Redirecting Resistance and Refocusing Attention Will Boost Your Influence in Hypnosis
By Covert Hypnotist | December 31, 2009
Photo by pasukaru76
Conversational Hypnosis is an art largely made up of the language you use. As a hypnotist you must learn to bypass the critical factor using a set of Stealth Tactics in order to enter people’s minds. Stealth Tactics are very helpful in the field of conversational hypnosis in this manner. Once you learn how to use them you will be able to deal with your subjects in a way that you have never experienced before.
Stealth Tactics are simply a way to do one of two things; get into the mind unnoticed by your listener or complicate them to the point of allowed entry. You really want to learn how to mask what you are doing in order to enter the mind and leave your suggestions. This takes a fine skill as it means you must bypass the critical factor and defeat resistance.
While it is important to know how to sneak in bypassing all resistance. Now you need to learn how to go beyond that. You must learn how to use resistance in a way that is helpful to you as the hypnotist. Believe it or not, resistance can actually help you to get where you need to be inside the mind to carry out your purpose.
The Law of Reversed Effect is very useful tool however it can also create problems in your hypnotic relationship. It can really bring out the worst relationship in a hypnotist and subject when used too often or in the wrong way. The problem with this tool is it puts your listener in a combative frame of mind. It becomes a question of you versus them and can be damaging to the self esteem.
Let’s face it no one likes to be controlled by someone else, it makes them feel weak and can ultimately give a person a poor psychological frame to continue to grow from. As people we feel we need to have control of our lives, if we don’t we start to overcompensate with feelings of low self esteem and destructive behaviors in our relationships and with ourselves.
The bottom line is the more a person feels out of control the more they will fight to take that control back. When they put this instinct into motion the Law of Reversed Effect happens and they will fail causing more damage and hardship to the self esteem
There is a solution to this and it is not to abandon all you just learned about the Law of Reversed Effect! The best way to combat this problem is to use the resistance you are stealing from them to uplift the person’s self esteem. The idea is to build on your rapport at the same time you are sneaking your suggestions in. Use your tools and skills to get the person to like you more, give them a feeling of control back in their life.
The best way to do this is by redirecting resistance. Redirecting resistance is very simple in the idea of it. It is to purposely give a person something to resist that will fail. This will give them the feeling of power back, they were not at the mercy of all outside influence and they defeated some external suggestion making them in control of something.
A good example of this would be if you were a real estate agent and you have a client that wants to buy a house. He has found the house he wants but is still having some second thoughts, he hasn’t quite signed on the dotted line just yet. As a fantastic real estate agent you give him many options to consider when purchasing a house, one of which being a variety of upgrades. After hearing about the upgrades, new kitchen tile, fireplace so on and so forth. Next thing you know he decides on no upgrades but he buys the house.
Now here you have redirected the resistance. You have given your client something to resist other than the suggestion you initially wanted to take place. Your desired outcome was for the man to buy the house. As he was having resistance to that you gave him the upgrades to resist. It really doesn’t matter to you if he upgrades his fireplace just that he buys the house.
The beautiful thing here is you both win. The person resisting feels as if they have regained control of their life again and you get to slip in the suggestion with little to no resistance.
Redirecting resistance is solely about finding the things people will be able to resist instead of your original purpose. As the conscious mind focuses on the idea of resisting your new idea the old one goes in unnoticed and usually becomes valid. “When you do this, you can do this as well.” By accepting the invitation to resist the second part of the statement you are automatically making the first part true.
There are thousands of ways to use this principal, and it will be combined with all the other principals you are learning in order to create a whole. As a Stealth Tactic redirecting resistance is very powerful and will be an awesome skill to store in your toolbox, especially when it is combined with other stealth tactics.
The next Stealth Tactic that we will cover here is that of refocusing attention. The concept here is to make a suggestion and implant it and then refocus their attention elsewhere. This principal is similar to seeding ideas but creates a more powerful effect.
In refocusing attention you will plant the seed in their mind then before it is noticed you will focus attention on something other than resisting the original idea. The power in this tactic is that the original idea will go unnoticed and start to grow as you focus the person elsewhere. The key is to refocus the attention before the critical factor gets a hold of it and starts to criticize it.
When you put this skill into action you will drop in the suggestion and refocus the attention repeatedly. Suggest, refocus, suggest original idea, refocus and so on and so forth. If there is no conscious information coming from them then the suggestion will have the time it needs to grow within without time for resistance. Eventually it will appear to them as their own idea and people tend to agree with ideas they think are their own.
An example of how this works is if you were having a conversation with a friend and they suggest an idea or make a statement in passing. The statement is only a small part of a much larger conversation but it is still there. Then maybe 5 months down the road you are having a similar conversation and you state the idea as your own. You may not even know the idea came from your friend because you were not focused on the statement itself you were focused on the entire conversation that was taking place.
You see here how this one layer effect of refocusing attention can be powerful and has probably happened to you at one time or another. Now think about the same idea but in layers of five, six or seven layers of different topics, much, much more powerful. This idea of layering creates an overload of information to the point of lack in ability to keep and focus on the original idea.
There are ways of distracting attention that will make this tactic even easier. The first way to do this is to simply change the topic, a new set of information to focus on. You can also confuse them. This will focus them on trying to decipher what you have said and again focus will be distracted.
Another way to distract attention is to overload the person with details and facts. An overload of information will cause their conscious to focus on finding a place for all the details you are giving them, when really these details are probably unimportant.
Now it is very important to remember to use repetition in this process. On the other hand, it is also equally important not to come back to the idea so often that they figure out on a conscious level what you are up to.
There are degrees with which you must alter your repetitions. If you are working with a very sharp minded individual you will need to repeat less and mask your suggestion more. The opposite happens for the simpler minded; you will need more repetitions and can make your suggestion in more blatant statements.
You will be able to determine how often repetition is necessary from experience with each person you work with.
Visit http://inducetrance.com/conversational-hypnosis/ now to learn how you can become a master conversational hypnotist!
Topics: Conversational Hypnosis, Layering, Overloading, Redirecting Resistance, Refocusing Attention, Stealth Tactics in Hypnosis | No Comments »
The Law of Reversed Effect in Hypnosis: How to Use the Hypnotic Challenge
By Covert Hypnotist | November 30, 2009
Photo by Smath
As you dive into the deep art of conversational hypnosis you will find that there are a set of Stealth Tactics that can be used in order to bypass the critical factor in people’s minds. Stealth Tactics are used in a way that either will be unnoticed by your subject or will be too complicated for them to really grasp the objective you have in mind.
The main point in Stealth Tactics is that this is a way of disguising what you are doing in order to defeat the critical factor and get your message through a person’s resistance. Because these tactics are a little on the sneaky side you will want to be sure to exercise the best judgment in using them. If you do not, it is likely that your listener’s unconscious will start to distrust or dislike you in the actions you are taking.
The first Stealth Tactic we will discuss is the Law of Reversed Effect; it will explain how we should be using something called the Hypnotic Challenge. The Law of Reversed Effect is simply that the harder you try to do something the more likely it is that you will fail. This is not to be confused with persistence. It is not the more your try to do a thing it is the harder you try to do a thing that will result in failure.
There is a reason this failure will take place and that is that our conscious minds work in a way that it executes doing things. Our unconscious mind acts on the things we decide to do and works out the navigation of how to actually do them. For instance you decide to read a book, you read the words consciously but your unconscious deciphers them and adds the emotions and feelings that accompany the words.
This is important to understand as it is the basis of why the Law of Reversed Effect works. The Law of Reversed Effect works because our conscious mind is trying to do something that we would normally use our unconscious mind for. The conscious mind works on the simple things, things that only require 5 – 9 steps to accomplish. The unconscious mind makes the more complicated functions of life run more smoothly as it can handle much more complicated procedures.
It is only when the conscious mind starts to get into the unconscious mind’s territory that failure begins to take place. When the conscious mind starts to interfere with the fluid motions of the unconscious the result is failure.
Now this brings us to the Law of Imagination, which is yet another reason for failure. The best way to describe this law is to give you an example. We are all humans and in that we want things. If you think of something you want but should not have you start to set yourself up for the failure in this law.
The way this works is when you state that you do not want something or you shouldn’t do something, you are reminded of it often as you think about how you shouldn’t have it. Usually if you want something the thought of it will bring a mirage of good experiences to mind. If you like cake, the taste, if you like cars, the excitement of owning a new car.
These are good feelings and experiences that you relate to the thing you are trying to avoid. The more you think about preventing yourself from getting the thing you shouldn’t have the more positive associations are ignited in your head. Eventually you will be overloaded by the positive images of the thing you shouldn’t have and your unconscious will give in and get the thing you shouldn’t have.
Now in this comes the Hypnotic Challenge. In the Hypnotic Challenge you are going to be setting your listener up for failure by using the Law of Imagination and the Law of Reversed Effect. The Hypnotic Challenge is a way that you will ask someone to try to fulfill a suggestions and you watch to see how they fail.
A classic hypnotist would do this through suggestibility tests. The test is not within the suggestions themselves it lies within the challenge and failure to complete that challenge attached to the end of the test. When a person try’s and fails a challenge you have set before them they will unconsciously start to believe that resistance is not within their means.
As long as the listener believes that resistance is not within them to control, that control will be given over to the hypnotist. As long as they continue to believe this one thing it will continue to ring true for them. Now all the suggestions you make will easily flow to the unconscious because there is no resistance in place to stop and examine the suggestions.
This is where the reversed effect comes in; by showing a person that they have no resistance and that they will fail you have actually, in a very sneaky way, passed up the barrier that causes failure. They have no resistance; they failed because you set it up that way, now they will believe they have no control over failure. Because they believe this you now have the power to avoid all failure in your objective as you have bypassed all their resistance.
The best way to use this law in conversational hypnosis is to use a linguistic trick by using words that imply “try”. “Try” itself implies failure and to imply the failure is to stack the odds in your favor that they will actually fail at a preconceived task.
Now let’s review this as there is a lot of action going on in this Stealth Tactic. The Law of Reversed Effect says that the harder you try to do a thing the more likely it is you will fail.
To put this law in action you need to require that the subject make a conscious interference with a normally unconscious process. You will add to this basing the odds in your favor by asking them to complete a task it is likely they will fail at. As you do this you will use subtle hints to imply they will fail, such as the word try or something with a like meaning.
All of these steps will cause a conflict in their resistance to your suggestion. The critical factor and resistance will be completely bypassed in the process.
Visit http://inducetrance.com/conversational-hypnosis/ now to learn how you can become a master conversational hypnotist!
Topics: Conversational Hypnosis, Hypnotic Challenge, Law of Imagination, Law of Reversed Effect, Stealth Tactics in Hypnosis, Suggestibility Tests | No Comments »
Stealth Tactics in Hypnosis: What Are Stealth Tactics
By Covert Hypnotist | October 30, 2009
Photo by Ciprian Ionescu
Conversational Hypnosis is an art of communicating suggestions to others while they are in a state of trance. The suggestions you are giving to audience should be ones that will help them to live happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives. The question becomes how to get the very suggestions in to a person’s mind when they reject them.
Everyone has what we refer to as a critical filter. This is the mechanism inside your mind that analyzes and criticizes information coming in from outside sources. The critical filters decide what is safe to allow inside our minds. They are also responsible for creating resistance for hypnotists. They look at all the messages being sent to the mind and either reject or accept them.
There are times when a person’s critical filter has become overactive and will start to reject even the good and wise suggestions coming from anyone. A good example of this is when a friend, someone you would normally trust, gives you a great piece of advice and you just outright reject and discard it with no thought. The critical filter has come to a point where it is simply not allowing any information in.
Stealth Tactics are the tool hypnotists and you will use to get past the critical factor. They were created in a way to assist in helping to influence people in a positive way that still bypasses the critical factor inside the mind. There are other ways to get past the critical factor although they are largely damaging and can cause emotional and mental hardship which should not be your goal in hypnosis. In fact quite the opposite.
Stealth Tactics are a secretive way of getting past the critical factor that doesn’t resort to bullying. These concepts are based on a set of principals that will allow you to use people’s strengths against them in ways that will help them to improve their lives in the ways they want. True they are a bit sneaky, as you will see, but all intentions with Stealth Tactics are truly good intentions. It is simply an alternative way to get inside the mind so you can begin your work as a hypnotist.
There are five Stealth Tactics that we will give a brief explanation of here and then dive further into in future articles.
The first Stealth Tactic is the Law of Reversed Effect. This principal is very powerful like most of the Stealth Tactics. In the Law of Reversed Effect the concept is that the harder you try to do something the more likely it is you will fail.
This happens mainly because a person that is consciously trying to do something that should be taking place unconsciously. The effect of the conscious mind interfering with the fluid movements of the unconscious mind is confusion and failure.
The reason the Law of Reversed Effect works for Conversational Hypnotists is that when put into action it causes a person to fail at something, you cause a person to fail at a requested task. That failure will cause the person to step away from their resistance and allow your suggestions in.
The second Stealth Tactic is to Redirect Resistance. Redirecting Resistance is the art of giving a person something they can resist you over so they feel validated and powerful in their abilities to control their own mind.
Now the beauty here is that while they are busy resisting you over an idea that you are really not concerned with you have the opportunity to give your suggestions to them. Many times they will be so busy consciously resisting the one aspect that the important suggestion is never even noticed going in.
Refocusing Attention is the third Stealth Tactic and it can be used right along with Redirecting Resistance. We will cover that aspect in a future article. The importance here is that you have a brief summary of Refocusing Attention.
Refocusing Attention is when you subtly place the suggestion you want to get across in conversation and then distract or refocus the listener’s attention elsewhere. This is a simple and easy process once you get the hang of it but can be very powerful when put to full use.
The fourth Stealth Tactic is Implication. Implication is the power of how to use body language, facial expressions and tone of voice in order to imply a thing. This is considered a Stealth Tactic because when you imply something to someone it usually bypasses the critical filter simply because we assume implications are true.
People don’t typically stop to analyze them because this is a lot of hard work and effort to put in to an implied idea. This tactic is used everyday in the natural ways we speak and can be a great tool in hypnosis.
Presuppositions are the fifth Stealth Tactic we will eventually cover in depth. As for a quick introduction, presuppositions are simply linguistic assumptions. These are the things that are automatically assumed to be true based solely on the language we use to convey them.
This may sound complicated at first but once you get into the habit of using presuppositions they are very easy to use and you in fact use them everyday. Presuppositions have a lot in common with implications simply because they are assumptions. Again this Stealth Tactic is very powerful and can be like all the Stealth Tactics layered with the others to make a more powerful affect than when used alone.
Finally the sixth Stealth Tactic is called Binds and Double Binds. Binds and Double Binds are a strategic way of phrasing a statement or question that gives the illustration of a choice but that choice really does not exist. It was thought in the 1970’s that binds and double binds were the cause of schizophrenic symptoms resulting from childhood.
A bind or double bind is a sneaky way of redirecting the resistance of a person because they simply do not have a choice in the matter. You sound as if you are asking a question or giving a choice but you are really getting a much bigger question answered in the process.
A famous Marx Brothers line that is a double bind is when a man asks the hotel manager, “So are you still beating your wife, yes or no?” The bind is in that no matter how he answered the question he would be admitting guilt of beating his wife.
Binds and double binds are a very powerful way to bypass the critical factor as are all the other Stealth Tactics. You will learn much more about these and how to use them as you progress through the next five articles. Until then the main concept you need to know is that these are principals that can be combined with one another and the other language skills you have been learning in order to really know how to begin to communicate hypnotically.
Visit http://inducetrance.com/conversational-hypnosis/ now to learn how you can become a master conversational hypnotist!
Topics: Bypassing Critical Factor, Conversational Hypnosis, Critical Filter, Implication, Law of Reversed Effect, Power Tactics in Hypnosis, Presuppositions, Redirecting Resistance, Refocusing Attention, Stealth Tactics in Hypnosis | 2 Comments »
Persistence Tactics in Hypnosis: Laws of Successive Approximations & Compounding Effect
By Covert Hypnotist | September 28, 2009
Photo by slushpup
There are many different tactics you will learn to use in your conversational hypnosis. Persistence Tactics are some of the tools you will begin to combine with many other various skills and tools that will begin to draw all your learning together to create a cohesive whole to hypnosis.
When you learn to combine the four Persistence Tactics with other tactics, signal recognition, the foundations of hypnotic language and rapport skill you will be building the foundation for conversational hypnosis.
There are four Persistence Tactics; we have covered the first two tactics which are the Hypnotic Triple and Seeding Ideas. These both have to do with repetition and are very powerful ways to slip ideas, thoughts and suggestions into the minds of your listeners.
The Hypnotic Triple is the art of stacking up the same word or idea to place a suggestion. If you want someone to buy something you would relentlessly use the idea of buying, say the word buy and continue to triple up the effect of that one word. The Hypnotic Triple is a great repetitive use of language that will steer your listener to your suggestion.
The second Persistence Tactic we have covered is Seeding Ideas. In this tactic you will place thoughts in the minds of your listeners through casual conversation. Each time you plant an idea you will continue to revisit it and help it to flourish to what will eventually be a full suggestion. This is a technique that will gently coax your subject into feeling comfortable with what may begin as an overwhelming suggestion.
The final two Persistence Tactics are the Laws of Successive Approximations and the Compounding Effect. These will continue to help you build persistent skills into your conversational hypnosis.
Law of Successive Approximations is used when you want to present a large concept or idea to someone which may seem overwhelming. It is similar in its purpose to the idea of seeding, just a different way to confront the issue of a large change.
The Law of Successive Approximation offers you the idea of breaking the big idea down into smaller pieces that will eventually equal a large result. Breaking down the information down makes it easier to swallow, an easier transition.
A good example of when to use the Law of Successive Approximation is if you wanted to induce a hallucination. This is a very big step for someone to take when they know logically that the hallucination, whatever it may be, is not really in front of them. By using the Law of Successive Approximation you will be giving them little pieces of the hallucination to picture one at a time.
As you build the different aspects of the hallucination; the smell of it, feel of it, the way it sounds. As you give the listener all these suggestions it will start to become real for them and when it is time to really induce the hallucination they will be more prepared to actually take a larger step and see what it is you have given them bit by bit.
There is a possibility in this process that you may lose your listener; if this happens and it will eventually you only need to backtrack as far as the last point of agreement. In this situation you would then create a new ‘yes set’ and build on that thought and behavior until the person is ready to move on to the next step.
This is very easy as you can create a constant pattern. This pattern would consist of taking a small step, step, lose listener, and go back to agreement, ‘yes set’ then move on to the next step. This is an easy pattern to follow as it will create a constant loop for you to travel on. The key is to be sure the listener is following your lead before moving on from the ‘yes set’.
The final Persistence Tactic is the Law of Compounding Effect; this is also very similar to the ‘yes set’. Each time you have your listener put a specific suggestion into action they will in turn become more suggestible. This compares to the ‘yes set’ in that each time your subject says yes to one thing they are more likely to say yes to the next statement. You are building a habit of agreement.
In the Law of Compounding Effect you continue to piggy back suggestions and the person continues to carry out those suggestions as they become more suggestible with each one. The more they carry on in this manner the more resistance is broken down and the more likely it is they will continue responding to your suggestions.
Over time the Law of Compounding Effect and the suggestions made with it will become a natural way to react to the ideas you place before your listener. This is another very powerful tactic in conversational hypnosis and one you will have the ability to use often as it accomplishes two things at once. It not only allows your suggestions to be carried out in thoughts and behaviors it also diminishes resistance.
These two Persistence Tactics when combined with the other persistence tactics and concepts we have learned will start to bring your knowledge together to create a smooth flow of suggesting behaviors and seeing those behaviors come to life in your subjects.
Visit http://inducetrance.com/conversational-hypnosis/ now to learn how you can become a master conversational hypnotist!
Topics: Conversational Hypnosis, Law of Compounding Effect, Law of Successive Approximation, Persistence Tactics | No Comments »
