In this week’s blog I’m going to cover the joys of getting lost in your own imagination or the imagination of others.
Oscars
I have to confess that I stay wait up until the 1:30am start of the Oscars last night; waiting until this morning to check the list of winners and losers, adding films to my ‘must watch’ list. I am a great lover of films – especially ones that I can immerse myself in. Indeed, thinking about this – my definition of a bad film is one that either failed to grab my imagination or betrayed my trust.
Suspended Reality
The last film I watched was the 1942 classic ‘Holiday Inn’ – a black and white Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire movie and frankly something very different to my usual taste in films. The film is set in the 1940’s dance hall culture in America and has a very contrived utopian reality. Not only to you have to tune into the dated timeframe of over 70 years ago but believe that people actually lived in the way portrayed by the film. Noting that the film was released about a year after Pearl Harbour and America was at war; the story about love triangles between a talented singer, a talented dancer and a number of leading ladies set in a snow covered, idyllic farm is pure escapism and fantasy. I loved it.
Betrayal of Trust
Films and TV today regularly require us to believe in aliens, zombies or regress to times past. I have to say that this ability is something that we as a society have become very accomplished at. As children we are quickly introduced to the concept of talking animals, cars, trains and some very strange creatures that become our childhood friends.
However this can go awry. For me it was the film ‘Independence Day’ that did it most notably. It had been super hyped before its release and long awaited. It was about aliens and spaceships, which is a favourite type of alternate reality for me. I immersed myself and prepared to enjoy.
There were some early warning signs, but I think it was when Will Smith’s pilot character disabled the large Earth conquering super powered alien by punching it on the chin that I literally lost the plot.
What was the problem?
You have to understand that I had been looking forward to this film for months, the critical reviews I had seen were good and enthused about the scale and the special effects. I arrived at the cinema ready to sink into my cinema seat and lose myself in the experience, become emotionally involved. I engaged, I trusted in the film to reward my willingness to immerse myself in its reality and some way into the film it betrayed that trust by pushing its reality beyond the point I was prepared to follow. It crossed my cheesiness threshold.
Um. What’s this got to do with hypnotherapy?
As a hypnotherapist I use hypnosis to increase suggestibility and the willingness and ability of the client to accept what we call direct suggestion. In some circles this is described as somehow bypassing the ‘critical faculty’ of the mind and giving instructions to the mind to implement whatever changes the client desires.
Regular followers of my blog will know that my approach to hypnosis is all about focussing the imagination to the point where the client becomes so engaged and absorbed that they are no longer aware that they are doing it. They are so caught up in the process, in the same way as you get caught up in a movie. I'm suspect you know where I'm going with this now..!
Using Stories
The use of stories to teach is as old as language. We have religious texts such as The Bible, Aesop’s Fables and many more which teach us wisdom and morals. The Good Samaritan, the Golden Goose.
So it is an obvious step to combine the increased suggestibility of hypnosis within its domain of the imagination and metaphorical stories.
A Safe Place
Here is a practical example of this idea, one I was discussing with a fellow professional, a psychotherapist, just the other day.
When I am working with a client, especially one who is experiencing some strong emotion, perhaps fear or anxiety, I will have them create an imagined safe place in their mind. A place they can retreat to during the subsequent therapy if they start to become overwhelmed by the emotion, or just simply as a place they can rest and relax whilst receiving instruction.
I have them create it for themselves, suggesting it could be a real place or totally imagined, in the open air or in a building, that it must feel safe and comfortable, that only they can enter there, that my voice will follow them there. I spend some time having them create the detail of this place and really getting into the experience of being there and feeling calm, safe and in control.
Artfully Vague
The real skill in doing this, much like the skill of the film maker, is to create only so much of the reality and allow the clients imagination to fill in the gaps. As a therapist or story teller the more you can provide merely the framework, the concepts and have your client or listener build this into something more tangible – the more engaged they will be.
So for example, I often ask a client to imagine walking somewhere ‘along a safe path, it could be a beach or in woods, on a field or in a town or city or somewhere else that is right for them, the important thing is that you can just walk and feel relaxed and start to notice the things around you on this path that help you to feel calm and relaxed and safe'.
Notice how vague this is – I don’t say ‘you are walking on the beach, you feel the warm sand in between you toes’. I don’t spoon-feed the experience to them.
In addition to requiring the client to get really engaged in the experience, the second reason is to avoid the alien punching effect I mentioned in my soapbox tirade above. If I get too specific in my description of what I want to then to create in their imagination then there is the risk that something I say will not fit. Even in the simple ‘walking on the beach’ example – perhaps the beach they imagine is rocky not sandy, perhaps they imagined wearing flip-flogs and thus can’t possible feel the sand. I have violated their imagined reality and this will jar. If I were to get this really or consistently wrong I anticipate that they will come out of hypnosis and fix me with a look of betrayal.
So as a story telling therapist I have to walk a fine line between giving sufficient direction so that they client knows what to do yet still allowing them the freedom to create their experience in the just right way for them.