Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors

A friend tipped me off that the first section in this book is gold, and I’m inclined to agree. I’m not a clinician, and I’ll never have the psych degree and experience to be a therapist, but the principles in the first chapter here would be useful to any hypnotist, therapist or not. I’m going in (mostly) blind, but Binaural Histolog has their own short summary as well. It’s worth including their disclaimer on it before diving in…

There’s a set of principles from the Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestion and Metaphors. I don’t recommend the book as it is quite dated, but the principles have served as a kind of folk wisdom for hypnotists over the years and you may hear references to various laws over the years.

- Binaural Histolog - The Newbie Guide to Hypnosis Suggestions - Guidelines

Formulating Hypnotic and Posthypnotic Suggestions

(Wow all right, the writer is a bit overconfident calling these maxims “laws” but I’ll roll with it.)

Principles of Hypnotic Suggestions

Establish Rapport and a Cooperative Relationship

Rapport has been done to death in other guides. Collaborate with your partner.

Create Positive Expectancy

Inspire confidence. even when using permissive suggestions. For example, express something will happen, even if you’re not sure when, rather than suggesting perhaps something will happen.

The Law of Reversed Effect

When creating physiological phenomena, avoid telling them to TRY HARDER. Garden the environment to let the suggestion take place automatically. If you’re exerting a hell of a lot of effort trying to sleep, you’re not going to have much luck.

Law of Concentrated Attention (Repetition)

Shotgun your approach. Either repeat the suggestion in different ways, or start with a metaphor, then start giving direct suggestions.

The Principle of Successive Approximations

Iteratively build phenomena.

The Law of Dominant Effect

Leverage emotion. Get them in the mood for whatever phenomena you’re trying to create, it’ll help with attribution.

The Carrot Principle

Your partner is there for something they want. Highlight these reasons when giving suggestions, appealing to their desires and identity. (I’d be careful with this one in recreation.) See also, the consistency principle in negotiation.

The Principle of Positive Suggestion

I have a pet peeve towards people that say you should never use negative suggestions, since it conjures malarkey about how the “subconscious can’t process negatives.” 🤮

Put differently, and mostly aligned with the book, I think a better way to think of this is to prefer actionable suggestions. For example:

You won’t daydream of suave, attractive werewolves anymore.
You’ll find that, as time goes on, the parts of you that were attracted to werewolves simply fall apart. Perhaps they begin to remind you of what a womanizer Sean Connery was in old James Bond flicks, or that their charismatic expression is fictional and fur deep. Hell, what’s a werewolf look like when you shave them? Pathetic and irritated. And what’s attractive about that? It’s easy to find reasons to be less attracted to these creatures, and you’ll find yourself finding them automatically.

The Principle of Positive Reinforcement

There’s a reason why “that’s right” is a meme in the hypnosis community. Just don’t be too ham-fisted with your compliments. The book suggests complimenting the subconscious and it’s abilities, which doesn’t vibe with me, but it may work with your style.

Creating an Acceptance or Yes-Set

Thanks NLP for rebranding acquiescence bias. /s

We’ve done this one to death. Rotate through truisms, then slip in your suggestion payload.

Interactive Trance and Confirming the Acceptability of Suggestions

Hey guys - pro tip. Hypnosis is (at least) a two player game. In ‘trance,’ you can ask your partner for a verbal response, or use suggested nonverbal cues. You can also use a contingent motor response to check for or imply acceptance. EG: “And as you think about *cough* what a terrible idea it *gag* was to crack open a can of Surströmming in the living room, you’ll find that as that hand finally rises, your unconscious mind has agreed to never do that again. *sniffle*”

There’s a ramble here about obtaining commitments from the person and the subconscious, but eh, if you’re here, you probably know how I feel about that.

The Principle of Trance Ratification

Sell the power of trance to make the suggestions more believable. Any sufficiently impressive hypnotic phenomena will do as an example. Really it’s a form of “your mind just did some cool shit you didn’t know you were capable of… and even if you’re not consciously aware of it… you’ll find your mind capable of many more experiences that once felt out of reach…”

Timing of Suggestions and Depth of Trance

The book says give your suggestions last, when your partner is the most zonked. I’m going to tell you to give ‘difficult’ or ‘daring’ suggestions when your partner is sold on the process and impressed with the effectiveness of hypnosis, and will actually believe something crazy will work.

The Principle of Interspersing and Embedding Suggestions

You can change the meaning of a sentence by adding pauses. It’s just crafty wordplay. You can pause to emphasize something, or change the meaning mid-sentence. While I don’t think it has much utility, it does add sex appeal when giving a recreational session.

Boring example: And you can find yourself relaxing deeper and deeper as your hands get heavier.

Hot, oversold example: And you can drift… as you listen… to your own thoughts… and my words… that continue to comfortably and easily let yourself… GO DEEPER… into your mind… your body… just sinking… into the chair… as you continue to… LET GO… further… than you thought you could… as you find yourself… GOING EVEN DEEPER… than you did before… you started out as a subject… that can go so deep… (etc etc)

Erickson’s Principles of Individualization and Utilization

I’m going to bullet point this - I’m lazy:

Make sure your partner can follow your suggestions. Ya know, talk to them. They highlight making sure they have the ability to imagine visual / auditory / kinesthetic / olfactory qualities, I prefer to just ask them to imagine suggestions however they like.
There’s a huge (and, for the time, reasonably well researched) rant here about how indirect suggestions aren’t inherently better. IMO, just don’t shoot yourself in the foot with a suggestion that can fail. Work with your partner. Permissive suggestions are just harder to fuck up.
Use exact components of your partners language and descriptions to ensure you don’t unintentionally misinterpret or reframe something they said. I don’t buy the bit about “conforming to the patient’s pattern of thinking… (P26)” It’s a bit too simple to assume you’re thinking in their terms by matching their language.
Utilize everything. For example bind suggestions to their body language. If they have a tendency to let their mind wander, suggest that’s not a problem, and they can go ‘deeper’ or whatever even as they daydream.

The Law of Parsimony

Keep it simple, stupid. (Or, as simple as possible to achieve your shared goals.)

Types of Hypnotic Suggestions

Ah, I dig how they start this section off, setting the tone that this is more of a style concern.

As I have indicated, there is no outcome research to suggest the superiority of any of these styles of suggestions. It is recommended, however, that you familiarize yourself with all of these types of suggestions to broaden your available repertoire for intervention.

- D. Corydon Hammond - Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors - P27

Implication

☀️ Always Sunny - The Implication ☀️

Instead of asking someone to imagine the color of an apple, ask them about it’s color. Implication gets stuff done for free while reducing the risk of failure.

Some other notes that I’ve written about elsewhere, but may be useful if you’ve stumbled on this page:

Try may imply failure may occur. If is also in this bin. Use a double bind as a countermeasure. (Which hand is getting lighter?) James Tripp milks this one for all it’s worth.
You can imply there are different depths of hypnosis by asking them how deep they’d like to go. (Might be handy for those who are hung up on how deep they are.)
Suggesting something will happen slowly at first implies that it’ll speed up later.

Truism

Huh - this cheat sheet of truisms is pretty sweet. (They say these are undeniable truths that everyone has experienced.)

Groups: Most/some people, everyone, some of us, it’s common to You: You know, you’ve always known
Temporal: Sooner or later, over time, eventually

Not Knowing and Not Doing

Nice for avoiding the law of reversed effect, as well as guiding.

Optionality: You don’t need to, it isn’t necessary/important/required
Awareness: Without knowing it, you don’t need to be aware of / be concerned with
Automaticity: Just allow it to happen, Without really trying, it will just happen

Covering All Possibilities of Response

This has some Graham Old vibes, but instead of the subject not needing to know something, you don’t need to know something. You can suggest a hand can move left right, up, down, relax, stiffen, flip you off, but none of that matters because as it does [suggestion] will happen.

Questions

A reasonably open-ended idea that you can suggest something in the form of a question, such as a double bind.

As an appetizer, they provide the following format:

Structure: Can you, do you, would you like to, does, will, are you aware of… Payload: Sensation, awareness, consider, allow

Contingent Suggestions

Some people call this ‘ratifying’ a suggestion. When [easy thing] happens, you’ll find [other thing] is true. There’s some phrasing ideas in the book, but I think an example will do fine in this case.

And as we’ve continued, you may have noticed that your eyelids have become heavy, and you might be tempted to close them. But, I don’t want you to do that quite yet. They’re likely becoming heavier and heavier, and you’ll find that as soon as they close, you can drop into a deep comfortable state of relaxation, and you can feel them beginning to close all on their own, now.

The Implied Directive

They break this down pretty neatly. Implied directives…

Have a temporal (time or event) binding component.
A story or explanation for some sort internal change that will occur.
A response (behavioral/motor/whatever) that ‘signals’ when the change occurs or completes.

EG: As soon as [condition], your mind has found the resources to [do thingy], and when that is complete, [easy, practiced response.]

Apposition of Opposites

Create oppositional responses. EG - as that arm stiffens, you’ll find the rest of your body relaxes more and more. Likely provides utility in self-comparison for the subject to find evidence of something becoming effective in more than one way.

Negatives to Discharge Resistance

It feels a bit silly to call this a tool for discharging resistance. The book has examples, but I’d like to think of it as a subtle reframing tool to imply something. Let’s talk about discharge.

Without discharge: After this session, you’ll find yourself able to quit smoking.
With discharge: You really won’t find yourself quitting smoking until Tuesday, will you?

The Bind of Comparable Alternatives

Double binds.

Conscious-Unconscious Double Bind

“If your unconscious mind is ready to give up Balatro, your right hand will lift up. If your unconscious mind is unwilling, the left hand will rise. (Unsurprisingly, their left hand has arisen.) Good. And your unconscious mind can continue to work on that until our next session. [Hypnotist waxes on about how the unconscious mind can work on problems outside of awareness.]”

Confusional Suggestions

Again with Erickson and Rossi, these are useful for “depotentiating conscious mental sets.” Or they could just speak plainly and say “we’re going to confuse the client so they’re forced to consider new options or try something different.”

Shock and Surprise

Some highlights:

“‘And what that hand is going to do next will surprise you,’ while then waiting expectantly.” - D. Corydon Hammond - Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors - P35
You sure you’re awake? (Proceeds to gaslight them into trance.)
Surprising suggestions that seem combative. Such as how hosed they’d be if they just kept going the direction they’re currently going with their Balatro habit.

Double Dissociation Double Bind

A suggestion that’s as confusing for the hypnotist as it is for the subject. It takes the format of…

You can ____ but (despite of / you don’t need to / outside of your awareness) ____ , or, you can [do the opposite], but (any other previous phrase) _____.

This is probably more sauce than substance. But, here’s an example from the book.

You may choose not to remember, or you may choose just to forget, but choosing to forget is your choice in the same way as choosing not to remember that which you’ve chosen to forget.

- D. Corydon Hammond - Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors - P36

I mean, this is the section on confusion, and it delivers.

Phrasing for a Double Dissociative Conscious-Unconscious Double Bind

Seriously this is the Mad Libs Olympics for hypnotists.
This type of confusional suggestion may take the following format:

"Your conscious mind ____, while (or, an, since, as, because, at
the same time) your unconscious mind ____, or perhaps your
unconscious mind ____, while your conscious mind____." Explained
another way, the format may take either of two forms: (1) Conscious
____, unconscious ____, while (or, since) conscious ____,
unconscious ____. (2) Unconscious ____, conscious ____, while
unconscious ____, conscious ____.

\- D. Corydon Hammond - Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors - P36

(The book confesses this is confusing to master. Thank you.)

Interspersal of Suggestions and Metaphors

Metaphors seed ideas, and should be agreeable in nature. Don’t be condescending. If you’re a bullshit artist, don’t out yourself. Specifically, they highlight that metaphors don’t have to be long to make an important point.

Symbolic and Metaphoric Imagery

An indirect way to get things done. Instead of saying “feel less pain,” you could try having them create imagery of the pain, and what it would look like if it lessened. If they present symbolism or metaphor for how they feel, you can use that metaphor in imagery to try to shift their experience.

The Phrasing of Suggestions

Erickson would allegedly (and heavily paraphrased) say “wing it” when giving suggestions, and to trust your unconscious mind. Of course he could do that, he’s a fucking LeBron James of hypnosis.

I really dig this quote:

However, the concept of “trusting the unconscious” should not be used to justify sloppy clinical work and lack of thoughtful preparation or treatment planning.

- D. Corydon Hammond - Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors - P39

Rhythm and Pauses

You don’t have to be an S tier hip hop artist, but it helps to slow down and give time for suggestions to take place. If you sound like you’re giving a lecture, you’re doing it wrong. (Unless they have a kink for librarians.) They suggest you can speed up to try to speed up your suggestions with a resistant partner, but really, I think coaching engagement is a better option than trying to outspeak them.

Examples of Introductory Hypnotic Phrasing

They give us a grab-bag of hypno-ey sounding soundbites and tropes to get us going.

I’ll probably be back here later to summarize the sections on Types of Hypnotic Suggestions, The Phrasing of Suggestions, and The Process of Suggestions in Facilitating Phenomena. I don’t agree with everything, but their format is neat and concise, and the bullshit ratio is pleasantly very low.