HYPNOSIS
WHO MAKES A GOOD CANDIDATE
What makes a good hypnotic subject?
Last Updated: December 18, 2020 |
It’s a relatively popular belief that if a person is easily hypnotised, it is a sign that they’re gullible and weak willed…
But in fact, the opposite is true!
“…it is not a sign of instability or weakness to be capable of being put in a hypnotic trance, but that, quite on the contrary, a certain amount of intelligence and concentration on the part of the subject is absolutely essential.” (Eysenck, 1957: 32)
That view that those who are “easily hypnotised” are weak, gullible or lacking in intelligence comes from the idea that subjects are passive and that hypnosis is “done to them”.
The modern view is that the subject is actively “doing hypnosis”, that in some way all hypnosis is self-hypnosis – even if some elements of the hypnotic experience are seemingly automatic or involuntary.
Essentially, everyone responds to hypnotic suggestion in some way, and to some degree. The degree of response can be easily measured. And, more basically, everyone can respond to suggestions even without a hypnotic induction.
Indeed, hypnotic inductions do not seem to increase suggestibility that much. Responding to suggestions is not down to some magic thing that happens to us in hypnosis where our intelligence and “critical faculty” gets switched off or by passed.
Psychologists have been trying for almost a century to correlate hypnotic responsiveness and responsiveness to non-hypnotic suggestions with other personality traits and have met with surprisingly little success!
Nevertheless, there are a handful of traits which are believed to correlate with responsiveness, albeit to a small degree. Many people who lack all of these traits can still be highly responsive to hypnotic suggestions. It is useful, though, to know that these factors tend to add something.
Note also that these are all positive traits. By contrast, people with negative traits such as psychosis or mental retardation are traditionally considered more difficult to hypnotise.
Intelligence
Some people confuse suggestibility with gullibility. While there is no direct correlation between intelligence and hypnotic responsiveness, people of very low intelligence may be less responsive to hypnotic techniques, often because of fundamental concentration regulation issues.
Research also suggests that the more people understand hypnosis the better they tend to respond. This is often because they can set aside unwarranted fears, have reasonable expectations, understand what is wanted and are very creative in “getting” the hypnotic response (e.g. for the arm to float up automatically in arm levitation.
Imagination & Absorption
A particular kind of imagination is correlated with hypnotic responsiveness: imaginal absorption. People who become easily engrossed in movies, novels or daydreams tend to be better subjects. This may be related to the trait of being “fantasy prone.”
It stands to reason that people who become absorbed in their imagination will probably be able to focus more deeply on the images evoked by suggestions, while they temporarily forget about the world around them.
Confidence
A specific type of confidence is relevant, sometimes referred to as “expectation.” People who worry about whether they are “doing things right” or not tend to suffer from self-inflicted performance anxiety.
People who are self-confident in their ability to respond to suggestions and hypnosis, unsurprisingly, tend to respond better. In a sense, this is “faith in oneself” or “belief in the process” by another name.
“I can do this, I can figure this out” – this is very helpful self talk to give ourselves before hypnosis.
Motivation
The more you want to be hypnotised, the more easy you are likely to find it. A high level of motivation helps to focus the mind.
In the past, doctors using hypnosis in a medical setting observed that their patients were more responsive than average – probably because people in hospitals are often highly motivated to accept treatment that might help them. They focus on the suggestions being given, and want and expect the suggestions to be powerful, and so experience powerful emotional and physiological responses to the suggestions.
So it’s best to always refresh and increase our motivation before we do hypnosis on ourselves or receive it from someone else!
Patience & Self-encouragement
Research suggests that people who worry about “distractions” tend to make slower progress with hypnosis than people who are patient and accepting toward their experiences. Everyone’s mind wanders sometimes, that’s normal, especially in the beginning. Patience and perseverance help.
Indeed instructing clients to be patient and how to deal with “interfering thoughts” helps develop the mindset of patience and disregard for competing thoughts or distractions.
Good subjects also encourage themselves by noticing even the tiniest response and celebrating it. They do not get down on themselves or the hypnosis if they don’t respond immediately or get a huge response.
They have a learning mindset. Noticing any small improvement and encouraging themselves.
“Oh look my arm muscles are twitching a bit in response to the suggestion” (for arm levitation)
vs
“My arm is not floating up, it’s not working.”
So there are the five traits that (slightly) increase hypnotisability!
But don’t worry if you don’t have any intelligence, imagination, confidence, motivation or patience, which is very unlikely!
You may still be a good hypnotic subject, and should certainly be able to improve your responsiveness with a little training.
And that is the real secret to both developing our hypnotic responsiveness, to outcomes in psychotherapy and achievement in life… the belief that with a little practice, effort, knowledge we can improve our responses.
This is the “high self-efficacy” mindset.
Where we do not put seeming lack of ability or “failure” down to something innately lacking in us, we ascribe it to insufficient knowledge, effort or practice – all of which are something we can acquire or do something about.
WHY TRY HYPNOSIS?
Your Gateway to Health
MIND OVER MATTER
Neuroscientists say that hypnosis could actually help you focus better
Those who believe they can be hypnotized, can be hypnotized.
Health and science reporter
July 29, 2016
Among different crowds, hypnosis can have a reputation ranging from goofy and gimmicky to outright spooky. But regardless of what you think, neuroscience is now showing it has a noticeable effect on the brain.
Research from Stanford University shows that hypnosis actually changes the way blood flows to different areas of the brain. According to a study published (paywall) in Cerebral Cortex on Thursday (July 28), these patterns of activation indicate that patients who are hypnotized are better able to focus on a single task without worrying about their surroundings.
Hypnosis is a “state of relaxed focus,” according to the American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists. David Spiegel, a psychologist at Stanford and lead author of the paper, describes it as the feeling of living in the moment without feeling self-conscious about your behavior.
“You do shift into a different kind of brain function when you go into a hypnotic state,” he says. “It helps you focus your attention so you’re not thinking about other things, you have better control what’s going on in your body, and you’re less self-conscious.”
For their experiment, Spiegel and his team selected 57 patients who tested on either end of the spectrum of hypnotizability—basically, a measure of how open you are to being hypnotized. “In general, people who are hypnotizable tend to be less self-conscious, trust other people more…and use their imaginations more,” Spiegel says. Thirty-six participants showed that they were highly hypnotizable and 21 patients were not able to be hypnotized at all.
The researchers found that when the hypnotizable patients underwent hypnosis, the parts of their brains associated with recognizing the surrounding environment and the patients’ actions were less active and that the networks associated with mind-body communication were more connected than usual. Together, the researchers say, these effects could lead to feeling more focus and control over the body, and less inhibition while moving and engaging with the environment.
Practically, Spiegel says, this means hypnotized patients can experience stressful thoughts without the usual physical side effects, like sweating or higher blood pressure.
Despite the observed changes in the brain, it’s too early to tell whether hypnosis has definitive therapeutic values. This study was only looking at the effects of hypnosis on blood flow in a relatively small number of patients’ brains, and was not looking to treat any particular condition. Hypnosis has been used in Western psychology since the 19th century to help manage pain, like that endured during childbirth (paywall), quit smoking (paywall), but evidence of its efficacy has been mixed. It’s also difficult to implement as a practical treatment: Mark Hall, a licensed hypnotherapist and social worker, compared it to trying to fall asleep—impossible if you focus too much on it.
“Hypnosis is something that can be used to help [people] live in the moment,” Spiegel says. These preliminary brain scans suggest that there’s a biological basis for the effects its been known to have, and further studies may help define its role in medicine.