What can hypnosis be used for?

From About Hypnosis:

The problems which affect human beings are "unconscious" ones, almost by definition.

After all, nobody consciously chooses to behave in ways that cause them problems!

 One of the great presuppositions of modern hypnotherapy is that all behavior is trying to achieve a purpose, even if the effects of that behavior are counter-productive.

In other words, the unconscious mind has convinced itself that the problem behavior is "good" for us in some way, and persists despite all the evidence to the contrary.

It is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to control unconscious behavior through conscious effort alone.

The human mind has often been compared to an iceberg, with the conscious mind being the 10% that you can see above the surface. That leaves 90% below the surface - and that's the bit which sank the Titanic. To put it another way, the unconscious mind outnumbers the conscious mind by 9 to 1. In your conscious, lucid moments you may well recognize that your habits, responses or feelings are causing you difficulty, but that lone rational voice will be drowned out by nine unconscious voices saying the exact opposite.

The solution, therefore, is to get the unconscious and conscious minds saying the same thing.

Hypnosis is all about direct communication with the unconscious mind, and is the most powerful tool we have for bringing about change at the unconscious level. It can be used in any situation where you need to let go of old patterns of behavior, and learn new ones.

All of the problems that people commonly seek hypnotic help for can be seen in this light.

Changing unwanted habits such as smoking or nail biting obviously involves changing a pattern of behavior, but so does something like gaining more confidence or dealing with stress - the unconscious needs to learn "confidence" patterns and unlearn "stress" patterns for specific situations.

So how does hypnosis actually teach the unconscious mind these new patterns of behavior?

 Broadly speaking the hypnotist or hypnotherapist is aiming to do at least one of two things. First of all, they aim to help the client perceive things in a different and more helpful way - a reframe in therapy jargon.

Phobias are a good example. When somebody has a phobia, their unconscious mind has labeled an object or situation as literally life-threatening. Hypnosis can be used to reframe that object or situation in a more realistic way, as something that is inherently safe, or at least non-threatening.

Even physical conditions such as chronic pain can be reframed. An experiment conducted by the University of Bangor achieved remarkable results with rheumatoid arthritis sufferers. Using self-hypnosis, the participants visualized their pain as a person, bringing them news that something was wrong. They were able to thank that person for the information, before sending them politely but firmly on their way. This technique brought about significant reduction in pain. In effect, their pain had been reframed, from "permanent condition" to "message delivered - so no longer needed".

Reframing takes place every time the unconscious receives and accepts new information through hypnosis. Learning better ways to deal with stress, breaking a dependence on cigarettes or alcohol, developing the ability to speak to the opposite sex without blushing, even learning to relax more deeply - these are all reframes, in that they literally create a different world for the client, one in which the old ways of going about things no longer apply.

The second hypnotic strategy is mental rehearsal of preferred behavior or a preferred future.

In therapy-speak, this is known as future pacing.

Through the use of guided imagery, the hypnotist is able to re-create the preferred behavior in rich and vivid detail, so that the client experiences it in their imagination as if it were actually happening. Somebody who is severely stressed at work, for example, may be future-paced through a typical day feeling calm and in control.
 
The rationale behind future-pacing is that the unconscious mind does not discriminate between "real" and "imagined" events - it produces exactly the same physical and emotional responses to each. If you vividly imagine your favorite meal, for instance, you'll probably start to salivate. In just the same way, building up a detailed mental picture of yourself acting or feeling better in a certain situation gives the unconscious mind a better template to refer to the next time it encounters that situation.

This process also harnesses expectation, a powerful force shaping human behavior. We're constantly trying to fulfill our expectations, good or bad. If you expect something to be stressful, it usually will be. If you expect the same thing to be easily manageable, it will usually be that, too. This is another form of reframe, of course. Setting up positive expectations about a situation or event creates a preferred-behavior shaped "hole", which the unconscious mind seeks to fill with a preferred-behavior shaped "peg", made up of the appropriate emotions, responses and behaviors.

It could be argued that all problems are unconscious problems, even those that arise from external events that seem to be beyond our control.

It is our reaction to these events, rather than the events themselves that is crucial.

Through hypnosis, we can learn better ways for our unconscious minds to react to the uncertainties and challenges that are a normal part of living.

Hypnosis works by communicating with the unconscious mind.

Conscious and unconscious are really just shorthand terms to describe the general characteristics of the human mind.

The "conscious mind" is the bit where we tend to "live" - the bit you might think of as "you". If there's a little voice reading these words out loud in your head, that's the conscious mind talking. The unconscious mind is everything else!

The unconscious controls all of the autonomic processes that you don't have to think about - the heart rate, the blood pressure, tissue growth, cell regeneration, the immune system and so on. It's where our thoughts, memories and accumulated experience reside. It controls our emotions, our habits and our responses to the world.

In many ways, it creates that world for us. The unconscious mind handles about two million bits of sensory information every single second. The conscious mind deals with about seven. That means that the reality you're actually aware of from moment to moment has been brought to your conscious attention by the unconscious, in a sort of Readers' Digest version, choosing seven bits which it thinks are important from the two million it's just processed.

The conscious mind is more logical, critical and analytical - it's constantly making value judgments. If somebody was to say to you "you really should give up smoking, you know, it's terribly bad for you", you're highly unlikely to become a non-smoker on the spot. You're more likely to come up with a dozen, rational sounding reasons as to why you should carry on smoking, or you might tell them to shove off and mind their own business. Even if you do consciously accept that you should give up smoking, it's not the conscious part of the mind that's keeping the habit in place.

The unconscious part of the mind, on the other hand, is much more accepting. It's also quite literal and tends to take things personally, relating any information it receives to you as an individual.

Hypnosis works by bypassing the critical conscious mind (usually through relaxation or linguistic techniques), and speaking directly to the unconscious in a language which it understands - pattern, association and metaphor.

As mentioned earlier, the unconscious mind is basically in charge.

The vast majority of things that we do are unconscious, which we can be grateful for - if you had to consciously think about every single thing you did, you wouldn't do anything. However, it can lead us astray.

Most problems are things that we've learned how to do at an unconscious level - we've just learned how to them in an unhelpful way.

Problems are often an attempt at a solution.

This is true even for such apparently self-destructive habits as smoking. Many smokers start in their teens, when smoking is seen as a quick way to fit in, acquire adult status or generally appear cool. Through sheer repetition, the unconscious mind becomes convinced that smoking is serving a vital purpose - that it's "good " for you in some way.

Hypnosis works by updating the unconscious mind with new and more helpful information, like reprogramming a computer.

It can be used to change associations, so that cigarettes, for instance, are no longer seen as "little friends", and are more realistically regarded as "toxic killers". It can also be used to mentally rehearse better ways of going about things, such as being able to deal with stressful situations without having to light up.

Since the unconscious mind controls our autonomic bodily processes, physical change can also be achieved through hypnosis.

Pain control is a very good example. The mind alters our awareness of pain all the time - professional chefs, for instance, get burnt on a regular basis, but rarely notice it unless it's particularly severe. You'll have experienced this yourself if you've ever discovered a cut or a bruise and wondered how it got there. Physical events are still occurring, but the unconscious has relegated them to the 1,999,993 bits of sensory information you're not aware of every single second. Hypnosis can therefore be used to amplify that same response and apply it to a specific situation, such as the control of headaches.

Hypnosis works, then, by shaping our perception of reality by dealing directly with the unconscious mind, the seat of most of our problems, and most of our solutions too.