7 types of Hypnosis

Eyeopening insights for an improved life and better world

Hypnosis is everywhere.

It can be intentional, unintentional, self-serving, pernicious, absurd, inspiring, commodifying, essential and tragic. The trouble is we have such terrible trouble defining it, and recognizing it - maybe because it’s so close up and a part of our lives.

Let’s start by exploring its meaning.

So what exactly is hypnosis?

For the uninitiated it has echoes of stage comedy, clucking chickens and tranced-out people stuck to chairs. Fascinating, humorous and confounding as this is to watch, the reality is actually way more interesting.

Before my sessions I explain to my clients what hypnosis and hypnotherapy is and what it involves. I explain it, firstly, thus: it is focused attention. Focused attention to the exclusion of everything else.

Now, this doesn’t have to be ‘trance’ per se. Though it can be; that might be one way of describing a part of it. But what exactly is trance? Well, again, it’s a state of mind or being where we get caught in a particular mode of emotion, thought or behaviour - to the exclusion of anything else. It’s like we don’t actually see or consider any other options at that point.

I don’t’ mind admitting I find this fascinating. That’s why I guess I’m a hypnotherapist – or more precisely, a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist. Maybe I’m tranced out over it!

It’s how I see the way society and individuals unconsciously organise themselves and ultimately operate. It’s how things unfold for us.

So let’s explore and break down the various ways in which hypnosis plays out.

There’s some crossover here, but I’ll do my best to separate the categories.

1.    Screens and the young

Have you ever tried to get a teen to engage in a conversation whilst holding a phone/device in their hands? Of course you have. And it’s not worked, right?

You’re met with silence.

Picture a whole battery of children frozen in time around the globe, transfixed by their devices, not paying any attention to anything around them. I’m not judging, I’m just observing. It could be that they’re online, learning about quantum physics, researching for a cure for cancer or how to speak Spanish.

Or they could be playing Fortnite. Or looking at porn. Again, I’m not judging here. After all, it is what it is, right?

The interesting thing is, they’re not HERE. They’re there.

And that has quite a profound significance, because being ‘there’ indicates our minds are receptive to all kinds of things, all kinds of experiences and they can be captured by those who have the desire and motivation to do so. But, of course, we do have a choice here. We have agency, but only if we have the awareness and will to pull ourselves away.

We’ll get to this point later.

So we are time travellers, in the space suits of our bodies; our minds and our thoughts can transport us to multi-universes of places and experiences that are unbound. We can live vicariously, lapping up everything without ever moving.

It’s amazing and...mind bending in its possibilities. (cf the metaverse!)

There are benefits and there are costs to all of these aspects and it’s how we weigh these up that we can arrive at a practical analysis of an issue. How beneficial a thing is or how detrimental.

Screens, technology, the internet and social media have been incredibly enabling. But we need to be aware of the downstream effects of these tools and how they are used.

Just like the child transfixed to the screen, we need to snap out of whatever we are doing to see those outcomes and what they mean.

2. Anxieties and fears

Where do these come from? Are they ‘real’ or made up? A person petrified of spiders could be totally fearless when it comes to rock climbing or motor racing.

Keanu Reeves, for instance, has a fear of the dark, yet he’s been in a multitude of films involved in many dangerous stunts and faced very real life challenges, like his girlfriend’s car crash after the death of his still-born baby.

Some people have a fear of dogs, and can’t even look at a photograph of a dog. Yet it’s only a screen, an image, not a dog they’re in the presence of. Incredibly, we manage to transfer something like the fear of dogs to the representation of the thing we’re fearful of.

That takes some imagination!

And that’s the point.

Our anxieties and fears are highly subjective, imaginative and mostly irrational. Yet all of us have experienced them at some point in our lives, perhaps in different ways.

We tell ourselves stories, repeat our self-talk, over-use our imaginations until we’ve convinced ourselves and our emotions into fear of x or y.  This is why anxiety and fear is often a form of hypnosis. Self hypnosis.

We are caught in focusing on the problem, maybe the past, the imaginary ‘what ifs’ of the future. Some of this is a negative bias to keep us safe and on guard and alive, but much of it is misplaced worry, triggered by other stimuli or is just an unhelpful habit like so many others.

60% of people are reported as suffering anxiety in the UK, that’s 8 million in one given time (Champion Health and Mental Health UK). We have an anxiety pandemic on our hands here and it’s getting worse with the pressures of 21st century living.

Yes, we have a burgeoning mental health industry and mindfulness and various approaches (such as mine!) have crept into the corporate arena where industry leaders, bosses and HR have recognized the need for this kind of responsibility.

But until we perhaps change our thinking, and up our knowledge and understanding, life in the west will get progressively divisive and eat itself up.

So, in many ways, it’s my mission to get people to understand that we need to de-hypnotise before we move forward with useful hypnosis. That way we can disentangle ourselves from our own personal neuroses and anxiety – and get ourselves in a place of calm to enable good decision-making. 

3. Flow states

Being in flow is generally considered a positive and useful state to be in. We experience this most notably when we’re playing a sport, for instance, like tennis, or playing a musical instrument or speaking a language.

Being in flow is being focused on what you’re doing…yet, paradoxically, you’re not. It’s a form of trance…where what you’re doing is so automatic that you’re not overly trying. Everything seems to come easily. You’ve learned the techniques, skills and details of the discipline, and that’s usually taken some time, but now you’re expressing yourself through that medium without conscious thought. You feel at one with the act.

We also experience flow when driving and talking. Also when creating – like painting or writing.

Incidentally, Einstein was a regular self-hypnotist and reportedly came up with the theory of relativity during a self hypnosis session. His phrase, ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’  (Albert Einstein 1879-1955) is testament to this. And Mozart is said to have composed the opera, ‘Cosi fan Tutte’ while hypnotised or in flow.

There are plenty of other examples of flowstates, like walking, where we are unconscious of what we’re doing. This simple act uses around 200 muscles on one step forward, but we do it without conscious thought. Life is a miracle in that way.

Flow usually comes from practice and is a mother of habit. The benefit of flow allows us to do two things at once (talk while driving) and saves us time and energy to create and progress. The cost can be…that we can flow into certain beliefs, ideas and poor choices (smoking can be a flow state!) and if we’re too trusting of the flow, it could cost us dear.

4. Mass Formation Psychosis

Here’s where things get really interesting! This is a form of mass hypnosis (some may say mass hysteria, or tribalism) where crowds or groups of people get pulled together by a similar emotion, belief or action. A certain awareness is abandoned and, due to a overwhelming primal urge to belong or be accepted, people are ‘hypnotised’ into that group. Often all rational thought is discarded.

Tangible and somewhat visceral examples of this at work are Nazi Germany and Diana, Princess of Wales’s death. (You don’t often see those two events in one sentence!).

If anyone has seen a Hitler rally or was around during the time of Diana’s death, you will see two extreme forms of emotion at work. Hitler, and I’m not proud of this fact, was a particularly powerful hypnotist.

Other examples of Mass Formation Psychosis, or mass hypnosis, are football crowds, religious gatherings and music festivals and gigs.

As human beings we can get stirred into political groups, spiritual ideologies and movements quite surprisingly easily. We do it with race, nationality, sexuality and the ‘antis-‘ of these that these categories spawn. Feelings can run strong!

We find ourselves carried away and seduced by charismatic figures; political figures, pop, movie and social media stars. People, fans (short, notably, for fanatics) do the most extraordinary things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Cheering, shouting, screaming, swearing, fighting. Even killing. And we can often enjoy these acts. For some reason we love not thinking or not being awake like this.

5. Love? Or Infatuation?

As the wonderful song goes, ‘Love…love will tear us apart. Again’. (tribute to Joy Division and Curtis).

But should it? Is that truly love…and what it does?

Shouldn’t love be bonding, selfless and giving. Shouldn’t it be healing, not tearing people apart.

I’m not going to dig into a deep philosophical discussion about ‘what love is’ here. Suffice to say, there are many perceptions and explorations about love and relationships. Countless songs, poems, novels and films.

The problem is, that we conflate love with other feelings. Like sex. Like desire - for chocolate?! Like affection. Like…liking something. Anything.

I may be being pedantic here. But love has been used liberally and generically to cover a multitude of feelings - and this can be a problem because we end up with an unreal expectation of a relationship. We can marry on the basis of something fleeting. And many a wonderful marriage has been ruined on many a confusion!

Speaking of which, let’s look at infatuation or obsession…that feeling that comes under the description of, ’falling in love’. We’ve all experienced it. 

Is this the ‘life force’, nature’s way of encouraging us to propogate? Is it ego driven? Or is it something we do to ourselves? Perhaps it’s a mix of all these.

My point is that it appears there appears to be an element of hypnosis involved. In those moments, we become ‘enraptured’ and enter a state of total focus – on that person. And nothing else matters. We see nothing but perfection in that person. They become the object of everything that matters to us. And when the relationship falls apart, we can fall apart.

Again, this process can be a fantastic, transcendent experience. It has its benefits but it also has its costs. Surrender is beautiful, like sunlight. We just need to be aware of the flip side, or the shadow it can cast.

We need to be…yes, aware.

6. Habits – Smoking, overeating, alcoholism and drugs

Anything repeated soon becomes a habit. We know this from first hand experience. This is fabulous news because it means we can practise something, like a language or an instrument or a sport, and we can get better. And better. And if we start really young and we persist, we can get even better still. Even become a professional at it.

The trouble is, you guessed it, this comes with a flip side too.

We can become really good at stressing, doing anxiety, smoking, eating too much, alcoholism, drugs or porn. These can also become habits.

Life doesn’t call these good or bad habits. It doesn’t judge…it just gives us the tools. We just need to make sure the repeated action becomes a useful habit.

We can be ‘addicted’, and I know many people who are, to exercise. That’s pretty useful. (Unless you happen to have an injury or a problem with your heart, of course!)

But smoking, which I work a lot with. That’s not useful, like all the other so called, bad habits listed above.

Often bad habits start as avoidance tactics, or in some cases they provide a quick shot of dopamine, known as the pleasure neurotransmitter. We get addicted to this, especially when it’s combined with cortisol.

Biology and chemistry aside, the problem here is one of self-hypnosis. We convince ourselves that certain things that are not useful for us are good for us in some way.

At one level we know they’re not useful. But on another we hypnotise ourselves into thinking they will make us feel better, relax us, make us more confident.

Smoking, where nicotine is a powerful stimulant, is an example of this. Physiologically it makes us more stressed, the heart rate and adrenaline levels go up. Yet we smoke, why? To make us more calm, more relaxed - and at first it does, because we THINK it does. A classic case of hypnosis and belief in action if ever we saw one!

So despite all the evidence to the contrary, we go ahead and do the things we do, useful or not useful. We shut down our critical thinking and switch to auto-pilot.

Just like we do with so many other aspects in life.

These damaging habits can all be overcome if we firstly recognise this form of hypnosis, then de-hypnotise…and finally learn to use the process for more useful habits.

7. Information and The News

I tend to counsel highly anxious clients to watch themselves more than the News.

We live in an uncertain world, a world of tragedy and misfortune in any place at any time. And the news is as competitive and as commercial as any other industry. This, combined with a hardwired curiosity for the tragic that we seem to have, forms an often unhelpful and unhealthy dynamic. We find ourselves drawn and ‘hypnotised’ into these stories.

Before we know it we are feeding our pre-existing fears. Because there is very little good news broadcast (bad news is more compelling than good), we start to catastrophise the world. Everything becomes a problem. We get worse. It can make us depressed.

Of course, where there is a commercial element there can be distortion. And in a fast time-poor world of 280 characters, thinking can become punchy and extreme, with no room for nuance. Which has given birth to the ‘fake news’ phrase. And just as there is distortion and ‘fake news’ there is conspiracy theory - the extreme form of overtheorising and castrophising ‘fake news’.

Confused? Why wouldn’t you be. But this is what we’re up against.

Story after story. Polarisation after polarisation - over politics, identity, the ‘truth’ which, it seems, is always up for grabs.

This, again, is hypnosis at work. An overfocusing on a viewpoint, information, an idea. To the exclusion of other viewpoints or options.

As we were kindly advised once, ‘Stay Safe’.

Indeed.

But I would add, ‘stay awake’ too.

Useful Hypnotism and Hypnotherapy.

Ultimately, then, we hypnotise ourselves.

We can’t control everything outside ourselves. But we have agency and sovereignty over how we filter.

There are many other instances of hypnosis at work on different levels, as I’ve struggled to define it here.

Arguments, wars, terrorism.

But ultimately, from a mental health perspective, everything starts with awareness, a certain degree of detachment, mindfulness. It would also help humanity.

A deep breath in, standing back from the din and the forces that draw us to them, whatever they are, from wherever they come, however they take shape.

It sounds very eastern and it is. But don’t get me wrong. We need abandonment, surrender, involvement, joy, passion and enthusiasm. In fact it’s what makes life what it is and worth living.

We just need to learn how and when to direct it for the good of ourselves and others. How to use hypnosis and our thinking usefully, with cost/benefits attached.

I can help using Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy, to improve your mental health and your life.

Contact me on 07778 613268 or help@docwellness.co.uk