Scrypnosis:
Post-Hypnotic Suggestions...
...an overview
Post-Hypnotic Suggestions (P-HS) are one of the more misunderstood
tools of hypnosis, and so it deserves a whole section on its own.
PH-S are suggestions that are to transact after the patient has awakened
from the session. These can often be used in triggering special ideosyncratic
behaviors that the patient did not have before the session. Unfortunately,
a lot of stage hypnotists use these to create ridicule and harmful behaviors
in their stage participants, and some don't even have the courtesy to trigger
a release mechanism, such as a time limit.
For example, I witnessed a hypnotist that came
to a local junior college. One of the college Student Body officers
was given the suggestion that "Anytime you hear my voice say (the name
of the college), you will instantly shout out 'Go Hawks!' " Conceivably,
if this student does go to another display by this hypnotist at this school
in a year or two, the suggestion will still be there.
Scrypnosis is built around the basis of trust and foreknowledge of
the session, so P-HS are not going to be a problem as patients will edit
them out of any scripts that they don't want to use them. However,
there are some really useful reasons to use P-HS since we're incorporating
so much trust, and these suggestions need to be inserted just before the
"waking up" part of the script.
First off, if you want to trigger your own
behavior against something, you might add a suggestion to turn off specific
feelings while inventing other feeling. For example, let's say that
you're striving to quit smoking, but you feel like a cigarette. You
word the script:
-
From now on, anytime you feel like a cigarette,
you can touch your lips with a finger, and you will instantly feel the
relief that you'd felt from having just taken the cigarette break, but
without ever smoking.
Or
-
From now on, anytime you smoke a cigarette, it
will taste worse than the cigarette before it, until they get so gross
that you never smoke again.
Secondly, if you want to turn on a short term sensation, or specific
time sensation, you need to word it according to your wants:
-
For the next hour...
-
Until you go to sleep tonight...
-
On July 25th, 2007, at 4:00pm, you will...
-
Everytime you are in a dental office for a filling...
...or whatever you want to insert. The impact of the words will
be acted upon beginning at that point, and unless you instill constraints
of a time period, the suggestion will continue to be in the person's mind
from that point onward, so you might want to have defined limits and end
of sessions:
-
...and all these suggestions will stop being effective as of _(midnight,
tomorrow, or a specific date and/or time)___"
-
...and every suggestion I have made today will remain effective until
you decide to say "Stop it all" and mean it in relation to the suggestions
I've made."
Now, since you're using scripted hypnosis and
your patient is going to see the script in advance, so there is no way
to trick the patient into something he or she wouldn't like. You
want to make sure the person will not place themselves in jeopardy by acting
on these suggestions, so you should include something like "when you are
not driving or doing anything that needs your concentration" just to be
safe. Perhaps you'll invite the patient to consider some of these
options, especially if the person is your lover or spouse:
-
Anytime I pull my left earlobe today, when you
are not driving or doing anything that needs your concentration, you feel
a rush of lust and want to kiss me.
-
Anytime I pull my nose today, you sneeze.
I think you've probably noticed the boringly repeating
pattern here, but the fact is, once you understand the game, you can more
easily adapt and include more pieces to your puzzle. It's more like
one of those puzzles where all the pieces are the same shape, so there's
no limit to just how big the puzzle can be, and there are no borders to
stop the puzzle.
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