If you take a quick look around the internet hypnosis can apparently cure everything from Manic Depression to Cancer. And do that on CD - MP3 download or Telephone.
Hypnosis can make you thin, make you happy, make you sleep, make you stay awake, make you confident and even make you rich. Some people even claim it can increase the size of your breasts and even your penis, that is of course if you have those attachments in the first place.
Well actually to be perfectly honest, Hypnosis can't do any of the above.
Hypnosis is in fact very limited in what it can do as is any psychologically based intervention.
Your body can fight disease and repair trauma and your brain can learn new and more productive behaviours. Thoughts can not make your body do what it isn’t programmed to do or is capable of, and your brain can not change it’s base influential process which we call your personality.
For instance you can not by thought alone, and by extension by hypnosis, regrow a limb, change the shape of your nose, change your eye colour, only digest the good stuff, fly without the aid of mechanics or survive being immersed in water for twenty minutes without breathing apparatus. Your body has limits and, your imagination, your personality can not force it to go beyond those.
I know, if you’re a pro in the people problem sorting game you will see all this as entirely negative and will ban any prospective clients from coming within a million miles of this blog but, it’s just as important to know what hypnosis can’t do as it is to know what it does. Then you can find ways around to create viable alternatives.
Hypnosis changes behaviour. That’s what it does. Nearly all behaviour, habitual thinking is just behaviour, is learned from someone else. I say nearly because lifting your backside to pass wind, scratching an itch, laughing with relief when someone else falls over and picking your nose are all instinctive behaviours. There are probably 7,987,876 other ones and most are just too gross to talk about - including sex.
Hypnosis however can not change personality and the propensity to do certain stuff no matter how much it is claimed to able to.
You are born with a personality. It isn’t something that develops. It is a basis of predisposition and innate talent.
An addictive personality for instance becomes an addicted person. And by addiction I’m not talking just about the physical state with some drugs - although a non addictive personality usually doesn’t get hooked. That is a learned behaviour. I am talking about an underlying compulsion rather than a learned habit. Hypnosis is very good at changing learned habits using as it does the same mental process as learning. But no matter what you may have read it isn’t good at all in stopping people returning to whatever it is their personality, think mental DNA or blueprint, is inclined to do.
Physical stuff works more or less the same. Physical stuff works best when our body’s chemicals are balanced and in the right proportions. Our brain controls a lot of this except when it comes down to what comes in to our body from outside, although on the whole it does a good job of regulating that by . Note I say brain which in my book is as mechanical as the heart, liver or pancreas. Our mind is something else. Think of it as a computer and user relationship.
The thing is whilst the brain can be overridden by the mind it can not go further than it is designed to go and it can not do more than it is possible for it to do. Hypnosis can’t make it either.
So what can hypnosis do? It allows us to learn new behaviours in response to certain stimuli. If, and only if, that doesn’t conflict with our base personality, then these will become habit and we will respond in a different manner. Using hypnosis makes this happen really fast. I mean at the speed of thought fast and even light doesn’t stand a chance there.
By changing our behaviour we change the environment our brain and body works in and we can give both the best shot they have at becoming healthy, and that is what makes most people happy. Although there are some personalities that prefer to be unhappy.
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