(This blog was originally posted on January 20, 2014)
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; 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 Hypnotherapywww.hypnosis.edu®
and to set up an appointment, please
visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2015
