A Primer on Hypnosis

Just the Basics

Hypnosis = Focus

DISCLAIMER: nothing herein shall be construed as psychological or medical advice. The following is shared purely for the sake of sharing ideas. Readers are fully responsible for whatever they may do with said ideas.

Introduction

In this post, I am going to share what I believe is the fundamental process inherent in all forms of hypnotic communication. By the time you’re done reading this, you will have the basic knowledge required to successfully hypnotize another person—or avoid being hypnotized by those who might not have your best interests at heart. Though seemingly mysterious, hypnosis is as natural and commonplace as walking or breathing.

Have you ever found yourself so absorbed in a movie that someone called your name and you didn’t hear them? If yes, then you already know what a hypnotic trance feels like.

Have you ever communicated persuasively to another person about literally anything? Then you’ve successfully employed the principles of hypnosis without realizing it.

Some forms of hypnosis can be deeply therapeutic; sometimes it can be radically destructive. One of the main inspirations for starting this Substack is to help people learn how to recognize it when it’s happening. In my opinion, knowing how to defend your mind against unwarranted and destructive forms of hypnosis is a critically important survival skill—especially in the age of social media.

What is Hypnosis?

In a nutshell, hypnosis is a state of absorption during which a person becomes more suggestible than “normal”. Everyone experiences it in their own way. The key ingredient in all hypnotic processes is focused attention. If you want to get a small taste of what I mean by this, then simply pick an object nearby that you can stare at—pick something bland, like a glass of water, or a dot on the wall.

Once you’ve selected your object, just stare at it at the exclusion of all other objects in the room. Notice it’s qualities, it’s texture, it’s size, etc. Imagine that your attention is like a laser-beam, focusing on that object and nothing else. As soon as you start to feel your consciousness shift, say to yourself something along the lines of “I’m starting to relax… I’m becoming pleasantly relaxed… my body is becoming pleasantly relaxed… I’m relaxing”.

The language need not be precise. Simple suggestions that you’re becoming relaxed will likely cause your body to automatically begin relaxing. Results may vary.

If you experienced nothing, then don’t worry about it. And if you experienced any shift in your relaxation then congratulations—you’ve just experienced what it’s like to “hypnotize” yourself.

Different People Need Different Things to Absorb Their Focus

Anyone or anything that can capture your attention and hold it is hypnotic, to some degree. If you have a favorite band, then this is probably because you find their music captivating (aka hypnotic) based on your tastes. Your neighbor may not like the same music as you, but they will nonetheless have their own tastes.

For a very long time, it was assumed that some people are “more hypnotizable” than others—and this was because of the way that suggestibility tests used to be carried out. Essentially, a hypnotist would test the same hypnotic processes (such as dangling a watch) on a variety of people, and this produced varying levels of suggestibility in the test subjects. Today, we realize that the truth of the matter is that everyone is hypnotizable—but not everyone can be hypnotized using the same methods.

How do we know that everyone is hypnotizable? We know this is true because everyone’s minds need to process enormous quantities of information all the time in order to survive. To do this, the mind compartmentalizes itself into conscious and subconscious “parts” (for lack of a better way of putting it).

Everyone processes things “automatically” to some degree; and just about everyone has the capacity to become deeply focused on things that compel their attention.

Understanding the Conscious and Subconscious Parts of Mind

Consider what happens when you have a conversation with someone. When it’s your turn to talk, how do you know what to say next? Do you scan your brain consciously for every word you’ve ever learned? Chances are, you’re not thinking very consciously about how you’re talking—your mind produces the language it wants to use almost automatically. The amount of processing and computation required to do that is too overwhelming for the conscious mind to handle on its own. The subconscious mind is needed for assistance.

These two minds necessarily process our experiences in different ways, because they serve slightly different purposes. Just like how the organs in your body all serve different purposes, and work together to keep you alive.

The conscious mind is generally responsible for demarcating the boundary between what’s real or not-real; by contrast, the subconscious mind makes rapid associations and generally (though not always) struggles to differentiate between imagination and reality. When we watch a scary movie, the conscious mind knows it’s fictional, but the subconscious mind reacts as if the scary things happening on the screen were “real”—your heartrate may increase involuntarily, and so on. The healthier your conscious mind becomes, the more closely aligned with reality your subconscious imagination will become.

The conscious and subconscious minds specialize at certain things but are likewise limited in certain ways. Though the subconscious mind struggles to differentiate imagination and reality, it is uninhibited with regard to making complex and rapid associations; conversely, though the conscious mind is more capable of making intellectual determinations between truth and falsehood, it cannot process complex associations at a fraction of the rate that the subconscious mind can. When these two “parts” of mind work in concert with each other, the result is that the conscious mind becomes imbued with the processing power of the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind becomes constrained by the logic of the conscious mind.

Hypnosis and “Persuasion” are Two Variations of the Same Basic Phenomenon

Any form of communication is hypnotic to the degree that it causes a subconscious, automatic response. Though many people divide “persuasion” and “hypnosis” into separate fields of study, I see no reason to consider them as separate fields—hypnosis could be regarded as an extreme example of persuasion, or persuasion could be regarded as a “light” form of hypnosis. Either way, it’s a matter of degree. Whether you wish to persuade or hypnotize, you’re aiming to do the same thing: you want to facilitate the acceptance of certain suggestions by the subconscious mind.

Remember how I said that this can yield positive or negative results? A phobia might be considered an unhelpful hypnotic suggestion. By contrast, the placebo effect is an extremely positive example of hypnotic suggestion. Sometimes, all it takes for a person to become well is for another person in a position of authority to suggest that if they do (or take) x or y then they will become well.

How does the placebo effect work? Let’s break this down a bit:

1)    If a person is motivated to heal from sickness, this means that they are focused on the problem, so to speak. Strong, selective focus paves the way for hypnotic suggestibility to occur.

2)    For most people, doctors are trusted authority figures (whether they should be or not is a different conversation). This means that they are more likely to respond automatically to whatever doctors tell them.

3)    Ergo, when the doctor says “take this/do that and you will get better” the subconscious mind may succeed in martialing all of its latent resources to manifest the suggestion.

Selective focus + authority figure + suggestion = the placebo effect. Generally speaking, if the laws of physics permit it, and the subconscious mind believes it, then it will happen.

A Weird Quirk about the Subconscious Mind

One might wonder, if the subconscious mind can already heal itself, then why does it need a hypnotist to tell it to do so? Frankly, I don’t have a definitive the answer to that. My personal theory on the matter is that the subconscious mind, for all its power, needs a guide. Some theorists argue that the subconscious mind doesn’t differentiate whatsoever between helpful and unhelpful suggestions—I agree that this is partly true. We’d be in a lot of trouble if the subconscious mind helplessly carried out every suggestion given to it.

However, if you really think about it, to selectively pay attention to anything in a given environment requires that you selectively ignore everything else in that same environment. The fact of the matter is that the subconscious mind is constantly accepting or rejecting suggestions, for various reasons. What matters most to the subconscious mind is relevancy.

Recall that the conscious and subconscious minds process thing differently—“relevancy” is a relative term. What is relevant to the conscious mind may or may not be relevant to the subconscious mind, and vice versa. (To use an analogy, different physiological functions are more “relevant” to certain organs than others. Though your kidneys and liver ultimately work together to keep you alive, they are concerned with different processes.)

In my estimation, the subconscious mind needs to be prompted by something that it sees as relevant to itself before it will respond to suggestions.

The Impact of Subconscious Relevancy

When I first started telling people that I studied hypnosis, a surprising number of people would almost immediately go into a trance of some sort (maybe 1 in 15 people). Why is this? Because the very label “hypnotist” can cause fascination for many people (aka absorption/focus) due to the authority and skillset implied by it. The moment I see someone’s eyes glaze over and/or their breathing rate slow down, I know I’m in a position to make hypnotic suggestions that will likely “stick” (though, to be sure, there are always exceptions).

Of course, other people may be subconsciously motivated to believe hypnosis isn’t real (often due to fear), and so the very mention of hypnosis will cause them to go into overdrive to “disprove” it. One might think that such people are “immune” to hypnosis, but in fact, they are just as prone to it as anyone else. They just need a different authority figure to deliver them suggestions. The same person who cannot be hypnotized by a stage hypnotist may very easily fall under the hypnotic spell of their favorite celebrity, or some other figure who they find persuasive/influential.

EXERCISES

It’s one thing to understand hypnosis from a theoretical standpoint, but it’s a whole different thing to practice it deliberately “out in the field”.

Subliminal (aka subconscious) influence is inevitable. You can’t even avoid subliminally influencing yourself. Every time you communicate with anybody—including to yourself in your own head—at least a little bit of subconscious influence has taken place. Like walking or breathing, subliminal influence is a fact of life. The only difference between a trained hypnotist and the average person is that the hypnotist knows how to engineer it consciously—and he knows how to spot it happening in real time.

The way I see it, if you’re going to walk anyways, you may as well become good at it. Hypnosis is neither good or bad in and of itself—what matters is what one does with it. There’s nothing wrong whatsoever in using your natural powers of persuasion to help yourself and others.

With that in mind, here are some exercises that will build good instincts for perceiving the subconscious mind at work.

Exercise 1: take 5-10 minutes per day to talk to yourself the way someone who unreservedly loves you and wants the best for you would talk to you. Tell your anxieties that you’ll get back to them at another time, but be firm that you’ve set aside some time for this. You may find your mind resists—just keep going. It’s the daily effort that makes a difference. Sooner or later, you’ll start to discover that your baseline mood has improved, and you’ll start to appreciate things about yourself you may not have previously considered.

Essentially, this exercise trains you to become your own hypnotherapist. By staying focused on the exercise, you create the internal condition necessary to start receiving your own suggestions. This will lead you will build a “vocabulary” of helpful suggestions over time.

Exercise 2: go out people watching every now and again. You don’t need to stare people down—just get a quick glimpse and sense what their emotions might be. With the exception of trained actors, most people are telling you how they feel unconsciously by the way they move. Learn to read this language. (Your instincts will guide you well).

Exercise 2, part 2: Pay close attention to the emotional dynamic between two or more people interacting. Is there an obvious leader? Are they happy to be in each other’s company? Are they friends or are they business associates? Just take note of whatever comes to mind. The goal isn’t be “right” per se—we’re learning how to become observant.

IMPORTANT NOTE: don’t stare at people. Just take occasional, unobtrusive glances from time to time and see what you see. Keep in mind that practically everyone observes other people for the exact same reason—to size them up, to understand what’s going on, etc. It’s not rude to simply acknowledge the presence of other people. Your goal is to learn how to read the emotional landscape. You will get better at this over time.

Exercise 3: if you have the opportunity to do so, cheer someone up out of a bad mood. Emotions are the language of the subconscious mind; if you can change someone’s emotions, then you can hypnotize them.

None of these exercises alone will teach you how to make people think their hand is glued to a table—but they will make you sensitive to subliminal influence on a rudimentary level, and this will help to build a powerful foundation upon which to understand hypnotic phenomena.

We’ve covered quite a lot of ground in this article—if things don’t make sense yet, rest assured that it’s only a matter of time before they will. Novel information takes time to process; luckily, your subconscious mind is VERY good at figuring things out. How do I know? If it weren’t, you wouldn’t even be reading this in the first place.

In my next article, I will share the story of how I used many of the principles described above to “cure” myself of dog allergies. You may find when you read that story that many problems in your own life might spontaneously solve themselves too.