Why See a Hypnotist?

Kimberley Stapleton .. Master Hypnotherapist & Transformational Therapy Trainer

Why does change, at times, seem so difficult? Why can’t we just make up our minds to change patterns of behaviours, thoughts, and emotions and have it happen that quickly? The ‘Holy Grail’ of change work, whether it be self-help, or through utilizing a coach or therapist, is the instant ‘quick fix’ change can rectify years of habitual behaviour patterns in a few short moments. Oh, and while we’re at it let’s make those moments comfortable and relaxing.

Let us look for a moment at a possible reason why change doesn’t always occur that easily (in fact rarely) and why hypnosis might be a possible candidate for that Grail.

Your entire magnificent body/mind system sails through life performing an astronomical number of simultaneous tasks. Barring emergencies, your heart never stops beating, your lungs never stop operating, you metabolize the food you eat, and maintain a body temperature of 98.6 regardless of your environment. And, that is just a tip of the physiological iceberg of ongoing vital functions. Yet you only become aware of these processes if there is a problem. Otherwise they thankfully require no attention. These processes are part of your vast ‘unconscious’.

Included in this ever ongoing party of physiological processes beneath your awareness, or consciousness, are all of your brain’s functions, including language, proprioception (sense of your body and it’s position), emotional responses, etc., etc. There is, of course, no clear dividing line between physical and mental processes, and we are blissfully unaware of the overwhelmingly vast majority of them.

Now, specifically regarding behaviours. Most of our behaviours seem to be picked up unconsciously from our environment. Perhaps we are born with the tendency toward some behaviours, the jury is still out on that regard, but whether nature or nurture, the acquisition of behaviour is predominantly unconscious. How many times, as we mature, do we marvel at how much our behaviours (particularly speech patterns) resemble our parent’s patterns, often in spite of our best efforts. These are behaviours we unconsciously picked up from our environment as we developed.

What then, is our conscious mind, and what is it’s scope? What’s left?

Research has repeatedly shown that we can generally only be aware of, or conscious of, seven plus or minus two pieces of information at any one time. As glorious as our conscious mind is, it is so severely limited in the volume of information it can handle, that, in most cases, it is unable to have much of an effect on our overall behaviour. Our conscious mind can manage momentary adjustments of behaviour at best. In fact, I suggest that the main purpose of the conscious mind is to handle the necessary small bits of information we receive just until we can process them into our much more able ‘unconscious mind’.

In fact, think about how we learn new things. Take riding a bike, for example. At first, when we climb on that wobbly two wheeled device, we have more things to attend to than we could possibly consciously handle—balance, speed, avoiding oncoming obstacles, and so on. We end up falling down a lot. However, we keep at it, and one day, success! We can climb on the bike and ride, virtually without a conscious thought about balance, speed, avoiding obstacles, and all of those other innumerable matters connected with bike riding. We say we’ve learned to ride a bike. What we mean is, riding a bike is now an unconscious behaviour, and our conscious mind is free to think of other things while we ride.

Once we learn something, once it becomes accepted as an unconscious behaviour, it usually stays with us for life. That’s a wonderful thing for habits like bike riding and learning to read. It sometimes becomes a bit of a problem when we have learned behaviours like smoking or phobic responses. It seems as though, once a behaviour is learned, we unconsciously assign a value to it (we did, after all, work hard to learn to smoke for whatever reason we had at the time). To later try to change that learned habit challenges those initial reasons and values, and seems to violate the integrity of the unconscious. Trying to consciously change a habit, like smoking, is like trying to swim upstream against an overwhelming current. With smoking, in my experience, the habit is much more difficult to break than the chemical addiction.

Hypnosis to the rescue.

There is one method of interpersonal communication that does allow access to the normally unavailable unconscious processes, and that method is hypnosis. Hypnosis simply creates a doorway to the unconscious part of our mind. A qualified hypnotist can establish communication with the part of your unconscious mind that maintains the habitual behaviour you want to change. Sometimes through simple suggestion (new information) and sometimes through a more complex conversation with that unconscious part of your mind/body that controls the problematic habit, a hypnotist can literally change the course of that mighty unconscious river. Once that occurs, change results as easily as floating downstream on a sun-drenched inner tube.

Hypnosis is that “Holy Grail” of personal change.

Please contact my staff or myself if you have any questions or to make an initial CONSULTATION. 

Face To Face in person sessions are by appointment only.

Appointments are available 6 days a week and also in the evenings at our discreet premises in Mellieha, Sliema & Naxxar in Malta.

Or online by skype or Zoom

Please note for sessions in Naxxar clients have access to the pool and a towel after and before their sessions.
For a list of problems I may be able to help you with please click here

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A Brief History of Hypnosis

Where does hypnosis come from? Discover the roots of hypnosis with this brief history of this fascinating subject.

Evidence of hypnotic-like phenomena appears in many ancient cultures. The writer of Genesis seems familiar with the anaesthetic power of hypnosis when he reports that God put Adam "into a deep sleep" to take his rib to form Eve. Other ancient records suggest hypnosis was used by the oracle at Delphi and in rites in ancient Egypt (Hughes and Rothovius, 1996). The modern history of hypnosis begins in the late 1700s, when a French physician, Anton Mesmer, revived an interest in hypnosis.

1734-1815 Franz Anton Mesmer was born in Vienna. Mesmer is considered the father of hypnosis. He is remembered for the term mesmerism which described a process of inducing trance through a series of passes he made with his hands and/or magnets over people. He worked with a person’s animal magnetism (psychic and electromagnetic energies). The medical community eventually discredited him despite his considerable success treating a variety of ailments. His successes offended the medical establishment of the time, who arranged for an official French government investigating committee. This committee included Benjamin Franklin, then the American ambassador to France, and Joseph Guillotine, a French physician who introduced a never-fail device for physically separating the mind from the rest of the body.

1795-1860 James Braid, an English physician, originally opposed to mesmerism (as it had become known) who subsequently became interested. He said that cures were not due to animal magnetism however, they were due to suggestion. He developed the eye fixation technique (also known as Braidism) of inducing relaxation and called it hypnosis (after Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep) as he thought the phenomena was a form of sleep. Later, realising his error, he tried to change the name to monoeidism (meaning influence of a single idea)however, the original name stuck. 1825-1893 Jean Marie Charcot a French neurologist,disagreed with the Nancy School of Hypnotism and contended that hypnosis was simply a manifestation of hysteria. There was bitter rivalry between Charcot and the Nancy group (Liebault and Bernheim). He revived Mesmer’s theory of Animal Magnetism and identified the three stages of trance; lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism.

1845-1947 Pierre Janet was a French neurologist and psychologist who was initially opposed to the use of hypnosis until he discovered its relaxing effects and promotion of healing. Janet was one of the few people who continued to show an interest in hypnosis during the psychoanalytical rage.

1849-1936 Ivan Petrovich Pavlov - Russian psychologist who actually was more focused on the study of the digestive process. He is known primarily for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex (or Stimulus Response Theory). In his classic experiment, he trained hungry dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell, which was previously associated with the sight of food. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1904 for his work on digestive secretions. Though he had nothing to do with hypnosis, his Stimulus Response Theory is a cornerstone in linking and anchoring behaviours, particularly in NLP.

1857-1926 Emile Coue, a physician who formulated the Laws of Suggestion. He is also known for encouraging his patients to say to themselves 20-30 times a night before going to sleep; "Everyday in every way, I am getting better and better." He also discovered that delivering positive suggestions when prescribing medication proved to be a more effective cure than prescribing medications alone. He eventually abandoned the concept of hypnosis in favour of just using suggestion, feeling hypnosis and the hypnotic state impaired the efficiency of the suggestion.

Coue’s Laws of Suggestion

The Law of Concentrated Attention

" Whenever attention is concentrated on an idea over and over again, it spontaneously tends to realise itself"

The Law of Reverse Action

"The harder one tries to do something, the less chance one has of success"

The Law of Dominant Effect

"A stronger emotion tends to replace a weaker one"

1856-1939 Sigmund Freud travelled to Nancy and studied with Liebault and Bernheim, and then did additional study with Charcot. Freud did not incorporate hypnosis in his therapeutic work however because he felt he could not hypnotise patients to a sufficient depth, felt that the cures were temporary, and that hynosis stripped patients of their defences. Freud was considered a poor hypnotist given his paternal manner. However, his clients often went into trance and he often, unknowingly, performed non-verbal inductions when he would place his hand on his patient’s head to signify the Doctor dominant, patient submissive roles. Because of his early dismissal of hypnosis in favour of psychoanalysis, hypnosis was almost totally ignored.

1875-1961 Carl Jung, a student and colleague of Freud’s, rejected Freud’s psychoanalytical approach and developed his own interests. He developed the concept of the collective unconscious and archetypes. Though he did not actively use hypnosis, he encouraged his patients to use active imagination to change old memories. He often used the concept of the inner guide, in the healing work. He believed that the inner mind could be accessed through tools like the I Ching and astrology. He was rejected by the conservative medical community as a mystic. However, many of his ideas and theories are actively embraced by healers to this day.

1932-1974 Milton Erickson, a psychologist and psychiatrist pioneered the art of indirect suggestion in hypnosis. He is considered to be the father of modern hypnosis. His methods bypassed the conscious mind through the use of both verbal and nonverbal pacing techniques including metaphor, confusion, and many others. He was a colourful character and has immensely influenced the practice of contemporary hypnotherapy, and its official acceptance by the AMA. His work, combined with the work of Satir and Perls, was the basis for Bandler and Grinder’s Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).