I\u2019ve been asked if everyone is hypnotizable.\u00a0 My answer to them is never a straight yes or no.\u00a0 I truly believe that everyone is hypnotizable.\u00a0 There are differences between clients and how well or how quickly they respond.\u00a0 I believe there is a great deal of preparation one can do to increase the success of the session.\u00a0 I have had two clients that struggled with getting into trance.\u00a0 As a therapist, I often fall into the trap of\u2026\u201dif it works well, I did a good job\u2026 if it didn\u2019t, it must be something the client did.\u201d\u00a0 Own my successes, blame the failures\u2026. No, wait\u2026 that\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n
Anyway.\u00a0 One male client just couldn\u2019t go into a deep enough trance.\u00a0 He responded well to relaxation, but couldn\u2019t get any deeper.\u00a0 My office building was particularly louder that day and my client simply did not respond to the suggestion of letting the sounds around him bring him deeper into trance (as opposed to not paying attention to them\u2026 it\u2019s really hard to not pay attention to something\u2026 my favorite, and you can try this right now\u2026 is to not pay attention to the thought of a blue horse\u2026 what\u2019s the first thing that popped into your head?).\u00a0 Sometimes it just doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 The other situation was with a lady that, for lack of a better way to put it, was just too high strung.\u00a0 She could not (and I truly think this is the deciding factor contributing to successful hypnosis) get past the concept of locus of control.\u00a0 Most people struggle with hypnosis because they simply do not want to give their power to someone else, and in their mind they truly believe they are giving their power up to me.\u00a0 Those have been the only two so far.\u00a0 Not bad.<\/p>\n
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I have had people struggle with the pre-session testing that I do.\u00a0 The Barber test is a suggestibility test that sort of measures how suggestible a person is.\u00a0 It might be more accurate to say that it measures what areas of suggestibility may be more successful than others.\u00a0 It goes through a series of hypnotic phenomena suggested, but not while the participant is in trance.\u00a0 They close their eyes and go through a series of imagined situations.\u00a0 One imagination results in an arm floating and raising while another has it feeling heavy and lowering; seemingly on its own.\u00a0 A person is prompted to imagine different parts of their body freezing\/locking in place.\u00a0 I won\u2019t mention them all, but it is really interesting to watch people\u2019s surprise when their body starts responding to suggestion.\u00a0 It is also a good place to notice how and when people struggle with drawing their attention to things.\u00a0 Some people don\u2019t like being told that they \u201ccan\u2019t\u201d\u00a0do something (try to say your name and you can\u2019t).\u00a0 There is one suggestion in the test that suggests that a person forgets one of the exercises carried out during the test.\u00a0 I am surprised at the success rate of that particular item.\u00a0 Almost all, even without being in a trance, will forget a specific test experience until I suggest they can now remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been asked if everyone is hypnotizable.\u00a0 My answer to them is never a straight yes or no.\u00a0 I truly believe that everyone is hypnotizable.\u00a0 There are differences between clients and how well or how quickly they respond.\u00a0 I believe there is a great deal of preparation one can do to increase the success of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[478],"class_list":["post-5412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-counsellingandpsychotherapyincanada","tag-clinical-hypnosis"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n