With Your Permission and Only With Your Permission, Part 1

(This blog was originally posted on January 20, 2014)

Photo by Rick Hustead

If you do not want to be hypnotized—whether you do not believe that hypnosis will work for you or resist being hypnotized because you are afraid—you won’t be. I repeat the statement, “with your permission and only your permission” throughout the session to remind my clients that they can choose to be hypnotized and actualize their desired behavior changes. I also use my clients’ own words to reinforce their emotions, reasons and motivations for making these changes. As a certified hypnotherapist, I use hypnosis is a tool to help you change behaviors that no longer work for you and replace them with behaviors, strategies, etc. that you want and believe will improve your quality of life. During hypnosis, you are completely aware of everything going on around you. If you wouldn’t say or do something when you are completely alert, you would not and could not be made to do anything in hypnosis that opposes your beliefs, morals and ethical principles.

Therefore, I tend to be very critical of how and why hypnosis is depicted on television and in movies: a protagonist is “commanded” to do something that is completely out of character; the hypnotist erases and then replaces a character’s memory with a new, fictitious personal history and personality; or, a person is “hypnotized” to behave in a particular way simply to move the plot along. In these scenarios, the character is completely unaware that he has been hypnotized and just does whatever the hypnotist tells him to move the plot along. Imagine my surprise that I not only bought the hypnosis-ambush of a character in a popular detective series, but it made absolute sense why this scenario worked and was believable.

               

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Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2019

Getting Caught Up In the Action

Photo by Rick Hustead

According to John G. Kappas, Ph.D., founder of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute, “hypnosis is created by an overload of message units, disorganizing our inhibitory process, triggering our fight-flight mechanism and ultimately resulting in a hyper-suggestible state, providing access to the subconscious mind.” In other words, when the mind is overloaded by multiple, multi-faceted physical and emotional stimuli, we actually “escape” into hypnosis to avoid the anxiety produced by this over-stimulation. In today’s blog I will share some common examples of emotional responses/reactions people make when they are in hypnosis.

• Have you ever been in love? During the peak of infatuation, it is common to adopt the preferences (e.g., musical, film, books, etc.), behaviors or even habits you have observed in your beloved. This tendency is actually a product of suggestibility, whereby we become “suggestible” to a romantic partner’s beliefs/attitudes/behaviors during the relationship.

• Did you cry when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jack Dawson, died at the end of Titanic? Deep down, you knew that the actor was alive and well somewhere. However, the message units that flooded your mind during this scene—sounds and images of this character perishing in the icy North Atlantic Ocean—overwhelmed your conscious mind so you slipped into a light trance. DiCaprio’s on-screen charm and acting prowess sealed the deal in terms of your “buying into” the story that Jack Dawson died. Did you do on-line research after the movie let out to see if he was a real person and died on the R.M.S. Titanic? If so, the cast and Titanic writer/director James Cameron accomplished their goal of creating for the audience a realistic experience of sailing on and witnessing the demise of this historic ship.

• Do you cry and curse Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin every time he “kills off” one of your favorite characters but cheer when a true villain meets a particularly gruesome/unusual demise? Your conscious mind knows that the individuals who populate Martin’s exciting, horrifying, creative, fantastical kingdoms do not really exist. Nonetheless, when you have a visceral (physiological/emotional) response to the words you read on the pages of these books, you can be sure you were sucked into this alternate reality. Yes, you were hypnotized.

• Consider the last time you went to the grocery store. Did you buy any item(s) that were not on your original shopping list? Did you take one or any of the free food samples you were offered? If so, there is a good chance that you were in a light state of trance during your shopping trip: i.e. Hypnotized by the Grocery Store.

So, next time you find yourself completely engrossed in what is going on when you are watching a movie or television program or reading novel, or after you leave the grocery store laden with various item(s) you never intended to purchase, look in the mirror. If your eyes look glassy/glazed over, that is a sure sign you were in a state of trance. I also invite you to check out my blog titled, Are You Sure I Was Hypnotized? to learn about other physiological responses that your body makes when you are in hypnosis.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

After the Watershed Hour

 

I can remember a time when there was very little if any profanity in books or movies or on television. What little swearing there was would have been bleeped out. If someone cursed during an interview and the word slipped out before the bleep could be superimposed, the individual and/or the network on which the word was heard would likely offer profuse apologies for the offense. On-screen kisses were generally fairly chaste, and if a couple was shown in bed, both partners had one foot on the floor. When Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” at the end of Gone with the Wind, audiences were equally if not more scandalized by that line than Miss Scarlett’s constant machinations to seduce Ashley Wilkes.

These days however, very few words or activities are off-limits on-screen, on the radio or on the page. Even then, it is often possible to discern what is being said or done. I am constantly amazed at the amount of fairly explicit sexual innuendo and even depiction of sexual activity on network television before 9 p.m. A wider variety of expletive language has become more prevalent among public figures, as well: Remember when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti dropped an F-bomb during a speech to celebrate the Los Angeles Kings hockey team winning the Stanley Cup in June 2014? New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady apparently let one fly in November 2013, and Jennifer Lopez reportedly did the same on American Idol in March 2014. What happened to the idea that public figures such as athletes, politicians and other celebrities should be role models for youngsters? What gives?

According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Theory of Mind, every belief and behavior other than a reaction to the fear of falling and a reaction to the fear of loud noises is learned. First we identify a stimulus (e.g., smell, sound, taste, sight, touch) and associating it with a positive or negative response or experience (knowns). As these associations gradually create our life script (mental script), we continue to behave in ways which we have learned “work” to help us accomplish a particular goal. As our primary caretaker(s) and, eventually, other influential people in our environment, repeatedly introduce us to specific beliefs or behaviors, the critical area of the mind identifies this random data as “knowns” in the SCM.

I doubt that expletive language, sex and violence have become more prevalent or extreme in recent years. Rather, I think our acceptance of and familiarity with them in our daily lives has facilitated our acceptance and tolerance of them on-screen and in books, etc. This isn’t good or bad, just an observation about how we behave and our expectations and attitudes about these behaviors. Sure, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (film) had very little swearing in it. However, I bet if the film was made today there would be a lot more “bad words” simply because it is more socially acceptable to use profanity in books, movies and on television that it was forty-plus years ago.

Eventually, we become desensitized to that stimulus (e.g., profanity, sexual imagery, etc.) in our environment so that its presence in our entertainment also feels familiar and comfortable. I think that with these words and images now playing such a big part in (a large portion of) society’s subconscious mental script, it would almost feel unrealistic if they were missing in today’s entertainment.

 

 

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014