What Constitutes Successful Hypnosis?

One of the things that people who are new to hypnotherapy often say to me is that they are worried they did not enter into hypnosis because their expectation did not match their subjective experience at the time of therapy. When I ask further, I find that they were expecting to be ‘put under’, be in a complete state of oblivion, and lose total awareness of everything that was going on around them. Because this subjective experience had not occurred, then they wonder if therapy has been ineffective for them.

Unfortunately holding thoughts of this nature is somewhat missing the point and is a red herring in terms of achieving your goal.

In reality there are many levels of consciousness that individuals experience when in hypnosis. It is true that with a lot of consistent use of the cd I provide to all clients, or if you were having a session in my office, then you could enter a deep state of  hypnotic relation, a state in which your focus and attention would be completely inward and not on your external environment (other than a focus on the words spoken to you by me).

However, for most people during self- hypnosis, and when working with me, some awareness of the external environment will remain. I explain it to clients that it is as if they were in a state of comfortable, dream-like relaxation. Their eyes closed, in order to further reduce external stimuli, but maintaining some level of awareness of the activities going on around them.

Let’s be clear, for therapy to be helpful for the individual, "depth" of hypnosis, or the subjective experience of going ‘into it’ is not the goal. The important thing to remember is the outcome of the process, the result i.e. what the content of the therapy is and how it impacts on the client’s behaviour after the session.

As reported to me by clients undergoing therapy, they can have both surface and deeply internal hypnotic experiences and that both states produce positive results. It is the result that matters and not necessarily the depth of the hypnotic state that is the determining factor in this regard.

The more important thing to keep in mind is the power of consistent application of the therapy given, mixed with honest intention and desire to change.

I want to finish with the following statement -  rather than a client focusing effort and energy on the relevance of the "depth of hypnosis", it is far more productive to remind oneself that the actual depth of hypnosis is nowhere near as important as being open to the process of hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy works most effectively when you work with it!