People often create realities or pick outcomes that aren't worth having. That is a limitation in self–hypnosis. One of our students had a client who had decided that it was crazy for one person to carry on a conversation with himself. He read in a book "It takes two people to have a conversation. Since conversations are for two people to talk to one another, he decided that talking to yourself is stupid. So he just stopped having internal dialogue. When he stopped, he lost the ability to do certain things that he had used internal dialogue for—little things like the ability to plan! All he could do was see pictures and have feelings. He couldn't ask himself questions like "What would i like to do today?" He hadn't considered the overall impact of that change before he made it.
Clients often come in asking for things that wouldn't make them happy. Sometimes 1 give it to them and let them suffer for a while. Then it's easier for me to go back and give them something more meaningful.
One client of mine came in saying he didn't want to be able to feel anything. He told me that everything he had felt for years had been terrible, that people had hurt him over and over again, and he didn't want to have to feel things anymore. So I hypnotized him and hypnotically removed his kinesthetic experience. Of course he lost his sense of balance and could no longer stand up. Then I brought him back out of trance, still without any feelings, and asked if he would like to come back next week. He said "Please! Do something!" I said "All right, now we'll do it my way."
When you do self–hypnosis, consider the outcomes you go for very carefully. Play the counter–example game and ask yourself if there is any way in which your outcome could be harmful, and then use that information to improve your outcome. In both the examples 1 just gave you the person was trying to improve his life by limiting himself. Giving yourself more limitations is rarely a way to solve limitations. A guiding principle is to always add to your abilities and add to your choices.
Questions
Man: Would it be OK to give you a case description and get suggestions from you?
Well, it would be OK. I don't know if I'll be able to say anything about it. A lot of times people describe a client to me, but since I don't have the person in front of me, I don't know what to do. Most of our procedures are based on moment–to–moment sensory feedback, and that doesn't exist in a verbal description. But I'm certainly willing to take a shot at it.
Man: This is a nineteen–year–old young man whom I saw once last week, and I will see him again tomorrow.
He certainly elicits a response from you! The first step is for you to use the phobia cure on yourself! OK, what about him?
Man: He told me that he's worn a surgical mask for four years.
How is that a problem? Does it mess up his French kissing, or what?
Man: Several years ago he became very preoccupied with his nose and—
Do you have any idea how this occurred?
Man: Yes. He developed acne on both sides of his nose, so he started wearing a surgical mask to cover it up. Does he still have acne on his nose?
Man: No. When he came to see me, it was the first time he'd left the house in four years.
He's a courageous young man.
Man: He was totally housebound, and is convinced that his nose is the most deformed nose in existence.
Well, I'll give you an amusing approach you can try. I can't guarantee you that this will work, but it's something I have done.
If you have a secretary, get her to type up a short article on the positive relationship between unusual noses and sexual attraction. Get her to use a selectric typewriter that has one of those type faces that looks like magazine print. Type up this article and make xerox copies of it and put the name of some prestigious journal or magazine on it. Then leave the article somewhere in the waiting room. When your client comes in and sits down, have your secretary watch him until he sees the article. The minute he sees it and picks it up, have her run up and take it away from him.
I had a guy who wore a splint on his nose when he went out. The tape went all the way around his face so it covered his cheeks and his nose, because he was very concerned about acne.
I typed up an article about the relationship between bandages and severe acne. The whole thing detailed how people would put on band–aids, and it would lead to severe acne and sexual impotence and homosexuality and just about everything. I left the article in my waiting room, and let him read just enough to start to get into it, and then I had my secretary take it away. When he came in to talk to me, he demanded to see the article, and I insisted there was no such thing. Finally I opened the door, went out, and asked my secretary if she had taken an article away from him. She handed me an article about breast–feeding babies! I gave it to him, and told him that it was just his anxiety. When I said that, I looked at him very suspiciously. Probably now he'll never wear one of those splints agan, even if he breaks his nose!
You have to create a context in which the response you want will occur naturally. You also need to use hypnosis or metaphor to talk about the responses that you want him to have, because not only does he need to be able to go out in public, he needs to go out in public with a sense of purpose. One of the things you might have him do is to go out in public with his surgical mask on, and go into places where he will meet people whom he will never see again. Have him pick some woman whom he knows would be really repulsed by his nose, and find out if he can go over and flash the surgical mask at her and make her throw up. The odds are you won't be able to get him to actually do that, because it will be too frightening. But you can talk about it and get him to laugh about the idea. You anchor his response of humor, and then begin to talk about going out into public. You can use that anchor to begin to associate a sense of humor about the ridiculousness of his nose with going out in public. Rather than getting him to feel OK, get him to feel ridiculous about it. It's much easier to diffuse the existing response, rather than try for a meaningful one.
I'll tell you something else you can do. We did this one, too, but we did it with a twenty–two–year–old woman who wore very unusual clothes. She wore very baggy clothes. She wasn't fat at all, but she believed that if people saw her body, they would find her hideous. So she wore hideous clothes to cover up her body.
I hired a bunch of guys from downtown to help me carry this one out. I got guys who wear vests with no shirts on. You know the type. They had big muscles, and tattoos and everything. I had them come into my office right before her appointment and sit there reading magazines. When she walked in the door, they turned around and laughed at her, and said "Those are the weirdest clothes I've ever seen." And there they were, dressed in a totally bizarre way. When she came into my office she was totally freaked out. I said "What's wrong?" and she said "Oh, those guys laughed at my clothes." I said "Oh, don't pay any attention to them. What do they know?"
The next week when she came back, her dress was not quite so baggy, but it was still kind of weird. When she came in, a man was sitting there in a suit and tie, dressed very nicely. As she walked in the door, he looked at her, then looked away and started sputtering, trying not to laugh, and said "I'm sorry. Excuse me." That was all it took to get her to wear reasonable clothes.