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A Tip For Working with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

When working with clients who suffer from GAD (general anxiety disorder) I have often found that they present with ‘my anxiety just happens, it’s not about anything specific…’. In the past this was quite the barrier for me to work with, and after some time and experience with those clients I have notice some interesting things. I’ll give you two of them here, and you can let me know in the comments what you think.

1. In the intake, even with GAD clients, I have always been able to notice some triggers that make the anxiety worse or add to it. While I don’t find the ultimate trigger for everything (which is what the client is looking for), I do find something that does something. I will often start with that, and once I open those up, more often then not the rest starts to open as well.

2. When I don’t know the triggers, I check for the idea that this that there are no specific triggers and the anxiety ‘just happens’ is itself quite anxiety provoking. That idea has so far always been on the mark. Now that I have identified that global trigger, I open it up by acknowledging the positive intent behind that anxiety (more often then not it’s ‘try to figure it out so I can know why it happens so I can fix it’). Once the client clearly sees that benefit, they let it go, and that bit of anxiety is gone.

At that point I have found that the rest becomes explorable as well. And there’s a simple explanation. The anxiety of ‘just happens’ creates the tight hold on ‘I need to completely figure this out’ which makes it that the client automatically rejects anything that isn’t a full blown perfect explanation for everything, which presents as ‘I don’t know what my triggers are’. Opening up the ‘just happens’ now opens the space for us to pinpoint and pick apart the triggers as well.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section.

Joe

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NLP’s Fatal Flaw

Hypnosis, NLP, EFT, TFT, 3d mind…

All those beautiful ‘magical’ therapies.

They all have something in common.

A fatal flaw.

A deadly paradox.

It’s always there. Always lurking below the surface. Poking its head up from time to time, only to be quickly misdirected and shifted aside.

It comes up for the practitioners. Especially the ones who get long term feedback from clients. When they dare ask the unaskable questions, they are quickly taught to get in line.

And so what delicious flaw is it that I speak of?

It’s quite simple. The one thing those therapies have in common is the core belief that problems are simply ‘mistakes’. Things that truly don’t belong, shouldn’t be there, and are therefore easily removed.

It might be with a swish pattern, a direct suggestion, a release of energy, a collapsing of anchors.

The core premise being that change is quick and easy. There is no need to work or suffer. That to assume that any change needs hard work or suffering puts one into the category of the evil psychologists and therapists (or The-Rapists as many will quip).

Well whats wrong with that! What’s so terrible about that premise! After all, I had a friend with a phobia, we did the fast phobia sure, and 4 minutes later he was standing on the roof! No pain, plenty of gain!

Well here’s the thing. While it’s certainly true that you can make change without pain. Even significant change. The idea that ALL change is easy and painless is dead wrong (and harmful).

Here’s a simple way to prove it to your next NLP trainer. Ask him why he’s overweight, or why he smokes, or why he bites his nails, or why he gets angry, or why he has any bad habits, emotions, or behaviors at all.

And he will answer that he is human and isn’t perfect.

But what does that really mean? If all change is easy and painless, then why not? Why not take an hour, and zap em all away? Why have any problem more than once in your lifetime? Why once any issue ever comes up for the first time, don’t you simply run the magical process and rid yourself of it forever and ever?

And to that, the answer is simple. While there is a lot of things you can change that is simple and easy, there are many things that will be quite difficult to change.

This makes a lot of sense as well. Sometimes the problems we have are simply the product of a larger dysfunctional system. While simple phobias are almost always an isolated pattern, things like OCD, GAD, depression, and other issues can often be part of a global stable system of dysfunction (quite often they aren’t as well and are fixed easily). If it is a whole system that supports the problem, then a simple 6 step reframe won’t do the trick.

To solve these problems you often need to do a specific piece and then let the rest of the system ‘catch up’ and fall into a new order before you can know which bit to shift next.

A good example is building an idea and a product. While some businesses and ideas can be built big straight off the bat, in some industries you need to start with one bit, let the market shape itself around that bit, then evolve the next bit, wait for the market, and so on. The internet as it is now could not have been built in one shot 20 years ago. There are simply too many supporting factors that make it possible (the amount of people with computers, the mindset of society in regards to the web, the people trained in creating content, the users trained in consuming that content, the advertisers and their mind set, and a million other things) that were not there 20 years ago. The only way for the web to be as it is today is because it evolved step by step.

The truth is, you knew this already. You knew that your NLP trainer wasn’t perfect or God. It’s simply that you never put two and two together. That your NLP trainer not being perfect clearly leads to the idea that not all change is simple or easy. That sometimes change needs to be done step by step with the system reorganizing itself at each point. That sometimes the middle steps aren’t pleasant and that’s where many people flee back to the safety of the old system.

If you actually work with clients in the real world and follow up with them long term, you will see this truth as well. Not all future pacing is foolproof. Not all clients stay ‘fixed’. People change, and then change back.

And if your NLP trainer denies that, well then ask him why he isn’t perfect!

Ah. So now here’s your big question.

But hold on. One second here Joe. Don’t you do brief therapy as well? Don’t you get your clients out the door in 1-5 sessions?

But how? What if it’s a difficult issue? What if it needs longer than that.

It’s a good question. And the answer has 2 parts.

Firstly, there is almost always some change you can make instantly. I have yet to find the client that I couldn’t make some sort of instant impact.

Which leads to the second bit. And that is, when I identify a system-wide issue with my client, my goal of therapy is to train him to take himself through those steps all by himself. That although he might not be all ‘fixed’ when he leaves my office, he does know how to move forward and most importantly, he has learned to ‘sit’ in the middle step of a system wide change even thought it may be uncomfortable.

When my client ‘gets it’, I know I’m done.

Your thoughts?

PS I teach all this (and more) on my online supervision course. I will have the recording for sale soon enough. If you would like to be put on a notification list (and get a chance at the early bird discount), simply sign up here.

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Save Your Marriage

Is your marriage on the rocks? Is that long term relationship about to go bust? Has it already been dead for years? Have you long given up hope on figuring her out?

In the next few weeks, I will be conducting an online workshop. I will be guiding you through my “how to win her back in 30 days” process. This is for men only.

We will be doing 5 one hour sessions in 30 days with one long term (6 months) followup. The sessions will be done over skype (audio only) starting at 9PM EST.

As the sessions will be recorded and released as an audio product, participation is free. You don’t need to provide your real name, and you won’t need to divulge any deep secrets. The workshop will be based on a practical and real world understanding of how men and women operate in relationships, and it will be very hands on. If you’re not interested in putting lots of effort into this, it isn’t for you.

My goal is to return your relationship back to the state it was when you first fell in love. You will learn how to change her back into that wonderful and loving woman. Once you grasp the principals and do the work, the changes begin to happen very very swiftly.

There are only 3 slots available, and so if you want the chance to save your failing (or revive your already dead) relationship, contact me here.

Please provide a brief description of your situation making sure to include:
1. How many years you’re together
2. How you met and how things were in the beginning
3. When it started going bad
4. How it is now
5. What you think changed

Joe

PS If you know a friend that would benefit from this, feel free to email them this post… You could be saving their marriage…

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Hypnosis Against Someones Will

Perhaps one of the most asked questions that I get as a hypnotist is “can you hypnotize someone to so something against their own will?”

It’s a good question, an important question, but a very poorly worded question.

Here’s why. Hypnotists are very good with words, frames, and manipulating your perception of reality. And so once you ask a question that leaves certain abstract concepts like ‘hypnosis’ ‘will’ ‘against’ and ‘do’ open, that leaves space for the hypnotist to manipulate the answer to imply what he wants you to believe and still say ‘the truth’.

And so here is the question reworded. Without any wiggle room. If you want to know the answer to that big question, here is how you ask it…

-Say it’s 1980 and the USA and the USSR and at war. You live in Moscow. You are Russian, but you love the good ‘ol USA. You have just secretly found out that Colonel Alex (a committed Russian patriot who believe the USA is the root of all evil and must be destroyed) has punched in the launch codes to nuke the USA. The nukes will launch tomorrow at 12PM unless you get the redirect codes out of him. If you do punch in the redirect codes, the nukes will be rerouted to Colonel Alex’s home town and will kill his family. It’s your only option.

Here are 3 scenarios.

1. Colonel Alex has come to you the hypnotist for nail biting. You have just tested for name amnesia and it has worked as far as you can tell.

2. Colonel Alex has come to you the hypnotist for nail biting. It’s the beginning of the session, and you have no idea as to his level of commitment, his capability as a subject, or his ability to follow instructions.

3. You meet Colonel Alex in a bar. You can’t mention hypnosis, mentalism, or magic, as Alex has been warned to never speak to a hypnotist, mentalist, or magician.

In each scenario, out of 10 random times, in how many would you be able to get the launch codes out of Alex? You have no knives or guns with which to threaten him. You also are a lot weaker then him physically. He also knows that you aren’t authorized to get the codes no matter what you tell him.

Here are my answers.

Scenario 1 9/10
Scenario 2 6/10
Scenario 3 2/10

What are yours?

Comment and share.

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What is Hypnosis Part 2, De-constructing Heap

Michael Heap has written a wonderful article on hypnosis. You can find it here.

I think that it’s a wonderful article. Heap comes very very close to understanding hypnosis.

In light of my recent understandings I’ll now show where he’s wrong.

Read the Heap article first. Without it you won’t quite understand what I’m talking about here.

Enjoy.

Heap talks about the importance of automaticity. And thats great. However he struggles to understand how that automaticity is created. Here is a quote

“There appears to be a consensus amongst academic psychologists who study hypnosis that any theory of hypnosis must account for the subjective experiences of involuntariness and realism that the suggestible subject finds so powerful.

One line of approach that is now popular is to consider that when responding to suggestion, the highly suggestible person is able to exclude from conscious awareness elements of the experience that would normally be available to consciousness. For example, when I raise my arm I am conscious of my arm lifting up and my intention to lift my arm. If however I am able to exclude from conscious representation my intention to lift my arm, it will seem to me that my arm is “lifting on its own”, i.e. involuntarily.

Similarly, if I am given the suggestion that my best friend is standing in front of me, I may make the effort to imagine him, to think of his voice, to imagine my feelings on seeing him, and so on. If I can remove from consciousness awareness the effort and intention that I make in creating this experience, then it will seem more like my friend is really there. To develop these ideas we can and indeed must – use models and theories from mainstream cognitive psychology and neuroscience.”

So Heaps solution to automaticity is the exclusion from awareness that I am choosing to do the act.

I find this absurd.

Classic conditioning has long ago proven that we can condition a reflex. And so if I hit your knee with a hammer a few times and at the same time I ring a bell, and then I only ring the bell, it will automatically and involuntarily twitch (Twitmyer, E. B. (1905). Knee jerks without simulation of the patellar tendon. Psychological Bulletin, 2, 43.)! In that case you don’t postulate that the person has decided to twitch the knee but has excluded that knowledge from awareness. Salter (1941) talks about using classical conditioning to condition pupil dilation. Would Heap argue that this is also voluntary but excluded from conscious awareness?!

And so once we have shown true automaticity, let me give you another example. One which Heap brings earlier in the paper.

The lemon test. If you imagine a lemon vividly enough you start to salivate.

I once again ask, is the secretion of saliva a voluntary act which you excluding from conscious awareness?!

Now of course you voluntarily imagined the lemon which then led to the saliva, but the saliva itself is involuntary. Salivating is something you can’t do it voluntarily and on command!

And so we have proven a key key point. And that is “If I imagine a context for which there is an appropriate response, that response will involuntarily be elicited”. And so you can’t vividly imagine the lemon without salivating. And therefore, so long as you imagine the lemon, the saliva is involuntary.

With that in mind, explaining an arm lift that happens without effort is rather simple. So long as you imagine a context in which that response is appropriate (helium balloons), the arm will respond with true automaticity.

Now lets take it further. Let’s say you imagine a context in which every response happens. Like the idea that the hypnotists is in full control. In that case, so long as you continued to imagine that, then responding to the hypnotist would be genuine, automatic, and involuntary. The only solution you would have would be to stop imagining that the hypnotist was in control.

And so here is the final step. Lets say you imagined that the hypnotist is in control, and you also imagined that you have no control over any of your imagining. In that case, there would be an automatic response of being unable to stop imagining this reality! And so you are genuinely and truly stuck! We have closed the door or stopping to imagine via imagination! We have closed the loop!

THAT is what hypnosis is. True honest automaticity.

Lets move on in Heaps words.

“Let me now describe three experiments and challenge you to think about the possible explanations in terms similar to those I have just described.

Hypnotically suggestible subjects when given the suggestion that they cannot see a chair in front of them may report convincingly that they cannot see anything. Yet when asked to walk across to the other side of the room they walk around the chair. People who are told that they must only ‘pretend to be hypnotised’ usually bump into the chair (Orne, 1962).

Secondly we suggest to some very suggestible subjects that they can no longer hear their own voices. In the case of those who respond to this suggestion we then ask them to speak into a microphone that is connected to an amplifier and a pair of headphones that the subject wears. The amplifier causes a delay of say half a second in the subject’s speech that he hears through the headphones. This is called ‘delayed auditory feedback’ and it is very difficult for people to speak coherently when at the same time they are hearing their voices delayed for a fraction of a second

What happens to those subjects who insist that they cannot hear their voice? With delayed auditory feedback their speech is disrupted as under normal conditions (Barber & Calverley, 1964)!

Finally, subjects learn a list of words and are then told that they cannot remember any of these words until a signal is given. Some very suggestible subjects may report complete or almost complete amnesia for the words. However they still show a characteristic electroencephalographic response when presented with words that appeared on the list Allen, Iacono, Laravuso, & Dunn, 1995; Schnyer & Allen, 1995) and this material still interferes with the subjects’ recall of another list of words that was not included in the amnesia suggestion (Coe, Basden, Basden & Graham, 1976).

Some people think that the results of these experiments indicate that these very suggestible subjects are simply pretending. With no other evidence this is the best explanation. However, the further evidence that has accumulated has led most researchers to reject this explanation, although it is still entirely possible that some subjects may be pretending.

What seems to be happening in each of these experiments is that very suggestible subjects have the ability to exclude from consciousness awareness the explicit representation of the stimulus – hearing their voice, seeing the chair, or recalling the list of words. However, these stimuli are still implicitly registered in their behaviour and thinking in the usual way – their speech is affected by delayed auditory feedback, they avoid bumping into the chair, and the ‘forgotten’ material still interferes with new learning. This is a plausible way of understanding what is happening.”

Powerful stuff!

But there is a solution…

Here it is.

In every example he gives a suggestion presupposes awareness that contradicts the suggestion itself. If you tell me not to see a specific chair, then at some level I need to be aware of the chair in order not to see it! If I wasn’t aware of the chair at all, then how would I know what not to see? It’s like most of my clients who want their problem gone. But so long as that is their goal, they presuppose having the problem for eternity! You can’t know something is gone unless it exists at a minimum as an idea.

The same is true in the other 2 examples. In order for the subjects mind to process the suggestion, it has to be aware of what it’s supposed to be unaware of. Hence the ‘hidden observer’. The suggestion itself builds in that hidden observer!!

Here is how to really test it. Suggest that a subject is completely blind. Then see what happens.

Salter (1941 “What is Hypnosis”) talks about suggesting deafness and then firing a gun next to the subjects ear. The subject didn’t flinch.

Now if I’m correct (as the lemon test proves without doubt), that means we simply need to imagine a context vividly and the resulting response will be a hypnotic one.

This depends on 2 things.
1. A subject with a good imagination.
2. A hypnotist who gives good suggestions. Most hypnotists say ‘your arm is stuck’. Thats a bad suggestion (unless the subject has responded to that type of suggestion already). In that suggestion you hope the subject imagines your command to be true and therefore you get the result.
A good suggestion is one where you tell the subject to imagine the context “Imagine I’m in control of your reality”, and then ‘closes the door’ via imagination “imagine you are unable to control your imaginings, even this one”.

The rest is simple. The more we are dissociated from external reality, the better we imagine. As in a sensory deprivation tank, as in REM sleep. In hypnosis the subject is dissociated from external reality and very strongly associated to the reality of the hypnotist creating reality. Hence the zombie look you often see. It’s dissociation from external reality (excluding the hypnotist and what he suggests). And so an as I proved in Part 1.

Your thoughts?

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Hypnotizing the Conscious

Here’s the standard line from the standard hypnotist “I can’t make you stop smoking, you need to want to stop”.

Let’s examine that now.

We as hypnotists work with the subconscious of our clients. Thats how we can get all the splendid hypnotic effects such as amnesia, hallucination, and ideomotor movement. We simply have the subconscious accept our suggestion for name amnesia, and presto like magic, they can’t remember their name no matter how hard they try and no matter how hard they want to.

Can someones SC work against their wishes? Of course it can! Look at any phobic, they didn’t ever want to become a phobic, they got hypnotized into it without their consent and without their willingness, and there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do to stop it.

We find that phenomena of people being unable to consciously fight the SC on many levels. We find it with emotion, thoughts, habits, and beliefs.

So if we as hypnotists work with out clients SC minds, so long as they follow our instructions during the session, why oh why would they have to consciously want to quit?

So here’s the thing. As good as we are as hypnotists, we aren’t perfect. So while we might change beliefs, habits, patterns, and emotions, for all we know there might be some pieces of the puzzle that we haven’t gotten to. Those remaining associations and learning can reinstall the old smoking issue.

Along with that, even if we did zap the smoking issue completely and remove all traces from the SC, the conscious mind of a person is their own hypnotist! Not always is it the most effective hypnotist (as we see in the case of a phobia), but it’s a hypnotist nonetheless. And so it’s possible that even after we have changed the SC so the problem is no longer there, they might rehypnotize themselves right back into the habit.

Recognizing that, we enlist the aid of their SC so that they don’t fight us and rehypnotize themselves, and so if we missed something, they will hypnotize themselves and finish the work.

And so to summarize, I think that we most certainly do not need the person to want to quit. So long as they come to us and follow instructions during the session, we can change the SC to the point that they can’t smoke no matter how much they want to. We can also change the SC to the point that smoking means nothing to them and holds no attraction for them.

However we do recognize that the way they think consciously has a powerful hypnotic effect on their SC. And so to make sure that the job gets done even when we haven’t done a perfect job, we enlist the help of their 24/7 hypnotist, and that is their conscious mind, to fill in what we missed. We also want to make sure that they don’t fight what we put in there and reinstall the habit.

This concept applies to almost any change we make. If we enlist the on-board hypnotist (the conscious) and teach him how to use his power well, we can have our clients finish the job that we started when what we did wasn’t quite enough.

So it’s a lie that the client needs to want to quit, but one that seems to work in the best interests of all involved.

Because of the demographic I often work with in my private practice (male, 18-30, Lawyers, Engineers, and Scientists) I get a lot of clients with very active conscious minds. And so I have had to develop a whole range of techniques and ideas to work with them and ‘hypnotize’ the conscious. In my upcoming online group hypnosis supervision you will have a chance to learn my methods and practice them with live feedback in class.

You can find more information and sign up here.

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Text Therapy

Here is a small and quick piece of changework that I did with a young hypnotist who had worked with a friend and made some mistakes. He was in a pretty bad state, and I helped him move through it and learn something as well.

Now this obviously was rather easy as it was only a simple state change, and you can take the ideas used and apply them to more complex cases.

None of this was planned, it was all ‘in the moment’. If you want to learn hypnosis and therapy and train your mind to be able to create powerful therapeutic approaches ‘in the moment’ you can go sign up for the online supervision group.

Enjoy!

[2:46:58 PM] Joe K Fobes: I talk to the SC all the time…
[2:47:04 PM] Joe K Fobes: its called ideomotor signaling
[2:47:38 PM] Joe K Fobes: have you ever had a finger twich by itself?
[2:47:49 PM] Steven: Hmm not really
[2:48:00 PM] Steven: I’ve had my eyelids twitching by themselves tho
[2:48:10 PM] Joe K Fobes: so every part of your body is always perfectly still?
[2:48:14 PM] Joe K Fobes: do this
[2:48:23 PM] Joe K Fobes: put your wrist on the table
[2:48:26 PM] Joe K Fobes: and float your fingers
[2:48:27 PM] Steven: k
[2:48:30 PM] Joe K Fobes: float
[2:48:40 PM] Joe K Fobes: now watch those fingers
[2:48:54 PM] Joe K Fobes: and twitch one of them
[2:48:58 PM] Joe K Fobes: a few times
[2:49:03 PM] Joe K Fobes: and then stop twitching it
[2:49:05 PM] Joe K Fobes: and watch it
[2:49:14 PM] Joe K Fobes: and let me know when it does a little twitch by itself
[2:49:27 PM] Steven: ohh
[2:49:30 PM] Joe K Fobes: yeps
[2:49:31 PM] Steven: woah
[2:49:33 PM] Steven: why?
[2:49:36 PM] Joe K Fobes: so thats the yes finger
[2:49:38 PM] Steven: that’s so strange?
[2:49:46 PM] Joe K Fobes: now, go and make a no finger
[2:49:49 PM] Joe K Fobes: so twitch the no finger
[2:49:55 PM] Joe K Fobes: a few times
[2:49:55 PM] Steven: can it be on the other hand?
[2:50:00 PM] Joe K Fobes: and then let it do it itself
[2:50:07 PM] Joe K Fobes: well I want you to be able to type
[2:50:10 PM] Steven: kk
[2:50:11 PM] Joe K Fobes: so pick a hand
[2:50:14 PM] Joe K Fobes: do the yes finger
[2:50:17 PM] Joe K Fobes: and then the no one
[2:50:22 PM] Joe K Fobes: and tell when you have that
[2:51:19 PM] Steven: hmm the other finger is not reacting
[2:51:22 PM] Joe K Fobes: ok
[2:51:28 PM] Steven: only the yes finger seems to be twitching when I concentrate on it
[2:51:29 PM] Joe K Fobes: so look at the yes finger
[2:51:38 PM] Joe K Fobes: and Im going to ask your SC something
[2:51:43 PM] Joe K Fobes: and that finger will respond
[2:51:46 PM] Joe K Fobes: is that ok with you?
[2:51:50 PM] Steven: yes
[2:51:54 PM] Joe K Fobes: good
[2:52:11 PM] Joe K Fobes: so SC of Steven, does Steven have parents?
[2:52:16 PM] Joe K Fobes: and watch the finger respond
[2:52:25 PM] Joe K Fobes: and tell me its response
[2:52:33 PM] Steven: yes finger moved
[2:52:38 PM] Joe K Fobes: good
[2:52:58 PM] Joe K Fobes: and SC mind, does Steven have siblings?
[2:53:17 PM] Joe K Fobes: and once again tell me its response
[2:53:21 PM] Steven: yes finger moved
[2:53:23 PM] Joe K Fobes: good
[2:53:28 PM] Joe K Fobes: no we will install the no finger
[2:53:29 PM] Joe K Fobes: ready?
[2:53:32 PM] Steven: ok
[2:53:42 PM] Joe K Fobes: watch the hand in response to this question
[2:53:56 PM] Joe K Fobes: and notice which other finger goes
[2:54:00 PM] Steven: ok
[2:54:22 PM] Joe K Fobes: SC mind, has Steven ever raped a woman?
[2:54:54 PM] Steven: hmm
[2:55:02 PM] Joe K Fobes: what do you get
[2:55:03 PM] Steven: my hand has no response
[2:55:05 PM] Joe K Fobes: ok
[2:55:07 PM] Steven: but I can feel a tingle
[2:55:09 PM] Steven: in my pinky
[2:55:11 PM] Joe K Fobes: watch it and I’ll ask again
[2:55:15 PM] Joe K Fobes: and this time it will answer
[2:55:18 PM] Joe K Fobes: fully
[2:55:19 PM] Steven: ok
[2:55:29 PM] Joe K Fobes: SC mind, has Steven ever killed a human being?
[2:56:23 PM] Steven: hmm
[2:56:30 PM] Steven: my index finger is my yes finger
[2:56:33 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[2:56:38 PM] Steven: and I can see my pinky and ring finger shaking
[2:56:42 PM] Joe K Fobes: perfect
[2:56:45 PM] Steven: but not as big of a twitch as the yes finger
[2:56:49 PM] Joe K Fobes: so now onto the good stuff
[2:56:56 PM] Joe K Fobes: it gets stronger as we move on
[2:56:59 PM] Steven: ok
[2:57:16 PM] Joe K Fobes: so SC mind, your job is to give Steven the best life possible, is that true?
[2:57:43 PM] Steven: yes
[2:59:05 PM] Joe K Fobes: and SC mind he had an event with this girl which you feel is important, yes?
[3:00:12 PM] Steven: yes but its a smaller twitch
[3:00:24 PM] Joe K Fobes: perfect
[3:00:50 PM] Joe K Fobes: and SC mind, you have the ability to create any though or emotion, or memory or imagination in his mind, isn’t that so?
[3:01:23 PM] Steven: overwhelming yes
[3:01:25 PM] Steven: omg
[3:01:37 PM] Joe K Fobes: yeps
[3:01:40 PM] Steven: i felt a pulse from my head move down to the yes finger
[3:02:44 PM] Joe K Fobes: and so SC mind, would it be ok for you to have him experience being a brilliant and experienced hypnosis expert (pick your favorite) and as he experiences that, have him get a really clear perspective on what happened?
[3:03:52 PM] Steven: hmmm..
[3:04:04 PM] Steven: it stays relatively still
[3:04:16 PM] Steven: but whenever I dont focus on my hand
[3:04:17 PM] Joe K Fobes: thats fine
[3:04:32 PM] Steven: it like my pinky is tugging slightly
[3:04:38 PM] Joe K Fobes: thats fine
[3:04:48 PM] Joe K Fobes: SC mind, youre here to help Steven, yes?
[3:05:01 PM] Steven: yes
[3:05:10 PM] Joe K Fobes: and you can create anything in his mind, yes?
[3:05:20 PM] Steven: yes
[3:05:48 PM] Joe K Fobes: does it make sense to you, that perhaps experiencing this from the perspective of an experienced hypnotist, that he will learn important new things?
[3:06:24 PM] Steven: yes
[3:06:38 PM] Steven: but my pinky felt weird
[3:07:00 PM] Joe K Fobes: and so since you can create anything in his mind, and youre here to help him, and it does make sense on some level, would it be ok for you to create that experience for him?
[3:07:19 PM] Steven: yes
[3:07:39 PM] Joe K Fobes: ok
[3:08:30 PM] Joe K Fobes: so SC mind, please go ahead and do that now. Close his eyes, and have him experience that, and when he has learned what he needs to learn, open his eyes and have him report back. You can take as long as full minute or even as short as 10 seconds to do that now.
[3:10:00 PM] Steven: wow
[3:10:12 PM] Steven: that was… rather enlightening
[3:10:16 PM] Joe K Fobes: indeed
[3:10:23 PM] Steven: I’m usually on the other end of the hypnosis
[3:10:26 PM] Joe K Fobes: tell me about the parts that youre aware of consciously right now?
[3:10:29 PM] Steven: so its weird experiencing it
[3:10:32 PM] Joe K Fobes: yeps
[3:10:32 PM] Steven: especially when I closed my eyes
[3:10:33 PM] Steven: and It felt like
[3:10:36 PM] Steven: I dno
[3:10:42 PM] Steven: I was looking at myself hypnotizing the girl
[3:10:46 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[3:10:49 PM] Steven: like it was like watchin it from up above
[3:10:51 PM] Steven: weird feeling
[3:10:53 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[3:11:05 PM] Joe K Fobes: and what did you notice consciously that you learned about that
[3:11:20 PM] Steven: I noticed that I shouldn’t have dealt with her family issues
[3:11:24 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[3:11:33 PM] Steven: she said that she was whispering because her father was yelling at her
[3:11:37 PM] Steven: and I only focused on her
[3:11:37 PM] Joe K Fobes: mhmm
[3:11:43 PM] Steven: the fact that it had to do with her father
[3:11:51 PM] Steven: went completely through me
[3:11:54 PM] Steven: during the hypnosis
[3:11:54 PM] Joe K Fobes: yeps
[3:12:01 PM] Joe K Fobes: quite a powerful insight
[3:12:05 PM] Joe K Fobes: what else did you learn
[3:12:07 PM] Steven: as part of metaphorically frame the issue
[3:12:17 PM] Steven: I made her visualize the trauma she was experiencing
[3:12:25 PM] Steven: in terms of images that couldnt touch her
[3:12:31 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[3:12:34 PM] Steven: kind of like ghosts
[3:12:51 PM] Steven: that was … sorry for my language, but fucking stupid
[3:13:00 PM] Joe K Fobes: lol
[3:13:11 PM] Steven: it was so obvious that she was dealing with her trauma in a suppressive way
[3:13:15 PM] Steven: it was obvious it happened the day before
[3:13:28 PM] Joe K Fobes: good
[3:13:32 PM] Joe K Fobes: so now do this
[3:13:35 PM] Steven: yet I still forced her to imagine it
[3:13:41 PM] Joe K Fobes: float right above that Steven
[3:13:46 PM] Joe K Fobes: doing those things
[3:13:55 PM] Joe K Fobes: and realize how being the person he is
[3:14:03 PM] Joe K Fobes: he isnt quite aware
[3:14:12 PM] Joe K Fobes: that he needs to be aware of this stuff
[3:14:21 PM] Joe K Fobes: are you noticing that?
[3:14:40 PM] Steven: I felt my vision blur for a moment just now
[3:14:43 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[3:14:44 PM] Steven: and my head is a bit heavy
[3:14:47 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[3:15:06 PM] Joe K Fobes: and as you notice that younger you, doing what he’s doing
[3:15:10 PM] Joe K Fobes: based on what he knows
[3:15:16 PM] Joe K Fobes: and who he is
[3:15:24 PM] Joe K Fobes: making decisions that to him seem to be wise
[3:15:34 PM] Joe K Fobes: you learn what you need to learn from that
[3:15:43 PM] Joe K Fobes: in a healthy and integrated fashion
[3:15:48 PM] Joe K Fobes: and as you learn that
[3:15:51 PM] Joe K Fobes: the emotion fades
[3:15:54 PM] Joe K Fobes: fades away
[3:16:03 PM] Joe K Fobes: as you have learned what you need to learn
[3:16:07 PM] Joe K Fobes: its a part of you now
[3:16:13 PM] Joe K Fobes: and your SC can now release that emotion
[3:16:21 PM] Joe K Fobes: and when its done doing that
[3:16:30 PM] Joe K Fobes: you can come fully back to the present fully awake
[3:16:47 PM] Joe K Fobes: feeling that relief wash through your mind and body now
[3:16:55 PM] Joe K Fobes: releasing that emotion
[3:17:05 PM] Joe K Fobes: and becoming fully free
[3:17:14 PM] Steven: phew im back
[3:17:23 PM] Steven: wow
[3:17:25 PM] Joe K Fobes: welcome back
[3:17:31 PM] Joe K Fobes: you feel good, dont you
[3:17:31 PM] Steven: my mind feels … like clear
[3:17:34 PM] Joe K Fobes: yes
[3:17:34 PM] Steven: yah
[3:17:36 PM] Steven: like awake
[3:17:42 PM] Steven: I dno, I remember what happened during the trance
[3:17:44 PM] Joe K Fobes: it was good that you experienced that
[3:17:48 PM] Steven: but like
[3:17:48 PM] Joe K Fobes: learned your lesson
[3:17:58 PM] Joe K Fobes: and are now free to move on
[3:17:59 PM] Steven: it felt like .. ages
[3:18:02 PM] Joe K Fobes: yeps
[3:18:07 PM] Joe K Fobes: time distortion is one of the things
[3:18:26 PM] Steven: wow
[3:18:28 PM] Steven: thanks a lot Joe

If you want to get a taste of how to easily do work like that, go sign up for the online supervision group now!

Posted on

Free Conference Call #2

I had some awesome feedback on the first call about the automatic reaction model. People have been telling me how it has made learning hypnosis much clearer, and has allowed them to put everything they have learned over the years into a nice and tidy box.

And so I think it’s time to confuse ya’ll once again.

I’ll be presenting my “Reality Is A Scam” model in a free webinar March 24th at 3PM EST.

It’s the second full functional hypnosis model (the automatic reaction model being the first).

The implications of this hypnosis model are massive.

It will lift the veil and give you a simple and clear view of what you’re actually doing when you hypnotize a subject.

It will utterly change the way you work and how you learn hypnosis.

I won’t be using skype this time, and so getting on the call ought to be a pain free experience.

Here’s the linky to sign up

Get involved people!

—-UPDATE—-

The recording of the webinar is now live and available free!

http://www.anymeeting.com/wikihyp/EE51D88282

Enjoy, Share, and Comment!

Joe

Posted on

Skype Conference Call

I recently put a few dots together and collected a whole lot of information ‘under one roof’. I’m going to be doing a free conference call on skype on Wed Jan 5th at 3:30PM EST and I’m going to be giving it all over…

You probably already know a lot of this information… and at the same time you might have not put it all together as a cohesive whole. That will be my goal.

Here are some of the issues I’m addressing.

What is hypnosis?

What is an induction?

How do instant inductions work?

We always hear the experts say “tell them whats going to happen when you say sleep… or else they don’t know what to do…” Isn’t that cheating/faking hypnosis?

Can you hypnotize someone who has never heard of hypnosis?

I always hear about ‘being confident’ and being ‘The Hypnotist’. What does that have to do with my subject going under?

I hear alot about compliance and getting the subject to listen to you. What does that have to do with hypnosis? Isn’t that just compliance?

Why is the pretalk so important? Why can’t we just zap them under?

I have heard ‘inductions aren’t magic spells’, if they aren’t that what are they?

I have heard that inductions are rituals… What does that mean?

You can add me on skype at joe.10000 and IM me if you want to join.

This is all free as I haven’t yet gotten savvy enough at the internet marketing thing to figure out how to sign you up for a never-ending email newsletter…

Looking forward to seeing ya’ll.

Posted on

Secrets of the Subconscious Part II

(You can find part I here)

Imagine a small child, around the age of 18 months or so, who is just beginning to learn about language and abstraction. Learning that there can be ‘the thing’ and ‘the thing but not the thing’. This understanding is key in learning language as words are an abstraction, an idea. They symbolize the thing but are not the thing themselves.

This is what differentiates humans from animals. This is why animals can’t learn language (outside of a few words that are pushed in via brute force Pavlovian conditioning). They can’t grasp ‘ideas’. That something can mean something but not be that thing itself. And so they are restricted to the world of concrete things and realities, they can’t go beyond that and think about pure ideas.

As this child ‘gets’ this concept and begins learning language a wonderful thing starts to happen. The child begins to engage in imaginary play.

How are those two things related?

It’s simple. Before one can distinguish between a reality and an idea, they can’t distinguish between fake and real. After all, ‘fake’ is real with the idea of fake wrapped around it. One who can’t understand abstract ideas can’t understand fake.

And so before a child knows about fake and real they can’t imagine, as if they did imagine they would be psychotic! They wouldn’t be able to realize that their imagination isn’t the reality, and they would respond to their imagined world as if it were real. That would be quite dangerous. If a child imagined that there was no fire and there was, and they didn’t realize that their imagination wasn’t the reality, they would stick their hand in that spot and get burned.

And so once we gain the ability to distinguish between real and fake, it becomes safe to imagine. Losing that ability to know whats real and whats fake would be the most dangerous thing that can happen to us.

We mentioned in Secrets of the Subconscious Part I that when we find our beliefs challenged we get very emotional. When our beliefs are challenged, we are in essence being told ‘your reality is not reality, something else is reality’. That to our subconscious, the message that you should start believing a fantasy as reality, is a very dangerous message.

This brings us to why techniques like EFT work so well. When someone does EFT, instead of fighting their emotions and reality as they usually do, instead they accept it and allow it to be. The moment you do that, your SC feels very safe and no longer needs to fight you.

The lesson is a simple one. Just like when you argue with others they get very defensive and try to defend themselves at any cost, when you argue with yourself and your own SC mind, it fights back to protect it’s reality and won’t give an inch. The secret is kindness, understanding, and diplomacy… with your own mind.

In the next segment of Secrets of the Subconscious, I will give you a super powerful tool that holds the key to controlling how you feel in any situation. This is what I teach and give to almost to all my clients right after the very first session. Using that magic technique, you can respect the message that your SC sends you and you can then persuade it to act differently. Once you do that, you become unstoppable!