220.01 - Maximizing Response and Depth

Now that you have a few tools under your belt - I’d like to leave you something to keep in the back of your head as you’re doing hypnosis. These are from Irving Kirsch - a PhD and one of the guys behind the ideas of response expectancy. Regardless of whether or not you subscribe to this theory, this is solid advice for clinicians that applies just as well to working respectfully with your recreational partners.

Hit Me With Those Tips

Be permissive.
Present and respect choices.
Present choices as therapeutic double binds, so that either choice promotes improvement.
Prevent failure by beginning with easy tasks that the client is almost certain to accomplish.
Proceed gradually to more difficult tasks.
Define tasks so that failure is impossible.
Evaluate performances at any level as indications of success.
Structure expectations so that even small improvements are seen as significant beginnings.
Be alert to random fluctuations and capitalize on those that occur in the desired direction.
Prepare clients for setbacks by labeling them in advance as inevitable, temporary, and useful learning opportunities.

-Irving Kirsch, Clinical Hypnosis as a Nondeceptive Placebo, a journal in Clinical Hypnosis and Self-Regulation https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7992808/

But I Like Trance!

That’s cool! You can still do this. However, use these tools to build a designer trance for your subject. Talk with them and check in with their expectations around trance. A few thoughts…

Their thoughts will not completely stop, but slowing down is common.
Feelings of dissociation are fun to suggest, and increase expectancy.
Leaning SFW? Cool - suggest how relaxed and comfortable they are. NSFW and subby? Tell them how good it feels to submit. Either way - this is a common space to use a links and chains pattern.
Read some deepeners - steal what you like!
Remind them that it’s OK to have thoughts in trance. Reframe them in a way that’s useful to both of you - either as an indication that everything is continuing on as it should, or noticing some qualities in their thoughts that indicate their depth is increasing.

Notes on Depth

Depth is rarely, if ever correlated with responsiveness.
Depth and absorption change over time. Explicitly mention and allow for this.
Depth can increase expectancy - but if you’ve gotten this far, the problem isn’t your deepener.

As you have probably already discovered through your own hypnotic experiences, your experience varies from moment to moment. Sometimes you are more engaged in whatever is being suggested to you, other times you are less so. Sometimes you are deeply absorbed in processing some image, idea, or memory; other times you are distracted by some irrelevancy or intrusion. This is natural and to be expected. Saying to someone, “Go deeper, deeper, deeper” is unlikely to lead them to do so. Realistically, people’s minds wander to one degree or another, so the inevitable fluctuations in people’s attentiveness are to be expected and allowed without attaching a negative judgment to them (“Why are you resistant?”). As the session progresses and the client becomes more focused and engaged in the experience, the intensity of the hypnotic experience naturally builds.

Yapko, Michael D; Yapko, Michael D.. Trancework: An Introduction to the Practice of Clinical Hypnosis (p. 105). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.