If you
do not want to be hypnotized—whether you do not believe that hypnosis will work for
you or you 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 wouldn’t 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; he just carries out the hypnotist’s bidding and
does whatever needs to be done 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.
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
