure magic (in more ways than one).

There are many other ways to increase motivation using hypnosis, especially with the Ericksonian approach, and there are some problems that are harder to resolve than others because of the nature of the problem and the degree of motivation required by the client has to personally take responsibility for resolving their problem. For example, clients with a lack of self-esteem or confidence tend to also lack motivation. Likewise clients who have been referred therapy by a third party rather than deciding to attend themselves. Often clients present themselves for therapy but because of benefits they have received in the form of secondary gains through having their problem, they lack motivation to participate fully in the therapy. In such cases the therapist has to address the secondary gains and find some way to replace them with something healthier or similar so that the client can feel more motivated to let go of their problem.

Even when a problem is potentially life-threatening clients can still lack motivation. For example a heavy smoker may feel reluctant to quit because of their dependency, and despite presenting themselves for therapy show a degree of resistance to help. Even if told by their own GP that they should quit, the idea of smoking causing severe illness and even death can still seen far away in their minds. With such cases the hypnotherapist has to increase the emotional intensity of the negative consequence of maintaining the problem to increase the motivation to change. The same can be true for other problems where there is reluctance or resistance to change. Sometimes this reluctance is not intentional but is active at the unconscious level.

I remember client who wished to lose weight. Everything we tried failed to work. It was only when we discussed her relationship with her husband that I realised that she had a fear of looking more attractive. Her relationship with her husband was not good sexually, they had children and so stayed together mainly for the family. At an unconscious level she realised that if she became more attractive she would be tempted to have relationships outside of the family. Her instinct to maintain the family unit and take care of her children was preventing her from losing weight effectively because this might cause her to leave her husband and upset children. In this instance I stopped offering therapy for weight control, and instead asked her to invite her husband into the therapy. We then worked through the issues within the relationship and resolved these so that she was able to feel comfortable and more loving towards her husband. This required changes on the husband’s part which he agreed to and completed. After we had resolved these relationship problems she started to lose weight without any further intervention from me.

So motivation is not just contingent upon the client themselves taking the conscious decision to commit more thoroughly to outcomes. It can also require hypnosis work at the unconscious level to free clients from patterns of behaviour in which they are trapped in some way. I like to tell my clients that motivation is similar to momentum, in other words, it moves us forward. And to move we need fuel, and emotion is the fuel that motivates us and helps us move forward. Without the emotion to move we just stand still. And this is why when offering tasks or challenges to our clients in therapy we need to make the task an emotional experience. Without the emotion there seems no purpose to the task, and without purpose there is no learning or insight on the part of the client.

An Article about how techniques for inducing hypnosis have changed over the years – from the Independent Newspaper, England by John McCrone.

Hypnosis can be explained as a form of self-induced sensory deprivation…well perhaps.

Hypnotists with swinging fob watches are out. Far more effective ways of putting people into a trance have been discovered which, with their employment of confusion and word twisting, are not too far removed from brainwashing techniques. Yet while the practice of hypnosis has made considerable strides of late, science is still uncertain whether the phenomenon even exists.

Hypnotism has been studied for over 200 years. For a long time, the only way known of putting subjects into a trance was to get them to focus on a spot on the ceiling or a monotonous pendulum while the hypnotist commanded them to fall asleep. However, this “authoritarian” method has since widely been replaced among hypnotherapists by an indirect technique pioneered by the US therapist, Milton Erickson. Today, a hypnotist uses a careful manipulation of the conversation they have with their clients to “lead” them into a trance state.

As Stephen Brooks, director of the training group, British Hypnosis Research, explains it, there is none of the traditional mumbo-jumbo that used to be the hypnotist’s stock in trade. Instead, the aim of modern techniques is to drop hypnotic suggestions casually into the conversation. The patient’s attention is first directed inwards by asking them out of the blue if their hands feel heavy or if they can remember some pleasant holiday. This relaxes the subject and the hypnotist can then drop hints into the conversation about the sort of experiences the patient should expect to feel under hypnosis; sensations such as weightlessness and involuntary behaviour.

Finally, when the patient has been led into a deeply relaxed state – one so relaxed that the critical faculties have been dulled to a small point of consciousness – the hypnotist starts confusing the patient with non sequiturs and apparently pointless remarks. Confused, but too relaxed to struggle for understanding, the patient’s tendency is to seize hold of almost anything the hypnotist then suggests as their new hypnotic reality.

The technique is much like brain washing in relying on confusion followed by the planting of a new belief system. However Brooks stresses that brain washing relies on much more brutal confusion techniques such as terror and isolation, and is carried out with quite different aims in mind than those of a therapist! That at least is the modern practice of hypnosis – and a method highly successful at overcoming resistance as most patients never realise that the therapist has switched from ordinary conversation to the hypnotic induction. However, what about the science behind hypnosis?

There is a strong body of scientific opinion that would say the many people experiencing Ericksonian hypnosis – or its more highly packaged derivative, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) – are merely feigning a trance state to please the hypnotist. A combination of social pressure to perform and everyday knowledge about the way hypnotised people are suppose to behave, are enough for cooperative patients to fake the experience. Like being drunk, even people who have never touched a drop usually can do a good job of acting tipsy.

This hypothesis that hypnotic trance states are merely feigned was taken up enthusiastically by researchers in the 1980s, particularly in Canada. Their methodology was to take two groups of subjects, one whom believed themselves hypnotised and one whom had been told to fake a trance, and then test them for how similarly they behaved. Astonishingly, the fakers could even match the hypnotised in demonstrations where they had to ignore pain – although it is true the fakers were never tested with something like the tooth root canal extractions which some hypnotised patients can withstand.

The non-state theorists – researchers such as Nicholas Spanos of Ottawa and Graham Wagstaff of Liverpool University – did much to dispel many of the old myths about hypnosis. It was found that apparently vivid memories recalled under hypnosis were as liable to be imagined as real. Proof of this led to a Home Office warning in 1988 against the use of evidence gained under hypnosis. Other evidence, such as experiments showing that subjects with induced deafness or amnesia could still respond normally in carefully designed experimental tests, seemed to prove the non-state theorists’ case that no special trance state exists. But a few years ago, neurologists using brain scans and other monitoring devices started coming up with support for the belief that hypnosis is a genuinely altered state of awareness.

A key feature of the trance state is the ability of subjects to experience intense hallucinations at the suggestion of the hypnotist. These visions have none of the paleness of ordinary imaginings and are as vivid as dreams. David Spiegel of Stanford University in California placed hypnotised subjects in front of a screen of flashing lights. The lights were known to trigger a characteristic pattern of activity in the visual cortex, the patch of wrinkled brain on which visual sensations are mapped out. When the hypnotised subjects were asked to imagine a cardboard box blocking their view of the screen, the electrical activity disappeared. The hallucinations seemed so intense that they “took over” the visual cortex, the inner reality erasing the evidence of the senses.

Other neurologists have found similar evidence for brain changes. Dr John Gruzelier of Charing Cross Hospital in London has discovered a dampening down of neural activity in the left and frontal regions of the brain – areas responsible for language-driven abilities such as thought and planning. Dr Gruzelier is due to report his latest work at an Italian Hypnosis Society conference in Venice this month; a meeting at which several other papers on the neurology of trance states will be presented.

Dr Gruzelier says it is still early days for a full explanation of hypnosis but one line of speculation is that hypnotised subjects may be “switching off” their critical faculties in a similar way that everyone has to shut down their conscious minds as they fall asleep at night. Insomniacs will know how difficult it can be to stop the nagging flow of thoughts that stem from their inner voices, the part of the brain wired for producing sentences. Sleep research has shown that when we fall asleep, the lower brain pumps out natural tranquillisers to block the normal traffic coming from the senses. Gradually, we are cut off from our eyes, ears and body.

The lower brain’s blocking of sensory traffic produces a state of mental isolation similar to the sensory deprivation of a floatation tank. In this state, any internally generated images tend to take on a hallucinogenic reality. Cut off from real sensations but not quite asleep, the visual cortex will seize on stray thoughts and images, expanding them to fill the mind. This gives us what are known as hypnagogic sensations; the swirling lights and strange visions we often have at the point of sleep. It also gives us dreams during the periods of the night when we become aroused enough to skirt the boundaries of wakefulness. In dreaming, the brain is awake enough to produce images but too relaxed to think coherently and we drift for a while in a jumble of imagery.

Under hypnosis, a similar state is achieved. A hypnotic trance is not like sleep because the lower brain is not pumping out the chemicals that bring true oblivion. But the hypnotised person has put him or her self into a sort of waking dream by deliberately cutting off almost all outside sensations and putting their language centres on hold. It is notable how the hypnotised person’s voice becomes very faint and responses monosyllabic. Both the old-fashioned authoritarian induction and modern confusion techniques work by making the subject focus inwardly and so causing them to shut out sensations of the outer world. The subjects are also prompted to still their inner voice and to drift in a state of uncritical imagination. The hypnotist can then “reach in” with his own voice and control the experiences the subject is having by triggering the desired images with words. Asking subjects if their hands feel light literally plants such an idea in their heads. Yet because the subject’s own speech centre has been by-passed, there is no feeling of a command being issued and an action willed. The subject has handed over all responsibility for the guidance of thought to the hypnotist.

The evidence may not be all in, but the signs are that hypnotic trances are genuine altered states in so far as they are accompanied by real changes in blood flow and electrical activity in the brain. However the surprise is perhaps that the state is largely self-produced and not all that different from day-dreaming, meditation or falling asleep. What gives hypnosis its unique power is there is a second wide-awake voice standing by to take control just at that point when we relinquish our own.

(This is a version of an article that appeared in The Independent (Copyright, John McCrone, March 1991).

As a professional psychotherapist, you may be wondering where you can find the best information to help improve your client outcomes and grow your practice. I’ve compiled a list of the 14 best psychotherapy blogs.

Each blog was hand-picked based on the quality of content and frequency of updates (minimum once per month).

1. Psychotherapy.net

With over a dozen PhDs contributing to this blog, there’s a substantial variety in content. Some articles focus on how to handle real life client situations situations while others are actual interviews with professional psychotherapists.

Favorite post: Intuitive Therapy

2. Dr. Deb

A top psychologist and practicing psychoanalyst, Dr. Deb is know for her work in treating depression. My favorite part about Dr. Deb Serani’s blog is her use of multimedia to present information, such as videos and infographics. She is also an accomplished author. Her latest book is titled, “Depression In Later Life: An Essential Guide.”

3. Psychcentral

Living up to it’s name, Psychcentral is THE central place to find blogs about mental health and psychology. In fact they have 50+ active blogs on a variety of subjects. If you count the retired ones it’s over 100.

4. GoodTherapy.org

Good Therapy’s missions is, “Helping people find therapists. Advocating for ethical therapy”. They have a massive website with hundreds of frequently updated articles. Professionals seeking new clients should apply to be included in their therapist finder tool.

5. Mark Nakell

Mark has been an individual and couples counselor with his own practice for over 30 years. He primarily writes about “life changing” events and how to deal with them.

 

6. CounselingResource.com

The unique part about this website is the quizzes and self-tests. You may be able to apply some of these tests to your own patients. Also check out the “Ask The Psychologist” section.

7. Vantage Point Counseling

A Dallas based group of therapists who blog about sexual issues, relationships, and addiction.

8. OCD LA Blog

The OCD Center of Los Angeles is the #1 authority blog for the latest information about obsessive compulsive disorder. The problem I find with most blogs in this area is they only cover the “Pure O” definition. But OCDLA discusses related types and disorders in depth, such as HOCD and Dermatillomania.

9. Dr. Bridgett Cantrell

With an emphasis on helping veterans and active duty service members with mental health issues, Dr. Cantrell has been the owner of a Cantrell Counseling for over 15 years, an expert witness for PTSD cases, and a published author.

 

10. Dr. David Allen

A blog that discusses family dysfunction and mental health issues. David Allen M.D. is the professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee Health Center and the author of two books: “How Dysfunctional Families Spur Mental Disorders” and “Psychotherapy With Borderline Patients.”

 

11. Psyblog

Dr. Jeremy Dean specializes in anxiety and depression by adding his commentary to the latest news and studies in these fields. He has also written several e-books on those subjects and holds three higher-education degrees.

 

12. Jodie Gale

Jodie has over 500 hours of clinical experience – a requirement for her master’s degree in Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy from Middlesex University – along with multiple certifications. Jodie has helped hundreds of women and children through her busy practice. Her blog focuses on reviewing books about relationships, body image, and psychotherapy.

13. Gretchen Rubin

While Gretchen isn’t a psychotherapist per-say, she publishes relevant content on The Happiness Project. This New York Times best selling author of the book “Better Than Before” and is releasing a new book called “The Four Tendencies”, which is about using personality profiles to make other people’s lives better.

This actually has to be my favorite “listen” instead of “read” because she has a podcast where she interviews readers and experts!

14. Progress Focused

Coert Visser blogs about “The Progress Focused Approach” to psychology. This was awarded as one of the top 100 psychology blogs as well.