But Can You Be Hypnotized?

Have you ever thought, “Hypnosis sounds great, but I’m not sure I can be hypnotized. I have to be in control, and I have trouble relaxing.” Or maybe, “I’m very stubborn.” or “I don’t have a very good attention span.”

If you have, you aren’t alone, and you may be surprised to learn that hypnosis is actually a natural shift in conscious awareness that we typically experience several times a day.

Think about a time when you were working on a task, playing a game, or reading, and were so absorbed in what you were doing that everything else drifted into the background. Someone might have walked into the room and said something, and you sensed their presence but didn’t catch what they said.

Another familiar example is the phenomenon of “highway hypnosis.” The experience of driving along a familiar route, missing your exit because you were absorbed in thought, or realizing that there is a landmark or whole town you don’t remember passing.

You were using your subconscious mind in a state of “auto-pilot” to do the familiar task of driving the car while your conscious mind got bored with the familiarity and wandered off. If something on the road needed your attention, your awareness would have returned immediately, without effort.

Whenever something like this happened to you, you were experiencing a different level of conscious awareness. Moments like that mirror the same kind of focused, inward attention we create during hypnosis.

When you experience hypnosis in a session with a professional hypnotist, they use specific language patterns and suggestions to create the same type of shift in your conscious awareness. In this state, you are more receptive to new ideas and suggestions, and changes in thought patterns and behaviors can be made easily without practice or reinforcement.

What makes someone able to be hypnotized?

All that is required to be hypnotized is a willingness to participate in the process. That's it. Nothing fancy, and no special requirements. The process works with your cooperation, and you stay in control of what you choose to allow.

Each person will experience hypnosis differently, because each mind works in its own natural rhythm. The beauty of it is, there is no wrong way to experience hypnosis. Some people drift into a deeper, heavier feeling. Others stay aware and comfortable. 

A skilled hypnotist is working with you, tailoring their approach so that you reach the level of inward focus and state of consciousness that allows change to happen more easily.

Why Does Hypnosis Work?

To understand how hypnosis works, it helps to look at how our subconscious mind organizes information and habits.

Your mind has layers of awareness. Your subconscious mind holds your habits, memories, emotional patterns, and responses. It speaks in imagination and emotion, and it uses information it has gathered over time to prompt your actions and feelings now.

The subconscious mind has the job of protecting us and keeping us alive. We learn from the moment we're born how to interact with the world around us, and all of those lessons and strategies stay with us until we replace them with something better.

There is a filter that sits above the subconscious mind and only allows in certain kinds of information. Your subconscious mind can't hold on to two opposing beliefs at the same time, so your filter, the Conscious Critical Faculty, only lets in information that you already agree with. This is why we think change is hard, because while we are consciously aware of how things should be different, we have trouble implementing them as new behaviors because of the filter.

Where our subconscious responds through imagery and feeling, the conscious mind uses logic, reason, and rational thinking. They work together, but they have very different roles.

When using hypnosis we use a specific set of language patterns, tonality, and suggestions designed to tap into your subconscious through your imagination. Hypnotic language allows that Critical Faculty filter to begin to lift just enough, giving us access to your subconscious mind. In this state of heightened focus we can begin to introduce suggestions for changes that you'd like to see in your life, in a state where you are more open to accepting those suggestions. Because of this, those changes begin to implement naturally and automatically.

You also have certain safeguards in place. Even in hypnosis, you cannot be made to do anything that you are not willing to do. Hypnosis can help you to eliminate the subconscious barriers that may have been holding you back, and help you to build and tap into your resource states more efficiently and effectively.

Creating Lasting Change with Hypnosis

Think of hypnosis as a way of updating old patterns, the way we update a device so it runs more smoothly. Changes can feel big and profound, or they can grow subtly in the background. Either way, they feel natural, as if these new responses have simply become the way it's always been.

All of this means that the question isn’t whether you can be hypnotized. It’s how you want to use the abilities your mind already practices every day.