3 Dirty Little Hypnosis Secrets

Hypnotists like to make it seem as if hypnosis is completely safe, and that scientists have already figured it all out. But there are a couple of facts that they don’t want you to know. In this article I want to expose some of those secrets, that all the neat and proper hypnotists desperately tried to keep a lid on.

Dirty Little Hypnosis Secret #1: Hypnosis Is Safe

This one is my favorite lie about hypnosis. Hypnotists always like to say that hypnosis is safe. Nothing can happen, don’t believe the movies, don’t believe the media. Right? Well, unfortunately it is very possible to completely mess people up under hypnosis. It already happened thousands of times. Specially when it comes to psychoanalysis and hypnosis. For some reason, psychoanalysts always like to dig for bad stuff that happened in the past. Specially in the 70s and 80s, there were thousands of cases of women who have hypnotize into believing that they had been sexually abused when they were children. Because it’s very possible to create false memories under hypnosis. And the popular theory in the field of psychoanalysis at that time was about how traumatized people, like rape victims or victims of sexual abuse, could with the heavy emotions. Often times, they just consciously forget them. But does that mean that just because somebody does not remember being sexually abused, then they probably have been sexually abused because they repressed the memory? No, it doesn’t. However, what these hypnotists it back then — and the frightening thing is that many still do it now — was to ask suggestive questions, and implanted seeds of false memories in those women’s brains. Now when you create memories under hypnosis, it can be almost impossible to distinguish those made-up memories from real memories. Can you imagine the pain and agony that causes the woman and her loved ones if she is absolutely convinced that she has been sexually abused by another member of the family when she was a child, even though that is not true? It’s terrible. These women got traumatized for no reason at all. So, giving hypnosis is safe? I think it’s about as safe as driving a car. If you’re driving carefully, and you’re driving in a safe car, and you are a good driver, chances are that you will never get hurt. But if you drink and drive, speed, don’t put on your safety belt and drive like a madman you’re taking chances. And if you put yourself in the hands of the wrong hypnotist, you are taking chances.

Dirty Little Hypnosis Secret Lie #2: Hypnosis Only Works on Weak Minded People

Many people think that only people who have a weak mind are hypnotizable. Strong-willed people can’t be hypnotized, right?

Well, sorry to disappoint you here. It doesn’t matter how weak or strong your mind is. It doesn’t matter, how high or how little your IQ is. It doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman. It doesn’t matter what age you are. Everybody is hypnotizable. The reason why so many people believe that some people can’t be hypnotized is because there was a famous scientist at Stanford University. This guy had huge budget and did lots of experiments with hypnosis. One of his most famous experiments was about hypnotizability. He measured hypnotizability indifferent people. And he found that some people will more hypnotizable than others, and some people weren’t hypnotizable at all. The problem with this experiment was, that he used only one kind of hypnotic induction. It was one pre-recorded hypnotic induction that was spoken into a tape recorder. He just made people sit down in a room and played them that take. They did some tests with them to find out how deep they went into hypnosis. Now, every skilled experienced hypnotist can tell you that if you use one pre-recorded hypnotic induction on several people, only some of them will go into hypnotic trance. Minds are different. And people have different strategies how to enter a trance. And people have different trance tragus. That is why the most effective kind of hypnosis is still when there is a truly skilled hypnotist who is hypnotizing one of hypnotic subject in a live setting. Because the hypnotic subject is getting all kinds of signals that the hypnotists can integrate in his trance induction. Depending upon the person of this type of the hypnotic subject, the hypnotists has to adjust his trance induction to custom tailor it to the hypnotic subject. But the famous Stanford scientist did not do that in his experiment. Experience has shown that everybody is hypnotizable, it’s just that there are some people that meet different ways of going into a hypnotic trance.

Dirty Little Hypnosis Secret Lie #3: Only Hypnotists Can Hypnotize

Many people believe that you have to be a hypnotist to hypnotize others. That is the true. Everybody can hypnotize others. In fact, there are many people that hypnotize others, that are not hypnotists. And even more, those people can hypnotize other people without their knowledge. Yes, you read that right: they can secretly hypnotize others. To an outside observer, it might look as if they are just talking, having a conversation. But what is really happening is that that person is leading the hypnotic subject to a deep hypnotic trials and implanting suggestions in their subconscious mind. This is called conversational hypnosis, and it’s a skill that salesman, negotiations, politicians and many other people use for their own advantage and benefit. If you have ever been sold something that you didn’t really need, and maybe you’d paid even more than you needed to pay, chances are that conversational hypnosis might have been at work.

That is one of the reasons why it’s so important to familiarize yourself with conversational hypnosis. Because once you know how it’s done you can not only use it on other people, but you can also detect when other people are trying to use it when you and you can protect yourself from their attempts to manipulate you. This is highly important. There are so many people that don’t know about this, and once they run into a skilled conversational hypnotists they are like a puppet on a string in the hands of the puppet master.