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Del Morrill, M.S. C.C.H

Transitions

A Center for Counseling & Hypnosis
Tacoma, Washington, USA
(253) 752-1506

I Can't be Hypnotized!

Question

     I was hypnotized in June from a man with your company. It did not work for me. At the time I was too scared to tell him that I was not being hypnotized, so I just played along. My question for you is; why is it that some people can be hypnotized while others can't? I have spoken to a couple of people who said that they cannot be hypnotized; but I really thought it would work for me. Can you please explain it to me?


 

Answer


    Sorry, I have never had any man with my company, so you must have been to some other office. It would have been helpful to have explained to me, in your request, why you don't believe you were hypnotized.  So I will be making some assumptions in my response to you.


    When hypnotized, unlike the common belief many have of hypnosis, you more often than not will feel as if you can hear everything, especially if it is new to you.  Thus, some people feel that weren't hypnotized, because they believe they're supposed to be "knocked out" or asleep.  Just because it might look that way on stage, with a professional entertainment hypnotist, this isn't true.  I have had clients tell me that they could hear everything; and yet, they didn’t hear a very large book fall from my lap to the floor, not the telephone ring, nor the guy outside the window mowing the lawn.  Sometimes people will hear sounds, and yet the noise makes little difference to them.  For them, it is like being on a beach with hundreds of people, and when the sun makes them feel so warm and comfortable the noise of the people fades into the background.  That is a hypnotic trance.  


    In theory and practice, everyone can be hypnotized, because we are many times in a day.  Every day you emerge from sleep and come into full awareness, and every day you go from full awareness into sleep. This is a hypnotic trance process.  When you daydream or lose track of time, it is a hypnotic experience.  You might hear people in your home, when you are deeply engrossed in reading or watching a TV program, yet they don’t interfere with that activity. In fact, you might not hear them at all. When we are convinced of something or believe what someone tells us, we are being hypnotized.  Advertisers and news broadcasters are great hypnotists.   When you are deeply relaxed, or focused (that is, entranced with something), you are the most open to suggestion. When you are open that way, you’re able to receive what the hypnotherapist is offering.  However, you don’t have to feel relaxed to be hypnotized. Traumatic experiences, in which someone isn’t at all relaxed, puts the person in a sort of hypnotic “spell” which needs to be broken in order for the person to move on with their life.  There are all kinds of experiences and ideas that hypnotize us.


     Anytime you “narrow down” your geography, or become totally focused on something where it becomes more prominent than anything else, it’s a form of hypnosis.  You may not call such experiences by that name, but they are trance states or altered states of being, and the same as what we, who work in this field, mean as “hypnosis” or “hypnotic experiences”.


     The question is just how open someone is to hypnosis when in the office of a hypnotist. Most people can be hypnotized in a formal setting.   Yet, I have found that there are a few people who have more difficulty.  They tend to fall into two groups: those who expect the hypnosis to be done or experienced in a certain way; and those who consciously think they are ready to make a change but, in fact, have an underlying, deeper reason for not making that change.  Such expectations can block you from experiencing hypnosis. 


     Besides having some belief about just how you should feel when hypnotized, there are other reasons for not being so:  wanting to be too much in control, not trusting the hypnotist, not being comfortable in the particular environment, not feeling safe enough, or believing it should feel like it 'did before" (if hypnotized by someone else), etc.  Sometimes your conscious mind might be ready but your deeper self, the unconscious/subconscious mind, is afraid or is rebelling at making such a change.


     It is possible that your particular hypnotherapist did not find a method that would work best with in getting into the hypnotic state.  If you didn't let him know and "played along," he might have assumed that everything was going okay.  Don't give up on hypnosis - try someone else.  You might ask for a brief consultation with the next person you wish to try, to see how you respond to him/her before you have an actual session.


 
 

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