EMPOWER PSYCHOLOGY

DEEP RELAXATION & FOCUSED AWARENESS

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The hypnosis-induced trance state is a state of deep relaxation that in its lightest form most closely resembles a state of guided daydreaming. Hypnotherapists use hypnosis to guide the mind into a deeper state of trance. When entering the deep trance state, we focus all our attention on our thoughts while disassociating from our body and the present environment. In a way, we become the audience of the movie in our minds. In this deep trance, we can sometimes experience physical sensations like a tingling or a heaviness in our limbs, or emotional sensations like feelings of peace and calm. Therefore, with a change of the state of mind, a state of fear or anxiety can also be changed into a state of relaxation and tranquillity. This process on its own can already have an exceptionally positive impact on our well-being.

While trance comes with an almost sleep-like relaxation of the body, the mind always remains in a state of high reflective awareness and agentive control. While the body is sleeping, the mind is wide awake. In this state, our mind makes use of a protective mechanism called the Critical Faculty. This mechanism is the internal filter we use to interpret how the world works based on all our rightly or wrongly held beliefs that we have learned since we were born. We use these beliefs to judge what is safe and what is dangerous, what is true and what is false, or simply to know that a stone is hard. The Critical Faculty is however not flawless. While most beliefs are useful and support us, some of the beliefs we develop early on in our lives can work against us without being questioned by the Critical Faculty. So can comments from adults during childhood for example teach us that we are unattractive or unintelligent. When such deeply ingrained beliefs persist into adulthood, they are very hard to remove from the unconscious mind and we will find it difficult to accept ourselves even if contrary evidence is presented to us. For this reason, it is so difficult to take advice from others even when we know it to be true.

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CRITICAL FACULTY

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The Critical Faculty is the middle stage of our consciousness. It is like a firewall between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. It stops new beliefs from automatically being accepted by the subconscious and gives the conscious mind a chance to evaluate and possibly reject the new belief, if it does not align with the beliefs we already hold. The beauty of hypnosis is that it allows direct communication with the subconscious by temporarily by-passing this firewall. Hypnotherapists can use this to the client's advantage by introducing new, more helpful, more powerful beliefs to the subconscious or by replacing any existing negative beliefs with more positive ones. While traditional talk therapy is limited by the critical faculty (it takes a long process of rationalization with the conscious mind to solve problems), hypnotherapy goes beyond this limitation and changes or replaces beliefs directly in the subconscious. The subconscious will however only accept new beliefs if they are beneficial to or required by us. Our firewall is always up and running, even during hypnosis, and it will immediately reject any suggestion of a new belief that is harmful or not in line with our moral code or values. In such instances, the Critical Faculty would instantly terminate the hypnotic state.

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THE SAFE PLACE​

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Before we learn to access our past traumatic events with the help and support of a hypnotherapist, we need to create a mental safe place first. A safe place is a place that we create in our own imagination, and that gives us a deep feeling of safety, peacefulness and tranquillity in an environment that is generated exactly to our own liking and preferences. We learn how to do self-hypnosis and access our safe place whenever we need to or simply feel like recharging our physical and mental batteries. It is also the place were we find tranquillity and inner peace, just before we get awakened from our hypnotic trance state. Later in the therapeutic process, our mind is guided back in time into early memories that are related to the challenges we experience in the present time in our lives. In these so-called regressions, we can still respond and describe what we see and experience in our memories. While our body remains in a state of deep relaxation, our mind will experience these memories and the matching past emotions, as if they were happening in the very moment. Although part of the process is re-living very emotional experiences, we can always retreat into our safe place, when an experience is overwhelmingly emotional. Subsequently the safe place is also used to practice inner child work and initiate a course of emotional healing. Empowered to re-experience and resolve past events, old beliefs that we have learned in the past can be replaced with new, more beneficial beliefs. When the unconscious mind is fully activated and willing, it can receive those beneficial and healthy suggestions from the therapist. The old unhelpful filters are removed, and life is improved, without the lingering negativity of our past traumatising events.

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CONCLUSION

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Therefore, hypnosis is a powerful tool for personal development, for changing negative beliefs and behaviours, in other words: for helping us to think and act in ways that are more in line with our goals and dreams. Hypnosis cannot be used to force us into doing something that is against our will. We must be willing to accept the suggestions offered by the therapist during hypnosis, and the suggestions must be in line with our moral code and personal values.