While you're giving a general learning instruction, you might add things like "And with each breath, you continue to get … deeper or stabilize yourself at the most comfortable level of trance … for you and for the purposes that you have." Don't include any content; let him choose the content. Just give him general instructions to make unconscious choices and learnings.
3) Whatever general suggestions you give, add some statement that provides you with feedback. "And when your unconscious mind has completed offering you that experience, simply indicate that it has by allowing one or both arms to float up with honest, unconscious movements, or by causing your eyes to suddenly flutter open as you have a sense of refreshment and delight that you have accomplished what it was that you were after." This builds in a signal for him to let you know he has completed the little piece of work that he was going to do in the altered state.
4) When you get that signal, you need to build a way for him to get back out of trance. "Now I am going to count slowly backwards from ten to one" or "I'm going to reach over in a moment and touch you on the shoulder." This tells him what is about to happen, and gives him some time to prepare himself. "And when I reach 'one' your eyes will flutter open, and you will awake feeling delighted by your experience, refreshed and renewed by what just happened, and ready to begin again learning something new."
As an alternative, you could lift his arm, which will be cataleptic, and say "And your unconscious mind can allow that arm to go down no faster than you drift back to this particular reality, bringing with you any sense of accomplishment, any sense of refreshment and renewal from this experience." Or "When I touch you on the shoulder, you'll feel a sudden surge of quiet energy which will give you a tingling sense of well–being as your eyes flutter open and you reorient to this place and time."
Any questions?
Woman: You gave us too much!
I gave you a lot. You'll be surprised at how much you'll remember as you go through, step–by–step, inducing a trance, giving general learning instructions, and bringing him back. OK. Go ahead.
Incorporation and Dealing with Abreactions
There is another very important general pattern that I want to talk about called incorporation. If something significant occurs, whether it's something internal—a profound response develops in the client— or something external—suddenly a door slams or someone walks by and bumps the chair that the client is sitting in—the least effective thing to do is pretend it didn't happen. You will then lose credibility and rapport with the client, because he needs to know that you are alert enough to notice what his experience is. When something happens, your next verbalization should immediately incorporate it.
In one of your practice groups, Cathy talked about hearing the buzz of the background conversation as she was going into a trance. What does that suggest to you metaphorically?
Woman: Bees.
Sure. You can incorporate the buzzing sound by saying "And the buzz of the conversation in the room can remind you of a pleasantly warm summer day. You hear the sound of the honeybees as you lie in the cool grass, feeling the warmth of the sunshine on your face." That's one way you can incorporate.
Woman: What if the person had a phobia of bees?
If you are watching you will know immediately from his response if he has a phobia of bees.
Woman: What would you do if that happened, though? You immediately incorporate that: "And you can know that those bees are bees that come from another time and place, and that you arc sitting comfortably here in this room." You take him out of the situation where it is dangerous for him and reorient him to the present time and place. Or you can make him a bee. Have him buzz around a little bit himself. To bee or not to be.
There's no way of knowing ahead of time if a metaphor that you are going to use, or a particular maneuver you are going to try, is going to trigger a phobia or some other traumatic experience. You have to use feedback to know if the maneuver you are making is appropriate. As long as you are constantly observing the client, you will know immediately if something unpleasant happens.
The other major way to incorporate is the following: "And that loud slam of the door you just heard will allow you to be even more comfortable as you sit here listening to the sound of my voice." You begin by simply stating what happened, and then connect that to the response you want to develop.
After the last exercise a man came up to me and said that as he was going through this experience, he felt himself going into a trance, and then he suddenly felt his body jar and pulled himself back. Now he had a reason why he did that; he said it was as if he didn't want to go any deeper. His response would have been very different if the person who had been talking to him had noticed those involuntary movements and had said to him "Sometimes as you begin to go into an altered state, your body begins to jar itself slightly, just like sometimes when you're very tired, and you're going to sleep, just before you drop off your body begins to twitch involuntarily. It's only an indication that you're just about to go really deeply into an altered state." You see, there's nothing in human experience which necessarily means anything, so you can make it mean whatever you want.
Now what about strong internal responses? All of you who operate as hypnotists need to have ways of taking care of abreactions: intense unpleasant responses that sometimes occur as a person goes into a trance. Let me put this into perspective. One of the unconscious motivations that causes people to specialize in one state of consciousness to the relative exclusion of others, is that they have stored massive amounts of unpleasant or incongruent experience in a representational system that is excluded from consciousness. If you are going to specialize in certain states of consciousness, one way to protect yourself from experiences which are painful for you to consider is to put them into the system that is out of consciousness. Then you get at least temporary relief at the conscious level. The unconscious mind holds back material that would be potentially overwhelming to the conscious mind. This is appropriate, and is one of the functions of the unconscious.
So if you alter someone's state and make available an unconscious system, it may be that the material most immediately available will be junk. In gestalt terms, it's unfinished business. In TA terms, it's material for redecision. Painful memories have been re–experienced so frequently in the history of official hypnosis that this phenomenon has been officially labeled "abreaction." My understanding is that an abreaction is simply the most natural response to suddenly uncovering a system which contains material from the past that is painful or overwhelming.
Now what if someone has an "abreaction?" Let's say he bursts into tears. Being quite alert at the sensory level, you notice this. Now what do you do?
Jack: Wouldn't you do the same thing you just talked about doing for external interruptions? I'd start by pacing what I observed happening.
Absolutely. That's exactly what I would do as well. First you pace. You say "You are having feelings of discomfort and they are very uncomfortable." You have accepted his response. He doesn't have to fight with you about the validity of his own experience. You've given him a verbal pacing statement of what his experience is. "And you are crying … and those tears are representative of pain and discomfort from your past . . — and you are very uncomfortable. … As you remember … these particular feelings and they again come into your body …I would like you to consider the following… . Each of us, in our own personal history has had many, many experiences, some of which we label as unpleasant… . Those unpleasant experiences often form the basis … for later abilities … and skills … which people who have never been challenged by such experiences … fail to develop. … How pleasant it is … to experience discomfort from the past . , . with the full realization … that you survived those experiences, and that they form a rounded set of experiences from which you can generate more adequate behavior in the present."