Does it really work?
 

As stated in the subject does Hyponsis do something..?

Yes it does many things but you're going to have to make your question more specific if you're looking for a more in depth answer.

Cheers!

KP

Does hypnotherapy work? It may work or it may not work. I am not an expert but with the bit of information I get, this is what I think. If you really believe in what you are being told, it is more likely to work. You also have to practice what you have been taught.

I think it depends on the individual.

My father had hypnosis to stop smoking before my brother was born and never smoked since. He is also skeptical, but it still worked.

There are 2 things hypnotherapy works really well for:
1. Adopting new beliefs/identity - with all the possibilities this entails.
2. Physical healing via deep relaxation.

As with most therapies, success depends largely on the skill of the therapist.

Works For Some, But Not All
 

Some are good candidates for hypnosis & others aren’t. A skilled therapist can do some simple tests to determine this.

Hypnosis binds your spirit so that it is in the care/control of the hypnotist. Unless they have any idea what they are doing, it usually leaves you exposed to outside influences in the astral/etheric/beyond. This binding is also against natural laws as every spirit is entitled to free-will. Not many know what hypnosis does or its effects so, be careful.

It only works, if you believe it will. If you think you cant get hypnotized then you cant. Any hypnotist will tell you that, even in live shows...

I'm a hypnotherapist and I will tell you otherwise. :smile:

Especially in stage hypnosis, the belief that the hypnotist has power is the main way it works. It just is far from the only way.

Also, it works for everybody, if the hypnotherapist is skillful enough.

I could not agree more. Beliefs are never set in stone so you may believe you can't be hypnotized but if you have a skillful enough hypnotist they will quickly undo that belief and have you in hypnosis very quickly.

The truth is that we enter hypnosis through out our daily lives, it's how we learn most effectively. When you read a good book or watch an enthralling movie you enter hypnosis.

It is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of experience.

Cheers!

KP

It's not magic. It's a state of mind... a state of consciousness. Actually, even the professionals do not agree on a definition. As was stated by others, some people are more easily hypnotized than others. There are many factors involved but a skilled hypnoTHERAPIST works with the individual client to get through resistance that may be blocking him/ her from being able to enter into a desired state. If your question is: can everyone be hypnotized? Then the answer is 'yes, absolutely'.

What would you like to know about? If hypnosis is effective for what? There is a great deal of empirically based evidence for it's use on pain, somatoform disorder, and trauma. If there is a question about whether you can control someone else's will... the answer is no.... and playing with such an idea will bite you in the butt.

It you believe it will work... them it will work on you...

Correct, one way would be to use covert hypnosis where you are hypnotised before you know it. Of course, you could snap out of it at that point if you wanted to.

Absolutely, or stand in a lift, or drive down the motorway.

Trance is ubiquitous although hypnotherapists rely on a slight variation where you are responsive to them.

I once had a client who had lied to her fiance about having an affair and dragged him to come engage me in their little deception. She was absolutely determined to not be hypnotised, just to fake it.

It was a very weird situation - was I still responsible for looking after my client? I decided I was responsible to both equally and to give him prima facie evidence - if he really wanted to know, I gave him the perfect opportunity.

He didn't want to know. When my client realised I could hypnotise her quite easily she couldn't wait to get out of there and her fiance stayed on her side. I don't recall getting paid. :icon_confused:

I think it is important to consider something here as well. You do NOT need to believe that it will work in order for it to work. What you do need however is a willingness to give it a try and see what happens. I've had a number of clients who who tried so many other therapies in the past that did not work so when it came to hypnosis they also did not believe it would work. However, one was willing to give it a chance out of desperation.

Hypnosis is not placebo or magic. Neuroscientists out of Columbia University discovered last year that hypnosis works because it completely and automatically override's the subject's top down processing. Researchers were able to able to completely abolish the Stroop Effect in the brain. They gave suggestions while the participants were in hypnosis that cancelled out this effect then put them in an FMRI and administered a Stroop test, the parts of the brain that should have lit up in this kind of test did not at all.

This type of result is not linked with belief in hypnosis nor the suggestions, this was an immediate and automatic effect.

Hypnosis does not function through belief, it functions through information processing. This is not to say that belief is not important. Hey, if you believe a medicine isn't going to work strongly enough then it won't. When it comes to therapeutic practice it makes my life much harder when I have a client who is certain they are not going to change. I will fire clients like this because they're motivation is not there which means the likelihood of them taking part in the therapeutic process is minimal.

Cheers!
KP

I know anything is possible or so they say...so could this (highlighted blue) account for some people's belief that they were possibly abducted by aliens?

Lots of interesting comments in this thread. I only once had hypnotherapy years ago for weight loss, but it made my stomach feel funny / uncomfortable, so I didn't go back after once or twice. What about its use here and now for such things as smoking cessation and weight loss? How effective is it, really?

Sounds very interesting, but how about dumbing it down for me, a quick lesson on what this Stroop Effect is? Thanks~*

The Stroop Effect has to do with the speed with which we process information.

For Example: Name the colors of the following words as fast as you can. Don't actually read the word, just name the color. So if the word "Red" is written in blue then say blue.

Black Orange
Purple Grey
Green White
Yellow Blue
Red Teal

If you go through this you should notice something very interesting happening.

It is significantly easier to read the word than say the color it is in. When saying the color the word is in as opposed to reading it the rates of error are much higher. This is because our brains have learned to process information in very specific ways. Reading becomes such an automatic response that when one is asked to override it, errors occur.

In the study I wrote about, this effect was cancelled out. Participants were no longer subject to the Stroop Effect. They quickly and accurately named the colors the words were written in. The FMRI showed that the parts of the brain that normally light up during this type of task were shut off for people given the hypnotic suggestion which bypassed this effect.

Cheers!

KP

That is interesting, KP. Although when I tried it out, I knew ahead that I should ignore the words, so that was easy. My trouble came in when I reached the 3rd word (Purple) which seemed to be dark blue, then I realized I have to determine what colors did they intend? Was dark blue supposed to be a shade of teal or was the first word (Black) supposed to be teal, as the same color can come in many shades/tones. So, by the time I got to the last word (Teal) which looked pink to me, and saw there was no word pink, it was quite confusing. Obviously I got hung up on semantics because the colors were not 'clear' to me, lol! Thanks for explaining the Stroop Effect, but does that mean that the 'effect' when it is in effect, is where a person slows down or speeds up? I'm a little confused on that.

Hi Silvergirl,

It makes no difference if you know ahead of time to ignore the words. It's about reaction time. In fact if you go back an read my directions, I told you to ignore what the word said. If you take your time and go slowly through the words then yes you can do it. With Stroop tests though its about moving through as quickly as possible because what it is measuring is not just rate of correct responses but the lapse time between being shown the word and answering.

The Stroop Effect is the processing preferences that the brain makes when making rapid decisions.

For more information about the hypnosis study check out these links:

Journal of Psychological Science
http://ctl.scu.edu.tw/scutwebpub/web...26232620_1.pdf

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/science/22hypno.html

Cheers!
KP

[EDIT: Ooops, I should have finished reading the thread :p ]


Interesting Krishna. Do you happen to have a link or source handy? That sounds like an awesome and 'quotable' study to bridge Cognitive Psychology with the practice of hypnosis!!! :hello2:

There is so much to learn that I don't think one life-time is enough. Because of what I'm doing in this time and space, I really like Heart Centered Hypnotherapy teachings but I would love to study all there is to know. :D

All that I KNOW is that I have not seen the type of benefits that combining hypnotic trance with other therapeutic modes brings in any other type of psychotherapy. There is just no going back to talk therapy from here. :)

In the 90s, lots of memories of sexual abuse were found through hypnosis. Only the abuse never happened.

The causes ranged from 'direct' suggestions such as "go back and remember being abused" to 'indirect' pre-induction talk eg "we've found lots of people with repressed memories of being abused so we're going to hypnotise you".

The mind is quite capable of creating plausible events that never happened eg dreaming.

So when expected to, the mind comes up with something that seems like a plausible memory.

This is quite different from motorway trances. Driving on a motorway fully conscious is both tiring and boring so the mind adapts a more suitable state. It does not make the mind more suggestible or more likely to hallucinate (probably less likely).

So I'd say no. The phenomenon of self-reported alien abduction is almost unheard of in Britain and most of the world as far as I know.

I've never met anyone who claimed to be abducted.

But I was always taught that, however outrageous the claims of a client, one should consider the possibility that they're true. :alien:

It is more of an art form than a method. It's like asking how good films are in general. :wink:

Smoking cessation is the more straightforward of these problems. You have both cravings and habitual choosing to smoke.

I've only found one method that's effective for cravings - EFT. You can do it with NLP anchoring but that takes rare skill and possibly hours. I've read many reports of ex-smokers saying the cravings are still there after 20 years.

Changing the decision to smoke is simply repeated mental rehearsal of how an ex-smoker would think about smoking ie resolve, distaste and a clear understanding of why they don't want to smoke.

Weight loss is another matter. Even the medical profession is clueless about the major factors that cause it.
eg after the age of 30, people's metabolism typically drops like a stone. This is due to a drop in the release of growth hormone (the same thing they give short kids).
After this time, exercise does almost nothing for weight loss (there are exceptions).

So there are 2 options, eat far less or take growth hormone precursors.

For the former, you need clients to completely change their relationship with food ie a re-imprint. Hypnosis is practically inevitable here.
Hypnosis can also be used to boost metabolism.

It's perhaps easiest to think of hypnotherapy as an amplifier of experience, but it can be used to bypass everyday self-doubt. It cannot do anything that people can't do on eg their best day in ten years.

Feel free to ask more questions.

Interesting news on Stroop test, Krishna.

Yes, I'm onto that eating far less, it still does almost nothing for me, sad to say.
So, are growth hormone precursors hard to come by (does it take a prescription)?
How hard would it be to search for a good hypnotherapist who can perform this food - relationship and metabolism boost therapy?

I'm eating a third of what I used to and struggling with my weight more than ever. Just a few pounds, but not used to it.

No easy, in every health/fitness store. There are 2:
arginine - a simple amino acid. You have to take quite a lot in powdered form.
niacin - one of the B vitamins. Causes niacin flush which means it isn't suitable for public exercise. :wink:

Because the slimming function of growth hormone is to turn fat into muscle, exercise makes it work 3 or 4 times better.

Arginine has a much stronger effect and niacin is dirt cheap.


It's incredibly unlikely that they'd know what to do. You could explain to them what kind of suggestions you want.

Boosting metabolism means burning more calories. It has to go somewhere which generally means either fidgeting or keeping your body warm.

The latter, if 24 hours a day, actually works better than regular exercise for those lacking growth hormone. You can also encourage it by simply using gradually thinner duvets.

Changing one's relationship to food could probably done through meditation.

Where can I find the best guidelines as to how much niacin and arginine to take?

I take amino acids gel caps 1X a day presently, sometimes 2X, but you say it s/b powder form. Just need to know how much for purposes of weight loss and if the gel cap form is ok.

Niacin, start at 100mg and build up to 200. More info.

Arginine, never done it but you have to take probably 10,000x what you'd get in a gel cap ... http://www.futurescience.com/arginine.html

Thx for the links~*

The therapist with an agenda. Did you know that the beginning of the "false memory syndrome" originated with the parents of someone who truly did remember her early sexual abuse (a Clinical Psychology intern)? Then this 'phenomena' was exploited by a "therapist" with an agenda who (strangely enough) suddenly remembered her own abuse and had to back-track her "work"/ agenda a bit. As someone who works with trauma, I am very concerned with the damage that her work did to people who could possibly get help if not for this type of exploitation. And... as someone who is a sexual abuse/ incest survivor I am glad that I had ONE memory to begin with. If not, I would never believe that it happened... and I can't imagine how invalidating that would have been and I don't believe there would have been a possibility of recovery. :)

http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/

Interesting post, Aquarian (you'll excuse my soap box at the beginning... uhg... horrible damage done by certain 'work'... nothing like ENHANCING the **** the victim goes through on stand and off). As far as the program that I've been utilizing for weight release; it is not a diet program. It's actually targeting health so there is no ideal weight and a scale isn't used. However, hypnosis is used for the purpose of understanding the reasons that we may have an unhealthy relationship with food (eating disorders such as overeating, anorexia, and bulimia). Regression is used also to understand where the patterns originated and to heal at the source. Also, in trance to enhance the experience of getting in touch with the body and gauging hunger. And, of course suggestion. I 'feels' much healthier to me than any other program I have seen. It's that whole dialect between accepting oneself as you are and knowing that change is needed.

Not trying to 'hog the board' but I do think this is important for therapists... and PARTICULARLY hypnotherapists to understand:

Elizabeth Loftus

University of Washington psychologist Elizabeth Loftus is an accomplished researcher with expertise in eyewitness testimony, particularly how the memories of crime witnesses can be distorted by post-event questioning. Loftus is a prominent spokesperson for the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and her views have by and large been very well received by the mass media in the United States. Loftus also testifies as an expert witness on the behalf of people accused of child abuse on the basis of recovered memories. She has co-authored a book entitled The Myth of Repressed Memory.
You've probably heard of Dr. Loftus, and seen her quoted approvingly and uncritically in the popular media. No doubt, as reported in the media, she has prevented some wrongly accused people from being unjustly convicted. She has also played a valuable role by bringing attention and accountability to bear on some irresponsible practices by some incompetent therapists. Yet Dr. Loftus has also claimed that recovered memory is a "myth," and that the majority of such memories are false and implanted by therapists.
Unfortunately, thus far reporters and journalists have almost completely failed to critically evaluate her claims. Nor have they addressed three crucial facts about her work:

1. Loftus herself conducted and published a study in which nearly one in five women who reported childhood sexual abuse also reported completely forgetting the abuse for some period of time and recovering the memory of it later.

2. Loftus misrepresented the facts of a legal case in a scholarly paper and, after finally apologizing to the victim of her misrepresentations, continued to promote the article with falsehoods. (See Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus' Scholarship and Accuracy, by Jennifer Hoult, whose case Loftus misrepresented.)

3. Loftus is aware that those who study traumatic memory have for several years, based on a great deal of research and clinical experience, used the construct of dissociation to account for the majority of recovered memories. However, she continues to focus on and attack "repression" and "repressed memories," which has the effect of confusing and misleading many people.

Here is the study almost never mentioned by Dr. Loftus or the media:

Loftus, E.F., Polonsky, S., & Fullilove, M. T. (1994). Memories of childhood sexual abuse: Remembering and repressing. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18, 67-845.

Abstract: "Women involved in out-patient treatment for substance abuse were interviewed to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% of the women reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. The majority (81.1%) remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives; 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time, and later the memory returned. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives reported a clearer memory, with a more detailed picture. They also reported greater intensity of feelings at the time the abuse happened. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives did not differ from others in terms of the violence of the abuse or whether the abuse was incestuous. These data bear on current discussions concerning the extent to which repression is a common way of coping with child sexual abuse trauma, and also bear on some widely held beliefs about the correlates of repression."

If you read this paper (and I strongly encourage you to do so, especially if you are presenting this issue to others), you will find that Loftus devotes most of it to attacking the construct of repression. If you read this paper, you will probably find it interesting and ironic that Loftus, after her sustained attack on the construct of repression, uses it to explain the recovered memories of her own study's subjects. If you read this paper and some of the other works cited on this page, you will understand that experts in psychological trauma would not explain the recovered memories of her research subjects in that way, but in terms of dissociation.

Here are the findings at issue:

"Forgetting was associated with a different quality of memory, compared to those who did not forget. Forgetting was associated with a current memory that was deteriorated in some respects. The deteriorated memory was less clear; it contained less of a 'picture,' and the remembered intensity of feelings at the time of the abuse was less" (p.79).

Notice the use of the word "deteriorated" to describe memory characteristics that most trauma specialists would describe as "dissociative." The principle that initially whole memories deteriorate over time is derived from research on nontraumatic memory. In contrast, just as dissociation involves a fragmentation of experience during abuse, subsequent memories tend to appear as fragments too – from the beginning. Thus, if a subject had dissociated during the abuse experience, such fragmentation would likely cause her memory to be "less clear," and to involve less of a "picture." Further, dissociative fragmentation during abuse typically involves a defensive attempt to split (dis-associate) physical and emotional pain from one's conscious experience. This could explain the finding that the women who had forgotten for some time, compared to those who had not, remembered the intensity of their feelings being less during the abuse. But Loftus and her colleagues, understandably wedded to their traditional model of memory and either unable or unwilling to apply the construct of dissociation, can only characterize such memories as "deteriorated."

Ironically, this leads Loftus to use repression as an explanation for these lost memories – though no psychological trauma expert would do so:

"Suppose instead we define repression more conservatively. . . . Just under one fifth of the women reported that they forgot the abuse for a period of time and later regained the memory. One could argue that this means that robust repression was not especially prevalent in our sample" (p.80).

In summary:

* Loftus has conducted and published research which calls into question her public statements on recovered memories; her own study demonstrated that the conditions of amnesia and delayed recall for sexual abuse do exist.

* She has relentlessly attacked the construct of repression in her scholarly work, in her expert testimony to judges and juries, and in her statements to the media; this behavior causes many uninformed people to believe she is arguing that the conditions of amnesia and delayed recall for sexual abuse do not exist.

* She has misrepresented the facts of a legal case in a scholarly paper and, after finally apologizing to the victim of her misrepresentations, continued to promote the article riddled with falsehoods (see Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus' Scholarship and Accuracy)

* She is aware that experts on traumatic and recovered memories, when they do employ explanatory constructs, use dissociation much more than repression to understand these phenomena.

* She has used repression to explain recovered memories reported by subjects in her own research, though experts in traumatic memory would argue that they are more likely dissociative in nature.

* For most of you, this is the first time you are learning these facts, because most members of the popular media addressing this issue have note done their homework or made any of these facts known. (For more on the unreliability and poor track record of the popular media on this issue, see Mike Stanton's piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, U-Turn on Memory Lane).

I hypnotize myself all the time.
If I look ( long enough ) into the corner of the room where my wall touches the ceiling, I leave. I have no idea where I'm at or even who/what I am when this happens, all I know is it's very peaceful. Ironically this peace is probably a neurological defect caused by bad genetics.

I'm still awesome though, so whatevs :laughing1:

Varies
 

Some are receptive to this & others aren’t. A skilled therapist can test to see if one is a good candidate for it.

It is the job of the hypnotherapist to lead the client into being receptive.

Of course, given the repertoire of the hypnotherapist they may go another way about helping someone. :smile:

Everyone is receptive to it. It's just not everyone responds to an induction or piece of change work in the same way. It's the hypnotist's job to find what works for that individual.

IN 1989 hypnotist, Bernard Powers was putting on a show in Spain. A group of 10 people were selected from the audience. He asked me if I wanted to join them as he knew I had doubts about his ability to hypnotise me.
The first part was where we had to close our eyes and imagine ourselves on a hot beach eating oranges…. Some oranges were brought round… we didn’t know until afterwards that they were in fact lemons!! I always find lemons to be too sharp so this part worked for me.
Then Bernard asked each of us to perform something different… He told me that I would forget the number 4… He asked me to count into the microphone up to number 5… I thought this would be easy so I started counting… “1, 2, 3,…… when it came to 4 I just couldn’t say it, my mouth was working but nothing came out!! So for that brief moment he had erased the number 4 from me!!
:hug3:

My hypnotist has a non spiritual approach, and he does it in such a way that he coaches you while you are giving yourself the suggestions mentally while under hypnosis, he is not the one that really gives suggestions. I always tell people ro keep an eye on feedback and reviews when dealing with a hypnotist.

i am going to go an see a hypnotist, next year for a past life regression, but i am a little bit skeptical, as i battle with visulisation, and to make matters worse, i am also anaylitical, eg:
Hypnotist: Think of a beautiful comfortable chair, surround by white satin cushions
Me: (i would think about what chair i would find more comfortable, go through thousand of chairs i have seen recently, and then try and pick one, then i would think to myself, but i dont like satin)
so so it goes on....HAHAHAHA

is there any hope for me, will this work?

Also i know imagination play a big part in all of this, but at the end of the day, one wants truth, not something they will keep thinking was it really true....or maybe i made it up?????????

But i suppose only time will tell!

Hi,

The reason why these suggestions are given is to make you tired thats what we hypnotherapists do :-), to give you more suggestions and shut your conscious mind off, so do not worry, it will work....... may be you are a feeler if you can get the feeling of chair or the smell of the place it will still work fine.

Works For Some, Not Others
 

Certain people are good candidates for hypnosis & others aren’t. A capable therapist can test for this.

I suspect that most hypnotists would fail with you. They would first have to recognise your analytical pattern and know how to redirect it.

Of the two main styles, an Ericksonian hypnotherapist is more likely to do the above.

Indeed. Being aware of this you're more likely to come up with something real. The hypnotist should also be extremely precise with what they say. Most aren't.

What do you hope to get out of PLR?

More Discussion About Hypnosis
 

If you're so inclined, a separate thread(s) about the nuances of hypnosis would be very interesting.

To tell you the truth, at first it was curiousity, but the more i have read about it, the more i am begining to understand the benefits of it. EG. I have a fear, which i have no idea where it stems from, it is not the usual, scared of heights, claustrophobia etc, it is more disturbing than that, and i think it about it constantly and get very emotional, so was wondering if it prehaps stems from a past life.