220.10 - A Rant On Working With Low Responders

Okay, now I’m gonna talk some shit.

When someone runs into someone having trouble ‘entering trance,’ the first thing you hear from most hypnotists is to go get a confusion induction. Nobody knows what the fuck they’re talking about (including me,) so they’ll reach for Seven Plus or Minus Two from Terrence Watts - which is nothing special. They walk in proudly and read the script to their subject like it’s a spell book. Both the wizard and damsel are distressed from the lack of response.

Where Did The Hypnotist Fuck Up?

Here’s what they did right:

• They tried switching methods when something didn’t work.

And here’s the shit they fucked up:

• They asked about their subject’s end state, but did not ask about their experience.
• They did not ask the subject if they knew what they were supposed to be doing during the session.
• The subject may have become uncomfortable being overloaded or having their attention bounced around. (Which is also a problem with inductions that involve confusion.)
• The hypnotist did not (or didn’t know they should) coach the subject on how to respond.
• They did not even find out if the subject understood the instructions they were supposed to follow.
• They did not check if the subject found the suggestions ineffective.
• They did not check for any phenomena that did happen.
• They did not check and see if the subject is usually stuck in their head anyway - a trance response may feel entirely unremarkable.
• They did not see if the subject is a regular meditator - perhaps when they were asked to notice something, they were looking at their experience objectively instead of trying to help ‘introduce errors into the system.’
• They did not ask the subject if they had negative self talk. Did they think they were just roleplaying? Were they busy telling themselves this won’t work? Were they anxious? Did they get some phenomena and convince themselves it wasn’t real?
• The hypnotist did not even realize that the subject’s roommate was blasting Justin Bieber, the cat vomited on the floor 2 minutes into the session, the neighbor’s child started having a nightmare (also about Justin Bieber) and began (understandably) screaming in terror, or that the subject was uncomfortable and over-caffinated.

Fuck. Anyway. I want to drill in something real hard. Switching inductions is a good idea so long as your problem is specifically with entering ‘trance,’ AND it is in addition to fully understanding the problems your subject has with responding.