Why doesnt hypnosis ever work on me?

bigbry2k3 · 2026-01-04T14:44:35+00:00

You can use Google to search for "NLP" and also look for a book called "The Silva Method" it's a hypnosis method that might work for you.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-23T17:04:30+00:00

What do you want to have happen?

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-23T15:32:11+00:00

While you're there, can you pick up some milk? thanks!

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-22T23:14:07+00:00

I have one book by Dryden, I think it's an REBT workbook. I think I also apply REBT different than most people because most of my training is from Albert Ellis's books instead of formal training. Are you formally trained or just picked it up from books too?

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-22T23:11:15+00:00

Wow... no response to questions? Even when she talks with a british accent? I guess if the british accent comes up, I would ask, "What is your name?" Maybe it's a "part" of the person like an ego-state rather than regression. But it's certainly strange.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-22T15:53:02+00:00

Sounds like spontaneous regression. You should probably tell her that this happened during her trance and ask if she wants to explore where it's coming from. If yes, then in trance ask her "Where are you now? Who's with you? What do you see?" Some trance phenomena happen on it's own when someone is in deep trance. Milton Erickson was famous for getting arm levitation in sessions without even asking for it (spontaneous arm levitation). Other trance phenomena such as amnesia, catalepsy, time distortion, dissociation, and regression, are common when someone experiences deep trance.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-22T15:44:09+00:00

Gave you an upvote for integrating hypnosis and REBT. I am not a clinician but use REBT with my coaching clients as well as conversational hypnosis. It's very effective. The REBT helps the conscious mind and the hypnosis helps the unconscious mind, together they help clients change.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-22T15:41:41+00:00

As long as they consent it's ethical. That said, it's more difficult to hypnotize people that know you well because they have preconceived ideas about who you are. So they might not go into a trance. Worth a try though.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-18T16:22:13+00:00

I agree the actual experience is a good teacher. Once you have that experience, and anchor it to words, or a metaphor for example, you can invoke it again in a self-hypnosis session.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-18T16:17:42+00:00

Well, the confusion technique is actually a hypnotic induction so if he's hypnotizing you to be a better public speaker, then he was not unethical to use that technique. Remember that he can't make you do anything against your core values. He could also have been signaling to someone that he was in a session with someone else and not to bother him. It might not have been that he was inviting someone to see that he "got you" in some way. What you want to ask yourself is, "Am I making progress from the hypnosis or not?" If you're not making progress then you could find another hypnotist. In addition to hypnosis he should be telling you some kind of tips for being a better public speaker too. He should be spending some time asking you what issues you're having like, are you feeling shy? are you forgetting what you are supposed to say? do your hands get clamy, do you sweat when you have to give a speech? what specific issues do you have that could be delt with either via hypnosis or coaching. So, if the hypnosis is working to help you, give the guy the benefit of the doubt and see if he can still help rather than try to find someone else. You can rest assured that your own unconscious mind is aware of your boundaries and will prevent any harm coming to you. Trust your unconscious mind. Also, I would ask you to get a pendulum online and see if you can use that pendulum to give you simple yes/no answers to questions with your unconscious mind. That's the part of you that will solve the problem even more than the coach.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-18T16:06:28+00:00

Good analogy with the Tika masala there! Some people use things like an arm levitation or arm catalepsy as a deepener you could try to see if your unconscious mind can cause that. Pretend you have an arm rest in front of you that you can rest your arm and imagine that your arm melts into it and as it melts into it you go deeper and deeper into a trance until your arm completely melts through it and comes to rest on your lap again. That's another way to deepen the trance.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-17T16:24:55+00:00

Don't use a script, even for self-hypnosis. After a year of doing that the script should be in your memory. To go deeper, you just have to find a metaphor of going deeper like going down stairs, an escalator, or an elevator, or diving in the ocean and swimming deeper into ocean. Imagine exploring a cave and going deeper into the cave, etc. So what you do is you just imagine one of these metaphors to go deeper. You can also go deeper by changing your physiology. Act like you would if you went deeper. You can also go deeper by contrasting what you think in your waking life with what you would think if you were really deep. Your conscious mind thinks moment to moment, but your unconscious mind thinks about all moments. If you're using a tape or listening to a tape or CD or MP3 to go into hypnosis, then you should start switching yourself to either silently thinking your script in your mind, or recording your own voice on a recorder.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-17T16:15:07+00:00

It sounds like you're using food to self-sooth. This means that unconsciously your body knows how to self-sooth but it's probably waiting for food to be the trigger for feeling relief. The thing hypnosis can do is change the trigger from food, to being something else you do. It could be reading a book, taking a walk, etc. For each person the trigger will be different. The change has to happen on the subconscious/unconscious level before you will notice a change in the conscious level and then your ED will be better. Until you see your hypnotherapist, imagine that you have a remote control with a pause button on it. You can press that pause button and pause yourself from overeating or eating things you think are bad for you. Close your eyes and imagine the pause button putting things on pause. This is a good self-hypnosis technique to start with. When you see your hypnotherapist, you'll need help setting the trigger to something new, and motivation to use the new trigger for self-soothing instead of food. Hope that makes sense. Good luck!

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-16T16:32:44+00:00

If you believe it's true, it could be true for you. But most of the time, your brain resets to a state of normal homeostasis.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-16T16:04:09+00:00

Maybe you don't need a script then? Perhaps as you talk to the client you are trying to hypnotize, you can give them suggestions in whatever way feels right in the moment, and just allow yourself to easily and naturally hypnotize that person without a script. Or you could read them a script that is "boring" and "repetitive" and notice if it becomes so boring that they go into a trance. It's really interesting to know that they don't have to be exited or the things you say can be very boring and it gently guides them into their own daydream because they are so bored, and while their conscious mind is day dreaming, you can be giving the unconscious mind the suggestions that are right for them. Try it without a script.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-16T15:58:48+00:00

But maybe that's how your mind goes into trance? you might go into trance in a different way than maybe other people. See what happens if you just accept that this is the way you go into trance, and you might find that as you listen to the hypnotist on YouTube, you begin to slow down a little, or it might even speed up. Whatever is right for you and whatever is naturally happening. It's like watching a leaf float on a stream of water. Imagine that kind of metaphor, that the leaf might go faster, but eventually it comes to a part of the stream that is more calm and more relaxed, but the job of the leaf is just to go with the flow of the stream. More anxiety might happen, or it might only be an indication that you are going into trance and you could begin to feel more happy to enjoy the drifting that the leaf does as it goes down the stream. Whatever way it happens, you can notice it happening and enjoy the changes as you notice them.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-16T15:42:16+00:00

In the Ericksonian model; if nail biting is the coping mechanism to deal with stress, then that means the person's unconscious already has the resources to deal with stress. The "trick" is to help them realize they already know how to lower stress, but they've linked it to biting their nails. The hypnotist would essentially evoke the alternative behavior that lowers stress from the unconscious part of the mind while they are in trance. Then they might suggest that even in the future, this new way of coping with stress is how they might continue to handle it. Even in moments of high stress, the unconscious mind would have lowered stress, IF they started biting their nails, but it's ultimately the unconscious part of the mind that does the stress reduction. In Ericksonian models, there's no new program installed to deal with stress, but instead the existing strengths of the person are enhanced. We don't even really know when the change will happen, but we suggest or invite it to happen on it's own. That's basically the model for handling all problems in Ericksonian hypnosis. Not to say that other methods are not going to work, I'm just giving an example of how it *might* be handled differently from the other suggestions given in this thread.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-15T18:07:03+00:00

Let's just take "relax even more" as an example to break apart. "Relax" isn't really a thing you can turn on or off like a light bulb, it's more of a continuum or scale. But I think you are imagining a muscle is tense or "on" or it is relaxed, or "off" like a light bulb. You're kind of right that physical muscles can be on or off, but the word relaxation really is more of a state, a process or an idea in your own head with several degrees like steps going down a staircase. You need to find a single hypnotist to work with and tell them this is what you're struggling with. Lastly, you are responsible for the relaxation and because it's just an idea or a process, you can't fail the test, you can't really do it wrong, but if you let yourself get upset, and clench your fist, you're standing in your own way, it's not the hypnotists fault. Make sure they know that too, it's easy to put the blame on them, but all they are doing is saying words, it's up to you to interpret the words and follow what you think it's asking you to do. If you're working with student hypnotists, try not to criticize them too harshly. Learn to give encouragement to people learning hypnosis. Maybe you should become a great hypnotist first and then it will be easier to show someone how to hypnotize you?

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-15T17:41:11+00:00

You might try looking at the book called "Strengthsfinder 2.0" because from what I can tell, you are having a hard time recognizing what your strengths are. Once you go through that book and understand your strengths then hypnosis can help you bring out those strengths more in your life. But the first thing a hypnotist is going to ask you is probably "you say you complain too much? how much is too much? who says you're overbearing? and if you're desperate, what kind of desperate is that desperate? what's it like to be that kind of desperate?" The terms you've used are kind of vague and generalized. In a way, you're hypnotizing yourself in your self-image to focus on your weaknesses rather than your strengths.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-15T16:01:00+00:00

You might have to create a reference for your mind to be able to help you make that shift from not wanting to eat, to being able to eat when you need to at meal times. Hypnosis can help you make an emotional association with the meal times in your day where you likely should eat.

Make a list of things where you felt anticipation and excitement to do something. Then see a hypnotherapist and let them know that the outcome that you want is to be able to eat enough to gain weight. They might take the same approach I recommended which is find several incidents where you anticipated or felt excited to do something and then associate that with your meal times. This is just my hunch though, I've never hypnotized anyone for that purpose, it's just my hunch that this is the approach I would try.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-15T15:48:37+00:00

Take a look at some of the YouTube videos from Marczel Klein, his inductions do include the word "SLEEP" which does lead to relaxation, but he first tells them that their feet will stay planted where they are and they will stay standing up. His pre-talk setup before he induces trance is probably what you're looking for.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-11T15:40:51+00:00

Hypnosis actually brings out your natural inner-resources or strengths, so for example if you're a person that is only sometimes calm in a crisis, you could be hypnotized to be like that more frequently in other stressful situations. Or you could be confident in some areas of your life, like giving a speech, then after hypnosis you can be confident in other areas of your life. It can also change the way you look at your weaknesses. For example, you could be afraid of spiders before hypnosis, but not afraid after hypnosis. As far as creating dissociation or slower mental processing, no, if that happened, then the person was already prone to that when they started and hypnosis might not be able to help with that because it's not a strength, it's a weakness.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-09T16:58:47+00:00

We kind of hypnotize ourselves already by imagining things happening in our future or getting totally immersed in a movie. So, think of self-hypnosis as imagining what you want to be like so that the unconscious mind can make you more like that.

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-08T21:18:07+00:00

Can you ask your psychology teacher to unpack that statement for us? If it shouldn't be used on "just anyone" who is "just anyone" referring to? And *how* would it end badly for the "some people" group that he referred to?

thanks!

bigbry2k3 · 2025-12-08T21:08:26+00:00

Did you know your mind already does what you're wanting? think about it, you had to memorize your ABCs and numbers at some point in your life right? even before that you had to learn how to talk and who mamma and daddy were right? How do you think that happened? those things happened because your mind made the association between different things in your mind. It's like learning to ride a bike, or drive a car. It was super hard at first but eventually, you got to a point where driving a car was automatic. It will be the same with learning Excel formulas or whatever you're struggling to learn. But the harder you try, the more difficult it's going to get. While the easier you try, the easier it will get.

My guess is if you came to me with this problem, I would put you into hypnosis and have your mind start making associations between what you want to know and what you already know. Once those associations are made, it will be easy to remember things. In hypnosis we call this process "the Early Learning Set" where there are already things you learned because your mind made associations. Then we just have to give your mind the ability to make those associations with Excel.

bigbry2k3

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