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the mind is the core place where the problem and solution is hypnosis as a way of communicating effectively with the subconscious usually offers the shortest and cleanest path to basically upgrade the mental software that we all
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have where is the disconnect why isn't this everywhere there are a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions so there's fear I I don't want somebody else in my head I can't be hypnotized my clients are aware of what's going on during their hypnosis session they're
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just their mind is open and they're listening The Manchurian Candidate the plot line is one of the communist countries hypnotizes an American servicemen to be their Sleeper Agent he becomes president and they turn him on and you know he becomes an entirely
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different person bent on destroying the United States the only thing about mind control related to hypnosis is that you regain control of your mind hypnosis is really all self-hypnosis it's just a relaxed state of concentration similar to daydreaming and it's something that
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everyone has experienced if you've ever played a video game and lost track of time that's a hypnotic State this is the best kept secret that's not a secret well hello everyone it's Jim O'Shaughnessy with yet another infinite Loops today be careful if you are
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listening to this or watching it on YouTube my guest Todd Goodwin may put you into a hypnotic trance Todd you and I have had some great conversations about the power of hypnosis and I thought it would be awesome to share some of the things we
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were chatting about with our broader audience because as you know um I think it could potentially be a key part in lots of uh of recovery lots of changed behaviors um and uh what I really wanted to know and and you were the domain expert that I had the great pleasure of hooking up
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with um uh about hypnosis because I really didn't know much about it so first off welcome don't are you hypnotizing me now what makes you think you weren't already hypnotized haha that's right I'm the Manchurian I'm the Manchurian podcaster here
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if we actually so so Jim it's a pleasure to be here um thank you for having me and um yes and if we get to that part of the conversation about some of the myths and misconceptions about hypnosis you and everyone else will realize that virtually everyone who is watching this
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or listening to this not only has been hypnotized but experiences that many times a day automatically with or without a hypnotist you know what let's just jump right in there because uh you said that to me the first time we talked and I found that
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absolutely fascinating I did a little extra research on it and started reading about the hypnotic Power of Words the hypnotic power of songs of a variety of things so it's not you that was kind of a revelation to me honestly um so so please uh let's educate our
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audience why is that why is it that even if there is no hypnotist present often a hypnotic State of Mind can be inculcated in a viewer or a listener whatever sure okay so there are different definitions I'm not going to get bogged down into Precision or that
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kind of thing but in general a hypnotic state is a state of accelerated learning or relaxed focused attention where someone is more suggestible which basically just means it's easier for them to change the way they think and feel about something so it would be a Speed Learning or speed
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unlearning State and you mentioned before that hypnosis could be uh an important part I believe you said something like that about behavioral change recovery all that not that it could be it already is an essential part but it's very underused which is one
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reason in my opinion why there is such a miserable success rate or more accurately a very high failure rate in the recovery field and in behavioral change look at how many diets fail how many attempts to quit smoking cold turkey fail look at
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how many how hard it is for people to quit biting their nails or to overcome a phobia these are all things that are in the domain of the subconscious which we can touch on and as a result just analyzing it using willpower using taking good advice is not going to shift
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that and that is one reason why a lot of people get stuck in long-term talk therapy where they gain a lot of awareness but not much really changes and so the work that we do in the domain of the subconscious using hypnosis and a few other few related
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modalities that is that massively speeds up the compresses the amount of time it takes to change something so it speeds things up people are able to get it deeper more long-lasting and just more profound change than they would with you know trying hard to change it
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um so hypnosis so basically in a sense hypnosis is really all self-hypnosis and it's just a relaxed state of concentration similar to daydreaming and it's something that everyone has experienced virtually everyone um if anyone if you've ever played a video game and lost track of
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time or your busy your body and your emotions are reacting to a video game a movie a TV show that's a hypnotic state if you get lost in a novel or a story even long before books when people would sit around the campfire and tell stories about something and
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ghost stories and people would start feeling it and in their mind they could picture it or if they closed their eyes it would feel like it's really happening and they remember it vividly those are all hypnotic States and when someone is hypnotized Jim their imagination becomes
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more powerful and has a bigger role on what they're experiencing and of course the imagination interfaces with emotions which affects physiology and then when you look at stress-related illness which is the vast majority of of medical problems
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uh it's the emotional stress which leads to physiological and hormonal changes which can create long-term health issues not to mention behavioral issues so really the the mind is the core place where the problem and solution is and really the key is to figure out in
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all the work that I do is to look at what someone presents as their Chief complaint which is usually just a symptom and then figure out very quickly it doesn't take much time uh what is the actual ultimate root cause instead of playing hey let's treat the
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symptom forever let's figure out very quickly what's causing it change that cause which is usually a thought process and when you change that the feeling changes the behavior changes and then over time the state that the person is in whether it's Financial relationship
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Health that changes because all of that is a symptom or effect ultimately of the way someone is thinking and feeling and it just so happens that hypnosis as a way of communicating effectively with the subconscious usually offers the shortest and cleanest
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path to basically upgrade the mental software that we all have but is mostly you know running old programs yeah I there's just so much to unpack there um I could not agree more about willpower um not working um I I and I've written about this
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tangentially in the thing called The Thinker and the prover I think you read that um where we're literally uh you know you're you can you can think about anything you want to think about you can have any emotion you want to have you could have any belief you want to have
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right if you believe the world is a fundamentally good place guess what's going to happen your perception your prover is going to prove that for you um and that all happens subconsciously I think and uh one of the things that you said to me in one of our earlier
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conversations was this idea that um all all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis I thought that was really interesting um so so walk us through a my interest in this is because I'm fascinated by Mind Body uh disorders uh Dr Sarno worked uh very closely with that I've
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suffered from them I worked with the therapist who actually introduced us um on them and so so I just have so many questions like the first question the first question is the efficacy of this really does seem to be quite High why is it why is it that more people
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aren't speaking your help or other hypnosis uh Specialists why rather to go to and I don't want to brag on anybody but like the the talk therapy sessions those can go on forever and ever and ever without getting any result what I like about you and what you've shared
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with me is your very results oriented you're very um let's not let's not treat the surface symptoms let's get to the root of the problem where's the bot where is the disconnect why isn't this everywhere yeah that's a great question and I get
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that a lot even from especially from clients after they you know in three four five six sessions I do with them the average person I see only five to seven times um over you know a month or two and in you know most the time they get really great results and then they say
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well why doesn't everyone do this it's like and I say this is the best kept secret that's not a secret um so there are several reasons uh first I'll finish the the thing about hypnosis because that answers this question too there are misunderstandings and
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misconceptions and myths about hypnosis and you know you joked earlier about the Manchurian Candidate um the movie from I believe the 50s and that was uh what played a big part in installing a public fear of being mind controlled um I sort of flippantly joke to people that
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the only thing about mind control related to hypnosis is that you regain control of your mind um and that hypnosis is not sleep it's not any form of Mind Control no one who's hypnotized by or hypnotist can be made to do anything against their will
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or say anything reveal anything so most of the and it's not scary you can't get stuck in a hypnotized state so pretty much what most people see in the cartoons or the movies with very few exceptions while entertaining and while attention grabbing they're really grossly
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misleading and I think one reason why our profession as much as it is now more accepted and widely known and utilized than ever before is still barely the tip of the iceberg compared to Alternative approaches like you know Psychotherapy which is useful for some people and some
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issues but the reason is because one there are a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions so there's fear and if people don't and I can explain away those fears in two minutes but if people don't get into that level of Engagement where they want
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to debunk the myths and really educate themselves or if they find a source that's misleading then it's understandable that people would say oh I don't want to you know I don't want to give up any control I don't want you to make me cluck like a chicken and why would I do
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that you know and so then sometimes people see on stage at comedy clubs and in Vegas they see entertainment uh stage hypnosis and I know a few people who do that I actually did a training in that and just chose not to pursue that as a
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side thing but um that's legitimate hypnosis it's just done for a different purpose and so what people see is very different and can be very misleading so ultimately that's one big reason there are misconceptions two uh as a as a field even though it has
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been around as long as as you know modern psychology you know well over 100 years uh the size of our profession is much smaller so we don't have the lobbying power that the American Psychological Association has or the APA for psychiatrists you know we don't have the
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the numbers the finances the money behind it to really um be as widespread other reasons is there are not it's not generally a licensed profession simply because it's not large enough to be worthwhile to regulate uh that probably will change in the future and there also are maybe less
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stringent standards for someone to become a practicing hypnotist as opposed to a psychologist or even a licensed mental health counselor at a bachelor's degree level so because of the variation in standards it's um there are a lot of people who become
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certified as hypnotists and they really can't harm people so there's no real risk to the community of of an undertrained hypnotist but um they might lack the competency and the confidence to actually go into practice and so as a result there may be a
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hundred psychotherapists for every one hypnotist I'm making that number up but it's probably in the ballpark so between misconceptions lack of public awareness and lack of consistent training standards there's also probably no if if there are maybe one or two
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University programs that teach this kind of um uh this kind of knowledge it's taught in a very different way it's usually done through mentorship or apprenticeship after doing a an initial training and then you have to do a few hundred hours
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or something over time but that's a that's an old school way of doing things that's not a university-based curriculum so it's not as standardized and if you you put all those factors together Jim you just it's it's um it's more of the Wild West people really understand
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um what it can do and that's one of my missions and my wife Gina who's also a board certified hypnotist is that education is really important to teach not just clients but Healthcare practitioners which is a big thing for me as well to understand the power of
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words to understand why the person does not change their behavior despite their good intentions despite the practitioner that the health care providers great advice and all of this frustration that leads to needless struggle and emotional and behavioral uh problems
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and the abuse of medication and and as well as drugs alcohol all kinds of other things people who are obese these are all in most cases an emotional or a thinking related problem and the more people at every level of society who understand this
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the more likely they are to actually use what what we believe is kind of a silver bullet for clearing trauma and changing the way people think and feel at a deep level that does not require The Willpower the effort the constant reminders the infinite level of self
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analysis uh that is otherwise required in in health care you know you said earlier uh before uh giving us the the reasons for why it isn't more widely embraced uh that you could in a couple of minutes dispel a lot of the fears about hypnosis so why
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don't you do that because I I think that our listeners our viewers I bet that we have a pretty reasonable percentage of our listeners viewers who would like to work on a problem but but they are held back by those fears I had some too when before you and I first talked so I think
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that would be really helpful for people listening in watching uh for you to kind of go through and and say Here's what people fear but here's the reality let me ask you would you be willing to share what you were fears or reservations were and then I
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can direct those specifically sure um so one of mine was the classic um I I don't want somebody else in my head um and uh well then you should never be home uh [Laughter] anyway please go touche um and uh so so that was one um another was I am kind of an endless
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self-experimenter and went to several hypnotists here in New York City and uh at least my experience of it was that I didn't it didn't work so to speak um and one of the things that I said to you which you laughed at I think rightly as I learned more but uh one of the
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things I said to you was I can't be hypnotized oh yeah remember remember yeah and and so um why don't we start with goats why don't we start with people don't want other people in their head again that kind of that ties in with the Manchurian Candidate where for for our younger
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listeners it was I think Frank Sinatra originally they remade it with a bunch of different stars but the the plot line is um then Russia or one of the communist countries uh hypnotizes an American servicemen uh to be their Sleeper Agent he becomes president and they turn him
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on and you know he becomes an entirely different person bent on destroying the United States um so so that one and then and then the other one which I'll bet is very common that you've heard a lot I can't be hypnotized right and that's more of a
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fear than just a general misconception but I'll address that as well great as far as someone in your mind um it's not okay so because when someone I mean I'll speak primarily for my 99 of my experiences with my clients um as opposed to in general you know I will say
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my clients are aware of what's going on during their hypnosis session um I mean there's other things we do that is not formally hypnosis where their eyes are closed and they're pretty emotionless and you know they're just their mind is open and they're listening
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but in in that kind of you know the hypnosis process let's say uh they're awake they're relatively aware of what's going on and they retain full control of themselves they might uh they might zone out in the same way that someone might during a lecture or just
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when they're daydreaming and they're and they oh they need to rewind what was on TV because they were lost and thought or driving on a road and feeling like how'd I get here that's a highway hypnosis which uh you know when it's not drug or alcohol
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related is generally armless but it just happens so it's because we have a Consciousness subconscious mind and our subconscious knows how to drive and can do it without our conscious awareness but we might consciously be thinking about where we're going to be in five
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minutes and be picturing that or replaying something from you know an hour ago or yesterday so we're consciously seeing things in our mind or replaying a conversation that has nothing to do with the road in front of us and yet somehow we stay in our Lane
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and that's because our subconscious can handle habitual you know learned automated Behavior extremely well that's what it's for and then the conscious mind is something that we are consciously focused on at that time when someone's hypnotized sometimes the
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conscious awareness sort of wanders off which gives some people the belief that they fell asleep during a session which does happen sometimes usually they don't fall asleep though they might zone out their mind comes and goes they're generally aware of what I'm saying but
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every once in a while it might feel like you know I'm over there in the room and then they say oh I need to listen and so that's just normal Attention our attention gets divided that's perfectly normal and doesn't need hypnosis to happen
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so someone cannot be if I were to say to someone you know what is your social security number or reveal some deep dark secret you don't want your wife to know um well for one thing that's an absurd thing I wouldn't do it but let's just say I were you know like Dr Evil and I
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wanted to to do something like that they would not reveal that information unless they wanted to and if you go back to the entertainment hypnosis when the hypnotist on stage says I want you to you know when I snap my finger or touch you in the shoulder you're going to be a
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an exotic dancer and the chair is your dance partner or whatever um and they do it if they do it which they should because the hypnotist is good enough to know that if someone's not very responsive he's going to send them back to the audience and so if you've
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seen these shows you know that they're left with like a third of the people still up there so he knows they like being the center of attention they're there to have a good time and they are suggestible enough to respond to what he's suggesting so they go and do it and it
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looks like they're being controlled because they're doing what he suggested but they're only doing it because a part of them wants to be an exhibitionist and wants to maybe be silly but maybe they have a little bit of stage fright but
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when they're relaxed enough through the hypnotic process they don't care and their imagination is heightened enough where they actually almost feel like they're the exotic dancer and that is their dance partner or scene partner so um at least in terms of a like an office
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setting which is the world I live in um and my wife would say I live in the office too much so anyway that is um someone is not an open book where they're where the hypnotist is like you know Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass looking for clues that he can pull out
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and even and anything that I ask they're gonna remember that they said but if they don't want to say it they won't in the same way on stage if the guy says get naked right now which you would probably only see in Vegas um the person is not going to do it
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unless they really want to so that's so there's no like someone doesn't have access to the mind what the way I look at it at least in the way and some hypnotists operate differently where they're asking a lot of questions the client is speaking back to them most
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of the work that I do is more that I'm speaking and they're listening because based on our conversation when we do an initial consultation and ongoing you know brief conversations with each session I know with a high degree of confidence
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what the person needs to hear to shift whatever needs to be shifted in their mind so I will tell them a story or I will you know give just straight ens or suggestions about things or there's a number of different techniques or a visualization that they experience
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and interact with that and all of those things will shift their belief system the way they think which changes how they feel and that can involve a sense of confidence or motivation or letting go of emotional baggage any number of things and and often the change happens within minutes
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but it's only because the person agrees to cooperate fully which leads to the second Point interrupt if you need to no please go so the this is all part of the lengthy process of hypnotizing you I'm just going to keep talking anyway so um so basically the
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um I can't be hypnotized there are a couple explanations for why people say that first of all anyone of even slightly below average intelligence and I know that's definitely not a problem for you can be hypnotized unless someone has you know like a major head injury or
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some kind of maybe an anti-epileptic drug I did have a almost client once years ago who was on I don't know if it was phenobarbital but some kind of very strong anti-epileptic because of a head injury and it was really blunting his cognitive abilities and I didn't take
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him as a client because he was having trouble holding a normal conversation and I said you know I could try it's certainly not going to hurt you but I don't want to ask you to invest your money and your hope and your time plus I like to get good results for
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clients on it on a crap shoot that this is going to help so I referred him you know I I referred him out to to another modality but if if a person does not have any brain problem or they're not you know maybe jacked up on 10 coffees or something
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else that could really affect them so a normal person of normal intelligence is going to go into hypnosis fairly readily and fairly easily now some people are more analytical some people are more artistic and creative and imaginative and so the hypnotist if the hypnotist is skilled
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enough will be able to modify the hypnotic induction or process to match that person uh their their the way they think better um but it's not hard to hypnotize people because people do it themselves the most important thing is that the client wants
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to be hypnotized trust the hypnotist enough even though they're not giving up control but you need to have trust and rapport with with the practitioner of any kind if you have that if you trust them if you say yes I want to be here I want to overcome this issue
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uh not because my wife told me to go but because I want to be here and I understand what we're doing I understand what to expect from the session which some hypnotists don't explain that so when someone says I wasn't hypnotized they might have been but they expected
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to be unconscious or they expected to be floating out of their chair or not remember what was being said or maybe if they zoned out they thought they fell asleep and they weren't hypnotized so there's a lot of things that just need to be explained and if the person wants
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to be there if there's trust and Rapport if they don't have any major mental or brain problems and most people don't um and uh they know what to expect most people will say yes I was hypnotized and I think I might have told you I've been
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doing this for 16 years I maybe I don't even think there were 10 people that I couldn't hypnotize maybe five so it almost never happens um then there that leads to the question of um like like Milton Erickson for example he's sort of legendary for his ability
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to get results rapidly uh for some like very very serious conditions like agoraphobia um you know fear of water fear of spiders that kind of stuff um is there is there kind of a hierarchy of things that are easier to to help people solve versus things that like
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might be much more difficult talk me through that yeah I would say in general so before I mentioned and this is a big part of of my my approach to working with clients and you know my biggest beef with the health sick care industry in this country and in Western Society
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is that it's mostly based on treating symptoms because it's more profitable to keep someone buying symptoms whether it's appointments with a doctor or taking medication or whatever uh as long as you're always treating symptoms you never have to treat the
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real cause and then the person remains dependent on the practitioner or the remedy if you call it that to treat the symptoms so if you look at the most surface level symptom gym in in a common issue let's just say uh weight problems so the most surface level issue or state
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that someone is in is their fat okay there's obesity or they're just overweight that's a state there's a physical state that they're in it's hormonal it's Health it's it's physicality there's all the number of factors but that is the effect of
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lack of exercise and too much eating pretty much okay the the the behavior right the I'm sorry the the cause of that state is behavior and that is a symptom as well but that behavior is eating junk food or eating too much food not moving enough and if
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you behave in that way you will have an unhealthy state so people say well let's just change the behavior and in my former life and I don't mean past life regression hypnosis which I don't do but I mean you know 24 years ago I got my master's degree in nutrition so I was
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briefly in that field working on just giving people advice to change their eating Behavior to lose weight and as you can imagine that didn't work most the time and that I was very discouraged and that led me to getting out of that field and ultimately led me to getting
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to being a hypnotist so that's the behavior we know that diets and willpower fail most the time because trying to change the behavior is like dealing with something Downstream of the real cause by the time it gets there it's very hard to control
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everyone has experienced that now what causes that behavior let's just say emotional eating or overeating comfort food eating it's emotions a person feels uncomfortable they can be sad they can be angry stressed Angus anxious whatever it might be so they're feeling
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uncomfortable and they're subconscious says I need to feel better right now how can I help oh I know let's have a few beers let's have a couple cigarettes let's eat a pint of ice cream and generally those things will make the person feel better temporarily because
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it distracts from unpleasant feelings or it gives them a sense of pleasure because of the sugar because of relaxation or whatever it is and mission accomplished and that is what can create a habit or a compulsive habit where the person
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feels an urge that they need to do this thing and to an extreme example this would be an addiction so that's the emotional cause of the behavior now we could just work on emotions we could just take you know antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds which have mixed
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results and can cause other problems but that's not dealing with why they're feeling that way the emotion is also in effect of the way someone is thinking it could be a one-time thought like you know um something scary happens like a snake
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falls on my head or something that's not a habitual thought it just happened but that scares me because it's a perceived threat I have a fear response and then I'm going to engage in some Behavior to alleviate that fear which is usually like beat the crap out
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of the snake or more likely just run like hell away from it and that's how the the thought feeling Behavior sequence takes place so the thought can be any number of things it can be I'm not safe which is probably the most common cause of anxiety that belief
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uh and it can be specific I'm not safe around dogs I'm not safe in airplanes I'm not safe when giving a presentation or I'm not safe in my body or on this planet or going outside okay so I'm not safe causes anxiety the other could be something like I'm not good enough I'm
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not worthy of love and that can create ongoing stress or anxiety and then the subconscious says okay I feel like crap what can I do to feel better oh I know let's eat drink smoke porn Facebook whatever to distract myself and if there's an acute perceived threat
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then the answer is panic or fear and that's going to be you know Escape or avoid and that explains someone who will not leave their house or will not gonna get on an airplane or needs to get out of an elevator as the doors close so to answer your question um
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generally it's easier to deal with the thought emotion connection then trying to change Behavior so for example if someone has an emotionally traumatic experience which is pretty much our specialty or you know we've done the full game Run the full
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gamut over all these years but we focus primarily on um emotional trauma and its negative effects that affect people emotionally behaviorally that's really easy to clear up and that may be surprising to a lot of people listening to this especially if they're psychotherapists but it's
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actually very easy most of the time to clear up emotional trauma and then it's just a cleanup job to you know work on how that's affected someone's confidence and um self-worth and all of that but that's a thought because trauma is largely based in memories that's what causes the
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emotion and uh the conditioning of the nervous system if the nervous system has a habit of pumping adrenaline every time they have a thought or something triggers them that needs to be changed so that's much easier to change than someone who is
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um you know drinking a bottle of wine every day now that still is not that hard but because we need to deal with the thought process that leads to the emotions it also leads to the behavior and the other issue is a lot of times people are ambivalent about changing a
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behavior because they are they know they kind of like it because it helps them most people don't say you know what I don't know Jim if I really want to get rid of my panic attacks I like the attention I get I kind of like you know freaking out and
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you know drooling all over myself and panicking people don't say that right but they might say well I don't know I I kind of like having a couple drinks and I know even if I can't have two because that means I have five and I know I'm better off not having any
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I don't know I kind of like to relax or I you know smoking makes me feel okay for a few minutes and and so we can get past that but that's usually harder than just the emotional stuff because there are more layers and there's more the person can uh
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can uh can try to convince themselves to maintain the pattern that they're in that's that's fascinating and that's extraordinarily clearly explained on your part so thank you Todd um let's go into that because I think that the last bit there that you said where
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they're ambivalent um is there have you seen quite a few patients who you've basically ascertained they say they want this but they don't really want it and if that's the case is change still possible yeah that's a great question so I have had clients over the years who
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um well first let you know there's there are simple answers and then there are my answers but I want to be detailed here so um when someone says I want to change or I want to let's just pick pick a I want to quit smoking let's just pick that it's simple um
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they say they want to quit smoking which means assuming you can take them at their word they consciously want to quit smoking means they're aware of of how it hurts them they're aware of how they might benefit being free of that they're aware of of all the different Dynamics
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in terms of you know what they're consciously aware of and then they they have but almost every client I see Jim uh and this is the case with almost anyone who wants to change something about themselves that there's an internal conflict
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and in other words it sounds something like this I want to quit smoking but I kind of still want to smoke or I wish I could stop doing this or I wish I could stop getting nervous and anxious in this environment but I can't help myself so that's the ambivalence that's the
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internal conflict and what that really means is their conscious mind which is the long-term logical rational thinking part of them says you know that's like our Executive Center that's our human brain it says I want this goal it doesn't matter what it is I want to
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lose weight I want to start a business I want to ask this person out on a date I want to um you know change my investment strategy to riskier assets okay that that's the first statement but then there's often a but and that's the subconscious which is much more powerful
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that's the short-term self-protective irrational and emotional part that says yeah but but what if I lose all my money if I invest in stocks as opposed to you know money market account or something um what if you know what if I fail what if I can't handle
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my social environment without alcohol or going back to smoking uh what if it's really hard what if I have horrible cravings and withdrawal symptoms and what if I end up just going back you know or I do it for a month and then I start smoking again what if I can never
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quit so or the subconscious might also say don't be so hard on yourself you know what at least it's legal or you know hey it's only one pack a day it's not like you're one of these people that smokes two packs or you know so that's the part
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that kind of bullshits us but it's important to realize that it's not trying to hurt us a lot of people when they're when they are caught in this internal debate Jim they they beat themselves up because they misunderstand what they're actually experiencing it's
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not they you guys so you've seen the cartoons where you have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other so I use this analogy a lot with people the angel in this case is the conscious mind it's the one Whispering Your Ear uh you know saying oh you know uh you can
41:22
do it you're good enough or hail is really good for you go eat eat a salad right and then the the subconscious the devil says uh come on you know you had a a rough day or you know look who's President whatever year it is so you know it's okay to eat
41:43
junk food for another few years until someone else comes you know whatever whatever is going to get us to uh to stick with with that particular old way of doing things the subconscious is very persuasive and so it's afraid of change and it likes to keep us consistent with
42:01
what we've been doing and the problem is it Rejects it's it's more likely to absorb negative suggestion than positive suggestion and this is why people who watch The Evening News regularly are more likely to be stressed and have anxiety issues than
42:16
people who don't because their goal on the news is to scare you and then take you to Commercial and sell your pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol and fast food uh because all of those make you feel better temporarily and so uh the the most common form of hypnosis is TV I
42:33
mean I you know I kind of joke but I've heard it said that it's called TV programming for a reason because you're being programmed and people are might be health conscious about what they eat oh I don't want to put that in my body but they pay no mind
42:47
to what they're putting into their head and there's a lot of junk food people are watching so ultimately the internal conflict is that if the person says I really want to change but that's something that I can help with but if they say well you know I really
43:04
don't want to change but my wife says you're really good and she told me I better come and see you or else I mean like I've had that a couple times and that's the end of the conversation right there because I can't because right because GMC if I could mind control someone if I
43:19
could make them do something against their will then well first of all um every single person I see or I meet for the first time I could help and two I'd have a hundred percent success rate it's very high but nothing's 100 but if it if if I could make someone do
43:37
something but then the other thing is why would they show up if they really don't want to so one last thing I'll say about that with the I want to but the ambivalence is that sometimes people who have chronic States like chronic pain depression
43:57
uh grief obesity these there's a few others but those are you know situations where people are in it long term it's usually very resistant to whatever they're doing to change sometimes even hypnosis and if they do change they often relapse
44:16
oh yeah addictions that's another one they go back to it so they have a fairly consistent unhealthy undesirable state in their life and then try as they might they can't consistently seem to change it and very often that's due to something called secondary gain which is
44:30
really fascinating which means they're they're getting a benefit for the having their problem so for example someone has back pain um they are obviously aware consciously that that really sucks and it's limiting and all of that but if it helps them not have to take out
44:50
the trash or it helps them get sympathy or their pain so they avoid difficulty and they get attention or or you know support hey that's a good thing and the subconscious will often keep a problem like that in place to get that benefit and they would often
45:09
resist changing because if the person gets over that pain or obesity or addiction or grief or depression then they may lose that benefit they get for having that problem and this this is not terribly common but you know I I do see that in some cases
45:29
especially if someone said I've tried everything or I've you know I had success for a little while I I don't know if Sarno I'm sure he would have seen this with some of his patients but I know I've known of chiropractors who've had people that start getting better
45:43
and then they stop doing their exercises or they stop coming in for adjustments and sometimes because on some level they really don't want to change but that's not the same thing as intentionally um misleading someone the person really does consciously want to change but
46:01
they're getting enough of a payoff that you know it's like the devil you know versus the devil you don't and so they stay stuck yeah I'm I'm a huge fan of chill beanie's book influence uh I'm sure you're familiar with that um and and what fascinates me about it
46:21
is these kind of human OS hooks if you will and you've been talking about a lot of them that I find it very helpful to the to the way you describe it um you know as I was listening to you about the TB programming and you know I always say you know follow the money right and
46:42
makes a lot of sense of course the news is trying to terrify you because they want the advertisers yeah and the advertisers want you in a mood they're looking for salvation of whatever form you know be more beautiful be be happier be have your fear go away
46:58
Etc and and then chalvini does a really good job of do you know looking broadly at at the what he calls click were it's like a you know program if you say because for example because is a magic word if uh if you wanna if I want to jump ahead of you to
47:21
um uh get uh something at a store and I just say hey Todd let me in front of you your chances are you're gonna say you get out of here bleach your time in line if I on the other hand come in and I say hey Todd uh can I jump in front of you in line because
47:39
it doesn't matter what you say after because that's what you'll be great finding was normally it's a it's a real reason right so hey Todd can I jump in front of you online because my wife is in the car with the baby the grandchild and I gotta get this right and so if
47:57
you're a normal person you're gonna let me go ahead of you online for the most part sure compliance goes way up what shildini's thing that I thought was really interesting was he isolated the fact that no no no no no it wasn't the reason it was that because
48:13
and and so he tested that by having people say and I'll just improv it here hey hey Todd um can I jump in front of you in line because I want to that has pretty much the same effect in terms of your compliance as the real reason I wonder are are there things like that
48:36
tricks of the trade not even called tricks methodologies um that you can use to overcome some of those for example the secondary gain that I I do know a lot about that because like I have had so no problems and I read sarno's books and everything
48:53
and he's big on secondary gains as well um and your example was perfect like um another one I can think of is you know the young mother who adores her child right she truly consciously adores her child and all of a sudden she has horrible back pain because the child is
49:14
keeping her up she's not getting any sleep and a normal human reaction to that is to be frustrated to be maybe even angry and so the consciously the mother thinks I can't be angry at but the at this beautiful angel um and so they they develop a back pain
49:31
a stomach pain or whatever to distract their attention from the real cause um are are there ways that you can you can help people when you're aware I think there's some strong secondary gains here that they're getting absolutely
49:50
um and and sometimes hypnosis it can be useful for that generally like structurally I would say in terms of looking at the issue the key is to find is is either to nullify the advantage that the person gets for having their problem which may involve some they have to
50:10
change their environment or something going on in their life in order to do that if they're getting rewarded for something that they may need to find a way to to stop that reward or if they're getting if they're avoiding responsibility or hassle for having their problem
50:24
um then that needs to be addressed obviously consciously they need to have the will to do that and but there are so so that's one way you need to remove the benefit the other is to is to give the subconscious permission or ideas for alternative ways to still get
50:46
that benefit that allows the person to let go of the of the behavior so if the person for example if one of the main benefits that okay so I'll tell you real quickly and then answer the question about the um tricks of the trade or or you know language issues words
51:05
um I had a client once I think this is maybe one of the best examples of secondary gain I can tell uh who was overweight let's just say 30 40 pounds 50 pounds overweight um and she was an attractive woman uh and much more so when she was you know
51:20
at a healthy weight and she was probably uh in her 30s or so when I met her and she had tried even with a hypnotist to lose weight and would either have no results or would have temporary results but as soon as she got like halfway to her goal her stress level would go up
51:36
and she'd start eating more to compensate for the stress and then her weight would go back up and this is one reason why people yo-yo diet is that their um there's something stopping them from getting to the finish line and so with some questioning I found out that when
51:54
she was in college she experienced a date rape and so and she was a very slim attractive woman at the time she got unwanted attention from a man uh to the extreme and you know in the aftermath of that was was you know stressed and it was traumatizing so she you know ate
52:13
more food as a way to cope but usually that would just be it's fairly temporary well what happened was with her she kept eating kept gaining weight and over you know six months or a year was 20 30 pounds heavier suddenly not getting much
52:27
attention from men now consciously she might say wow this sucks I'm overweight you know no man wants to be with me because I'm not attractive anymore and whatever but the subconscious said ah I'm safe I'm never gonna have to deal with that horrible traumatic experience
52:45
again and so when she started losing weight even though consciously she felt better her subconscious started getting more nervous because she was getting close to being thin enough to be raped again now this is irrational but that's how the
52:58
subconscious works and it's all about self-preservation so she would start getting stressed because that means there's danger coming she would eat more and she would sabotage her weight loss so our work had very little to do with hypnotizing her to eat vegetables and to
53:12
stop eating bread it was really about clearing the trauma so that she would no longer react emotionally to that memory and so her subconscious could had made peace with what had happened and she no longer needed to eat to be safe and then she was able to lose the
53:31
weight so by removing the benefit of the behavior which is safety because she feels safe without it the behavior is unnecessary and it's easy to change and that's again dealing with the root cause and not the symptom does that make sense it does I I just wonder
53:50
um how do you how do you how do you get rid of that fear how do you clear that fear okay so well one way it involves certain language patterns um and the because pattern is a is a language pattern there's many of them that tend to be very influential and
54:10
tend to um you know I don't know if you'd say they're hypnotic language patterns but basically in normal conversation using those words can be very effective and influential and some people in sales often use those to or whether it's in you know a vocally speaking or printed
54:31
material tv ads have a lot of sort of embedded hypnotic language and and imagery to manipulate people um in a way that's not in their best interest you know whereas what I'm doing is aligned with the person's best interest but that's a form of
54:48
neuro-linguistic programming which is you know a big part of what what I do as well and NLP is basically the study of how we think and involves a variety of different tools and techniques uh everything from certain visualizations to um to words to basically change
55:09
it it accepts the fact that the way we think affects how we feel and that of influences how we behave and that everything in our mind the way we think about it whether it's imagination or memory has a structure to it so there's certain visual elements and
55:25
auditory elements and and so on and by changing details or elements of that structure the entire experience changes and so one way to do that is through language another way to do it is through imagery so for example if someone has a particular traumatic
55:43
memory um usually there's something about the way they're seeing it in their mind that is evoking a strong and negative emotion so I mean I'm being I'm simplifying here but by changing certain elements visually in their memory in the way they think about it
56:02
it can often immediately change how they feel and with a little bit of repetition which sometimes only takes a few minutes it can in many cases have long-term potentially permanent um it permanently changing how that person responds to that thought the thought the
56:25
memory the image which then also changes how they respond to what would be a trigger I often say it triggers meaningless if there's no bullets in the gun so if someone has a trigger being around men with beards let's say because a man with a beard once was mean to them when they
56:42
were younger um by doing some work through you know hypnotic language so it could be through a hypnosis session or through just conversation or a visualization process by changing any of those elements and getting the person to think about it or
56:59
see it in their mind in a different way then that changes how they feel about it and so then when they're out in the world seeing that external stimulus like a beard in this case or stepping on an airplane or seeing a glass of you know whiskey if if they're recovering from
57:18
drinking alcohol those things no longer evoke that emotion whether it's Escape or avoid or Gimme More I Gotta Have It and because there's a the thought and the feeling has been rerouted or cut you know that it's kind of like you put up a detour and you have
57:37
to or you put up a roadblock and you have to take a detour they just don't go that way anymore and so that's how you can change the ultimate Behavior usually very quickly by just changing the way they think about it so that can be done through
57:51
language it could be done through imagery because the imagination and emotion is the language of the subconscious and so when I work with people in that way they are consciously aware of what I'm saying and and I'm asking them to do in their mind they have to
58:07
choose to follow my instructions of course if they you know they fold their arms and they're like I'm not going to do what you want I'm not going to let you hypnotize me or influence me or whatever then guess what they win well they lose in the long run but they're correct
58:22
because I can't make them but I know what to say and to have them do to get the outcome they want and if they play ball like a dance you know I lead they follow but we both have to want the dance to continue for it to work and when one of us says okay we're done
58:40
the dance is over but as long as we're dancing we can have that experience and create whatever change we want to create and usually once that's changed the the you know neuroclasticity which I know you know about um which is the fact that the brain can
58:55
constantly remodel itself based on how it's being used used meaning the way of thinking feeling you know acting different regions of the brain um if someone is creating a new way of thinking feeling doing and roadblocking or somehow making perceived
59:14
disadvantage of the old way of thinking feeling doing then the old way starts to break down because the brain wants to you know maximize its efficiency and so if it's not using a certain pathway it breaks down those connections and uses it to build up the new ones and that's how
59:32
habit change can happen immediately doesn't take 21 days it doesn't take six months and and change can happen very quickly so the the brain remodeling the Neuroscience involved in some of our work especially trauma um in a process called memory reconsolidation which is a natural
59:52
phenomenon that happens anyway we just direct it it it changes immediately how the brain is organizing that information that the person wants to change and once that happens I'd say 95 plus percent of the time whatever change they've noticed at the
1:00:11
end of that session meaning they're no longer emotionally aroused by that you know by that memory let's say 95 plus percent of the time that's there indefinitely it's the new state of the brain and so that's where a change can happen in minutes
1:00:28
you know and that's that's why usually the work is very fast and if trauma is the cause of their anxiety the anxiety is the cause of their addiction let's say than by clearing the trauma the primary reason the anxiety is there is gone so the anxiety goes away
1:00:45
and if there's no anxiety then there's really no need to drink or take drugs or overeat and so the whole house of cards collapses because you pull out the the main support which is usually unresolved trauma really fascinating um I I was uh an early reader of all the
1:01:06
neuro-linguistic programming uh books you know frogs and princesses and and I was reminded of the story of Richard bandler who would sort of The Godfather of neuro linguistic programming and and he used to do what he would call a hard reset when he was giving speeches and
1:01:25
this is in the 70s right and so so public profanity was much more taboo back then than it is today and and one of the things that he used to do to do what he called this hard reset for his audience was say like somebody would ask him an innocent question and he would
1:01:45
say you and like everybody would be absolutely stunned reset because of what he did and obviously that started to lose its efficacy as more and more people were more comfortable with profanity with swearing Etc but how does that tie in you said
1:02:08
hypnotic word sequences I'm really interested in and you referenced the because that that I borrowed from chilgini are are there are there others that people could like just use if they were trying to change something just like repeating to themselves sure
1:02:29
um well the first thing there's no harm in in you know trying to have positive self-talk or or affirmations as they're often called um you know like I can do it I'm good enough smart enough and doggone it people like me or whatever there's no harm in that um and even
1:02:51
using uh certain language patterns there's quite honestly it's not that effective it takes a lot of work because usually it's it's really only at a conscious level and trying to change you can't change the iceberg very quickly by just dealing with the with
1:03:09
the uh the the top a tip um that being said um people can say you know you know I don't usually advise people in areas of positive affirmations or positive self-talk because it's not very effective in my experience but that one language pattern for example might be
1:03:33
the more the more so in other words the more you do hypnosis the more easily and naturally you're going to feel better about yourself now that's not that's truism because someone will accept it as true but it's not like a universal truth
1:03:54
I mean there's you know the more you the more you listen to Jim's podcast the more aware you're going to be about the direction of technology and business or something okay maybe maybe not but it sounds good and so people will think oh okay well then you know or
1:04:15
um you want to listen to Jim's podcast because you like to learn new things and you're a smart person now if someone's dumb they're probably not listening to your podcast so they like to think that they're smart and so they're going to agree with something
1:04:30
because they're smart and so yes so I you're going to agree with Jim because you're an intelligent person that's one way there's another thing called a yes tag where you can end a sentence or begin a sentence with like a negative contraction and we've heard this before like um
1:04:48
um this is a really informative interview isn't it now do you want to say yes to that yeah of course I did I just said don't you want to say yes to it and you're so ironically because I'm even though it's a not um you you're it you know again it's not
1:05:04
making you say yes but isn't it easier to understand something when it's explained to you yes yes it is someone and so with NLP and this is gets back to the mind control thing NLP which has gotten a deservedly bad name in the sales world because of people who are
1:05:25
not uh doing it for people's benefit but they're doing it to manipulate and by the way everyone manipulates husbands and wives manipulate each other people manipulate their kids teachers manipulate you know it's not just because it's not just about the news and
1:05:38
the politicians I manipulate my clients they manipulate me it's all about what's the intention behind it the word manipulate while it's true simply means to like take your hands and move things about but ultimately if the intention if between both parties is aligned then
1:05:54
it's a great thing so if I say if I say wouldn't you like to have me as a guest on your podcast again you can still say no but it's easier to say yes than if I say would you like to have me as a guest again wouldn't you of course you would would
1:06:12
yeah yeah isn't that true of course it is right yes yes yes there we go and so now I got you yo so now I have you in a yes set which means you're now used to saying yes and so I can ask you a bunch of things that you would say yes to naturally and then ask you
1:06:34
something that you know maybe you would maybe you wouldn't and you're more likely to say yes so the way I look at it is NLP is very can be used to influence people if they're on the fence you can push them over in One Direction but if they're on one side of the fence you're
1:06:50
not going to get them onto the other side and so if someone is dead set against um for example I have no interest in eating fast food whatsoever I probably haven't in 15 maybe 20 years I used to like it so I don't care how good the Fast Food commercial is I don't care how
1:07:06
much whatever they try to influence me I'm not going to eat it I'm not on the fence but if I'm you know sometimes I like eating you know McDonald's and sometimes I don't and I don't know and I'm kind of like on the fence a little bit and then they
1:07:22
come up this really good commercial and they're like oh man I'm gonna go have some McDonald's because I'm on the fence and they're able to manipulate me but so that's why if someone is has a very clear sense of of what they want who they are what they're about
1:07:35
then they should not have any fear of even the media at least in the short term uh mind controlling or manipulating but the problem is over time people can be you know with dribs and drabs of of information that can happen that also comes back to the other part of what you
1:07:55
said which was I think something like if someone doesn't want to change or if someone does but they're not totally ready I mean I'm ad-libbing a little bit uh can you how can you get them or can you get them to change so there is a model you
1:08:12
may have heard of by uh Charles prochaska from years ago I don't even remember if it was 80s or 90s but he was you know called the stages of change mop that's a simple form and there's five or six depending on how you look at it stages that people go through
1:08:30
in Readiness for change so the first is called pre-contemplation which means a person's not even going to acknowledge they have an issue or a problem so someone let's just say who's in denial about their addiction uh they're like hey you know yeah I like
1:08:45
to gamble every week you know but I only use a couple hundred bucks each time it's not that big of a deal and I do it to have fun I deserve to do that I don't have a problem it's your problem not mine they're not going to change I don't care
1:08:57
what hypnotist you bring them to I don't care what Recovery Group you bring them to their arms are folded their brow is furrowed and they are not going to change and the more you push the more they're going to push back and dig in that's the most challenging stage for
1:09:10
someone to be in there are ways I'm not going to get into now but there are ways to slowly influence them to the next stage which is called contemplation where someone is now aware that they have a problem and they're really thinking about it
1:09:24
they may not be ready to change they may not know how or if it's possible but they're like yeah I really do have a problem with gambling um and um you know I'd like to change but don't know when don't know how but you're right I do a problem and it needs to change at some
1:09:41
point the third step is preparation and this is when the person is like okay I know I need to change I'm gonna go see Todd the hypnotist uh you know my first appointment is in two weeks and uh you know we're going to do it very soon and I'm ready
1:09:57
that's preparation that's usually a fairly short period and then action is like the moment when the change happens and then maintenance which in an old school psychology point of view is necessary but in the work that I do is usually not because there's no not much effort
1:10:15
needed to maintain it once the shift has taken place they're just living their new way but you could say that's maintenance which is an indefinite period where they're maintaining the new Behavior and then the pessimistic model has a
1:10:28
sixth stage which is relapse and that takes them all the way back to probably contemplation but pre-contemplation can last forever contemplation can last some period of time and usually I never see people who are pre-contemplative because they would never come to see me
1:10:46
they're usually contemplating but mostly they've done a lot of research they've thought about if they've referred been referred by someone seen our 75 star reviews on Google whatever it is they're going to say okay um I'm ready let's just do this and make sure that
1:11:01
you can help me and that's usually a lot easier than someone have to twist their arm that that is absolutely fascinating and uh unfortunately I am out of time but yes I would like to have you back on the podcast because I I think I think that in all seriousness I think we've just
1:11:23
touched the surface here and and maybe wet it some appetites I think that this is fascinating for so many reasons and you know the the idea of erasing the symptom treating the actual cause helping people and not milking them dry you know in other words it's kind of
1:11:42
like yeah five sessions you're done you're good not five years not 10 years I I'm I'm fascinated by these effective and demonstratable um uh ways to to change Behavior Todd so uh next time we'll we'll maybe do some case studies um in in the meantime uh as a hypnotist
1:12:09
you're gonna love this one uh we we ask all of our guests that well we're going to wave a wand and make them the emperor of the world for one day you can't kill anyone you can't put anyone in a re-education camp but we're giving you a magic microphone and you can say two
1:12:26
things into that magic microphone and as a hypnotist boy this you should be all over this uh and and what's gonna happen is every all eight billion people whenever they're next morning is they're gonna wake up and they're gonna think the two
1:12:43
things that you said and they're gonna think that it was their own idea and they're going to go right to the action part of the stages of change what what two things are you going to accept in people okay well uh one would be hopefully I'm answering this right but
1:13:09
hope one would be for the person to be curious about why they think feel and act the way they think feel and act and to really have a desire to understand themselves which then means they'll understand other people um if they do that then they'll understand that
1:13:28
in most cases obviously there are some real world cases where a person has such an uphill climb that you know senior hypnotist is not really going to be the top of their priority list but for a lot of people um the kind of work that we do
1:13:44
could be life-changing I mean it often is and so if they have the Curiosity and the desire to understand themselves which then also helps them realize wow it's not an uphill battle all the way it's not impossible I can change I can feel better I can change my behavior I'm not
1:14:06
I'm not identifying with my problem I'm not an alcoholic I'm not an addict I'm not a loser I'm not a fat person because it's in my family I'm not you know a depressive you know they don't identify with the problem they realize that they are doing something
1:14:22
because on some level they're choosing to do it because it's serving them on some way on some level and they can choose to change that with the right help and the right tools so that's the first thing I think that's one I threw a lot in there you know I'm not brief
1:14:34
um two woo I think I would like for everyone to to innately feel that they're Worthy of love and they're worthy of being alive and and owning their life no matter what other people might have said or done to them in the past and no matter what they might have said or done
1:14:56
because the thing is we come into this world no one's given us a road map on how to go through life and then if we are advised by people called parents teachers you know that kind of thing they're usually still struggling with their own crap
1:15:11
they've never dealt with and so this is probably one reason why Humanity hasn't made a mess of a lot of a lot of progress in terms of maturity level because we've done great with technology as you know but in terms of the human part we haven't progressed that much and
1:15:26
it's because our next Generations are being raised by people who have a lot of emotional and a lot of problems that they've never dealt with because of their parents and I'm not blaming everyone I'm just saying if you could stop if okay so if I could be
1:15:39
an emperor and if I could be like Superman or whatever and stop the planet I might need more than one day so I'm gonna beg for a little extension there but if I could if I could somehow get everyone to stop and fix their you know easier said than done but
1:15:56
easier done than most people think and just fix it clear away the trauma clear away the get rid of the disempowering beliefs realize that they can change their life for the better and they deserve it and then once that's clear go then all of a sudden the new children
1:16:14
will be raised in a healthier way probably all the politicians will have to go put themselves in a re-education camp because they serve no purpose anymore um corporate admissions will change Society will change dictators will suddenly realize they don't need to be
1:16:29
and blow up and invade countries because they're not overcompensating for insecurities anymore you know so those are the two to ten wishes I would have and I think everyone understood themselves better and respected themselves more they would treat you themselves and
1:16:46
everyone else better and you know World Peace starts with inner peace and if you want to make the world a better place you got to make yourself a better place so that's what I would say I love it they're both great thank you Todd and we will schedule a second uh uh
1:17:04
appearance because this is a fascinating topic to me and you are very erudite and uh explain things extremely well so thank you sir for being on the podcast and we will be in touch on on setting you up for a second one I look forward to it thanks Jim take care bye