The Hypnotic Mindset – Are You Really in Control?

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a client about the issue of control. Because of all the myths surrounding hypnosis and hypnotherapy, questions about being in control or fears of being out of control tend to be the ones that pop up most frequently.

For most people, their only familiarity with hypnosis is from stage show type formats where the whole thing is designed around the perception of the hypnotist making people do silly stuff over which they have no control, or from TV/movie portrayals of hypnosis being used to assist a story line. And I’m sure there are some people out there who think hypnotists still swing the old watch in front of their eyes or do the whole ‘look into my eyes, not around my eyes, look into my eyes’ type thing (just like Kenny in ‘Little Britain’ –  “Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don’t look around my eyes, look into my eyes, you’re under” – and if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about watch this You Tube clip from the show).

But who really has the control within hypnosis and hypnotherapy?

The Issue of Control

Here’s the thing: when someone comes to see me for help to fix a problem, it is the problem that has taken control and hypnosis is a tool to regain it. After all, if that control was there, then someone would just decide to do things differently in a way that would eradicate the issue then and there.

Yet that anxiety seems to take control and overwhelm your thoughts and feelings. Or that desire to eat that unhealthy food is so strong that you end up eating it and wishing you hadn’t. The pull of another cigarette crushes your resolve to quit. You panic leads you to avoid certain situations or get out of that environment as quickly as you possibly can. And the list goes on because when we have a problem, it can seem to take on a life of its own over which our willpower, determination and motivation has no lasting effect. Let’s be clear here. If you’ve got a problem that you can’t overcome then you are not in control over it.

Which is where hypnotherapy comes in.

Hypnotherapy is a tool to help you take back control over that issue so that you can reign in that anxiety, you can break that unhealthy habit, you can use how your mind works to redirect towards feeling calm and confident and much more.

After all, you know how to feel calm in some situations already, even if that is when sitting in front of your TV watching your favourite show, for example. You know how to be confident already, even if that is only about certain things or with certain people or in certain places. You know how to not eat sometimes. You know how to not smoke in places where you can’t smoke.

You don’t have to learn how to do the things you want to do, you just need to learn how to take that capability and purposefully apply it in a way that gets you the results you are looking for.

The Hypnotic Mindset

And all of this should make us all very happy indeed. Because despite the magic and myth surrounding hypnotherapy, the reality is a little more sober than that. Rather than losing control you are gaining control over yourself and your life. Rather than being out of control you can accept or refuse suggestions and even interpret them in your mind in the most beneficial way for you. How awesome is it to know that you can take charge or your own mindset, that you can take charge over how you think, feel, act and react?

When I saw a hypnotherapist to help me overcome my anxiety and social anxiety, I thought the results were magical. Thirty plus years of anxiety and low self esteem seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke in just a few short hours.

Yet hypnosis and hypnotherapy are not magic. They are a way of using how our mind works to take control.

As Adam Eason writes in his book The Science of Self-Hypnosis, ‘we explain hypnosis in terms of a hypnotic “mind set” comprising of ordinary processes, such as our beliefs, our imagination, our expectations, our attitude towards hypnosis, our level of motivation, the depth of our engagement with the role of being hypnotised and some other factors.”

That is, you actively engage with the hypnotherapy to achieve the results that will please you. By engaging your imagination to the best of your ability and using your thoughts, ideas and self-talk, you learn how to be in control.

Even better, the more your practice doing this (for example, I give my clients hypnosis audios to assist them), the better at it you can become and the greater the likelihood of achieving beneficial outcomes for yourself.

When you then also combine this with other strategies, techniques and processes for taking control over your thoughts and feelings, you create a potent mix for how you can learn to take control of who and how you choose to be in your life. Pretty exciting stuff, huh?

To your success,

Dan

Hypnotherapy Ely, Newmarket, Online

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