I’m Really a Trance Buster
I have used hypnosis in therapy for over 40 years.
And when I look back over the successful therapy sessions I have had, hypnosis was almost always involved in one way or another.
This is a 7 – minute video overview:
But I think we make hypnosis too mysterious.
To me, hypnosis is simply a focus of attention.
We go in and out of trance all day long.
You get absorbed in a movie.
You drive somewhere and suddenly realize you don’t remember the last few miles.
You lie awake worrying about something that hasn’t even happened.
You replay an argument from twenty years ago and your body reacts as though it is happening right now.
That is focused attention.
That is trance.
But Getting Someone Into Trance Is Not Therapy
I have always wondered about this.
A person learns hypnosis and becomes very good at producing arm levitation.
The hand floats up.
Wonderful.
Now what?
Or they produce eye catalepsy.
Amnesia.
Hand sticking.
Time distortion.
Again—fine.
But what are you going to do with the trance once you have it?
The person did not come into my office because they wanted their arm to float in the air.
They came because they were anxious.
Afraid.
Ashamed.
Angry.
Depressed.
Or because something that happened decades ago is still controlling how they feel today.
That is what interests me.
The Client May Already Be in Trance
Here is something I think is often overlooked.
Many of the people coming into therapy are already in a very powerful trance.
The anxious person is focused on danger.
The ashamed person is focused on what is wrong with them.
The traumatized person may be reacting to the present through something learned many years ago.
A frightened child may have learned:
Am I safe?
And forty or fifty years later, the adult nervous system may still be asking that same question.
Over and over.
That is focused attention too.
In fact, chronic emotional states can become an incredibly powerful form of focused attention.
Fear looks for danger.
Shame looks for evidence of inadequacy.
Anger looks for violation.
Anxiety looks for what might happen next.
The brain keeps searching for information that fits the old prediction.
So Maybe My Job Is Not to Put People Into Trance
Maybe my job is to help them get out of the trance they are already in.
That changed how I think about hypnosis.
I don’t particularly care how deep someone’s trance is.
I don’t care whether their arm levitates.
I care whether we can focus attention on the emotional experience that is creating the problem.
Where do you feel it?
What happens when you focus on it?
What does your nervous system seem to expect?
When did this first make sense?
What did that younger person learn?
Now we have something useful to work with.
You Can’t Heal What You Can’t Feel
Talking about an emotional problem and experiencing it are two very different things.
A person can explain their childhood for years.
They can understand exactly why they are anxious.
They can know intellectually that they are safe.
And still feel afraid.
Why?
Because the emotional learning is still operating.
So I want the person to experience enough of that emotional state that we can work with it.
That requires attention.
Focused attention.
Hypnosis.
Then we can introduce something different.
A resource.
New information.
A different perspective.
A different experience.
A change in the memory.
A change in the prediction.
And sometimes the nervous system discovers:
I don’t need to keep doing this anymore.
I Use Trance to Bust Trance
That may be the best description I have found for what I do.
I use trance to find the trance.
I use focused attention to locate the old emotional learning that has been automatically organizing the person’s experience.
Then we work with it.
If the old learning changes, the emotional state may change with it.
So after all these years, maybe I am not really a hypnotist.
I’m a Trance Buster.
I use trance to help people wake up from the trance that has been running their lives.
Clint77090@gmail.Com